[Montfort]

I was hoping something like that would be the case. So you are saying that the Church's stance against abortion is doctrine, but the church's stance against the death penalty is not doctrine?

[ninenot]

Re abortion you are correct. Deliberate killing of ANY innocent is murder. Doctrine.

Re: death penalty: the Church, DOCTRINALLY, recognizes that the State has the authority to use the death penalty. Never has changed--it's still in the Catechism.

However, the current Pope really, really, really, really, REALLY wants States to abandon the DP and use life-in-jail instead. He claims (justifiably) that in most Western countries, there's enough money to keep a prisoner for life.

But JPII cannot change the doctrine.

Same-o with war. The war must be a "Just War." (Don't have time to cite the stuff for you, but Google...) Now in the case of Iraq, the Pope's prudential judgment was that the justification for the action was not sufficient for the action we took.

GWB's prudential judgment was that the justification WAS sufficient.

Were we to have nuked every square foot of Iraq to prosecute the war, that would be UN-just. (Collateral damage must consciously be minimized...)

The Pope prefers not-war solutions, but does not have a DOCTRINAL basis for condemning this war.

[BlessedBeGod]

From the Catechism:

2266 Preserving the common good of society requires rendering the aggressor unable to inflict harm. For this reason the traditional teaching of the Church has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding, the death penalty.

Hope that helps. :-)