One Catholic voice on death penalty takes on another (Prejean vs. Scalia)

[SHEMP]

I think many who have posted on this thread would do themselves a great service by reading the following:

Cardinal Avery Dulles has a very nice article about Catholocism and Capital Punishment. He discusses the Catholic tradition concerning this issue. He discusses the current statements in the Catechism and statements by the US bishops:

firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0104/articles/dulles.html

Here is an article by Justice Scalia explaining his opinion concerning his obligation to faithfully interpret the US Constitution and his obligation to submitting to the teachings of the Catholic Church.

firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0205/articles/scalia.html

The last article is the most biased but I thought a very thought provocing peace concerning retribution and Catholic Tradition.

firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0408/articles/budziszewski.htm

I would highly recommend that if you are interested in this topic then read Cardinal Dulles article. If you want to criticize Justice Scalia then at least read his article so that you understand his opinion.

 

[Lizzie]

If activist judges and other lawyers could stop manipulating the justice system and quit releasing dangerous predators who endanger us, we could easily do away with the death penalty.

Helen Prejean is a phony who pretends to care but she doesn’t give a damn about those who suffer when lifers or capital punishment folks are freed in only a few years to prey on the innocent.

It is totally shameful that so-called Catholics claim that ‘crime is the result of poverty’! If that were true then the Great Depression would have produced more violence than today.

Squishy Catholics must wake up and realize that we should take responsibility for our actions.

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

Lizzie:

If activist judges and other lawyers could stop manipulating the justice system and quit releasing dangerous predators who endanger us, we could easily do away with the death penalty.

Helen Prejean is a phony who pretends to care but she doesn’t give a damn about those who suffer when lifers or capital punishment folks are freed in only a few years to prey on the innocent.

It is totally shameful that so-called Catholics claim that ‘crime is the result of poverty’! If that were true then the Great Depression would have produced more violence than today.

Squishy Catholics must wake up and realize that we should take responsibility for our actions.

This is how it works Lizzie.

First, you abolish capital punishment as unbefitting a civilized society and ridicule anyone who believes that it is a proper tool for enforcing the behavioral standards of the country. I mean how dare we actually kill people for doing what they believe is the right thing.

Then, you eliminate Life without parole sentences, because it is cruel to lock someone away forever. It is an admission that some people are unable to be rehabilitated, which is a failure of society, not the individual.

If society is the problem with these poor people, then we need to work to change society so that these people can fit in with the rest of us. Once we have reorganized societal structure and legal precepts, then we can get rid of prisons altogether and an unnecessary financial burden on society. The money saved can be used to fund crisis counselling centers for people who cannot understand why everyone doesn’t behave with some type of regard for their fellow citizen. They are the ones with the problem. Anyone who believes that there should be some type of moral standard to guide the behavior of society is trying to enforce their religious beliefs on the unwilling, which is a violation of the 1st amendment.

 

[Xavier4Life]

Scott_Lafrance:

This is how it works Lizzie.

First, you abolish capital punishment as unbefitting a civilized society and ridicule anyone who believes that it is a proper tool for enforcing the behavioral standards of the country. I mean how dare we actually kill people for doing what they believe is the right thing.

Then, you eliminate Life without parole sentences, because it is cruel to lock someone away forever. It is an admission that some people are unable to be rehabilitated, which is a failure of society, not the individual.

If society is the problem with these poor people, then we need to work to change society so that these people can fit in with the rest of us. Once we have reorganized societal structure and legal precepts, then we can get rid of prisons altogether and an unnecessary financial burden on society. The money saved can be used to fund crisis counselling centers for people who cannot understand why everyone doesn’t behave with some type of regard for their fellow citizen. They are the ones with the problem. Anyone who believes that there should be some type of moral standard to guide the behavior of society is trying to enforce their religious beliefs on the unwilling, which is a violation of the 1st amendment.

:whacky: Liberalism (to borrow the phrase from Michael Savage) truly is a mental disorder.

 

[chicago]

David_Paul:

Ok…got it now (finally). Bork is just fine. Within the bounds. I was getting a hint of Breyer/Ginsberg type thinking. Nothing specific which is why I’ve been reading a while before commenting.

No problem. Though, if you had read my posts more carefully, you would have seen that I mentioned Bork initially back in post #105.

And yes, Story was just one story. Familiar with William Rawle’s 1825 “View of the Constitution?” Agree with his secessionist argument?

(Not sandbagging you here. I don’t know if I am or not. Never explored it–mainly because the issue is settled…well…for most it is)

Actually, I do tend to sympathize with the secessionist argument. I don’t necessarily believe that Lincoln’s war for preservation of the union was a just war.

In fact, I’d kind of love to see some states try to seceed over the abortion issue today. I think that would force the matter.

 

[rjs1]

I am concerned that in this thread, in fact in this whole deabte about the death penalty, too many Catholics are not taking sufficient regard for what Holy Scripture says on the issue.
There is clear theme running through Scripture that the state can, for grave reasons, order the death of a person who has commited certain grievous crimes, especially murder.

An example of the state’s right to do this is seen in the case of a soldier fighting to protect his country, who is acting on behalf of the country to defend it and may in this circumstance kill the enemy if necessary. The Church has throughout history defeded such a position.
Similarly Scripture makes it clear that human life is so valuable and precious that anybody who deliberately takes an inoccent human life should forfeit his own life.

What concerns me is that by abolishing the death penalty we are in fact saying that the loss of INNOCENT human life no longer really matters.

Please look up the many scripture references on this topic and you will find that the abolition of the death penalty may be a liberal and currently popular move but it is not a scriptural move.

Years ago a prominent English Anglican theologian said that when England abolished the death penalty he knew that it would soon after allow easy abortion and this is exactly what happened. Those calling loudest for the abolition of the death penalty are the same people calling loudest for easy abortion. Why? Because they no longer recognise the difference between an innocent human life and a gulity human being.
Go back to Scripture and go back to the Church’s consistent teaching for the last two thousand years and you will find a clear distinction between taking an innocent human life and the state’s right to execute a person gulity of murder. The Bible says in Genesis 9:6, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image.”
In other words a human life, an image of God Himself, is so precious that the crime of deliberately taking that life must be dealt the ultimate penalty.
What message are we sending out to our society by not dealing out the strongest penalty to those who take an inoccent life? As in so many matters today I believe we disregard God’s scriptures, and the consistent teaching of the Church over the last two millenia, at our peril.

 

[Hildebrand]

tuopaolo:

One of the reasons Cardinal Dulles doesn’t favor (or at least sees being a factor against) the death penalty at the present time in the US is because of “The failure of modern democratic society to perceive the judgment of the State as embodying a transcendent order of justice.” So presumably if this reason or factor and others were to change in the future, Cardina Dulles would support the death penalty in the US. In my opinion, getting rid of the death penalty would only exacerbate the problem of “the failure of modern democratic society to perceive the judgment of the State as embodying a transcendent order of justice” So what Cardinal Dulles sees as a reason to not favor it or a factor weighing against it, seems to me to be actually be a factor weighing more for it than against it.

Well about 75% of the text (it would have been 90+% but for the last segment) I quoted was marked up with bold, underline, italics, often in combination, so I doubt anyone would have thought that Cardinal Dulles was responsible for all that mess

I would ask you this question: do you think the Roman Empire should have had the authority to sentence and carry out the death penalty?

You might say, if the Romans did not carry out executions, how could other Romans understand the transcendent order of justice.

Supporters of Dulles’ argument would point out that the Roman Empire did not care about the transcendent order of justice and neither does a society which legally killed 40 million+ children in the past 30 years and continues to kill them by the thousands each day. Nor a society supporting the use of the “the pill” to prevent pregnancy/or kill a newly conceived child. Nor a society supportive of creating a child in a science lab. Nor a society taking unused children (stored in a freezer) to experiment on them for the “benefit of society”. Nor a society that considers lewdness (and worse) a protection of the first amendment.

Avery Cardinal Dulles says it best: “For the symbolism to be authentic, the society must believe in the existence of a transcendent order of justice, which the State has an obligation to protect. This has been true in the past, but in our day the State is generally viewed simply as an instrument of the will of the governed. In this modern perspective, the death penalty expresses not the divine judgment on objective evil but rather the collective anger of the group. The retributive goal of punishment is misconstrued as a self-assertive act of vengeance.” (I added in the emphasis).

I am not with the US bishops and their declarations regarding the death penalty because to the best of my knowledge, those documents do not contain a introduction explaining clearly that the death penalty is NOT opposed to the teachings of the Catholic Church. As the Roman Catechism issued three years after the Council of Trent stated: capital punishment “is an act of paramount obedience to the fifth commandment”. This quote from the Catechism of the Council of Trent is a must at the beginning of every pronouncement by the US bishops on the death penalty. Otherwise they will be contributing to the confusion of the Catholic faithful on these matters. Bishops are suppose to teach and make things clear, is it not their duty to confuse every!!! And that is exactly what they have done.

 

[rjs1]

Hildebrand:

As the Roman Catechism issued three years after the Council of Trent stated: capital punishment “is an act of paramount obedience to the fifth commandment”.

Exactly!