I wish Pope Francis would stick to preaching Catholic Doctrine.
A good iteration of which is in the Catholic Catechism, which puts equal emphasis on the DUTY of the state authorities to protect society from unjust aggressors,and to use the death penalty when necessary, and otherwise,m when possible, to isolate aggressors from society via life imprisonment.
I read somewhere --- and I can't find the source, google though I may, so somebody help me if you can find the source --- I read somewhere on the internet that 500 people are murdered every year --- by perpetrators who have already been convicted on at least one previous homicide -- in California alone
So much for a state that does not have, IN PRACTICE, life imprisonment without parole.
Many homiciders live in confidence that they will NEVER get a genuine life sentence because of
The system is criminal in itself.
It costs around $50,000 a year to imprison someone in California.
It’s questionable whether a human life can be balanced against money. But many of the states are going broke, and one reason is all those lifers who have to be given their prison privileges, such as sex-change operations and big-screen TV.
And the solution is not what California and other states have done, to let dangerous criminals out on the streets before their time is up, when they are certain to rob, mug, steal, or kill again.
The Catholic Church has opposed the death penalty for some time, but it is a prudential decision, not an absolute law.
Without trying to be obnoxious, this kind of error is partly why so many have abandoned Rome. Your clarity of thought now exceeds the pope’s; the clarity of Rom. 13 exceeds the pope’s. The direct abandonment of Paul’s Scriptural perspective in favor of “...his own opinions” is beyond “clericalism”.