Pope Seeks End to Death Penalty

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CatholicBoy1957 said:
A lot of people might imagine, but that means we don’t know it is so, which means I don’t know if that’s a good reason to end the death penalty.
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The comment you refer to does not relate to the imposition or morality of the death penalty. I took the thread a bit off topic, sorry for the confusion. 🙂
 
ringil said:
The comment you refer to does not relate to the imposition or morality of the death penalty. I took the thread a bit off topic, sorry for the confusion. 🙂
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Actually, our comments are a response to the comments from Sally in post 166. These concerns sound okay, but unless we know that people have repented when given many years to do so, it’s going to be hard to base law on it. In fact, maybe impossible.
 
sallybutler said:
I have several problems with the death penalty.

However, these are probably the ones I feel the most strongly about.
  1. The person may not have the chance to experience God’s forgiveness because they are executed before they have opened their heart to the Holy Spirit. In this way it is like abortion in that the state has stepped in and placed itself in the role of a god that decides who lives and dies.
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Yes, in some ways they are the same. But then, there’s the differences. The CCC admits that the state has the right to the DP. The state does not have that right in regards to abortion. The unborn are always innocent, convicted criminals, not so. That is what makes procured abortion an intrinsic evil, and the DP, it is not.
  1. The person who has to execute them – and it is a person that does this, not ‘the state’, has to deal with the consequences to their mental state and to the state of their soul.
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The executioner does not have to. There are many occupations out there. Also, there is often more than one executioner, so no one knows who’s press of the button did it. Firing squads often use numerous rifles, some loaded with blanks.
 
CatholicBoy1957 said:
What does developed mean? We can get a man to the moon? Which has, what(?), to do with our penal system?

About a year ago, about 2 blocks away, 3 people were murdered by some guy that just got out of prison for murder. Not a very secure system in this country, is it? Now, had he been executed to start with, we could have saved 3 innocent lives.

Like the Pope, I would like to see the end of the DP, but we need to fix the system first, which, if I recall from the expanded quote from the Pope, he did mention that.
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That appears to be something that should be remedied through sentencing, rather than using the death penalty. The use of imprisonment in preference to capital punishment seems to be what the CCC is getting at with this statement in 2267:

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”
 
CatholicBoy1957 said:
Considering that it was the Pope who made this comment, and John Paul made similar comments, and they are good Popes, so I know I have to give serious consideration to what they say, however, I probably have to give more serious consideration to the CCC.
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You have stated my problem with this topic. Of all the arguments against the death penalty, I have a hard time accepting that we are as civilized and advanced as we think we are. I know of murderers who continue to murder from behind bars. I know of a few, very few, that are so evil that they will continue to be a danger to others. Yet how can one not weigh seriously the opinions of these great men.

In the end, I will vote and act in accord to what my shepherds want, but in my heart, I do not accept that we are yet a civilized people, or an advanced society. I also know that the idea we can safely incarcerate anyone is a fanciful wish, not a reality.
 
sallybutler said:
I have several problems with the death penalty.

However, these are probably the ones I feel the most strongly about.
  1. The person may not have the chance to experience God’s forgiveness because they are executed before they have opened their heart to the Holy Spirit. In this way it is like abortion in that the state has stepped in and placed itself in the role of a god that decides who lives and dies.
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This is not a problem that one should be too concerned with. We really shouldn’t believe that one person has the ability to frustrate God’s plan for someone else. This point was addressed by Romano Amerio, a peritas (expert theological adviser) at Vatican II:

Paradoxically, those who oppose capital punishment on these grounds are assuming the state has a sort of totalitarian capacity which it does not in fact possess, a power to frustrate the whole of one’s existence. Since a death imposed by one man on another can remove neither the latter’s moral goal nor his human worth, it is still more incapable of preventing the operation of God’s justice, which sits in judgment on all our adjudications.

There may be a good reason to oppose capital punishment, but this isn’t it.

Ender
 
Langdell said:
That appears to be something that should be remedied through sentencing, rather than using the death penalty. The use of imprisonment in preference to capital punishment seems to be what the CCC is getting at with this statement in 2267:

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”
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That was what they did, and it didn’t work. Now we have 4 more dead. Now they finally decide to give the death sentence.
 
CatholicBoy1957 said:
That was what they did, and it didn’t work. Now we have 4 more dead. Now they finally decide to give the death sentence.
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If courts sentenced murderers to life without parole, and we could be confident that life without parole would be carried out, would you still feel that there’s a need for the death penalty?
 
Langdell said:
Not to beat a dead horse, but … I’m having trouble reading CCC 2267 as not meaning that a developed country like the U.S. should not be using the death penalty.
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Indeed, that’s probably because there is no other reasonable interpretation.
 
Langdell said:
If courts sentenced murderers to life without parole, and we could be confident that life without parole would be carried out, would you still feel that there’s a need for the death penalty?
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Sure. Can you guarantee that the convicted and imprisoned murderer has zero contact with the outside world so he/she cannot order murders from behind bars? Can you guarantee that he/she will not kill fellow inmates or guards? Being in prison for life does not mean that person is no longer a threat to society.
 
porthos11 said:
Without taking a stand on the issue for this particular thread, I’m afraid this particualar construct is to me a form of begging the question (assuming the fact you are trying to prove, e.g. “gratuitious use of the death penalty is murder”) and cannot stand as a logical argument.
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Not at all. (A) The Catechism has defined what the gratuitous use of the death penalty is, it is the use of the death penalty whenever there is an alternative means. ( B)Otherwise it is not permissible, and is a murder no different than abortion or any other murder.

So the argument is, symbolically:
If A then B
A
Therefore B

Or something along the lines of this:
If capital punishment is gratuitous then it is murder.
Capital punishment is always gratuitous in modern society.
Therefore capital punishment is murder.

So you are mistaking a logically sound argument (a simple syllogism, really) for begging the question.
 
Scott_Lafrance said:
Sure. Can you guarantee that the convicted and imprisoned murderer has zero contact with the outside world so he/she cannot order murders from behind bars? Can you guarantee that he/she will not kill fellow inmates or guards? Being in prison for life does not mean that person is no longer a threat to society.
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That’s why we have solitary confinement.
 
LemonAndLime said:
That’s why we have solitary confinement.
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Great point! We must exhaust every possibility before resorting to the death penalty (and there are plenty of possibilities) not looking for ways to excuse the death penalty.

The is simply no dangerous criminal in modern society who cannot be effectively neutralized with thorough incarceration rather than death.
 
stanczyk said:
Great point! We must exhaust every possibility before resorting to the death penalty (and there are plenty of possibilities) not looking for ways to excuse the death penalty.

The is simply no dangerous criminal in modern society who cannot be effectively neutralized with thorough incarceration rather than death.
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It didn’t work for Michael Ballard. He killed another 4, now he’s getting the DP, supposedly.
 
stanczyk said:
Great point! We must exhaust every possibility before resorting to the death penalty (and there are plenty of possibilities) not looking for ways to excuse the death penalty.

The is simply no dangerous criminal in modern society who cannot be effectively neutralized with thorough incarceration rather than death.
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So, you think it is BETTER to put someone locked away with little to no human contact, excercise, etc… for the rest of his life? I almost think that executing him is more humane.
 
Scott_Lafrance said:
You realize that confining a person to limited or no social contact for extended periods of time is tantamount to torture, right?
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And it is worse than killing them because…?

Killing them is the easy option. I believe someone who has commited that crime should be locked up so they can think about it for a very, very long time.
 
LemonAndLime said:
And it is worse than killing them because…?

Killing them is the easy option. I believe someone who has commited that crime should be locked up so they can think about it for a very, very long time.
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Because of what you just said. You’d prefer to torture them with their own guilt until when, exactly?
 
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