Pope Francis calls for abolishing death penalty and life imprisonment

[dudleysharp]

Life and death is a cycle…can’t have one without the other. What do you mean…‘we all die ‘early’ because of our sins’…?

The eternal teaching is that we all die because of our sins.

 

[Ender]

Let me ask you this: if the U.S declared war on Canada, would that be a just war?

Some wars are unjust; some acts of personal defense are unnecessarily harsh; some uses of capital punishment are wrong. We are given freedom of choice. The fact that we sometimes misuse that freedom doesn’t change the fact that we have it.

There have been a number of supporting statements that speak of defending the common good or the defense of society. Which is another way of saying defending human lives.

No, this is where I disagree. As I responded to LongingSoul, the common good and that aspect of the common good which is living in a safe society are very different concepts. There are any number of things that contribute to the common good; it is by no means restricted merely to security.

You just have chosen to ignore that and have stuck with interpreting that as physical protection, and so are bound to find problems with that part of 2267.

In explaining the traditional teaching of the church 2267 states that capital punishment is allowed “when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings”. That is not a statement about the common good. It is a statement about…physical protection. If that isn’t what it means then an awful lot of people have been mislead.

Just because classically capital punishment was described in a way where it was divided into 4 objectives, one of them being human defense (i.e physical protection), doesn’t mean that’s what the Catechism means.

“Classically described?” You mean all the way back to 2001? The catechism isn’t as clear on this as it should have been, but those are still the four objectives of punishment. The church hasn’t changed that, nor will it ever change. It is just a description of the nature and purpose of punishment.

Maybe the relatively recent example of religious freedom can serve as an example.

Religious freedom is a different issue; what applies to it doesn’t necessarily apply elsewhere.

It seems something similar happened with capital punishment, as we see with St. JPII placing it under “legitimate defense” in the Catechism.

It is not under legitimate defense in the version of the catechism on the Vatican website. 2266 and 2267 are in the section titled Capital Punishment. That suggests that it is not in fact part of legitimate defense.

Ender

 

[dudleysharp]

SNIP
the determination of what contributes to the common good has been spelled out for us. That is, the formation of a "*just conception of the wickedness of murder…**And if (the Almighty) commanded man to have a horror of blood, He did so for no other reason than to impress on his mind the obligation of entirely refraining, both in act and desire, from the enormity of homicide. SNIP

Ender*

CCC 2265: “Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another’s life. Preserving the common good requires rendering the unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm.”

CCC 2266: “The State’s effort to contain the spread of behaviors injurious to human rights and the fundamental rules of civil coexistence corresponds to the requirement of watching over the common good.”

Rationally, that would point to both the death penalty and life imprisonment as the best options to meet the requirement in “rendering the unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm.” and any lesser degree sanctions ignore that requirement.

 

[graciew]

I already have, on this topic, for some years.

Your comment gave zero evidence for your thinking. Happy to hear your thoughts on that exact topic.

Thank you.

It is not about the thoughts , but the approach.
It is about a private meeting we have not been invited to , and addressed to a particular audience , and an article which reflects part of this meeting.
The Pope is the Pope. Has he commanded sin ? We owe respectful treatment to his authority and a respectful approach to his considerations.
At most , we are exploring the issue with due respect.

 

[dudleysharp]

Let me ask you this: if the U.S declared war on Canada, would that be a just war?.

Only if Canada were an unjust aggressor.

There have been a number of supporting statements that speak of defending the common good or the defense of society. Which is another way of saying defending human lives. You just have chosen to ignore that and have stuck with interpreting that as physical protection, and so are bound to find problems with that part of 2267. .

That does not appear to be correct.

It seems very clear that both the CCC and SPJPII are speaking of physical protection, with:

"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.’

It is cleat that both are speaking of criminal justice systems and, as a matter of fact, criminal justice systems allow unjust aggressors to harm over and over again, as is very easy to confirm, a reality the opposite of "very rare, if not practically non-existent.’

Just because classically capital punishment was described in a way where it was divided into 4 objectives, one of them being human defense (i.e physical protection), doesn’t mean that’s what the Catechism means. .

The Church has always found four ends for all sanctions, not just the death penalty. To my knowledge this has never changed.

 

[dudleysharp]

It is not about the thoughts , but the approach.
It is about a private meeting we have not been invited to , and addressed to a particular audience , and an article which reflects part of this meeting.
The Pope is the Pope. Has he commanded sin ? We owe respectful treatment to his authority and a respectful approach to his considerations.
At most , we are exploring the issue with due respect.

Correction comes from care. Non correction comes from not caring.

You should correct those whom you respect or don’t respect.

Pope Francis is giving his personal opinion. He was factually wrong and he had no biblical, theological or traditional support for his claim.

He made a secular policy claim, as follows:

Pope Francis condemned “a ’ penal populism’ that promises to solve society’s problems by punishing crime instead of pursuing social justice.”

My response was:

Do any leaders say that “we must solve society’s problems by punishing crime instead of pursuing social justice.”?

“instead of”

I can see no reason why the Pope would have said this. It is not even a prudential judgment.

I still cannot. Can you?

I respect the Pope.

The Pope was commenting on a secular policy issue and I found him dead wrong.

If you disagree, correct me.

Which leaders “promises to solve society’s problems by punishing crime AND DECIDING NOT TO purse social justice.”?

The list? There isn’t one.

 

[Kelt]

Correction comes from care. Non correction comes from not caring.

You should correct those whom you respect or don’t respect.

Pope Francis is giving his personal opinion. He was factually wrong and he had no biblical, theological or traditional support for his claim.

He made a secular policy claim, as follows:

Pope Francis condemned “a ’ penal populism’ that promises to solve society’s problems by punishing crime instead of pursuing social justice.”

My response was:

Do any leaders say that “we must solve society’s problems by punishing crime instead of pursuing social justice.”?

“instead of”

I can see no reason why the Pope would have said this. It is not even a prudential judgment.

I still cannot. Can you?

I respect the Pope.

The Pope was commenting on a secular policy issue and I found him dead wrong.

If you disagree, correct me.

Which leaders “promises to solve society’s problems by punishing crime AND DECIDING NOT TO purse social justice.”?

The list? There isn’t one.

I wonder why you’re not Pope…

 

[Kelt]

The eternal teaching is that we all die because of our sins.

How could we exist if we didn’t die? Are you suggesting that we could have lived forever? On this earth?
I know it’s going off topic, but it’s relevant to this point…thinking of catholic dogma - how come Mary died - as you believe she was without sin. Or is her disappearing bodily up to (?) heaven, something to do with that?

 

[dudleysharp]

I wonder why you’re not Pope…

When folks don’t answer a direct question and reply with something having nothing to do with the topic, it usually means two things.

Instead, why don’t you answer the question?

 

[Kelt]

I already have, on this topic, for some years.

Your comment gave zero evidence for your thinking. Happy to hear your thoughts on that exact topic.

Thank you.

Haha!
But no, I really mean it. You should take a step back from the dusty volumes of church law and look at what you’re saying in the light of the teachings of the man from Nazareth 2000yrs ago. He didn’t have much time for the sticklers to the Law. I don’t think you’d recognise him if he came today. Where d’you think he might go first…prisons…or churches?

 

[Kelt]

When folks don’t answer a direct question and reply with something having nothing to do with the topic, it usually means two things.

Instead, why don’t you answer the question?

Well you have decided that you know better than the elected head of your church. Perhaps you believe yourself better qualified than Francis?

 

[Ender]

You should take a step back from the dusty volumes of church law and look at what you’re saying in the light of the teachings of the man from Nazareth 2000yrs ago.

The Catholic Church claims that “the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has bee entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.” (Dei Verbum 10)

It is reasonable for non-Catholics to reject that assertion but it is surely unreasonable for a Catholic to do so. Since we have been discussing this issue in light of Catholic doctrine it is a little late to say the doctrines are irrelevant. The “dusty volumes of church law” are nothing more than the Church’s understanding of God’s laws. They are not merely an irrelevant code of rules drawn up in the ancient past. If they are not in fact God’s laws then the Church - and Christianity itself - is a fraud.

Ender

 

[Kelt]

The Catholic Church claims that “the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has bee entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.” (Dei Verbum 10)

The future of the Catholic church in the modern world is probably going to be jeopardised if the church keeps claiming sole, exclusive access to God.

It is reasonable for non-Catholics to reject that assertion but it is surely unreasonable for a Catholic to do so. Since we have been discussing this issue in light of Catholic doctrine it is a little late to say the doctrines are irrelevant. The “dusty volumes of church law” are nothing more than the Church’s understanding of God’s laws. They are not merely an irrelevant code of rules drawn up in the ancient past. If they are not in fact God’s laws then the Church - and Christianity itself - is a fraud.

Ender

They are a code of rules drawn up in the past - and even a long time AFTER Jesus was alive. He did not make them…his followers who lived decades and centuries after him did.
Modern educated people in our multi-cultural world will not be able to carry on accepting this ‘divine intervention’ only for one particular faith. In any case, the interpretation of these sets of rules are continuously argued and debated within Catholics. Silencing their arguments and debates, making people toe the narrow line of a myriad rules set in stone whatever, and claiming to have the only hot-line to God…is what is going to make the church and Christianity LOOK a fraud.

 

[graciew]

The future of the Catholic church in the modern world is probably going to be jeopardised if the church keeps claiming sole, exclusive access to God.

They are a code of rules drawn up in the past - and even a long time AFTER Jesus was alive. He did not make them…his followers who lived decades and centuries after him did.
Modern educated people in our multi-cultural world will not be able to carry on accepting this ‘divine intervention’ only for one particular faith. In any case, the interpretation of these sets of rules are continuously argued and debated within Catholics. Silencing their arguments and debates, making people toe the narrow line of a myriad rules set in stone whatever, and claiming to have the only hot-line to God…is what is going to make the church and Christianity LOOK a fraud.

 

[CrossofChrist]

Some wars are unjust; some acts of personal defense are unnecessarily harsh; some uses of capital punishment are wrong. We are given freedom of choice. The fact that we sometimes misuse that freedom doesn’t change the fact that we have it.

That isn’t answering the question though. Using your own prudential judgment, you might say it is. But are you saying a person who thinks the war is just is objectively wrong?

No, this is where I disagree. As I responded to LongingSoul, the common good and that aspect of the common good which is living in a safe society are very different concepts. There are any number of things that contribute to the common good; it is by no means restricted merely to security.

I’m pretty sure that’s what we’ve been saying the whole time. At least I know I’ve said the common good isn’t limited to physical protection.

In explaining the traditional teaching of the church 2267 states that capital punishment is allowed “when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings”. That is not a statement about the common good. It is a statement about…physical protection. If that isn’t what it means then an awful lot of people have been mislead.

But it’s not only about physical protection. The fact that some people are mislead is irrelevant. People are mislead about a lot of things…

“Classically described?” You mean all the way back to 2001? The catechism isn’t as clear on this as it should have been, but those are still the four objectives of punishment. The church hasn’t changed that, nor will it ever change. It is just a description of the nature and purpose of punishment.

What happens when the bread/wine is consecrated at Mass is classical described as “transubstantiation”. If we decided to use a new word or description for that, that wouldn’t change the doctrine; we’d just be describing what happens in a different way.

Religious freedom is a different issue; what applies to it doesn’t necessarily apply elsewhere.

It can help us understand the current issue though.

It is not under legitimate defense in the version of the catechism on the Vatican website. 2266 and 2267 are in the section titled Capital Punishment. That suggests that it is not in fact part of legitimate defense.

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a5.htm

 

[graciew]

I respect the Pope.

The Pope was commenting on a secular policy issue and I found him dead wrong.

If you disagree, correct me.

Which leaders “promises to solve society’s problems by punishing crime AND DECIDING NOT TO purse social justice.”?

The list? There isn’t one.

 

[graciew]

Pope Francis condemned “a ’ penal populism’ that promises to solve society’s problems by punishing crime instead of pursuing social justice.”

My response was:

Do any leaders say that “we must solve society’s problems by punishing crime instead of pursuing social justice.”?

“instead of”

I can see no reason why the Pope would have said this. It is not even a prudential judgment.

I still cannot. Can you?

I respect the Pope.

The Pope was commenting on a secular policy issue and I found him dead wrong.

If you disagree, correct me.

Which leaders “promises to solve society’s problems by punishing crime AND DECIDING NOT TO purse social justice.”?

The list? There isn’t one.

First things first. Do check your inverted commas as to what Pope Francis actually said.,which should be in fact quoted between inverted commas.
Here is the OP article again
catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1404377.htm

 

[LongingSoul]

Longing Soul has, clearly, misinterpreted my writings on this topic.

Published, years ago.

CCC 2267: “without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself”.

The Catechism finds that we should end the death penalty in order to provide alternate sanctions “without definitively taking away from him (the unjust aggressor) the possibility of redeeming himself” (2267).

The Catechism states that the wrongdoer redeems himself. The biblical/theological realities find that all wrongdoers can/should seek redemption, but that God provides redemption to the wrongdoer by His grace.

Wrongdoers can only seek redemption, they cannot provide it to themselves. Again, a poorly written CCC section.

The Catechism is stating that the God invoked sanction of death takes away the possibility of redemption. Think about that. There is nothing to defend such a claim, in such a context.

All of our sins have us die “early”. Is there a case, whereby God has erased the possibility of our redemption, solely because of our earthly and “early” deaths? Such an interpretation is, in context, flatly, against God’s message and cannot stand.

The biblical record, its interpretations, the Magesterium and virtually all knowledgeable Christian scholars and laymen, Catholic or not, find that the universal blessing that God gives us is that we all have the opportunity of being redeemed “before we die”.

The death penalty does not/cannot take that away anymore than does a car wreck, cancer, old age or any other “earthly” and “early” death, meaning all deaths, because of our sins. We all die “early” because of our sins.

Do all of those early and earthly deaths remove the possibilities of our redemption? Of course not.

It is as if the Church had, completely, forgotten the meaning of St. Dismas’ death, his words exchanged with Jesus and the promise to come (8), the perfect example of expiation and restoration, via the criminal’s accepted sanction of death.

Thus, the Catechism, wrongly, finds that all “early” deaths, meaning all earthly deaths, negate the possibility of our being redeemed. Such is an astonishing claim.

In God’s perfection, we suffer an “early” death, because of our sins. The Catechism wrongly tells us that our “early” deaths takes away the possibility of our being redeemed. It can’t and does not. God gives all of us the opportunity of redemption, in His grace, before our earthly and early deaths, no matter what that death may be - a teaching the Church has always accepted, until now.

Some opposing capital punishment “. . . go on to assert that a life should not be ended because that would remove the possibility of making expiation, is to ignore the great truth that capital punishment is itself expiatory.”(10)

"In God’s religion, on the other hand, expiation is primarily a recognition of the divine majesty and lordship, which can be and should be recognized at every moment, in accordance with the principle of the concentration of one’s moral life.” (10)

1. “Amerio on capital punishment “, Chapter XXVI, 187. The death penalty, from the book Iota Unum, May 25, 2007
   www.domid.blogspot.com/2007/05/amerio-on-capital-punishment.html

What your perspective indicates to me is that you erroneously believe that human justice has the capacity and the obligation to redress the divine order. It does not. Human justice is solely concerned with the welfare of the community… the common good.

Aquinas - “All who sin mortally are deserving of eternal death, as regards future retribution, which is in accordance with the truth of the divine judgment. But the punishments of this life are more of a medicinal character; wherefore the punishment of death is inflicted on those sins alone which conduce to the grave undoing of others.”

When CCC2267 speaks of someones capacity to ‘redeem’ themselves it is referring to his capacity to redress the disorder to the community that he caused by his crime. The courtroom is not the judgement seat of heaven and the judge is not God.

Hence when CCC2266 says "The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people’s rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people’s safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.67

… it clearly states that the disorder needing redressing is the disorder to the communal life of men. The expiation effected by the criminals acceptance of his punishment also relates to the material (including psychological and cultural) injury his crime has caused. Human relationships are what matter to human law.

It is interesting to note that some of the legalistic, letter of the law sticklers are opposed to the introduction of victim impact statements and criminal justice diversion programs that involve a victim/criminal dialogue within the framework of the law. They prefer to keep the arbitrary powers of the legal upper echelon safe from influence of the common good and human justice.

 

[LongingSoul]

Card. Dulles stresses in his (famous in the US) essay… “Retribution by the State has its limits because the State, unlike God, enjoys neither omniscience nor omnipotence. According to Christian faith, God “will render to every man according to his works” at the final judgment (Romans 2:6; cf. Matthew 16:27). Retribution by the State can only be a symbolic anticipation of God’s perfect justice.”

So all your nitpicking regarding mans capacity to ‘redeem’ himself is all for naught in the light of a proper concept of human law and the meaning of mans temporal life in community.

Just to add another piece of enlightenment from Aquinas… when he speaks of Christs redeeming work in the Passion, he compares it to the capacity of man to redeem himself in a temporal way.

“For since He is our head, then, by the Passion which He endured from love and obedience, He delivered us as His members from our sins, as by the price of His Passion: in the same way as if a man by the good industry of his hands were to redeem himself from a sin committed with his feet. For, just as the natural body is one though made up of diverse members, so the whole Church, Christ’s mystic body, is reckoned as one person with its head, which is Christ.”

 

[LongingSoul]

No, this is where I disagree. As I responded to LongingSoul, the common good and that aspect of the common good which is living in a safe society are very different concepts. There are any number of things that contribute to the common good; it is by no means restricted merely to security.

As Ender well knows, the discussion regarding the common good here is not in relation to it being ‘restricted merely to security’… but in his belief that it includes human laws ability to effect divine retribution. The Church clearly respects human authority in its legal decisions. She speaks up not in regard to legalities but morality. Her concern is for the dignity of the human person and to express the reality of the mustard coloured haze of Satan that she refers to as the ‘culture of death’. This culture of death affects peoples capacity to experience themselves as a family with other men and affects their capacity to know good from evil.