Pope Seeks End to Death Penalty

[Ender]

In a sense, yes. That’s what the Catechism says. If a prisoner has been effectively neutralized by incarceration, then they are no longer a threat and no capital punishment is justified. Likewise, if they present some sort of threat to society while incarcerated then capital punishment is warranted under the CCC.

Surely I am not the only one who finds it bizarre that this interpretation allows someone to be executed for threatening to commit a crime that he could not be executed for committing. If there is anything that demonstrates the disconnect between crime and punishment it is the rationalization that someone should be punished not for what he has already done but for what he may do in the future.

Ender

 

[stanczyk]

Surely I am not the only one who finds it bizarre that this interpretation allows someone to be executed for threatening to commit a crime that he could not be executed for committing. If there is anything that demonstrates the disconnect between crime and punishment it is the rationalization that someone should be punished not for what he has already done but for what he may do in the future.

You’re making some sort of straw man. Please, I urge you to read the Catechism with the intent to try to understand it, instead of trying to poke holes in it as you have been doing.

Listen to the wisdom of the Blessed John Paul II. Understand that the death penalty is only justifiable when there is no other option to protect society. Understand that vengeance is not a consideration, nor appropriate justification for any killing.

I will pray that God sees fit to soften your heart and show you the truth on this important issue.

 

[Ender]

You’re making some sort of straw man.

Back up your assertions with reasons. Explain what you think is a straw man argument on my part.

Please, I urge you to read the Catechism with the intent to try to understand it, instead of trying to poke holes in it as you have been doing.

“The” catechism? What about the five previous catechisms? Am I to ignore them? If all you know of Church teaching on this subject is CCC 2267 and Evangelium Vitae #56 then you have no idea what Church doctrine is or on what it is based. Are you unaware that the early Fathers were virtually unanimous in their support of capital punishment? That the great Doctors of the Church supported it? That at least a half dozen popes had spoken out on this issue beginning with Innocent I in 405 and were unanimous in their recognition of the justness of capital punishment? If you want to test my understanding of Church doctrine on this subject, take your best shot.

Listen to the wisdom of the Blessed John Paul II. Understand that the death penalty is only justifiable when there is no other option to protect society.

This is incorrect. Capital punishment is justifiable only when it is the just penalty for the crime committed. Punishment must be deserved based on a person’s actions; that is the nature of retributive justice.

Understand that vengeance is not a consideration, nor appropriate justification for any killing.

This is another misunderstanding. Vengeance is forbidden to the individual but is the obligation of the State.

Vengeance consists in the infliction of a penal evil on one who has sinned. (Aquinas)

The individual must forgive but the State must punish.

*Legitimate public authority has the right and **duty **to inflict penalties … (CCC 2266)
*

I will pray that God sees fit to soften your heart and show you the truth on this important issue.

What happened to the approach you championed in post #336 where you said:* “Probably better not to speculate as to the motivations of the people who promote the death penalty in defiance of the Church. The only thing to do is carefully and logically debunk their arguments, and thereby deprive them of their rationalizations.”* Where is the careful argument and logic in disparaging me?

Ender

 

[RACJ]

I believe that many, many murder victims would be alive today if their killers KNEW that if they were caught, they would be executed within a few months. America has become a weak nation, and though I like the Pope, I have been outraged by his declarations on the death penalty, and evolution (which is another topic, of course). Rob

 

[tominrichmond]

I’m sorry, but this or any Pope or bishop’s personal opposition to capital punishment may be interesting, but is not going to convince me that Sacred Scripture and Holy Tradition, which uphold the moral legitimacy and even the necessity of recourse to the death penalty as a ***vindication ***of the Fifth Commandment and the value of innocent life, are wrong.

Even the contemporary cathechism, as it must, acknowledges that the death penalty can be a moral punishment for a state in certain circumstances. It only suggests that some unspecified advances are capable of rendering offenders harmless, so that death sentence situations are “rare.” Never mind for the moment that we have in fact ***no ***reliable way of rendering offenders harmless, because many of them continue to kill or assault in prison.

Given that in America, only about ***one tenth of one percent ***of murders are punished by death, I’d say that it’s use is “rare, if not non-existent.”

 

[child_of_God85]

I’m 100% behind the Pope on this, but I don’t see it happening in the US anytime soon.

I’ve seen way to many cases in the last year of innocent men being on death row (west memphis three).

 

[tominrichmond]

Not sure I follow the logic… the West Memphis Three were not sentenced to death, it’s not even clear to me that prosecutors were seeking the death penalty.

In any event, these supposedly innocent defendants ultimately plead guilty pursuant to Alford v. NC, which is a plea wherein one denies guilt, but admits that the government has enough evidence to convict.

The vast majority of death penalty cases involve little if any doubt, e.g., the death sentence handed down this week in Connecticut in an absoutely horrific crime (see seeking4justice.blogspot.com/2011/12/connecticut-metes-out-justice.html).

The fact is, while the death penalty is only rarely used in this country, it is necessary in some cases, and needs to be retained. Catholics need to take care not to slip into the heresy which maintains that the state may never use lethal force, i.e., pacifism.

 

[karaleigh]

Thousands died during the Russian Reconstruction Ear(Post WWII), some say by the hands of Joseph Stalin. But it’s funny that today the Russian Republic is considering making Joseph Stalin a Saint. It should tell us something about name calling and making decisions concerning death and the death penalty. :nope:

 

[tominrichmond]

It is totally dishonest to attempt to claim that the moral liceity of the death penalty is not a part of the Ordinary Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
A sampling of Scripture quickly reveals that in the Old Testament, as early as the Book of Genesis, God directly countenances using the death penalty, not because of the primitiveness of the people or the absence of “steady improvement in the organization of the penal system,” but ***because human life is sacred and must be protected ***against unlawful assault. Thus in Genesis 9:6 the earliest explanation in Revelation for the liceity of capital punishment is found:

“Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,…”

not out of vengeance or bloodlust, or because life imprisonment was impractical for these early people, but rather for the greatest possible reason:

	“…for in the image of God made He man.”

Thus, from the very dawn of mankind and of Revelation, God teaches the morality of capital punishment on the basis that murder is the destruction of a person who possesses a share of God’s nature, having been made in His image.  The wrongful termination of that life, according to Scripture, merits that the wrongdoer should forfeit his own life.
Sacred Scripture in other places affirms the liceity of the death penalty for a variety of crimes,  and during Our Lord’s passion came this utterance from Dismas the good thief in rebuking the other thief for taunting Our Lord: “Neither dost thou fear God, seeing thou art under the same condemnation?  And we indeed justly:  for we receive the due reward of our deeds.  But this man hath done no evil.”    Our Lord does not contradict Dismas’ assertion that the thieves are being justly executed, but rather guarantees him salvation that same day.
From this strong Scriptural basis, the Tradition of the Church has maintained a continual insistence on the moral liceity of the death penalty.
St. Augustine is representative of the mainstream of Patristic views on the question, and he states that:

The same divine law which forbids the killing of a human being allows certain exceptions. Since the agent of authority is but a sword in the hand, and is not responsible for the killing, it is in no way contrary to the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’, for the representative of the State’s authority to put criminals to death, according to the Law or the rule of rational justice.
In another place, the great Father argues against the notion that the guilty should live in the hope of their conversion, stating that “inflicting capital punishment…protects those who are undergoing capital punishment from the harm they may suffer … through increased sinning which might continue if their life went on.”
This patristic theme is adopted by none other than St. Thomas Aquinas, who viewed attacks on capital punishment based on Scripture with scorn, holding that “the civil rulers execute, justly and sinlessly, pestiferous men in order to protect the peace of the state.”

[to be cont…]

 

[tominrichmond]

At the Council of Trent, a catechism was prepared, universal in scope, whose theological weight is greater than that of the recent Catechism of the Catholic Church, since the former was an act of a General Council of the Church. It still remains an important source of theology. The Tridentine catechism places consideration of capital punishment in its treatment of the Fifth Commandment:
Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence. Hence these words of David: In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land, that I might cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the Lord. Emphasis added).
As if to underscore this teaching, the Council Fathers urge as a remedy against violating this Commandment a reflection upon the evil of homicide, which is surely vastly more relevant to our society than to theirs:
The enormity of this sin [of murder] is manifest from many and weighty passages of Holy Scripture. So much does God abominate homicide that He declares in Holy Writ that of the very beast of the field He will exact vengeance for the life of man, commanding the beast that injures man to be put to death. And if He 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.

The murderer is the worst enemy of his species, and consequently of nature. To the utmost of his power he destroys the universal work of God by the destruction of man, since God declares that He created all things for man’s sake. Nay, as it is forbidden in Genesis to take human life, because God created man to his own image and likeness, he who makes away with God’s image offers great injury to God, and almost seems to lay violent hands on God Himself.

These strong words almost sound foreign to us, immersed in a culture of death turned lukewarm to the horror of murder. Yet the Fathers of Trent do not offer pragmatic reasons for the death penalty. They hold it to be a necessity based on obedience to the Fifth Commandment itself, inasmuch as capital punishment does not diminish but affirms the sanctity of life.

[to be cont…]

 

[tominrichmond]

In our own times the Church has not modified this ancient and venerable teaching. Pope St. Pius X promulgated a catechism which also, following Trent’s arrangement, refers to capital punishment in discussing the Fifth Commandment:
Q. Are there cases in which it is lawful to kill?

A. It is lawful to kill when fighting in a just war; when carrying out by order of the Supreme Authority a sentence of death in punishment of a crime; and finally, in cases of necessary and lawful defense of one’s own life against an unjust aggressor. Papal teaching was in accord with this view as late as the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, who stated in an address that “when it is a question of the execution of a man condemned to death it is then reserved to the public power to deprive the condemned of the benefit of life, in expiation of his fault, when already, by his fault, he has dispossessed himself of the right to live.”
So it is not surprising that even up to the very eve of the Second Vatican Council, Adolph Tanquerey could address the issue of the death penalty in his seminal moral theology text by first stating this principle:
“The civil authority is able to punish with the ultimate punishment of death evildoers duly convicted of the most grave crimes, as often as the public good requires (quoties id requirit bonum publicum).” (emphasis added).

Father Tanquerey supports this principle by demonstrating that recourse to capital punishment is strongly rooted in both history and human psychology, and ends his discussion by emphasizing the ethical probity of the death penalty:

Justice demands that the offended moral order be repaired and restored by a congruent satisfaction; and therefore the duty devolves upon the leaders of the Republic to take care that grave crimes are punished by proportionate penalties; for otherwise the moral order is disturbed and endangered. Certainly there are crimes of such gravity committed which, in the general estimation, will only be able to be expiated by means of the death penalty; of such a kind especially is murder cruelly committed after mature deliberation; for crimes which are the greatest affront to the moral order, and encompass the greatest harm, require of their nature the greatest punishment, that is, capital punishment. And therefore this rule is established by common sense: ‘Whoso sheds the blood of man, shall by man have his blood shed.’
Sacred Tradition, then, has consistently viewed capital punishment as a vindication of the sacredness of life. This is clearly shown by the way various Doctors, Popes, and Councils have firmly rooted their validation of the death penalty in discussing the Fifth Commandment; not only to explain why capital punishment does not offend against this Commandment, but also to underscore that by this punishment the sacred gift of life is vindicated. Clearly, the moral approval of capital punishment in the sources just examined is based, not on political expediency or practical concerns such as deterrence, but on obedience to the Fifth Commandment and in recognition of the sanctity of life.
Moreover, as a perennial teaching touching on a matter of morals, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Church’s teaching on the death penalty belongs to the Ordinary Magisterium of the Church. It is a teaching to which the following statement of the Fathers of Vatican I applies:
T]he Church would lose its immutability and dignity and it would cease being a life-giving society and a necessary means of salvation if it could wander from the safe path of truth in matters of faith and morals, and if, in preaching and explaining these matters, it could deceive or be deceived.
The moral liceity of the death penalty thus belongs to the perennial moral teaching of the Church, and one would have to posit that the Church had erred and thus failed in its Divine mission, if one would affirm that the death penalty is in fact always and everywhere immoral. The Church would, for its entire history, have not taught the truth to society about morality, but rather affirmed the moral good of what is in fact a moral evil. But this is impossible for a Catholic to admit. The Church could no more have taught erroneously that capital punishment is not only licit but laudable than She could have erroneously taught that use of artificial contraception is always and everywhere contrary to the moral law. The Church is Divinely protected from leading men astray in its constant teachings concerning moral issues. She is the teacher and informer of consciences and would have failed in Her mission if She had suddenly been found to have erred for so long on such a fundamental issue of morality.

 

[Verbum_Caro]

(name removed by moderator),

Did you author this article: pemptousia.com/2011/11/early-challenges-to-capital-punishment/?

VC

 

[tominrichmond]

OK, fair enough, a few early Fathers appear to take a prohibitionist stance. I think your conclusion that this demonstrates a development from prohibition to allowance is utterly unfounded, however.

It is entirely usual to find a few Fathers disagreeing on a particular issue, and yet that does not mean the issue is not settled as far as the Magisterium is concerned.

As Tanquerey has explained, a “moral consensus” of the Fathers is what one looks for in assessing whether a point is affirmed by the Fathers for purposes of determining whether it belongs to the Ordinary Magisterium.

Because of the strong witness of Scripture, and of the Schoolmen, Councils, and Popes, it is abundantly clear that the moral liceity of the death penalty has always been part of the Church’s teaching.

Any attempt now to restrict or change that teaching (as in the attempt to shift away from the traditional focus on justice and vindication of life as the reason for the liceity of the DP, to a mere pragmatic, public order justification) would be an inappropriate denial of the prior teaching, not a development. A development does not take away from the prior teaching, if anything it elucidates and expands it.

 

[tominrichmond]

It cannot be the case that was once immoral is now moral.

The dp has always been moral, regardless of the contrary view of the Fathers you cite. Again, the Fathers are but one of many of the “sources” of theological authority and as a body over time were in no way morally unanimous against the DP even if certain pre-Constantinian Fathers were opposed to it during the persecution of Christians.

Scripture, the Schoolmen, the Councils, and the Popes have seamlessly taught for 6,000 years that this punishment is not merely grudgingly allowed in a narrow contingent way, but that recourse to it is a vindication of the Fifth Commandment and a requirement of the virtue of Justice.

The CCC certainly does, as it must, acknowledge the morality of the DP, even as it attempts to burden its application with many contingent, technical, and unexplained conditions (e.g., the claim that there is some unspecified means of rendering offenders harmless without recourse to the death penalty).

Everyone should realize of course, that this is entirely an academic discussion, since even under the restrictive view of the CCC, the DP is ***in fact ***imposed only rarely (one-tenth of one percent of murders result in death penalty sentences in the U.S.).

 

[Verbum_Caro]

(name removed by moderator),

I’m think I’m confused! Apologies.

It seems like the article I referenced and your post shared similar wording. I don’t see that same similarity in the St. Anthony Messenger Press article that you linked. I think I’m missing something?

Thanks,
VC

 

[Ender]

Yes, that is probably true when the righteous were persecuted… which is not at all the same as when the wicked are prosecuted.

Around A.D. 177 the philosopher Athenagoras of Athens wrote …
Tertullian was a prominent Roman lawyer prior to his conversion and ordination in middle-age, which means he was very familiar with death-penalty cases.

Yes, these are the two exceptions to the claim that the early Fathers were virtually unanimous in supporting capital punishment.

It is the nearly unanimous opinion of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church(1) that the death penalty is morally licit, and the teaching of past popes (and numerous catechisms) that this penalty is essentially just (and even that its validity is not subject to cultural variation).
(1) *The two exceptions are Tertullian, who died outside the Church, and Lactantius. *(Stephen A. Long, Univ of St. Thomas, MN)

In Against Celsus 7.26 the church father Origen in the late A.D. 240s contended that if Jews were free of Roman control and constituted their own sovereign nation again, they would probably practice stoning and burning of malefactors as Moses had commanded, e.g. put murderers to death. However, Origen wrote, if Christians were in government they would be restrained by the laws of their religion from doing so.

I don’t think that section means what you think it means.

• For Christians could not slay their enemies, or condemn to be burned or stoned, as Moses commands, those who had broken the law, and were therefore condemned as deserving of these punishments; since the Jews themselves, however desirous of carrying out their law, are not able to inflict these punishments.*

This seems more like acknowledgement that Christians - like Jews - are not able to inflict these punishments under Roman law. He does not say that Christianity forbids them.

Finally, scripture: …

I am not interested in your personal interpretation of Scripture nor do I count my interpretation of any particular value. If you can cite where and how the Church interprets a particular passage then the point has merit.

Seems Fr. Flannery was incorrect, and at least a few of the early church fathers (some would say virtually all) were entirely opposed.

Fr. Flannery and Professor Long are hardly alone in holding their position.

*Tertullian, 160-220, and Lactantius, 240-320 also fought strenuously against capital punishment of condemned criminals. At the same time, the accepted Fathers of the Church never adopted these extreme positions, either outlawing all war as unjust or forbidding all capital punishment as inherently evil. *(Fr. John Hardon)

*Turning to Christian tradition, we may note that the Fathers and Doctors of the Church are virtually unanimous in their support for capital punishment *(Cardinal Dulles, 2001)

Ender

 

[Ender]

Circumstances have indeed changed but the basic nature of punishment has not, nor can it. The Church still teaches that the primary objective of punishment is retributive justice - the restoration of the order disturbed by sin.

*God does not delight in punishments for their own sake; but He does delight in the order of His justice, which requires them. *(Aquinas, ST I-II 87, 3-3)

If capital punishment was a just sentence in the past then it is equally just today as the severity of the punishment - to be just - must be commensurate with the severity of the sin, and quite clearly the severity of the crime of murder is neither greater nor less today than it was 2000 years ago. The basis for punishment has never been the extent of the protection it provides but whether or not it was appropriate for the crime. The Church has always held that capital punishment was a just sentence and that position cannot “develop.”

A rigid adherence to positions enunciated 100s of years ago, which were relevant under the circumstances in effect at that time, is, frankly, a waste of time now when society has moved beyond those times.

This appears not to be the case.

Equally important is the Pope’s [Pius XII] insistence that capital punishment is morally defensible in every age and culture of Christianity. Why? Because the Church’s teaching on “the coercive power of legitimate human authority” is based on “the sources of revelation and traditional doctrine.” It is wrong, therefore "to say that these sources only contain ideas which are conditioned by historical circumstances." On the contrary, they have “a general and abiding validity.” (Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 1955, pp 81-2). (Fr. John Hardon)

Only those who reject the concept of “development of doctrine” would insist otherwise.

If 2267 was accepted as doctrine it would demonstrate not development but repudiation, as you appear to recognize in calling on us to ignore everything the Church taught about capital punishment prior to 1995.

Ender

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Drug cartels impose a very effective death penalty.

But, anyway, one country with a far more egregious death penalty is probably the Peoples Republic of China … which uses executions as an opportunity to harvest organs for favored friends.

 

[Ender]

We dispute the number of Early Fathers holding that capital punishment was immoral. Beyond that, however, is that their opinions were not necessarily what the Church taught. As Innocent I noted in 405:

In regard to this question we have nothing definitive from those who have gone before us.

He then continued with this observation:

It must be remembered that power was granted by God [to the magistrates], and to avenge crime by the sword was permitted. He who carries out this vengeance is God’s minister (Rm 13:1-4). Why should we condemn a practice that all hold to be permitted by God? We uphold, therefore, what has been observed until now, in order not to alter the discipline and so that we may not appear to act contrary to God’s authority. (Exsuperium, Episcopum Tolosanum)

Any attempt to now claim that the unfettered right of the state to inflict the death penalty, regardless of circumstances, would be an inappropriate denial of the prior teaching which necessarily developed, in recognition that although the death penalty should generally not be utilized, under appropriate circumstances, it may be necessary.

No one has made such a claim. Of course circumstances may affect the punishment. What we are discussing really is whether or not capital punishment should be used because it is the just punishment for certain crimes whether or not it is necessary for protection.

Note: Yes, I confused Athenagoras with Lanctantius … I’ll try to address that later.

Ender

 

[Verbum_Caro]

(name removed by moderator),

Apologies, I’m just not grasping this correctly I think.

I’ve read the link you’ve given me to the St. Anthony Messenger article by Fr. Overberg several times, and I don’t see the passages that I am referring to.

What I mean is that your original post and the article I linked to (http://www.pemptousia.com/2011/11/early-challenges-to-capital-punishment/) by Dr. Brattston have similar wording.

For instance you wrote

And the article I linked to has:

In addressing a rebellious faction in the church at Corinth, 1 Clement 45 recalled that when in the Old Testament the righteous were persecuted or put to death, it was only by the wicked, the unholy, and the hate-consumed. Variously dated between A.D. 70 and 97, 1 Clement is one of the oldest extant Christian documents outside the New Testament. This letter was written while in the church at Rome “there were many still remaining who had received instructions from the apostles.”[1]

You then continued:
(name removed by moderator):

Around A.D. 177 the philosopher Athenagoras of Athens wrote a defense of Christianity to the Roman Emperors, describing the beliefs and practices of Christians. In the document, he dealt with and refuted pagan allegations that the Christian faith commands its adherents to murder and practice cannibalism. Athenagoras stated that Christians not only are forbidden to kill anyone for any reason, but also that “**we cannot endure even to see a man put to death, though justly. **. . . We, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him, have abjured such spectacles. How, then, when we do not even look on, lest we should contract guilt and pollution, can we put a man to death?”

And the article I linked to has:

Around A.D. 177 the philosopher Athenagoras of Athens wrote a defence of Christianity and description of its beliefs and practices. In it he dealt with and refuted pagan allegations that the Christian faith commands its adherents to murder and practise cannibalism. Athenagoras stated that Christians not only are forbidden to kill anyone for any reason but also that we cannot endure even to see a man put to death, though justly. …. We, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him, have abjured such spectacles. How, then, when we do not even look on, lest we should contract guilt and pollution, can we put a man to death?[2]

You have:
(name removed by moderator):

Tertullian was a prominent Roman lawyer prior to his conversion and ordination in middle-age. . .

, etc.

And the article tracks this as well, etc.

Sorry for belaboring this tangent, and I hope I’m not being inadvertently dense about something,
Thanks,
VC