When or is the death penalty alright?

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4elise said:
In a July 10, 2009 statement welcoming Mexico’s new ambassador to the Vatican, Pope Benedict congratulated the Mexican government for having formally repealed the nation’s death penalty laws in 2005.
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So the clarification of this issue by the Magisterium does not seem to be supporting your position.
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These comments provide no clarification. The pope disapproves of the use of the death penalty; that really doesn’t rise to the level of Church doctrine. A clarification of 2267 would be something that addresses and resolves the very real doctrinal problems it has created. Supporting repeal of capital punishment is inadequate for that purpose.

Ender
 
How and where does it benefit society by taking a person (that is not a danger to society or anyone else at this time) from a locked cell shackled, take that person to a room where this person is intentionally put to death? Upkeep, maintenance, food bill, the false sense of security that others will learn, righteousness, justice, who’s justice??:shrug
shrug:
 
joe_clark said:
How and where does it benefit society by taking a person (that is not a danger to society or anyone else at this time) from a locked cell shackled, take that person to a room where this person is intentionally put to death? Upkeep, maintenance, food bill, the false sense of security that others will learn, righteousness, justice, who’s justice??:shrug shrug:
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That would be justice and based on 2260 it would appear to be God’s justice.

Ender
 
CWBetts said:
Well Genesis 9:6 is a weak defense for the death penalty. If it is a justification for the death penalty, it is also a justification for vigilante justice. My point is, the application of the death penalty is not dogma, but practice, and as such can change.
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Dear CWBetts,

The death penalty is both dogma and practice since man will never cease to be made in the image of God, thus when violence in the form of murder is done to our fellow man an outrage against God is perpetrated. This is why capital punishment has continuing validity and cannot be subject to change.

Genesis 9: 6 is not “justification for vigilante justice” but a divine mandate for redressing an outrage against God. Moreover, this text must now also be read in the light of N.T. teaching, especially Romans 13: 3-5, where St. Paul specifically speaks of lawful authority as “the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer” - nothing there that even whiffs of vigilante justice.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait
 
Ender said:
That would be justice and based on 2260 it would appear to be God’s justice.

Ender
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The death penalty or a better accurate description, taking a helpless soul and murdering them to settle a score, to get even, to serve the people what. What is the final outcome except another put to death? How does it benefit society? Does it truly serve the Lord?

It is the year 2009 and we should be more advanced and educated and LESS fearful, but alas, we are regressing into a primative tribal dance of death reserved for the ignorant of old. Very sad.😦
 
Honestly positing the unreal idea that the sole reason capital punishment was acceptable in the past was the inability of societies to afford to incarcerate people safely…

(i.e. justice and punishment has nothing to do with it)

🤷

I find the idea unbelievable. It would be morally unacceptable in such a case, because it would simply be a matter of money and nothing else.

And that would’ve been made clear in the past, so that in cases at least where the towns or kingdoms were wealthy and doing prosperously enough, they would be forbidden then, to execute criminals and required to care for them.

But that is not the case. Money or the lack thereof is not the determining factor as to whether capital punishment is acceptable.
 
Portrait said:
Dear CWBetts,

The death penalty is both dogma and practice since man will never cease to be made in the image of God, thus when violence in the form of murder is done to our fellow man an outrage against God is perpetrated. This is why capital punishment has continuing validity and cannot be subject to change.

Genesis 9: 6 is not “justification for vigilante justice” but a divine mandate for redressing an outrage against God. Moreover, this text must now also be read in the light of N.T. teaching, especially Romans 13: 3-5, where St. Paul specifically speaks of lawful authority as “the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer” - nothing there that even whiffs of vigilante justice.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait
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The death penalty is NOT DOGMATIC. TO SUGGEST OTHERWISE IS TO THOROUGHLY MISREPRESENT THE TEACHINGS OF THE CHURCH IN A WEAK ATTEMPT TO JUSTIFY VINDICTIVENESS!!!
 
Portrait said:
Dear CWBetts,

The death penalty is both dogma and practice since man will never cease to be made in the image of God, thus when violence in the form of murder is done to our fellow man an outrage against God is perpetrated. This is why capital punishment has continuing validity and cannot be subject to change.

Genesis 9: 6 is not “justification for vigilante justice” but a divine mandate for redressing an outrage against God. Moreover, this text must now also be read in the light of N.T. teaching, especially Romans 13: 3-5, where St. Paul specifically speaks of lawful authority as “the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer” - nothing there that even whiffs of vigilante justice.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait
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Dear Portrait;

No disrespect but you are making a huge erroneous unsupported statement by quoting the Death penalty as Dogma in the Catholic Church.

No Pope in Church history has ever spoken Ex Cathedra, implementing the Death Penalty as Dogma.

Respectfully; even CCC: 2260 and CCC: 2267 in the Catechism which some call a teaching seems more like a Church opinion widely open to debate.

And until the Pope declares officially in ex-cathedra that the Death Penalty is Dogma there is NO obligation of the clergy or the laity to consider the Death Penalty a statement of Papal Infallibility.
 
I respect John Paul 2 for having lived through the experience of an attempted assination; and I respect him for for giving his assassin. I also respect him for being a brilliant philosopher and theologian.

However, whether it was specifically by his hand, or others under his direction who coined the bit about “unless society cannot be protected” and the drivel about how modern society can separate the criminal and protect the rest of us, it was written by someone who has little or no clue about the real world out there - the one that polite society has almost no knowledge of, and wants no knowledge of .

Whereof I speak? Do a little research on the beloved Mulsim cleric who was convicted in the first bombing of the World Towers, and what they caught on to finally that he was doing while in what should have been one of the finer, if not finest prisons around.

They can be shut off from society? Society can be protected from them?

How much physical violence, how much sexual violence, how many deaths are caused by inmate on inmate contacts in prison - and why are not other prisoners to be protected?

There are repeated studies showing that the death penalty is lacking in justice in terms of who dies, and who doesn’t. There are futher studies repeatedly questioning whether the death penalty has any significant deterrent impact on criminals. And the costs of actually putting someone to death far, far outweighs the cost of warehousing them for the rest of their natural life. Add to this the number of people wrongly convicted - I am not talking about the “not guilty”, but rather of those who simply were not the perpetrator - and executed, and one can see the system is far, far from perfect.

But if the justification for extremely limiting the death penalty is because of the alleged ability of society to protect everyone else from the killer or serial rapist; then the justification is built on a house of sand. In short, 'tain’t true.

And as far as throwing them in a cell, throwing away the key and not cutting them out of the cell until dead, well, guess again. The ACLU will have those cases in front of a judge faster than you can scratch your name illegibly on a sheet of paper. Protection? Nope.
 
Ender said:
Do not confuse the Mosaic Code with God’s covenant with Noah. The Mosaic Code contained laws that were valid for that time but not for all time, otherwise it would not have included provision for divorce, which Christ specifically mentioned and repudiated. The covenant with Noah however, as the Church herself says, is valid for all time.
We have done nothing more than simply repeat what the Church teaches. The interpretation of Gen 9:6 is not our opinion, it is set out in 2260. Why is it valid for you to cite 2267 and somehow invalid for us to mention a contradictory section of the same Catechism?

Other than that it appears in the current Catechism there is no support for the position laid out in 2267; that is, the only argument in favor of it is “the pope said so.” There is no historical basis for it. As for 2260, the entire history of the Church lies behind it; everything said about capital punishment at least until 1980 supports 2260. Nothing whatever supports 2267.

Ender
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So, in the end, you’re still picking and choosing what parts of the Catechism to accept. Right? Or does the Church say somewhere that the Catechism she promulgated has parts that are opinions and left to the individual to freely accept or reject?
 
otjm said:
I respect John Paul 2 for having lived through the experience of an attempted assination; and I respect him for for giving his assassin. I also respect him for being a brilliant philosopher and theologian.

However, whether it was specifically by his hand, or others under his direction who coined the bit about “unless society cannot be protected” and the drivel about how modern society can separate the criminal and protect the rest of us, it was written by someone who has little or no clue about the real world out there - the one that polite society has almost no knowledge of, and wants no knowledge of .

Whereof I speak? Do a little research on the beloved Mulsim cleric who was convicted in the first bombing of the World Towers, and what they caught on to finally that he was doing while in what should have been one of the finer, if not finest prisons around.

They can be shut off from society? Society can be protected from them?

How much physical violence, how much sexual violence, how many deaths are caused by inmate on inmate contacts in prison - and why are not other prisoners to be protected?

There are repeated studies showing that the death penalty is lacking in justice in terms of who dies, and who doesn’t. There are futher studies repeatedly questioning whether the death penalty has any significant deterrent impact on criminals. And the costs of actually putting someone to death far, far outweighs the cost of warehousing them for the rest of their natural life. Add to this the number of people wrongly convicted - I am not talking about the “not guilty”, but rather of those who simply were not the perpetrator - and executed, and one can see the system is far, far from perfect.

But if the justification for extremely limiting the death penalty is because of the alleged ability of society to protect everyone else from the killer or serial rapist; then the justification is built on a house of sand. In short, 'tain’t true.

And as far as throwing them in a cell, throwing away the key and not cutting them out of the cell until dead, well, guess again. The ACLU will have those cases in front of a judge faster than you can scratch your name illegibly on a sheet of paper. Protection? Nope.
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Again the vindictive crowd uses a nearly unique exception to represent the norm. Pitiful.
 
centurionguard said:
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Dear Portrait;

No disrespect but you are making a huge erroneous unsupported statement by quoting the Death penalty as Dogma in the Catholic Church.

No Pope in Church history has ever spoken Ex Cathedra, implementing the Death Penalty as Dogma.

Respectfully; even CCC: 2260 and CCC: 2267 in the Catechism which some call a teaching seems more like a Church opinion widely open to debate.

And until the Pope declares officially in ex-cathedra that the Death Penalty is Dogma there is NO obligation of the clergy or the laity to consider the Death Penalty a statement of Papal Infallibility.
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Dear Centuriongaurd,

Thankyou, I stand corrected the death penalty is not a dogma of our Church, but I am pleased that you at least concede that the teaching of the Catechism does appear to be “more like a Church opinion widely open to debate”. Many abolitionists, as the postings on this thread have clearly evinced, either cannot or will not allow this.

However, the fact remains that whilst capital punishment may not be a Church dogma, it is most decidedly a biblical teaching of both the Old and New Testaments and has been unchallenged until recent times. Thus the question has to asked, why does the Church suddenly feel uneasy with the death penalty when hitherto it has not had a problem? It does seem that the late JP II “prudential opinion” has been allowed to intrude into a teaching norm intended to instruct the faithful . Regretably this has lead to a great deal of confusion and uncertainty as this thread bears witness.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait
 
diggerdomer said:
So, in the end, you’re still picking and choosing what parts of the Catechism to accept. Right? Or does the Church say somewhere that the Catechism she promulgated has parts that are opinions and left to the individual to freely accept or reject?
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Dear Diggerdomer,

Ender is not being disengenuously selective as regards the Church Catechism; he is merely drawing our attention to the fact that para. 2267 is at variance with para. 2260 in so far as the whole of the Church’s history lies behind the latter but not the former.

It is surely incontrovertible that there has been a radical u-turn in our Church’s understanding of capital punishment in recent years, otherwise why all the controversy over the wording of the Revised Catechism?; people are not carping and caviling for the mere say so of it.

Regretably, the “prudential opinion” of the late JP II has become enshrined in a document that was intended as a teaching norm for the faithful and this was a fundamental error that was bound to engender confusion and contoversy. This is exactly what has occured as this thread amply testifies. It is not that sincere Catholics are unwilling to accept bona fide Church teaching, or wish to pick and choose, but that they are unwilling to accept the personal opinion of JP II on this issue as it is not consonant with what our Church has taught hitherto. We are not unique in highlighting this radical shift in our Church’s teaching for as Karl Keating (founder Catholic Answers) has remarked:

The Catechism…has included a prudential judgment (the only such one in the Catechism on any topic, so far as I’m aware) that, by its nature, CANNOT BE BINDING ON CONSIENCE.
(Karl’s E Letter 2nd March 2004, emphasis mine)

Thus it is disengenuous to imply that those who sincerely believe that this part of the Catechisim contains a prudential opinion are thereby quite ready, when it suits them, to be selective regarding any part of the Catechism. This is just plainly false - an unsupported assertion that will simply not bear scrutiny.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait
 
diggerdomer said:
So, in the end, you’re still picking and choosing what parts of the Catechism to accept. Right? Or does the Church say somewhere that the Catechism she promulgated has parts that are opinions and left to the individual to freely accept or reject?
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And what of 2260? Do you accept it? And if not, are you not picking and choosing what parts of the Catechism to accept? As I have said before, I see no way to simultaneously accept 2260, 2266 and 2267 so don’t accuse me of something that is in fact unavoidable and that we all must do, yourself included.

Ender
 
Something does not have to be declared ex cathedra to be of dogmatic weight.

The acceptability of the death penalty under certain circumstances is a teaching that cannot be changed, and cannot be denied. Because it has always and everywhere been taught since the beginning.

To deny it is to go against the constant teaching of the Church, and to deny Christ’s protection of her teaching, which is His, from the beginning.

And it is quite immoral to tarnish the Popes, saints, and people today who correctly follow the teachings of Christ and say the death penalty is moral, at heart.
 
The posters here can read the site:
www.prodeathpenalty.com
Generally, playing the race card is really old hat. It is not a racist site. The facts on the site are accurate, and if any of the posters have facts that show differently, they can post them. Attacking the messager and not the message is kind of an old tactic,
…then they can read the following post re Cardinal Dulles (RIP)
about the true nature of the prudential judgment portion of the teaching on the death penalty. He sides with Pope JP 2, but discusses it quite cogently.

ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=23852
 
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