blackforest
Well-known member
The onus here is on the prisons. I still don’t see any moral justification for killing inmates “just in case” prison staff is negligent in their obligation to keep them detained.
Is the death penalty ever “legitimate defense”?
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The Church in our time has determined that no society in the world is so unable to detain capital criminals, that the death penalty is justified. While I may have some reservations that the Church overreacted, I am willing to accept her assessment of the world situation today, and her casuistry, regarding CP. It is an issue that affects relatively few people, and no injustice is done to someone by confining them for life in lieu of executing them.signit:
The onus here is on the prisons. I still don’t see any moral justification for killing inmates “just in case” prison staff is negligent in their obligation to keep them detained.
Thanks for the reply.
With all due respect, I don’t agree with that assessment.
The assessment (that we are “so unable to detain capital criminals, that the death penalty is justified”) is based on social science, and our Catholic leaders are not always right on social science.
You or some of the other posters might believe that because only x% of capital criminals are set free (or escape, etc.), and only x% of them kill again, the system works as it is and we don’t need capital punishment.
I might come to a different conclusion. I might believe that for certain crimes and individuals any risk at all is too much.
And:
I support life without parole and would accept it in place of the death penalty if I were 100% sure life meant life.
But, there is a movement to abolish life without parole. As noted in post #18, in California there is a proposal to allow resentencing after 25 years.
We don’t know for 100% sure that the person who commits an extreme crime and gets freed after 25 years won’t do it again, even if they claim to be a different person than they were.
And that’s what I said, life without parole that means precisely that — life without parole.HomeschoolDad:
I support life without parole and would accept it in place of the death penalty if I were 100% sure life meant life.
But, there is a movement to abolish life without parole. As noted in post #18, in California there is a proposal to allow resentencing after 25 years.
I have wondered myself if the Church perceived the situation correctly, as you note, a question of social science (which is not infallible, nor is it a question of doctrine), but for this matter, I am content to accept the Church’s judgment. The Church should be entirely open to whether or not she decided this matter correctly.
I do have a concern that the faithful, under the rubric of “recentism” (keep in mind that, as a practical matter, for many, “the Church began in 1962”), will simply conclude that CP is evil in and of itself, or that the Church changed her teaching, such that the Church will be perceived as having been wrong all those centuries — which opens the door to saying “and she was wrong about other things as well, she’s changed that teaching, she can change others (e.g., contraception, the indissolubility of marriage, the all-male priesthood, and so on)”. Good and bad, right and wrong, true and false, these things never change.
There is legitimate use of the death penalty, but the Church judges that those conditions do not exist in the modern world. If those conditions ever ceased to exist, then the death penalty would be licit once again. The teaching has not changed, the circumstances have.
I would be really hard-pressed to say that the Church has incorrectly assessed the world situation WRT the death penalty. She is not guaranteed infallibility in making practical decisions as to whether a condition exists or not, but I for one am willing to assume she got this judgment right. Other things, such as how the Church handled sexual abuse in times past (that awful letter from Cardinal Ottaviani mandating absolute secrecy in, miserere Domine, matters involving solicitation in the confessional), the Church got wrong, but not this time IMO.
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And these are precisely the kinds of things the Church needs to look at, in deciding whether a blanket disapproval of CP can be made in today’s world. Whether she was aware of such situations, I cannot say.
Cloisters
Well-known member
The popes were distancing the church from the Culture of Death. Abortion, euthanasia, and assisted suicide – bloodshed – are part and parcel of the Occult. (As are priestesses and LGBT, esp trans). If we claim to be a church of life, how can we possibly promote the death of a great sinner, and cut off the possibility of conversion?
Granted, facing the gallows can pull one back into reality, and conversion.
Another reason was to prevent the execution of innocent people, which is more common than we think.
I was called for jury service a few years ago, on a Death penalty case. Took them a week to bring me to the stand for scrutiny. In a word, it was traumatizing. I explained that I’m Autistic with severe, inattentive ADD, and would have difficulty following the proceedings. Even after being offered a rolling transcript machine, I said outright that I could never vote to execute someone. “Hands off Cain!” I exclaimed.
After a back-and-forth with both the prosecutor and defense attorneys, the former “moved for cause” to release me.
During the questioning, I unintentionally made eye contact with the defendant. When I left, I wanted “something strong” as quickly as possible. I’m not a drinking woman.
During the trial, the jury got into a fight in the jury room over religion. The defendant was eventually convicted, and sentenced to life.
My 2 cents on what would have been the memorial of St Hildegard of Bingen had it not been a Sunday.
Blessings,
Cloisters
Granted, facing the gallows can pull one back into reality, and conversion.
Another reason was to prevent the execution of innocent people, which is more common than we think.
I was called for jury service a few years ago, on a Death penalty case. Took them a week to bring me to the stand for scrutiny. In a word, it was traumatizing. I explained that I’m Autistic with severe, inattentive ADD, and would have difficulty following the proceedings. Even after being offered a rolling transcript machine, I said outright that I could never vote to execute someone. “Hands off Cain!” I exclaimed.
After a back-and-forth with both the prosecutor and defense attorneys, the former “moved for cause” to release me.
During the questioning, I unintentionally made eye contact with the defendant. When I left, I wanted “something strong” as quickly as possible. I’m not a drinking woman.
During the trial, the jury got into a fight in the jury room over religion. The defendant was eventually convicted, and sentenced to life.
My 2 cents on what would have been the memorial of St Hildegard of Bingen had it not been a Sunday.
Blessings,
Cloisters
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