Pope revises catechism to say death penalty is 'inadmissible'

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KMG said:
Nothing wrong with referring to popes by their regnal names alone.
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I’d like to see you refer to him by his title at least once. He is the sovereign pontiff duly elected. It’s a matter of respect.
 
This seems to be such a hot topic here…especially as most posters here would be from the US…where the death penalty is still allowed…and it is a hot political potato here…the Catholic church speaks to Catholics worldwide…many of those countries have already done away with the death penalty…the US is one of only a handful of countries that still carry out capital punishment…the Catholic church doesn’t speak for the US government…and the US government doesn’t follow the teachings of the Catholic church…yet those Catholics here who support the death penalty are upset with this announcement from Pope Francis…I suspect they are more upset because it doesn’t fit with their political views than it does with Catholic teaching…incidentally…I’m somewhat in two minds whether it should be justifiable in extreme cases…but at the same time I will abide by what the church teaches
 
MikeInVA said:
According to the (now-old) Catechism, the reason for the death penalty is not to punish the person but to prevent him from hurting others.
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This is a critical point that I feel like many are missing.

I’ve seen posters over the year that spend a great deal of time articulating the position that the death penalty is not only about protecting society, but is also about retribution and justice. The fact is, though, that’s not what John Paul II or the old version of the Catechism said.

I feel like the way the paragraph was worded before, people looked at it as having an “escape clause” by which they could simply imagine that in whatever circumstances they personally felt the death penalty was appropriate, it could still be reconciled with Catholic teaching. Pope Francis has—in a sense—closed that loophole.

In reality, though, the previous “loophole” wasn’t as big as people imagined.
 
The guards can defend themselves, and lethal force is still allowed in self defense if needed.

What Francis is talking about is taking a person, already subdued, and executing them. totally different ballgames.
 
Only if the guards know its coming and if their skills exceed the prisoner in hand to hand combat. Otherwise you are back to the guards determining a death penalty but without a trial instead of a trial with a death penalty verdict. You are just shifting the decision to another entity without addressing the moral issue. Its like those people who dump their dogs out in the country because they are unwanted/sick/mean. They end up dumping the moral responsibility on others to execute instead of doing it their own.
 
Not really. The pope just said he will push a global initiative to abolish the death penalty everywhere. He made no difference between first world or third world nations.
 
Part of the reason you need justice and retribution as part of the reasoning (i.e., necessary but not sufficient) is that executing someone only to protect society is always unjust if the person is innocent. Despite his position against it when it was not necessary, JPII did acknowledge the retributive side of capital punishment, and punishment in general.

One can definitely have scenarios where killing an innocent man will have a stabilizing effect on the rest of society. This is exactly what the scapegoat mechanism is all about… it’s also the reasoning of Caiphas.
 
Talk about deflection lol…getting back to your point…of course this has been in the works for some time but the release could have been delayed. I might be mistaken but I don’t think the Pope has made any comments about the scandal.
 
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The means by which he argues for world wide abolition involve the setting up of infrastructures necessary to render the DP unnecessary. That is at least what he said in the last paragraph of the CDF letter.
 
Abortion isn’t a pet issue of the contemporary European political milieu.
 
Peebo said:
the Catholic church doesn’t speak for the US government…and the US government doesn’t follow the teachings of the Catholic church…yet those Catholics here who support the death penalty are upset with this announcement from Pope Francis…I suspect they are more upset because it doesn’t fit with their political views than it does with Catholic teaching…incidentally…I’m somewhat in two minds whether it should be justifiable in extreme cases…but at the same time I will abide by what the church teaches
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I disagree that it’s about political views. It violates church teaching to be 100% opposed to capital punishment and the discipline the church is taking is the wrong direction. European countries have erred in the complete elimination of capital punishment whereas the USA has erred in it’s erroneous and capricious use of it in some cases. I think it’s much more of an issue of culture than it is about liberal/conservative. Even Nebraska has eliminated the death penalty (a very conservative ideology state).

Europe is a dying secular culture in many ways. The people who are practicing Catholic Christians in Europe are very strong and devout however. I think it’s self-righteous to believe that the death penalty is bad in all cases but I do agree that the death penalty does prematurely end a person’s life even a person guilty of the serious crime of a serious murder(s) and that the dignity of the human person is that everyone was made beautifully in his image. Evil exists because it involves good being twisted.

Though this is the most progressive Pope that we’ve had and he is from a communist country to parents who were Italian. Europe couldn’t even defend itself and relies on someone like the USA to defend on its behalf from rogue dictators in Russia, Iran, or North Korea.
 
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MikeInVA said:
I wish he’d take on abortion first…
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What would you like him to do in this regard? The catechism is crystal clear as are other magesterial documents. He speaks out frequently against abortion.
 
KMG said:
Yes, he was amazingly vocal regarding Ireland.
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+1 very true. He didn’t stand out for them at all. I wish he would have said more than simply saying one speech about the innocent unborn especially those with Down Syndrome being similar to Nazi (and US) eugenics.
 
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