Well, you know, Augustine’s opinion was fallible.
Personal opinions of people, even if they are people who became saints (like Augustine) do not become Church doctrine merely because they express them. As for your quote by Clement, I question how he knew to decide “when one fails into any incurable evil.” I have no idea what that quote even means. What is “wrong?” What is “covetousness?” It sounds like Clement thought everyone should be put to death for any sin, even if that sin was venial. It almost sounds like blood atonement. Would you care to clarify?No. If the moral rule is that one may not vote for a pro-abortion candidate then… one may not vote for a person known to support abortion. In your example we can know whether a person meets the criterion the rule addresses. What I am talking about is (e.g) the rule to feed the poor. How we decide to do that is left to each of us to determine and you can argue that increasing the minimum wage would help the poor by giving them more money and I can argue that it will hurt the poor by eliminating their jobs and, even though our positions are exactly opposite, neither position is immoral. Protecting the public is like helping the poor: deciding how to accomplish those goals is an educated guess. It is not doctrine and explains why Cardinal Ratzinger could say:* “There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty”*
Yes.
This is an assertion with no evidence to support it.
Now it’s my turn to agree with you - sort of. I believe this is the reason JPII opposed capital punishment, because modern societies have become insensitive to the dignity of human beings. With abortion and euthanasia rampant and a disastrous loss of faith, the value of a human life has been greatly diminished. I believe JPII felt that executions would simply fuel the overall disrespect for man’s humanity. What he opposed was an execution’s perceived affront to human dignity.
Bingo. If an execution is an affront to human dignity then it can never be used, but the Church admits that it can be used ergo … it cannot be an affront. This problem is resolved, however, if my explanation of JPII’s position is correct. If the death penalty is only a perceived affront then it can morally be used in those cases where practicality makes it necessary.
Not specifically, but they have taught that such punishment is legitimate and that can only mean that it is not contrary to man’s dignity - and I believe this to be an infallible teaching by the definition given in Lumen Gentium (#25).
True, but in this case what he expressed was in fact Church doctrine.
The point of the quote was to rebut the claim Vouthon made that the Early Fathers “unequivocally opposed capital punishment.” Whatever Clement meant by his comment it is quite clear that he had no moral objection to its use.
Exactly the point that I was going to make, Ender, regarding this post. Every Catholic is required to believe that we must help the poor, yet the way to do so is up for debate. So I agree that the analogy to voting for a pro-abortion candidate is not on the same par, because of the other variables.
JPII opposed the use of capital punishment by modern societies except in very unusual circumstances. That is not the same thing as saying Church doctrine forbids its use with virtually no exceptions. The Church says it is moral to use it. JPII believed that in most cases (today) it did more harm than good; the former is doctrine, the latter is prudential opinion.
Thank you. This is the problem I have with Ender’s comments. I agree that the Church teaches that the death penalty can be used. I don’t think there is anyone in this thread who has disagreed with that. But there is a big difference between “may be used in some cases” and “should be used in all cases.”
From the quote you have provided it seems, at least to me, that Clement had no problem with executing anyone who committed *any *sin. So Clement, according to the quote you provided, evidently would have had no problem with being executed himself for any sin *he * committed.
As that is such an anti-Catholic sentiment I submit that the quote has either been taken out of context or that its usefulness is non-existent when used to defend the position regarding capital punishment by the Early Fathers. 
Not just human lives: all lives belong to G_d.
This is not an argument. You have simply described a Father of the Church as being un-Christian and dismissed him. Even you should recognize this as being over the top.
Look it up yourself if you think it’s been taken out of context, and your total mischaracterization of it means nothing in addressing his statement.
Well I don’t know. Vouthon has dismissed Augustine and Pope Innocent I and now you have dismissed Clement. I’m seeing a pattern here, nonetheless we can look at this comment from Athanasius:
I did no such thing. My remarks were made about the quote you provided - not about Clement personally. In fact, I did my best to defend him by stating that the quote may have been taken out of context.
See? It’s the quote with which I am having problems.
I DID NOT DISMISS CLEMENT! It is the *QUOTE * you provided!
Did you read it carefully? What does it say to you? I’ve already written what it says to me and I am not happy with it at all. In fact, I am so unhappy that I will have to reflect on the quote you have now provided later. I thought we had made some headway and I have been working on a response to a post in which I received the impression that we were coming to an understanding. But it’s long and it’s complicated (at least to me) and I wanted to make sure that it is the best I can do before I post it. Right now I’m frustrated and angry. I hate to be told I have done things that I have not done!That is why I made the following statement:
Do you have anything more than your thoughts to back up this possibility? I’m thinking about Vlad the Impaler and some other nasty people and wondering if the respect for human dignity has really changed as you say. This is only my opinion but so many people died in such horrible ways during the past 2,000 years that I wonder if we are actually moving in the right direction. Of course there is that abortion problem but I also wonder if any society in the past 2,000 years actually believed the unborn were people and entitled to dignity and life. There is also slavery, which most countries have made illegal (that isn’t to say it doesn’t exist). It just seems to me that we (or perhaps some of us) are becoming more aware of human dignity and that is why we fight so hard to end abortion, slavery, hunger, racism - which are all affronts to human dignity. This can get complicated very quickly because we may be slipping back into our old ways with the acceptance of contraception and the constant struggle to stop abortion and those other things I listed. I could probably write a tome here and I’m already above the maximum for a post.
“A perceived affront?” Now I’m confused about your position (again). Would you please explain a bit more about this?
Yes - not just human lives. Of course all lives belong to God as He created them all.
Looking at the examples you have cited, we see that the moral rule to help the poor is a moral rule, yet the decision as to exactly how to do that is what you call a prudential judgment. Then I gave the example of the moral rule of opposing abortion as something that falls under your definition of a moral rule, and then I claimed that the decision of exactly how to oppose abortion (whether or not to vote for a candidate who is not opposed to abortion) was a prudential decision. To this you objected saying that in my example one should know with certainty whether a candidate supports abortion, and therefore it was not a prudential decision.
yes absolutely
Yes, that’s pretty much my position.
Well, our obligation to justice is as great as our obligation to charity.
No, I didn’t really say that; I don’t think the two situations are that comparable. Helping the poor involves entirely prudential decisions; determining whether capital punishment is appropriate … not so much. I’ll expand on this in another post.
Let’s be more specific: it is not the appropriate response to “crime” in general but to murder in particular.
Yes, here is Cardinal Dulles’ comment on this point.
If executing a person really is an offense against his dignity then it should be opposed in all circumstances. It would be intrinsically evil. Since we know that it is not intrinsically evil (the Church allows it today, at least theoretically) it cannot be contrary to man’s dignity so it would be valid to use capital punishment. That it is perceived to be an affront to his dignity does not make it one.
I understand your thinking here but this would amount to calling a punishment that is cruel or too harsh an affront to man’s dignity, and I don’t think that’s a valid assessment. Besides, we know the Church accepts the death penalty as a just punishment or she would never accept it under any circumstance and the justness of a punishment is determined by the nature of the crime, not the circumstances surrounding the application of the punishment. There may well be prudential reasons not to apply capital punishment but there is no fundamental moral objection to it.
I think this is one of the weakest arguments against capital punishment because it doesn’t address the position taken by the Church for nearly 2000 years. 2267 is incorrect in claiming that the tradition of the Church allowed capital punishment if it was necessary for protection. The Church never even raised that as a concern (although she certainly recognize it as a benefit). All of her arguments supporting the use of the death penalty were based on her understanding of retributive justice.
Yes. And what I am saying about capital punishment is that what we are arguing about is the moral rule, not the application of the rule. That is, is it a moral rule that murderers should die for their crime? We may decide for practical reasons or peculiar circumstances to make an exception in certain cases, but the rule remains, just as the rule to help the poor remains unchanged even if one decides not to give money to a panhandler on the street.
The billionaire is clearly rationalizing a selfish position just as the person who votes for Nancy Pelosi is just as clearly rationalizing away her obvious support of abortion. Voting for Senator Casey of PA might have been valid; voting for Obama was not (based on the assumption that the moral rule prohibits voting for pro-abortion candidates).
It is not necessary (nor is it even possible) to know the exact point where valid choices end and dishonest rationalization begins - that’s the prudential part of the judgment. It is possible, however, as you point out, to know that some positions are valid and others are invalid and not knowing where the former becomes the latter doesn’t change that. We may not know where in the middle of the Rio Grande the line is separating Mexico from the US, but we surely know that the land on one side is theirs and the land on the other side is ours.
As I said, regarding capital punishment we are disagreeing over the rule, not its application, just as - regarding voting - the disagreement is over whether the rule prohibits supporting a pro-abortion candidate, not whether Candidate X falls into that category.