The bolding is mine. You have no right to pass of your view that it is right for a Church run state to execute someone for publicly spreading heresy, as Christian. The Church does not say so and it is certainly not what the teachings of Christ is about.
Wrong.
Dignitatis Humanae establishes that religious freedom is only morally permissible so long as it does not undermine the natural law or the moral consensus which regards the natural law is vivid. Beyond that the state is well within its rights to formally establish Catholicism and to suppress heresies that undermine the moral consensus.
Now if heresy may be regarded as a crime it follows that it may be punished as a crime. And like any crime the punishment may be suited to the gravity of the crime itself – and given that the crime we are speaking of entails the deliberate condemnation of souls to Hell, it follows that the crime is EXTREMELY grave and may be punished appropriately – even with death, in those few cases where all lesser measures fail.
If you have some ACTUAL ARGUMENT against this line of reasoning instead of impotent, sputtering rage that I don’t imbibe modern America’s First Amendment fetishism, I’d love to hear it.
severus68:
I hope you are not serious. The topic itself is provocative. Most Catholics whether on CAF or not do not feel the way a few fanatics feel. They just happen to be the most vocal. These few speak as if they were extremist Muslims. I too am Catholic born and bred, was in a Catholic school for the major part of my education. Catholics are not asked to memorise the Cathechism, memorise some verses from the Bible and then shut up forever. Many saints had doubts, struggled with their faith.
Christ taught that the greatest commandment is love, that is often forgotten on CAF.
Biblical love is the ordering of the will toward the good of others, the first and foremost of which is spiritual: the salvation of their souls.
If one soul who has already damned himself with heresy insists on dragging others down to Hell with him, love of others REQUIRES that he be punished.
Moreover, how do you treat someone with love unless you recognize them as a moral agent with free will who is responsible for his actions? It would be a profoundly UNcharitable act to let a criminal go free. This is the reason Hell exists, by the way: God loves us so much that He allows us even to reject Him.
Please don’t consider views on this BBS as authoritative. By definition, only the Pope and Magisterium is authoritative. People at best provide their own approximations.
It’s never OK to burn heretics. We should try to convince them peacefully. If they don’t listen we should argue with them and educate ourselves better. But burning is a no-no. It’s not something Jesus Christ did, but in fact was something Nero did. Still if heretics try to burn us we should be able to defend ourselves, even employing physical means.
The right response to the heretic is to turn the other cheek.
Those who advocate burning people as last resort, could you provide the Church teaching which states so, especially in the light of Pope Benedict’s anti-Death Penalty drive? Thank you.
Just to clarify, I have argued that the state has the right to execute heretics as a last resort, not to burn them. Even in execution, the methods must be proportionate. Lethal injection is fine by me.
Check the Catechism, #2267:
*2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."68*
I am not advocating anything beyond this: simply saying in that the (extremely rare) instances in which all lesser judicial methods fail to protect society from aggressive heresies, capital punishment is in order.
[QUO
Why does this topic need to be discussed at all. The burning of heretics or causing them to be burned is not something the Church is proud of.
At least one person here said he/she said so. I do not think it is about it being passe but rather that today we are more enlightened and have a better understanding of what Cheist taught.
Again, just to clarify, I don’t endorse burning anyone alive. That’s gross.
