No, what he is saying is that the booklet that you get to study for your driver’s licence does not purport to be have the same level of completeness or authority as the ‘traffic laws’ themselves.
Nice comparison. To take it further, nothing in the driver’s manual is false, but it does not cover every situation.
AGREED
So it is still morally acceptable to execute apostacizers, and to stone adulterers to death?
True enough, but you are insisting on an interpretation that arbitrarily excludes part of the law…
I am only interested in what the “Catholic Church” teaches.
If by this you mean that everything in the catechism is doctrine then you are mistaken as is shown by the comments of Ratzinger, Dulles, and the USCCB; they all infer that the teaching on the death penalty is prudential and therefore not doctrine. Since Ratzinger was the chairman of the commission established by JPII to create the catechism it really isn’t much of a stretch to assume he knows what’s in it.
All doctrines are teachings but not all teachings are doctrines. The catechism’s comments on the death penalty (2267) is an example of a teaching that is not a doctrine.
First of all, there is no connection between heresy and teaching, there was nothing in the definition I provided or the one you found that implies that there is. If I deny (e.g) that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine then I am a heretic whether or not I tell someone. The heretical act is denying, teaching is irrelevant.
What you are declaring as “fact” is impossible, as the Church teaching about the authority of the State explicitly prevents it from making a ruling like the one you describe.
If people would read my posts properly, they would come to realise that i am not oppose to the death penalty.
If you would read my post properly, you would come to realise, that i do not oppose the death penalty. I stand with the “Catholic Church” in oposition to the death penalty in America. It is your interptatation of scripture and your inflexibility that makes it imposible for people to see when the death penalty is right and when the death penalty is wrong.
If you believe that there is no longer a need for capital punishment in North America, that is your prerogative. However, it remains a false statement to claim that the Church proper has the authority to rule against its use in a particular geographic location, especially when the the Church proper is maintaining complete silence regarding the issues raised for holding a different conclusion by those entities the Church teaches as having both the authority and obligation to weigh such considerations.
The only way you can decide that was my “interp” was if you took my more recent statements in isolation without considering what else I’ve been saying consistently through the thread. Then again, taking things out of context like that fits your thinking pattern of taking only certain recent anti-DP statements in isolation without consideration of what the Church has taught consistently through the centuries.
What the Church did in the past, is in relation to the “socail order” of the past.
Then perhaps you can point out where has the Church taught that it has revoked the authority of particular states to weigh the considerations for whether capital punishment is still necessary in that particular geographic area. Many others in this thread making the same claim you are have also been unable to back up that premise of their position, despite repeated invitations to do so. Simply repeating a conclusion based on a false premise does not make it true; neither does or attaching emotional language to it, nor presenting oneself as possessing the moral high ground as an excuse for making false claims. The Church has made NO STATEMENT on the reasons presented for the continued use of capital punishment in America that have been presented since certain members of the hierarchy indicated the need for it had been outgrown in certain areas. None, not one, total silence on the issues raised by their declaration aside from the previously cited countering statements pointing out that the States still had the just authority to choose to continue to exercise it. This is most likely do to the fact that those individuals within the hierarchy opposed to capital punishment recognize they do not and never will have the authority to make that decision on behalf of the the State.
I agree; so why do you continue to deny that the Church is oposed to the immoral use of the death penalty in America? Are you saying, now, that they did not make those statements?
The Church does not have any power to revoke anything to do with any State that intends to act without the authority of the Church. But they do have the power to say that something is wrong.
Define “they”, and statements on which subjects.
Are you now saying that JP II and several other bishops are contradicting Church teaching?
If you’d read through what’s already been said on this thread, you have seen that I’m interpreting their statements as prudential judgments outside of the authority of the Church, where the contradiction to Church teaching is being made by those insisting those are authoritative teaching statements where disagreement constitutes opposing the “the Church”.
Your interpretations are not binding on the Church.