NEWS: "Culture of Life" Shifting to Encompass Death Penalty in Catholic Church

HenryTMensch said:
But by and large we aren't. At the very least at the trial level, the error rate is enourmous.

Rickets said:

The Catholic Church has always been consistent in their stance on the death penalty. The news here is that they're using the current political climate to to try and get something done about it.

joe_n_bloe said:


I know you're not saying that "better all murderers go free than one innocent man be executed," but some people will say that without considering its implications or the actual character of the people who make up the abstract term "murderers." My belief is that whatever the system, mistakes will be made, but I'd prefer to err on the side of keeping the guilty out of society, at least when we are correct in determining who's guilty. And by and large we are.

Rickets said:
The Catholic Church has always been consistent in their stance on the death penalty. The news here is that they're using the current political climate to to try and get something done about it.

Since when has the Church NOT taken an anti-death penatly stance?

darwinsjoke said:
then i'll say it. yes it is better all murderers go free than one innocent man be executed. any other belief and you've forsaken the ideals (which was the enlightenment, not christian theocratic principles) that lead to the creation of our nation.

darwinsjoke said:

consistent as long as you forget about the whole inquisition thing.

Peter_Piper said:

Yes, Medieval Show-Trials primarily based on an existing precendent from merry old protestant England. Politcally driven toward out what was seen as trachous blasphemers in Spain and/or France and/or America and/or England.
Pray tell, what part did the Pope have in the inquisitions, because as i understood it, Pope Sixtus gave permission for the inquisition, that is to excommunicate false Catholics (ie Prods, Muslims and Converso Jews). The Spanish (And most brutal) inquisition excelled at murdering in the name of religion.

However while the Catholic Church did not order the mass murder, it did nothing to stop it.

In 1994 Catholics committed a major genocide in Rwanda. Again Religion was used to justify an essentially ethnic War, and again the Catholic Church did essentially nothing to stop it.

Don't tell me they're not consistent.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

"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 with the dignity of the human person."2

This teaching is not new. St. Augustine recognized the need for capital punishment in the 5th century, but warned against vengeance, saying " our desire is rather that justice be satisfied without the taking of their lives or the maiming of their bodies in any part . . .3"

St. Thomas Aquinas defended the death penalty as a means of protecting the whole body of society in the 13th century, relating the state’s role in execution to that of a physician who "cut(s) off a decayed limb" in order to "care for the health of the whole body." However, he also proposed as a working norm that "in this life, penalties should be remedial rather than retributive."4

Contrary to the abilities of the penal systems of the 5th and 13th centuries, Pope John Paul II points out that we can protect the whole body of society today, and the cases warranting the death penalty now are "very rare if not practically nonexistent."5

The Papal Commission on Justice and Peace expressed opposition to the death penalty as early as 1976. Over the last three decades, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued statements against it four different times, and the Florida Bishops six times. Nearly all European and North, Central, and South American countries have abolished it, but not the United States.

Officially it was not the Church that sentenced unrepenting heretics to death, more particularly to the stake. As legate of the Roman Church even Gregory IV never went further than the penal ordinances of Innocent III required, nor ever inflicted a punishment more severe than excommunication. Not until four years after the commencement of his pontificate did he admit the opinion, then prevalent among legists, that heresy should be punished with death, seeing that it was confessedly no less serious an offence than high treason. Nevertheless he continued to insist on the exclusive right of the Church to decide in authentic manner in matters of heresy; at the same time it was not her office to pronounce sentence of death. The Church, thenceforth, expelled from her bosom the impenitent heretic, whereupon the state took over the duty of his temporal punishment. Frederick II was of the same opinion; in his Constitution of 1224 he says that heretics convicted by an ecclesiastical court shall, on imperial authority, suffer death by fire (auctoritate nostra ignis iudicio concremandos), and similarly in 1233 "praesentis nostrae legis edicto damnatos mortem pati decernimus." In this way Gregory IX may be regarded as having had no share either directly or indirectly in the death of condemned heretics. Not so the succeeding popes. In the Bull "Ad exstirpanda" (1252) Innocent IV says:

When those adjudged guilty of heresy have been given up to the civil power by the bishop or his representative, or the Inquisition, the podestà or chief magistrate of the city shall take them at once, and shall, within five days at the most, execute the laws made against them.

Moreover, he directs that this Bull and the corresponding regulations of Frederick II be entered in every city among the municipal statutes under pain of excommunication, which was also visited on those who failed to execute both the papal and the imperial decrees. Nor could any doubt remain as to what civil regulations were meant, for the passages which ordered the burning of impenitent heretics were inserted in the papal decretals from the imperial constitutions "Commissis nobis" and "Inconsutibilem tunicam". The aforesaid Bull "Ad exstirpanda" remained thenceforth a fundamental document of the Inquisition, renewed or reinforced by several popes, Alexander IV (1254-61), Clement IV (1265-68), Nicholas IV (1288-02), Boniface VIII (1294-1303), and others. The civil authorities, therefore, were enjoined by the popes, under pain of excommunication to execute the legal sentences that condemned impenitent heretics to the stake. It is to he noted that excommunication itself was no trifle, for, if the person excommunicated did not free himself from excommunication within a year, he was held by the legislation of that period to be a heretic, and incurred all the penalties that affected heresy.

joe_n_bloe said:

It's a well accepted notion among people (whether they behave criminally or not) that fraud, burglary, rape, kidnapping, murder, and so forth, are criminal activities that are morally and societally wrong and that carry punishments.

Guilt and punishment are separate. Someone who kills someone else is guilty of homicide. Guilt implies responsibility. The circumstances that lead to the crime, as well as the crime itself, determine the punishment.

I might agree with you that someone isn't fully responsible for growing up as a criminal, but in no way does being a criminal excuse criminal behavior.

Responsibility is assigned by society. It is not an individual attribute. Saying that "Bob is a very responsible child" is not the same as saying "Bob is responsible for his actions." That is a different meaning of "responsible." Our laws do compare the abilities of particular individuals against community standards (a 10 year old murderer, or a thief with an IQ of 70), but the individual is not the standard. The definition of "murder" is a community standard, independent of the murderer.

You are saying silly things.

[Edited on Mar 22, 2005 by joe_n_bloe]