Posted on 03/08/2015 7:22:35 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
)n Thursday, a slew of American Catholic publications, including America Magazine, National Catholic Register, National Catholic Reporter, Our Sunday Visitor, and Patheos Catholic announced their joint commitment to abolishing the death penalty in the United States.
Prompted by an upcoming Supreme Court hearing on the use of certain drug combinations in lethal injections, the statement represents a rare and welcome moment of unity among Catholics of varied political commitments. No such unity can be found among the 78.2 million American Catholics themselves, and that's because one group opposes these publications' position on the death penalty: white Catholics.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church holds that if non-lethal methods are sufficient for preventing a criminal from doing further harm, then those methods should be preferred over lethal punishment. It isn’t difficult to imagine why: The Catholic Church values a consistent respect for human life, the kind of approach Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernadin called “a seamless garment”—that a person’s guilt or innocence is irrelevant to the inherent value of their life.
That's why the Church has long opposed capital punishment. Pope John Paul II was an especially eloquent and dedicated advocate for life. Pope Francis, too, has called for the abolition of the death penalty, saying, “It is impossible to imagine that states today cannot make use of another means than capital punishment to defend peoples' lives from an unjust aggressor.”
(Excerpt) Read more at newrepublic.com ...
Actually Traditional Catholic teaching does not oppose the Death Penalty.
Yeah, to say otherwise glosses over about 1000 years of history. If that was the case, the death penalty would have been abolished in the Middle Ages.
So, what caused the Catholic Church to change?
About
I’m a student in Brown University’s PhD program in Religion and Critical Thought, which means I study religion and philosophy/politics. I got my MPhil in Christian Theology at the University of Cambridge under the generous auspices of the Marshall Scholarship and the Cambridge Trusts Scholarship.
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Elizabeth, let’s start the movement with you. I’d like you to carry a card in your wallet that says: I AM 0PPOSED TO THE DEATH PENALTY. IF I AM BRUTALLY MURDERED, I DO NOT WANT MY MURDERER PUT TO DEATH.
We will honor your wishes and the wishes of all those who carry such a card.
Public opposition to the death penalty was a POLITICAL decision. A great mistake for the Church in America.
It hasn’t changed officially. We just have modernist clerics opposing it.
Just sent to her.
e.h.stoker@gmail.com
lead a movement by example
Hi, Elizabeth.
Please lead this movement in opposition to the death penalty. Carry a card in your wallet or wear a bracelet with the inscription:
I AM OPPOSED TO THE DEATH PENALTY. IF I AM MURDERED, I DO NOT WANT MY MURDERER PUT TO DEATH.
Get others to wear it. Although we disagree on the death penalty, I would fight to honor your wishes.
...Doug
“So, what caused the Catholic Church to change?”
The Church didn’t change. Society did. At one point the death penalty was considered the only effective deterrent or punishment for many crimes. That is not the case now.
It’s not just “traditional.” The Catholic Church does not oppose the death penalty. The headline is a falsehood.
I’m not Catholic but I changed my mind years ago and oppose the death penalty especially after learning that because of the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, God isn’t mad at anyone because he completely exhausted all his wrath, condemnation, and judgment for everyone’s sins past, present, and future (1 John 2:2) on the body of His own Son because he loves the world so much.
As a punishment, the death penalty is unjust because whatever heinous acts the person did, those acts were already judged and condemned 2000 years ago, so the death penalty is unjust double jeopardy.
Based on that precept, not even jails would exist.
After Jesus died and rose again, He gave us the following scripture:
For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Romans 13
The Roman sword was for the death penalty.
To poorly paraphrase: In war, crying widows and burning cities is the truth.
Other than that, I don’t want the government killing people, and I don’t want folks “choosing” to murder babies either. Lots of governments have killed people just because they don’t like ‘em.
On the other hand, I have no problem with the family of a murder victim being given machetes and axes and putting the murdering SOB in a fenced in yard. Maybe even slicing the achillies to make it a bit easier for Grandma to have a few wacks.
Forgiveness if for G-d. I’ll take revenge.
I am about to leave and won’t be back in time to discuss your comment. I don’t care about your opinion on the death penalty. I favor it, but I can make a good argument against on the basis of a broken justice system.
All I have time to say is I believe you have ignored vast swaths of the Scriptures to come up with that interpretation. If God’s wrath has been fully propitiated, then why will there be souls in Hell?
I believe the Bible teaches that God’s wrath was fully propitiated FOR A SPECIFIC GROUP ONLY, namely His elect. Please read Romans 9 which specifically says that God has mercy on whom He will have mercy and He hardens whom He will harden.
The Scriptures declare that God does not change (Malachi 3:6). The Bible also says that God is angry with the wicked every day (Psalm 7:11).
Romans 9:21-23
21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:
23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,
The Catechism of the Catholic Church holds that if non-lethal methods are sufficient for preventing a criminal from doing further harm, then those methods should be preferred over lethal punishment.
This writer completely skipped over the first paragraph of 2267. Here is the complete statement:
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 with 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 definitively 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.”
The writer also ignores the polling data that shows more than one out of three white Catholics (34%) oppose the death penalty.
I’m a white Catholic and I oppose the Death Penalty.
I think deliberate killing is worse than hot blood killing. I oppose the death penalty. Some people deserve to go to Hell, but when they arrive is between them and God.
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