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eddio
Guest
It is always interesting to watch the “Cafeteria Catholics” on the Right tapdance around the death penalty. Support for life is a seamless garment that cannot be divided
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Brendan
Guest
Hmm, then all these people disagree with you
Christ
St. Augustine - The City of God:
Pope Innocent III -
Council of Trent
The “Right” is just proclaiming the Church’s Eternal teachings on Capital Punishment.
The teachings of the Fathers, of previous Popes and of an Infallible Council give the power of Capital Punishment to the Secular Authorities as part of their God given Authority.
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jim_orr
Guest
What is not to believe? If you know so much, show me the evidence for their position; that is all I am asking.I can’t believe this place sometimes!
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Brendan
Guest
Really,
First of all, that ‘Seemless garment’ concept is just badly phrased theology from Cardinal Bernardin, not an actual Church teaching. And even then Cardinal Bernardin excluded Capital Punishment from his list of ‘threads’ in that ‘garment’
In fact, he specifically stated that the State has a right to execute criminals.
In his speech on the “Consistent Ethic of Life” at Fordham in 1983, he stated his concurrence with the “classical position” that the State has the right to inflict capital punishment.
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Fitz
Guest
jim orr:
I would never work towards ending capital punishment like I would to end abortion. I think that I do feel guilt when some point at us and say things like:
I think this is the first time someone posed that to me. It is compelling for sure. I want you to understand that I have always accepted the need for capital punishment until the mess in Illinois. It was so very corrupt. The Governor that stopped our capital punishment was very guilty of other corruption so I never quite believed his reasoning.
I would never work towards ending capital punishment like I would to end abortion. I think that I do feel guilt when some point at us and say things like:
However, I am more willing to look at ending Capital Punishment if they would vote to end abortion first.
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jim_orr
Guest
If there are three persons in the Trinity, can it not then be said that Satan is a “person” created by God? Is he beyond “redemption?” And if God created one person who “became” evil through free will, could he not have created others who “became” evil, like say Suddam and his two sons, for example, or those people who teach others to think it an act of faith to hijack airplanes and crash them into high rise buildings filled with people, or strap bombs about them to blow people up on buses, trains, and in pizza parlors and shopping mauls? What about child molesters who murder their victims to get rid of the evidence, are they “good” people who just do evil things, or they evil people whom God loves but won’t “force” them to change? Does God refuse to redeem people, and that is why some become evil, or do they become evil over time because they refuse God’s redemption? I think the issue you should focus on is not the redemptive powers of God, but that of man’s rejection of them, and why.
Who is “preventing” that from happening? Who’s to say what is “God-given potential?” Who would deny that ones knowing the day and hour of their death is the only way they would have ever been able to fulfill their “God-given potential?”
Accidents also cut short the lives of people thereby preventing them from achieving “their God-given potential.” And most people spend their entire lives never achieving “their God-given potential.”
“God-given potential” is not what we regret losing when an innocent person is murdered. It is their human life we mourn, the most precious gift of all. Not punishing those responsible to the degree of their culpability is not honoring and respecting the life that you pretend to hold in such high regard. You diminish the value of lives by letting heinous murders keep theirs.
Who said I don’t love them? Wanting justice may be the MOST loving thing to do for those individuals. Is a parent who punishes his children for doing wrong not loving them? Ultimate punishment will be God’s but that is not an excuse for man to not establish rules of conduct for a tranquil and loving society. Such rules should include provisions for capital punishment in those extreme and heinous cases to fulfill the innate nature of man that knows the taken of lives in such a way is forfeiting the right of ones own life.
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jim_orr
Guest
I understand. I watched Governor Ryan’ s speech the day he commuted the sentences of all death row inmates and put in place a moratorium on the death penalty. I personally thought his underlining motivation was really his own personal future welfare knowing that he would be tried at some point in time by a judge and jury and the jury make up would probably include some blacks who may remember his “compassion” in commuting the sentences of numerous blacks on death row.
Liberals like to project on to conservative thinkers their own guilty consciences, and they are as cleaver as Satan in phasing what they say, as illustrated in the earliest examples of liberalness in the story of man’s life beginning in the Garden of Eden. If we are not armed with the truth and the facts, they often succeed and get some to cave in. Their purpose is the same as Satan’s; to pull us away from the truth and natural law within each of us, for it is only through their numbers increasing do they find conviction in their thinking, and from that a sense of “being correct” and a odd sense of “joy.”
And I, too, would make that trade off, any day, if that is what it would take to get a constitutional amendment returning the Right to Life to our state and federal laws…
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Matt25
Guest
Satan is an Angel. Traditional teaching is that Angels can only make an once and for all choice. However I confess to knowing more about people than Angels.
They are people with the capacity to carry out either good or evil acts. No amount of evil acts in the past removes from a person the possibility of making a radical choice for Christ in the present or future. God does not create evil. Evil in fact does not exist as a created thing. Evil is simply the absence of good. God is good and since he is nowhere wholly absent then evil is never wholly present. Which is why there is no such a thing as an evil person in the eyes of the Catholic Christian faith.
How does it enhance the value of one human life, for whom Christ died, by taking away another human life for whom Christ also died? Does your life take on an added lustre because the person who ended it has been fried on a chair?
The three greatest executioners in the world, Iran, China and the USA are not noticably more tranquil than those countries which do not have capital punishment.
web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-facts-eng
Over half the countries in the world have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice.
Amnesty International’s latest information shows that:
- 83 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes
- **13 **countries have abolished the death penalty for all but exceptional crimes such as wartime crimes
- **22 **countries can be considered abolitionist in practice: they retain the death penalty in law but have not carried out any executions for the past 10 years or more and are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions
- 78 other countries and territories retain and use the death penalty, but the number of countries which actually execute prisoners in any one year is much smaller.
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dax
Guest
Has the Church changed its teaching on the death penalty?
No, it hasn’t. The CCC, section 2267 (revised edition) says: “Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”
The CCC goes on to say that if non-lethal means are adequate to protect people’s safety, the civil authority should limit itself to those means. The CCC then quotes the encyclical The Gospel of Life where John Paul II teaches that conditions in our day are such that recourse to the death penalty is hardly ever necessary.
It is wrong for Catholics to say the state has no right to inflict the death penalty. Even though many nations including Italy has long abolished the death penalty, the State of Vatican City still keeps the law on its books—a law that has not been imposed under papal regimes since the 1860’s when Rome was under the direct rule of the popes. The last execution carried out under pontifical authority was on November 24, 1868 during the administration of Pope Pius IX. As a careful reading of the CCC reveals, the Church acknowledges the right of the state to inflict capital punishment—the Vatican as a “state” retains the right of capital punishment.
Moreover, it is scandalous for Catholics to equate the death penalty with murder. We can never equate an intrinsic wrong like murder an act of the individual with a right, which is authority, granted to the state by its citizens. The Church is simply saying that, in our time, conditions that would justify the state exercising its right to use the death penalty are very rare.
Some Catholics claim that the Church’s opposition to the death penalty is the same as the Church’s opposition to abortion. This too is absurd. We cannot equate the death of guilty felons with the death of millions of innocent babies. Capital punishment is a state’s right (even if conditions justifying its use are rare), while direct abortion is always wrong (and can never be justified).
The Church has not, and indeed cannot, change its teaching on the death penalty or any other moral doctrine. To say the Church has now changed (corrected) its teaching is to say the church once taught falsely. If the Church has ever taught error in a matter of faith and morals, then it cannot be Christ’s true Church.
Dax
No, it hasn’t. The CCC, section 2267 (revised edition) says: “Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”
The CCC goes on to say that if non-lethal means are adequate to protect people’s safety, the civil authority should limit itself to those means. The CCC then quotes the encyclical The Gospel of Life where John Paul II teaches that conditions in our day are such that recourse to the death penalty is hardly ever necessary.
It is wrong for Catholics to say the state has no right to inflict the death penalty. Even though many nations including Italy has long abolished the death penalty, the State of Vatican City still keeps the law on its books—a law that has not been imposed under papal regimes since the 1860’s when Rome was under the direct rule of the popes. The last execution carried out under pontifical authority was on November 24, 1868 during the administration of Pope Pius IX. As a careful reading of the CCC reveals, the Church acknowledges the right of the state to inflict capital punishment—the Vatican as a “state” retains the right of capital punishment.
Moreover, it is scandalous for Catholics to equate the death penalty with murder. We can never equate an intrinsic wrong like murder an act of the individual with a right, which is authority, granted to the state by its citizens. The Church is simply saying that, in our time, conditions that would justify the state exercising its right to use the death penalty are very rare.
Some Catholics claim that the Church’s opposition to the death penalty is the same as the Church’s opposition to abortion. This too is absurd. We cannot equate the death of guilty felons with the death of millions of innocent babies. Capital punishment is a state’s right (even if conditions justifying its use are rare), while direct abortion is always wrong (and can never be justified).
The Church has not, and indeed cannot, change its teaching on the death penalty or any other moral doctrine. To say the Church has now changed (corrected) its teaching is to say the church once taught falsely. If the Church has ever taught error in a matter of faith and morals, then it cannot be Christ’s true Church.
Dax
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Matt25
Guest
The Church can deepen its understanding of revealed truth. After all it did not define the doctrine of Papal Infallibillity until the late Nineteenth Century although it had been true for nearly two thousand years. Similarly on the Death Penalty the Church has not reversed itself it is simply making explicit what was only implicit before in the Magisterium of the Church.
The Catechism
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Ghosty
Guest
I’m also interested in hearing exactly how justice is done to the victim in killing a murderer. I know that if I were murdered, I would absolutely want my killer to live. It would be an injustice to my memory to kill my murderer, IMO. In Catholic teaching, the death penalty has never been advocated as a form of justice for the victim, but rather as a form of protection.
Again, I don’t think that the death penalty is absolutely immoral, but I do think that there’s strong cause to believe that it’s largely unjust given our current circumstances.
Even without being put to death, inmates on death row are heavily guarded and contained; they’re generally not like a typical prison population. Such heavy containment is obviously feasible, since we do for highly extended periods of time prior to putting them to death. I simply advocate containing would-be death row inmates in a death row style of containment. You are describing a general prison situation which, incidently, doesn’t usually apply to people on death row anyway. Unless you’re advocating putting all violent offenders to death, your points above don’t seem to hold much merit.
Again, I don’t think that the death penalty is absolutely immoral, but I do think that there’s strong cause to believe that it’s largely unjust given our current circumstances.
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dax
Guest
Quote: The Church can deepen its understanding of revealed truth. After all it did not define the doctrine of Papal Infallibility until the late Nineteenth Century although it had been true for nearly two thousand years. Similarly on the Death Penalty the Church has not reversed itself it is simply making explicit what was only implicit before in the Magisterium of the Church.
The Church does and will always continue to deepen its understand of the revealed truth. I agree but it does not confuse nor deny its practices of those things already revealed.
This is an apple and orange argument:
Yes, the Church clarified and defined the doctrine of Papal Infallibility—ratified the centuries old beliefs and actions of the Church (apples to apples).
The argument that the Church is only making explicit what was only implicit—denies history, the position and actions of the Church for centuries. If your argument is “true”, then why does the Vatican State retain the ability to utilize the death penalty? Why did the Church utilize the death penalty for centuries? Do you see how your apples and oranges comparisons are confusing?
The Church does and will always continue to deepen its understand of the revealed truth. I agree but it does not confuse nor deny its practices of those things already revealed.
This is an apple and orange argument:
Yes, the Church clarified and defined the doctrine of Papal Infallibility—ratified the centuries old beliefs and actions of the Church (apples to apples).
The argument that the Church is only making explicit what was only implicit—denies history, the position and actions of the Church for centuries. If your argument is “true”, then why does the Vatican State retain the ability to utilize the death penalty? Why did the Church utilize the death penalty for centuries? Do you see how your apples and oranges comparisons are confusing?
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tuopaolo
Guest
There are people who argue that support for the death penalty is part of being pro-life.
There are also, unfortunately, people who argue that the Church may one day come to an understanding that the death penalty is immoral altogether.
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ThornGenX
Guest
Very true, and I struggle with the question of the Death Penalty as well. I pray that God help me to be 100% pro-life in every way.
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Lurch104
Guest
For those who posted against the death penalty in all cases, are you also against life without parole?
Like I posted above, many people would join the anti DP crowd if life in prison was truly life in prison. However, many anti-DP people also seem to be anti life without parole.
Like I posted above, many people would join the anti DP crowd if life in prison was truly life in prison. However, many anti-DP people also seem to be anti life without parole.
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jim_orr
Guest
So, are you saying evil is done by good people? Or are you saying evil does not exist? Or are you saying evil is created by a good person who makes a mistake? Or are you saying evil is a force that is promoted by Satan? Or are you saying Satan does not exit? Or are you saying God permits evil because he loves us? Just exactly what are you saying about evil? If it is not created, then where does it come from?
How does the murdered victim’s life have added lustre because the murderer is allowed to keep his?
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jim_orr
Guest
Being FOR the death penalty is being prolife. Being AGAINST the death penalty is not. Don’t let liberals confuse you.
Prolife means being against the murder of innocent human life, not the execution of guilty murderers. The latter is a naked attempt by the lovers of the Democrat Party to try to develop a moral equavalency to the prolife stance of the Republican Party. It has no significance to good vrs evil, only to trying to keep Catholics in the Democrat fold because without the Catholic vote the Democrat Party could not continue to have the power to protect abortion-on-demand.
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jim_orr
Guest
People who would “join the anti DP crowd” if life in prison meant life in prison would be contributing to the continued murder and harm of innocent human beings. The Church has never presented evidence to disprove what I have just stated. Therefore, it is just a claim they have made for the modification of historic Church teaching. Not one person has been able to present any written proof from the pope on down to support the “claim” they are making.For those who posted against the death penalty in all cases, are you also against life without parole?
Like I posted above, many people would join the anti DP crowd if life in prison was truly life in prison.
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Ghosty
Guest
Absolutely. There are certain crimes and situations in which you can never be certain that the person can be reformed. In fact, time in prison often reinforces bad behavior. I think that not only should we have life without parole for the situations in which we currently call for the death penalty, we should make that time take place in very, very heavy containment, death-row level at least.
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jim_orr
Guest
The Church will never make capital punishment as applied in the US a sin.
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