Under Pope Francis, American Catholics see the ‘pro-life’ label as broader than abortion

[Corki]

You aren’t in line with Church teaching on this and not even in line with your national Bishops Conference, so that can only amount to your opinion of the issue.

I am entirely in line with Church teaching. I am fully against the death penalty. I think that it should not ever be used. But I also know that we have not found a truly humane alternative. Even Pope Francis spoke out against long-term imprisonment.

And there is nothing in Church teaching that says that the death penalty is an anti-abortion issue or even a right-to-life issue.

The writing of Avery Cardinal Dulles is especially relevant.

patrickmadrid.blogspot.com/2009/10/cardinal-avery-dulles-on-morality-of.html

 

[TCEL]

Involvement in the pro-life cause necessarily entails some understanding of the interconnectedness between child-rearing, education, child-care, material needs, and psychological needs, to name a few.

My one concern with this idea that pro-life is broader than abortion, is a certain temptation to distraction. Because yes, it’s very true that “pro-life” is an umbrella term, but that shouldn’t undermine our calling to fight against abortion itself. I think sometimes that is the implication. Different people have different strengths, and we can’t honestly expect the dedicated full-time pro-life fighter to also be a dedicated full-time women’s shelter volunteer, Gabriel House volunteer, Soup Kitchen chef, OBGYN, or mental-health specialist. We’re supposed to work together.

It’s a scandal there’s this apparent divisiveness in the Church over what should be common goals. However, it’s a good thing if perception changes and people start understanding that pro-lifers aren’t simply narrow-minded back-water hicks with an inability to focus on more than one thing at a time.

 

[lynnvinc]

washingtonpost.com/local/under-pope-francis-american-catholics-see-the-pro-life-label-as-broader-than-abortion/2015/01/22/621671dc-a1a7-11e4-b146-577832eafcb4_story.html

I think that’s a great idea. We should all pull together to promote life for all, whether it be to reduce medical abortions or miscarriages caused by environmental harms (pesticide use, car emissions, etc), or to work against the death penalty.

Another way to create a strong pro-life message would be to seek out how we ourselves may be contributing to harm and death and strive to reduce these, such as reducing our local, regional, global environmental harms, etc.

When people see a person engaging in such pro-life actions to reduce their harms in their own lives, and when they hear that person speak out against abortion, the message comes across much more strongly. At least that’s what I’ve found.

 

[lynnvinc]

Do you believe all murderers should live?

There is another issue involved, and that is studies have found that state that implement the death penalty either see no reduction in that state’s murder rate, or actually an increase.

The message the death penalty sends is “if you don’t like someone, then kill them.”

 

[Contarini]

Ha!

Mark Shea is a true friend of the DNC.

That is one of the most laughable things I’ve ever read.

The man insults Democrats viciously and has done so for years. Conservatives just don’t like it because when Republicans embrace evil, he doesn’t spare them either.

He denounces evil where he sees it. His manner of doing so could often be improved, but to suggest that he has a liberal bias suggests either that you haven’t paid much attention to his utterances or that you are so completely locked into your ideological prejudices that anyone who dares to criticize Republicans must be a friend of the Democrats.

Edwin

 

[estesbob]

**2267 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.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

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 non-existent.”

1. Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.*

Pope Benedict XVI

 

[estesbob]

There is another issue involved, and that is studies have found that state that implement the death penalty either see no reduction in that state’s murder rate, or actually an increase.

The message the death penalty sends is “if you don’t like someone, then kill them.”

There is a basic disconnect when we try to send the message that killing people is wrong by killing people .

 

[estesbob]

The problem is not those in the pro-life ministry trying to narrow the definition-the problem is Catholic Democrats trying to expand the definition to include supporting bigger government and contending a candidates support of abortion is mitigated by their support of higher taxes and increased spending on social programs.

 

[ARSpade]

Bishop Paprocki at the Pontifical High Mass he celebrated in DC on March day said that if you didn’t change the throwaway culture in the US that getting rid of Roe v Wade wouldn’t be enough solve the abortion problem.

Also, the post above me is correct. 95% of the time when somebody pulls this card it’s somebody saying that their pro-abortion stance is okay because I’m not both anti-abortion and pro-government welfare based of high taxes (I donate to charities that actually work. I work with the Feds and so I know that they really don’t).

 

[Suudy]

There is also a distinction between the sanctity of life and the quality of life. The pro-life movement, as I’ve come to understand it, focuses on the former. But it seems that there has been an effort (most strongly from the left) to pull the quality of life into the same pro-life category. And the melding of the two has reduced the focus on the sanctity of life. In fact, issues such as homelessness, health care, food stamps, and more are somehow being equated with abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment.

And the sanctity of life, or as the pro-life movement calls it, the right to life, is the priority. From Christifideles Laici:

The inviolability of the person which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, fínds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life. Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights-for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture- is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.

Other rights, including the quality of life, are dependent upon the right to life. What good is an end to homelessness if the homeless have to right to life? What good is access to affordable, quality healthcare if nobody has a right to life? No other rights have any value if the right to life is denied.

Unfortunately, the media and the left are using Pope Francis’ words to further their agenda–both the watering down of the sanctity of life focus and the attempt to discredit the pro-life movement.

 

[Darryl1958]

Pro-life is actually a misnomer when applied to anything but abortion. As a term it arose out of the political desire to posit oneself in a more desirable position than the ‘anti-abortion’ label implied.
If the term is going to be expanded to include everything but the kitchen sink, what priority are the unborn going to be given in that greatly expanded list of all things pro-life?

Number 5 or 6 priority maybe, somewhere between electric cars for pro-environment and hot meals for school kids?

 

[SWolf]

Pro-life is actually a misnomer when applied to anything but abortion. As a term it arose out of the political desire to posit oneself in a more desirable position than the ‘anti-abortion’ label implied.
If the term is going to be expanded to include everything but the kitchen sink, what priority are the unborn going to be given in that greatly expanded list of all things pro-life?

Number 5 or 6 priority maybe, somewhere between electric cars for pro-environment and hot meals for school kids?

You get it.

Broadening the pro-life label is an attack on the pro-life movement. As far as social tragedies go, the death penalty and inequality are drops in a bucket compared to the oceans of destruction abortions cause on society.

Perspective is everything.

 

[LongingSoul]

You get it.

Broadening the pro-life label is an attack on the pro-life movement. As far as social tragedies go, the death penalty and inequality are drops in a bucket compared to the oceans of destruction abortions cause on society.

Perspective is everything.

The Churchs perspective amounts to this…

“When the state, in our names and with our taxes, ends a human life despite having non-lethal alternatives, it suggests that society can overcome violence with violence. The use of the death penalty ought to be abandoned not only for what it does to those who are executed, but for what it does to all of society.” —USCCB, A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death

The Churchs perspective is that the death penalty waters the soil of the culture of death which feeds the abortion mentality.

I’m with the Church!

 

[SWolf]

The Churchs perspective amounts to this…

"When the state, in our names and with our taxes, ends a human life despite having non-lethal alternatives, it suggests that society can overcome violence with violence. The use of the death penalty ought to be abandoned not only for what it does to those who are executed, but for what it does to all of society." —USCCB, A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death

The Churchs perspective is that the death penalty waters the soil of the culture of death which feeds the abortion mentality.

I’m with the Church!

As has been stated countless times on this board, you can suport the death penalty and be in good standing with the Church.

You CAN NOT support abortion and be in good standing with the Church.

There is no comparison in the damage to society between the two.

 

[Darryl1958]

The Churchs perspective amounts to this…

"When the state, in our names and with our taxes, ends a human life despite having non-lethal alternatives, it suggests that society can overcome violence with violence. The use of the death penalty ought to be abandoned not only for what it does to those who are executed, but for what it does to all of society." —USCCB, A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death

The Churchs perspective is that the death penalty waters the soil of the culture of death which feeds the abortion mentality.

I’m with the Church!

The abortion rate is upwards of one in three potential births. It has exceeded a million a year in the United States alone, and every single one of the lives taken were innocent.

How many condemned criminals have been put to death in any given year?
And do those numbers in any way inform us of where our priorities might lie when it comes to which are the more pressing pro-life issues?

 

[saintjohnxxiii]

As has been stated countless times on this board, you can suport the death penalty and be in good standing with the Church.

You CAN NOT support abortion and be in good standing with the Church.

There is no comparison in the damage to society between the two.

Try telling that to Mark Shea

 

[Mystical_Seeker]

Here’s how you can test whether you can be politically in favor of banning abortions, and support death penalty at the same time:

Step 1: Determine why you are saving babies. If it is on the basis that “all human life is sacred” then you cannot support the death penalty, given the fact there are non-lethal means of preventing a threat, as the CCC talks about. Even convicts on death row are human beings, made in the image of God just like the rest of us. Unless we redefine them as non-human because we presume they have behaved in non-human ways.

Step 2: If you do it on the basis of “all innocent life is sacred” then that leads to a problem. That problem is, that we presume to find some lives as “sinful” and therefore no longer sacred. In other words, we judge that a person is no longer worthy of living – worthy simply due to having been made “in the image of God” – which was the reasoning we say in the first place, that “human” life begins at conception. Once that happens we have a creature in the image of God, that we have decided should no longer exist because we are angry at them or somehow think it’s therapeutic to society or victim families to witness revenge.

Or are we saying that because a jury finds somebody worthy of being killed for a crime, that they no longer are human? At conception they have human DNA. After being found guilty by a jury they still have DNA of humans, and some of them continue to breathe for a while if they don’t get killed in prison like certain particularly “notorious” criminals.

The law is here to protect the rights of citizens against others who would take them away – at the threat of up to and including deadly enforcement. So if an individual is removed as a threat, and we further desire that person die for his/her crimes, then we have made the decision that human life is only sacred until we say it isn’t. And guess where that leads to? Absolutely no clear boundaries.

Jesus hung around sinners all the time; apparently there was something about them that made their lives worth His time.

 

[SWolf]

Here’s how you can test whether you can be politically in favor of banning abortions, and support death penalty at the same time:

Step 1: Determine why you are saving babies. If it is on the basis that “all human life is sacred” then you cannot support the death penalty, given the fact there are non-lethal means of preventing a threat, as the CCC talks about. Even convicts on death row are human beings, made in the image of God just like the rest of us. Unless we redefine them as non-human because we presume they have behaved in non-human ways.

Step 2: If you do it on the basis of “all innocent life is sacred” then that leads to a problem. That problem is, that we presume to find some lives as “sinful” and therefore no longer sacred. In other words, we judge that a person is no longer worthy of living simply due to having been made “in the image of God” which was the reasoning we say in the first place, that life begins at conception. Once that happens we have a creature in the image of God. The law is here to protect the rights of citizens against others who would take them away – at the threat of up to and including deadly enforcement. So if an individual is removed as a threat, and we further desire that person die for his/her crimes, then we have made the decision that human life is only sacred until we say it isn’t. And guess where that leads to? Absolutely no clear boundaries.

Jesus hung around sinners all the time; apparently there was something about them that made their lives worth His time.

The prudence of the death penalty in a certain situation depends on a multitude of factors. I’m sure God believes every life is sacred, yet made many laws whose punishment included the death penalty.

“Q. 1276. Under what circumstances may human life be lawfully taken?
A. Human life may be lawfully taken:

1. In self-defense, when we are unjustly attacked and have no other means of saving our own lives;
2. In a just war, when the safety or rights of the nation require it;
3. By the lawful execution of a criminal, fairly tried and found guilty of a crime punishable by death when the preservation of law and order and the good of the community require such execution.”

The death penalty is a question of justice for a specific crime.

Abortion is a murder.

 

[Mystical_Seeker]

The prudence of the death penalty in a certain situation depends on a multitude of factors. I’m sure God believes every life is sacred, yet made many laws whose punishment included the death penalty.

“Q. 1276. Under what circumstances may human life be lawfully taken?
A. Human life may be lawfully taken:

1. In self-defense, when we are unjustly attacked and have no other means of saving our own lives;
2. In a just war, when the safety or rights of the nation require it;
3. By the lawful execution of a criminal, fairly tried and found guilty of a crime punishable by death when the preservation of law and order and the good of the community require such execution.”

The death penalty is a question of justice for a specific crime.

Abortion is a murder.

Maybe you’d be better off if you update your catechism to the one that is currently in effect. It’s funny that you have chosen to ignore what other posters have already posted on this issue from the CURRENT catechism, in favor of something that makes your point.

I suggest that the clarifications provided in the CURRENT Catechism, as opposed to the one it replaced because people like you were drawing incorrect inferences from it, trumps your ego’s apparent position, that in essence once a criminal has been duly convicted the Church has not much more to say about it.

I suggest you get with it and start using the CCC the rest of the Church is using. Yes, it is possible for a death row inmate to escape prison these days, but in the last 130 years since they wrote this passage you are dragging out we have improved our technology at least in the US (I don’t know about other countries) to confine dangerous criminals, and to track them in the event they do escape.

Oh, and since you seem to have missed it the last two times it was posted, here I will again copy the relevant passage from the CCC that is CURRENTLY in effect in the Catholic Church:

2267
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.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

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."

 

[SWolf]

Maybe you’d be better off if you update your catechism to the one that is currently in effect. It’s funny that you have chosen to ignore what other posters have already posted on this issue from the CURRENT catechism, in favor of something that makes your point.

I suggest that the clarifications provided in the CURRENT Catechism, as opposed to the one it replaced because people like you were drawing incorrect inferences from it, trumps your ego’s apparent position, that in essence once a criminal has been duly convicted the Church has not much more to say about it.

I suggest you get with it and start using the CCC the rest of the Church is using. Yes, it is possible for a death row inmate to escape prison these days, but in the last 130 years since they wrote this passage you are dragging out we have improved our technology at least in the US (I don’t know about other countries) to confine dangerous criminals, and to track them in the event they do escape.

Was that Catechism wrong?

Did God condone the death penalty?

If God allowed the Death Penalty, how can you put moral equivalence with Abortion?