Pope Francis Changes Catechism to Declare Death Penalty ‘Inadmissible’

[neptasur]

When the Pontifical Academy for Life is staffed with pro-abortion philosophers and IVF doctors, and doctors faithful to Humanae Vitae get the boot, it gets difficult to put a good image on all this stuff.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

Father Murray questioned whether sending a person to hell would violate his dignity?

A person can violate their own dignity. But God cannot violate a person’s dignity. I would think a priest would know that.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

it seems very dubious to claim that the traditional teaching on capital punishment is not part of the deposit of faith.

There is nothing in the deposit of faith that teaches that premeditated, retributive killing per se is okay. I think that is where your disconnect is. Have you read the letter to the bishops carefully?

 

[Pug]

Okay, yes, I see that it could be that one idea has increased. But I still can’t locate the old idea. I can’t locate the Catholic idea that criminals were thought to not have any dignity. It surprised me when the Pope wrote of that idea.

I suppose it could be as @exnihilo suggested, that the old idea was no more than that the state can have a penalty of death, just that.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

Weren’t we taught to visit the imprisoned?

So are you advocating for killing the “Son of Man”?

When did we see you [the Son of Man] ill or in prison, and visit you?’

And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’

We weren’t taught by the Church to visit those in prison who reject God and spit in our face. But that doesn’t mean that it’s moral to take the life of the prisoners who reject God. Or that because the prisoner has rejected God that it’s okay to kill them. But I suspect at one time many people may have thought so.

 

[Pug]

No, I am not advocating for the killing of Jesus. I am trying to understand a few of the pope’s words, which seemed out of nowhere to me (the rest of it is less unexpected).

I thought it was a positive move when they abolished the death penalty in my locale.

And maybe my problem is that I am a convert, but I was raised to visit people, even the irritating ones, or unbelieving, or whomever, as long as they wished a visitor. I assume that Catholic children from the same era were taught the same.

 

[angel12]

We weren’t taught by the Church to visit those in prison who reject God and spit in our face

Actually, in the Scripture passage referenced, Jesus didn’t put any qualifiers in the prisoner’s character. He simply said “I was in prison, and you visited me.”

 

[1Lord1Faith]

“these least brothers of mine” looks like a qualifier to me. Remember who Jesus said his brothers were? He said they were those who do the will of my Father. Perhaps I’m wrong, but that may have been the reason that we were never encouraged to visit Charles Manson or Richard Ramirez.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

I assume that Catholic children from the same era were taught the same.

Maybe it goes without saying, but you didn’t say it, so… I don’t specifically remember but we would have been taught that we absolutely do not have to, and probably should not, visit anyone who may be hostile to us during a visit. That kind of hostility would imply that harm could be done to us, and that kind of malice doesn’t fit with even a least “brother” of Christ. But bonus points for anyone who tries.

So there is a distinction there. That distinction may be at the root of all this violation of human dignity talk. Even the worst criminals don’t lose their dignity, but you don’t necessarily have to visit them.

 

[Pug]

Yes, I agree, I was not encouraged to visit someone who did not wish a visit or assaulted visitors. But I think the gospel goes beyond just the brother in Christ, on to the enemy even, with the corporal works of mercy. In my time as a Catholic, I’ve always gotten that vibe. Especially when using the words “the poor”. LIke here in the CCC, which footnotes to the sheep and the goats vignette.

1825 Christ died out of love for us, while we were still “enemies.” The Lord asks us to love as he does, even our enemies, to make ourselves the neighbor of those farthest away, and to love children and the poor as Christ himself.

I see, though, that the sheep and the goats says adelphos in the one line (not the other).

 

[neptasur]

1Lord1Faith,

Not only is it part of the deposit of faith that premeditated, retributive killing is “okay”, it is positively endorsed as demanded of justice. Do you think this subject just came up the first time this week? The Church has a long history with this question, which you are apparently oblivious to. What does Catholic teaching say about doctrines that are taught unanimously and consistently over very long periods of time? Have you ever heard phrases like “the unanimous consent of the Fathers” in defense of some doctrinal claim? What does that mean when you hear expressions such as that in defense of something like the real presence? Yet, the unanimous and multi-millennia old teaching on the death penalty can be whisked away with a patched-up veneer of “doctrinal development” that is not even defended, merely asserted.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

Not only is it part of the deposit of faith that premeditated, retributive killing is “okay”, it is positively endorsed as demanded of justice.

What an odd statement. Where would you get the idea that the death penalty is positively endorsed? Certainly not from the CCC before the revision. And certainly not from the last several popes. I’m going with the mind of the last several popes, and a majority of bishops since at least the time the CCC was written. I wonder where you get the idea that the deposit of faith doesn’t change or grow. It has certainly changed every century since the beginning.

 

[neptasur]

Where would you get the idea that the death penalty is positively endorsed?

The OT; the NT; Augustine; Aquinas; Pius XII; Pope Innocent III; The Council of Trent; countless popes, saints, martyrs, theologians; John Paul II; Benedict XVI; every pope prior to Francis.

Are you in this conversation? We are discussing whether or not current church teaching on the death penalty contradicts with the historic teaching on the subject. If you have no knowledge of historic church teaching on the subject, you don’t have anything to contribute to the subject, do you?

 

[twf]

That’s a bit misleading. Neither St John Paul II nor Benedict XVI “positively endorsed” the death penalty. They both discouraged it. They simply acknowledged that it isn’t intrinsically evil.

 

[neptasur]

twf, that is true (and I should have highlighted the difference in nuance there), however neither JPII nor Benedict XVI changed nor sought to change the historic position, they just said we don’t need it. Obviously what Francis is doing does seek to change the historic understanding; if he weren’t, it wouldn’t be called a “development of doctrine”.

 

[neptasur]

Some things can change, and some can’t. Can the Divinity of Christ change? Obviously not. The deposit of faith is those things that can’t change because they have been implicitly or explicitly held by the church to be definitive. My point is it is pretty difficult to argue that the historic position on the death penalty is not definitive.

 

[Pug]

Here is some Aquinas quote that I found and I thought it fitted the thread. It is a reply to an objection in the Summa, so it needs its context of second part of the second part question 64. It seems to talk about loss of dignity?

Reply to Objection 3. By sinning man departs from the order of reason, and consequently falls away from the dignity of his manhood, in so far as he is naturally free, and exists for himself, and he falls into the slavish state of the beasts, by being disposed of according as he is useful to others. This is expressed in Psalm 48:21: “Man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he hath been compared to senseless beasts, and made like to them,” and Proverbs 11:29: “The fool shall serve the wise.” Hence, although it be evil in itself to kill a man so long as he preserve his dignity, yet it may be good to kill a man who has sinned, even as it is to kill a beast. For a bad man is worse than a beast, and is more harmful, as the Philosopher states (Polit. i, 1 and Ethic. vii, 6).

 

[1Lord1Faith]

My point is it is pretty difficult to argue that the historic position on the death penalty is not definitive.

That’s fine, but every pope since Vatican II has been against it. It was abolished in the Vatican in the 1960’s. In light of new developments, Pope Francis says it’s inadmissible. So, no it’s practice never was definitive.

I think you’re confusing the doctrinal principles, on which the death penalty was historically upheld with, with the practice itself. The principal of defense is still there. I’m not aware of any retributive principle, that doesn’t seem to fit with the gospel. Maybe you could provide a link to any Magesterial documents since Vatican II that support your assertion about a retributive doctrinal principle being in support of the death penalty.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

Hence, although it be evil in itself to kill a man so long as he preserve his dignity, yet it may be good to kill a man who has sinned, even as it is to kill a beast.

This ^ is not Christianity. We are not to judge the dignity of others. Much less base the taking of another person’s life on that judgment. That just seems obvious to me. Comparing the dignity of people to animals is an obvious red flag.

 

[HarryStotle]

AlNg:

Father Murray questioned whether sending a person to hell would violate his dignity?

A person can violate their own dignity. But God cannot violate a person’s dignity. I would think a priest would know that.

Okay, then let’s try to reconcile God’s endorsement of the Mosaic Law which sanctioned capital punishment for a number of offenses.

Prescriptions of capital punishment for offenses against the Law would seem to indicate that if persons can violate their own dignity or that of others, then the eternal God himself was positively prescribing that human beings violate the dignity of others in the Holy Writ of the Old Testament.

Was God just NOT very aware of how prescribing death for serious transgression in the Mosaic Law was actually a violation against the dignity of human beings?

Of course not. The revision itself gives three reasons:

1. There is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes.

Increasing human awareness, unfortunately, does not demonstrate nor explain how God – whose awareness is presumably infinite – would positively endorse the capital punishment of those who committed serious crimes and assorted other transgressions of the Mosaic Law.

Has God’s moral awareness of human dignity, which is – we would suppose – infinite, also “increased,” not 2000 years ago, not 1000 years ago, not 500 years ago, but conveniently only in this current age?

If capital punishment is, today, an inherent violation of human dignity, then it would have also been such a violation 3500 years ago, no?

Or have human beings somehow been accorded a higher level of dignity today that is now potentially violated by capital punishment?

This opens another moral question for discussion. Is not any kind of punishment, even for lesser crimes, a fortiori, also not a violation of human dignity?

What is human dignity and when, exactly, is any action a violation it?

It would be important to know, just in case we do things to violate the dignity of others, who seem more and more insistent about having their dignity, for no matter what they do, properly respected.