For those who are faithful Catholics they have CCC teaching them the Church supports the death penalty in only very rare if not non existent cases (to defend society). That alone I would think should be enough for any faithful Catholic to not support the death penalty as a general rule. .
That is a criminological issue which can be factually assesed.
Had EV been properly thought through (3,4), it would have concluded that innocents were better protected with the death penalty and, therefore, it is a greater defender of society and, as such EV would have not created the errors which were then wrongly put into the Catechism.
2267 "Today, in fact, given the means at the State’s disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender ‘today … are very rare, if not practically non-existent.’ John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae 56).
The Catechism and EV are, hereby, using the secular standard of penal security as a means to outweigh justice, balance, redress, reformation, expiation and prior Church teachings. 2267 cannot stand.
This is such a poorly considered prudential judgement as to negate its “prudential” moniker.
Let’s look at “the means at the State’s disposal”.
All villages, towns, cities, states, territories, countries and broad government unions have widely varying degrees of police protections and prison security. Murderers escape, harm and murder in prison and are given such leeway as to murder and/or harm, again, because of “mercy” to the murderer, leniency and irresponsibility to murderers, who are released or otherwise given the opportunity to cause catastrophic losses to the innocent when such innocents are harmed and murdered by unjust aggressors. (4)
Incarcerated prisoners plan murders, escapes and all types of criminal activity, using proxies or cell phones in directing free world criminal activities. All of this is well known by all, with the apparent exception of the authors of the Catechism. (4)
Some countries are so idiotic, reckless and callous as to allow terrorists to sign pledges that they will not harm again and then they are released, bound only by their word, a worthless pledge resulting in more innocent blood. (4)
It has always been so.
The Catechism, as does EV, avoids the many realities whereby the unjust aggressor has too many opportunities to harm again. The authors of the Catechism appear to have no grasp of reality? (4)
The only known method of rendering a criminal “unable to inflict harm” is execution. “Unable to inflict harm” (2265) has the same meaning as “impossible to do harm”.
In addition, there exists the clear conflict between (1) this unprecedented and unjustified restriction on the death penalty and (2) “Preserving the common good requires rendering the unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm” found earlier in this same Catechism.
Which is it? Is the Church going to require “rendering the unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm” or is the Church going to require that we do everything but render the unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm?
Has a prudential judgement ever been placed in a Catechism, before? If not, the current one would seem to make the reasons clear and would denounce any possible repeat of that error.
footnotes to follow
