Posted on 03/21/2015 3:31:14 PM PDT by BlatherNaut
Why is it that we support clubs of people who think they can impose some unjust law upon the whole planet? How in the world is a collection of subsidized scolders, winers, and diners supposed to impose a worldwide moratorium on anything? Why does the Pope think they can?
Pope Francis delivered a letter this week to the International Commission against the Death Penalty
With these letters, I wish to have my greeting reach all the members of the International Commission against the Death Penalty, to the group of countries that support it, and to those who collaborate with the organism over which you preside. I wish, in addition, to express my personal gratitude, and also that of men of good will, for your commitment to a world free of the death penalty and for your contribution to the establishment of a universal moratorium of executions worldwide, with a view to abolition of capital punishment.
Plato was clear, “When there is crime in society, there is no justice,” and if you look around you’ll find plenty of crime. You’ll also find plenty of people teaching that actual justice is unjust or useless.
L.A. Archbishop Jose Gomez rolled out the tired pseudo-Catholic appeal against the death penalty once again this week, arguing that we’re so ‘advanced’ now it’s unnecessary, as if the point of an execution was to keep the convict from hurting anyone else. If we’re so advanced, why is there so much murder, and why don’t we understand that the point is to keep ‘others’ from killing, not the one already in jail?
(Excerpt) Read more at 66.147.242.160 ...
Life without parole does not bring justice. Life without parole is not the deterrent that death is. Murder an innocent and you give up what? The same you you get for theft? Murder a prison guard and there is no increase in penalty. Order a hit against a witness? Big whoop! You're in for life anyway.
No, I'm a Presbyterian. But we count. My opinions here are just as valid as yours.
The Torah also speaks to punishment for adulterers and eye for an eye and that lepers are unclean and are to be ostracized. Are you seriously saying that the absence of repudiation b Christ equals condonement?
1.) Jesus actually addressed the stoning of adulterers.
2.) The laws concerning lepers, although practical in preventing the spread of the disease, were not on the same level the laws concerning punishment for murder.
3.) Your use of the old eye-for-an-eye canard betrays ignorance of the law, the more famous example of which is Ghandi's ignorant utterance about everybody being blind and toothless. The eye-for-an-eye admonition was a proscription against EXCESSIVE retributive justice, as in "You stole my goat, so I'm wiping out your family".
4.) Capital punishment for murder was considered moral for 2000 years of Christianity. Now you're telling us that the Apostles and all other Christians got it wrong and were in opposition to Christ's teaching?
“Capital punishment for murder was considered moral for 2000 years of Christianity. Now you’re telling us that the Apostles and all other Christians got it wrong and were in opposition to Christ’s teaching?”
We must be careful to separate doctrine from practice. Circumcision too was a practice as was death by crucifixion or stoning as forms of torture.
Practice can change in each case when alternative forms of punishment are available. Bear in mind that rehabilitation, reparation, deterrence, and retribution have all been advanced as theories for capital punishment.
When Cain killed Abel, God did not end Cain’s life. Instead, he sent Cain into exile, not only sparing his life but protecting it by putting a mark on Cain, lest anyone should kill him at sight (Gn 4:15).
St. John Paul II said a sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. . . . I renew the appeal I made . . . for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.
—Pope John Paul II Papal Mass, St. Louis, Missouri, January 27, 1999
John Paul II, The Gospel of Life, [Punishment] ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.
—John Paul II, The Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae), 1995
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect peoples 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.
—The Catechism of the Catholic Church
Question (after two statements):
- I began life as a Catholic and recall a Nun telling us that if a Catholic was driving and came into a situation where there was no time to stop, and the choices were to run over a 30 year old man or a 6 year old child, the Catholic should run over the child - the reason being that the child was going to heaven but we could not know the state of the soul of the adult and it was our duty to try to insure the best chance for everyone's salvation that we could.
- Jonah ended up in the belly of the whale because, when God told him to go to Nineveh to save folks that Jonah considered to be unworthy of saving, he tried to go in the opposite direction.
Is it our duty to try to salvage as many souls as possible for God's pleasure, or is it incumbent on us to deal death and seal a soul's internment in Hell?
Sometimes stupid becomes indistinguishable from evil. I think we’re beyond that threshold.
Francis is a heretic. There is no misinterpreting these words.
No, Francis is not free to give his opinion when it contradicts the teachings he’s supposed to be upholding.
Ah, JPII’s slippery slope away from traditional teaching.
Are you trying to tell us the Council of Trent was just describing a practice and not doctrine?:
The power of life and death is permitted to certain civil magistrates because theirs is the responsibility under law to punish the guilty and protect the innocent. Far from being guilty of breaking this commandment [Thy shall not kill], such an execution of justice is precisely an act of obedience to it. For the purpose of the law is to protect and foster human life. This purpose is fulfilled when the legitimate authority of the State is exercised by taking the guilty lives of those who have taken innocent lives. In the Psalms we find a vindication of this right: “Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off all evildoers from the city of the Lord” (Ps. 101:8). (Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent, 1566, Part III, 5, n. 4)
You opinions if you’re not a Catholic mean absolutely nothing to Catholics. Worry about your own faith.
If you read it careful, you’d see its about a practice not a dogma. This was issued in 1566 for protecting the killer from re-committing murders by setting him off free. But if that purpose can be satisfied by life imprisonment without parole the rationale for revenge collapses.
The psalms you quote is the judgment of God. But there is plenty in the New Testament about forgiveness as well and of course the most crucial is the murderous thief on the right. (Pope Benedict in his book on “Jesus” refers to the thief as a brigand, an old word for murderer)
The quote was from the Catechism of the CATHOLIC CHURCH under the heading of THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. Much of what the Church has ALWAYS taught was included in this catechism to teach the Faithful and to warn of heretical beliefs (in response to the Protestant Reformation).
The point, Steelfish, is that the Catholic Church has ALWAYS ALLOWED for the Death Penalty. It has NEVER condemned it. No pope can come along and condemn it and opine that it shouldn’t be allowed anymore.
I agree with what you write. All, I am saying is that the forms and methods of punishment for murder are not static. It is just as conceivable to say, given reforms in the penal institution, to say nothing of the occasional death row inmates being set free on the basis of new DNA evidence or testing, that consistent with the teaching of Christ’s redemptive power and mercy, its use may no longer be justified. We have had political systems where mass murderers like Stalin and Mao whose regimes were accepted by many nations, not only gone free but statues have been erected in their honor.
Sometimes its better to rot in jail that a quick execution.
If you agree with what I am saying (which is what the Church has always said) then why do you seem to be defending Francis’ comments that the DP should never be used?
“Sometimes stupid becomes indistinguishable from evil.”
Great comment, absolutely the truth.
As Dr. Johnson supposedly said, nothing clarifies the mind like the prospect of hanging.
Once upon a time, the priests would be out there trying to get the person to repent - or he had already repented and he knew he would die pardoned. Now that we no longer take the afterlife seriously, nobody cares about the Four Last Things (death, judgement, heaven and hell) and no effort is made to save anybody. And when there is no death penalty, people who really need to think about it and repent simply don’t feel they have to bother and thus continue in their sins.
So in terms of saving souls for eternity, I think the death penalty has a lot going for it.
He is free to say whether states ought to exercise a limit right. Certainly we don’t wasn’t to go back to the situation that prevails in 18th century England where people were hung for relatively small crimes. But the Holy Father probably knows nothing about the situation in the USA, where killers serve relatively short sentences, where the trial procedures are fair neither to victim nor accused.
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