Posted on 11/20/2006 4:25:28 AM PST by goldstategop
If today’s Catholic bishops lived during the Nuremberg trials, they would have condemned the execution of nine of the defendants – including Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Hans Frank. Kaltenbrunner was responsible for mass executions of civilians and prisoners of war as Heinrich Himmler’s chief SS lieutenant; Frank oversaw the Nazis’ numerous atrocities as the governor of occupied Poland.
Such a presumptuous proposition seems plausible given two Vatican officials’ opposition to Saddam Hussein’s death sentence – and the Catholic Church’s moral revisionism concerning capital punishment.
Iraq’s High Tribunal convicted Saddam of committing crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death on Nov. 5. Reaction from the Vatican was swift.
“For me, punishing a crime with another crime – which is what killing for vindication is – would mean that we are still at the point of demanding an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice, told the Italian news agency ANSA.
“God has given us life and only God can take it away,” Martino continued. “Life is a gift that the Lord has given us, and we must protect it from conception until natural death. The death sentence is not a natural death.”
Martino is the same man who expressed public sympathy for Saddam upon his capture and whom veteran Vatican journalist Sandro Magister called “a cardinal out of control.” Yet Martino is not alone in his sentiments.
“Certainly, the situation in Iraq will not be resolved by this death sentence. Many Catholics, myself included, are against the death penalty as a matter of principle,” Father Michele Simone, deputy director of the Vatican magazine Civilita Cattolica, told Vatican radio.
“Even in a situation like Iraq, where there are hundreds of de facto death sentences every day, adding another death to this toll will not serve anything,” Simone added. “But saving a life – which does not mean accepting everything that Saddam Hussein has done – is always something positive.”
Perhaps Simone and Martino need to be reminded of what the phrase “crimes against humanity” means in Saddam’s case.
From 1977 to 1987, Saddam destroyed between 4,000 and 5,000 Kurdish villages and killed nearly 50,000 Kurds. During the following two years, Saddam murdered almost 100,000 Kurds – many of them through chemical weapons.
Perhaps the single most devastating attack took place in March 1988, when Iraq’s air force bombed the Kurdish town of Halabja for three days with various chemical weapons, including mustard gas and sarin. At least 5,000 of Halabja’s 80,000 residents died within hours. Those who survived the initial attack would die later or would experience, as the United States State Department reported in 2002, “staggering rates of aggressive cancer, genetic mutation, neurological damage and psychiatric disorders.”
Saddam did not confine his brutality to Kurds. After invading Kuwait in 1990, Saddam established at least two dozen torture centers in Kuwait City alone. As the State Department reported, “photographic evidence confirms reports of electric shocks, acid baths, summary execution and the use of electric drills to penetrate a victim’s body.”
Other forms of torture used in Iraq included crucifixion, rape in front of the victim’s spouse and mutilation by gouging out eyes, nailing tongues to wooden boards and amputating penises and female breasts with electric carving knives.
No wonder the United Nations Commission on Human Rights condemned Iraq in 2001 for “widespread, systematic torture and the maintaining of decrees prescribing cruel and inhuman punishment as a penalty for offenses.”
No wonder Jimmy Akin, a popular Catholic apologist and blogger, reacted with disgust to Martino’s and Simone’s views:
“This is the kind of sloppy language on social topics that regularly comes from some European churchmen….If someone is himself a murderer, then killing him would seem to amount not to a crime but to justice – i.e., rendering unto the person according to his merits….If you've got someone dead to rights, like Saddam, who clearly committed crimes against humanity then the act of putting him to death is intrinsically an act of justice…This is something that the head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace ought to understand….In any event, these are statements unworthy of responsible churchmen.”
Yet Kevin Miller, professor of theology at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, begged to differ.
“I see that the Vatican has protested the sentence, and rightly so,” Miller wrote Nov. 8 in commenting on another blog. “Would it be just to hang Saddam for his crimes? Absolutely. But the Church teaches that this criterion, while necessary, isn’t sufficient.”
Such confusion is the logical consequence of Pope John Paul II’s arbitrary attempt to reverse centuries of Catholic teaching about capital punishment.
In his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium vitae (The Gospel of Life) – which focused on abortion, birth control and euthanasia – John Paul declared capital punishment to be fundamentally unnecessary: “Public authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime…In this way authority also fulfils the purpose of defending public order and ensuring people's safety, while at the same time offering the offender an incentive and help to change his or her behavior and be rehabilitated.
“It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the 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.”
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith during John Paul’s tenure – and the current Pope Benedict XVI – changed the catechism to reflect the late pope’s view:
"If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.”
Though his written opinion allowed for capital punishment in limited circumstances, John Paul used the encyclical as intellectual cover for his personal campaign to abolish the death penalty worldwide.
During his 1999 trip to the United States, the late pope successfully convinced Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan to commute the death sentence issued to Darrell Mease, who was convicted of murdering three people – including a disabled 19-year old.
In 2000, John Paul asked Rome’s city officials to let the Colisseum’s lights shine continuously in memory of those who received death sentences. In 2001, the late pope wrote a personal request to President George W. Bush for clemency for Timothy McVeigh, who murdered 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
John Paul revealed his true opinion about capital punishment at a large Mass in St. Louis on January 29, 1999, two days after Carnahan commuted Mease’s sentence:
“The new evangelization calls for followers of Christ who are unconditionally pro-life: who will proclaim, celebrate and serve the Gospel of life in every situation. 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. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.”
Martino, speaking as the Holy See’s permanent observer at the United Nations, admitted that the Catholic Church seeks to abolish capital punishment worldwide in an address that November:
“Abolition of the death penalty … is only one step towards creating a deeper respect for human life. If millions of budding lives are eliminated at their very roots, and if the family of nations can take for granted such crimes without a disturbed conscience, the argument for the abolition of capital punishment will become less credible. Will the international community be prepared to condemn such a culture of death and advocate a culture of life?”
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops followed Martino’s lead in March 2005 by announcing its own comprehensive abolitionist campaign, complete with political lobbying, judicial intervention and educational efforts in every parish.
John Paul’s opinion not only reflected the growing consensus among European intellectuals against the death penalty. It also reflected his 40 years of living under Nazi and Communist tyrannies that arbitrarily misused capital punishment. Nevertheless, the late pope’s view directly contradicts centuries of Catholic teaching.
That teaching starts with the Old Testament, which all Christians consider divinely inspired. Genesis 9:5-6 describes God as ordering Noah and his descendents to execute murderers:
“Murder is forbidden….Any person who murders must be killed. Yes, you must execute anyone who murders another person, for to kill a person is to kill a living being made in God’s image (New Living Translation).”
That command, according to Genesis, came after a flood that destroyed a morally chaotic world – and is repeated in the every book of the Torah, the first five books that form the Bible’s foundation.
The command implies three theological principles. First, if God is the author of life, then God retains the prerogative to define the circumstances under which life can be taken. Second, God demands that humanity create just societies to protect the innocent. Third, murder is such a heinous violation of the divine image in humanity that execution is the only appropriate punishment.
Exodus 20-23 elaborates on these principles in what scholars call the lex talonis, which advocates punishment proportional to the offense – the original meaning of “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.” Instead of encouraging vengeance, as Martino maintains, the lex talonis discourages ad hoc vigilantism – the ultimate form of vindictiveness – in favor of due process.
In the New Testament, St. Paul reinforces the idea in his letter to the Romans. In Chapter 12, he discourages his readers from avenging themselves by quoting Deuteronomy 32:35 (“Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. I will repay!”). In the next chapter, St. Paul encourages them to rely on due process through legitimate authorities “because they do not bear the sword in vain (verse 4).” Centuries of Catholic thought further reinforces those principles. In The City of God, St. Augustine states:
"The same divine law which forbids the killing of a human being allows certain exceptions. Since the agent of authority is but a sword in the hand, and is not responsible for the killing, it is in no way contrary to the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ for the representative of the State’s authority to put criminals to death, according to the Law or the rule of rational justice.”
St. Thomas Aquinas, in his masterpiece Summa Theologica, argues against the idea that incarceration alone is enough to protect the community:
“If a man is a danger to the community, threatening it with disintegration by some wrongdoing of his, then his execution for the healing and preservation of the common good is to be commended. Only the public authority, not private persons, may licitly execute malefactors by public judgment. Men shall be sentenced to death for crimes of irreparable harm or which are particularly perverted.”
In Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas even argues that impending execution can stimulate repentance:
“The fact that the evil, as long as they live, can be corrected from their errors does not prohibit the fact that they may be justly executed, for the danger which threatens from their way of life is greater and more certain than the good which may be expected from their improvement. They also have at that critical point of death the opportunity to be converted to God through repentance. And if they are so stubborn that even at the point of death their heart does not draw back from evil, it is possible to make a highly probable judgment that they would never come away from evil to the right use of their powers.”
The papacy mirrored this philosophy as recently as 1952, when Pope Pius XII said:
“When it is a question of the execution of a man condemned to death it is then reserved to the public power to deprive the condemned of the benefit of life, in expiation of his fault, when already, by his fault, he has dispossessed himself of the right to live.”
Not even Sister Helen Prejean, one of the most popular opponents of capital punishment, contends that the abolitionist position has biblical roots, as she admitted in her book, Dead Man Walking: “It is abundantly clear that the Bible depicts murder as a capital crime for which death is considered the appropriate punishment, and one is hard pressed to find a biblical ‘proof text’ in either the Hebrew Testament or the New Testament which unequivocally refutes this. Even Jesus’ admonition ‘Let him without sin cast the first stone,’ when He was asked the appropriate punishment for an adulteress (John 8:7) – the Mosaic Law prescribed death – should be read in its proper context.
This passage is an ‘entrapment’ story, which sought to show Jesus’ wisdom in besting His adversaries. It is not an ethical pronouncement about capital punishment.”
So how does Prejean justify her abolitionist stance? As she told Progressive magazine in 1996, “I couldn’t worship a god who is less compassionate than I am.”
That sentiment pervades America’s Catholic bishops, along with a willful ignorance of previous teaching and an intellectually fashionable sense of moral equivalence. Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo, N.D. demonstrated all three when he publicly opposed the execution of Alfonso Rodriguez, who was convicted of murdering Dru Sjodin, a 22-year-old university student.
“Responding to this senseless act of violence with another act of violence through imposition of the death penalty … reinforces the false perspective of vengeance as justice,” Aquila told Catholic News Agency on Sept. 25. “In doing so, it diminishes respect for all human life, both the lives of the guilty and the innocent.”
In 2001, Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles and Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore issued a joint statement in which they said that McVeigh’s execution “will not bring back to life those who died.” Their facile pomposity is self-evident.
But the most idiotic opinion came from Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, a favorite of conservative Catholics. In response to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s thoughtful disagreement with the church’s revisionist stance, published in First Things in 2002, Chaput stated:
“When Catholic Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia publicly disputes church teaching on the death penalty, the message he sends is not all that different from Frances Kissling disputing what the church teaches about abortion,... the impulse to pick and choose what we're going to accept is exactly the same kind of 'cafeteria Catholicism' in both cases.”
Frances Kissling is a former nun who leads Catholics for a Free Choice, which advocates legalized abortion.
Ratzinger exposed Chaput’s irresponsible ignorance less than two years before becoming pope. In July 2004, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the following as part of a letter to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C. concerning the American bishops’ stance toward Catholic political candidates:
“Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion….There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about … applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.”
A far worse consequence of the Catholic Establishment’s revisionism, however, is its growing indifference – if not outright contempt – toward those who must cope with the murder of their loved ones. When she heard the news about John Paul’s intervention on McVeigh’s behalf, Kathleen Treanor – who lost her daughter and two in-laws in the bombing – told Associated Press: “Let me ask the pope, ‘Where’s my clemency? When do I get any clemency? When does my family get some clemency?’ When the pope can answer that, we can talk.”
In 1997, John Paul and Mother Teresa were among those advocating clemency for Joseph O’Dell, a Virginia man convicted of raping and murdering Helen Schartner in 1985. O’Dell’s fiancée manipulated public opinion in Italy to such a point that Gail Lee, Schartner’s sister, told Associated Press:
“We’re all very fragile at this point. It’s just like the Italians hate us. They in essence have said to my family, ‘You are worthless. Helen’s life doesn’t matter.’ ”
McCarrick displayed his own self-righteous indifference when he talked to the Washington Post about McVeigh’s execution, which only victims’ relatives could see via closed-circuit television: “It is like going back to the Roman Colosseum. I think that we're watching, in my mind, an act of vengeance, and vengeance is never justified.”
The good cardinal thus equated the grieving, vulnerable relatives of murder victims with the hardened, barbaric masses of ancient Rome who found the bloody agony of gladiators and religious martyrs entertaining.
When considering sympathy for Saddam Hussein and other murderers, the Catholic Establishment would do well to heed this prophetic advice from the Hebrew Talmud:
Those who would be merciful when they should be cruel will be cruel when they should be merciful.
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Technological advances in DNA evidence were the "divine intervention". There are lots of cases like the one in the article, all over the country.
We (and the rest of the world) have a justice system that sometimes convicts the innocent and lets the guilty go free.
Well, I sure would hope that the Church would be on an anti-DP crusade.
Sorry about the delay in getting back to your question, I was busy. First, let me apologize if I sounded glib or condescending, but know too that I can be all those things and so much more, lol.
The article I posted was supposed to show how even innocent people can be convicted of crimes that they do not commit. The opposite is also true, guilty people often walk away with no conviction or punishment. (I'm seeing an image of O.J. as I write that last sentence.) "Justice" in often flawed, incomplete, and in many cases, non-existent in this world. God's justice, on the other hand, is perfect. An innocent Man (and God) died on Calvary, that sacrifice being the ultimate example of human injustice.
I don't have the time to go into a whole discourse on Church doctrine and philosophy through the ages, but remember, the Church taught that the earth was flat at one time too, but that's another story.
Let's start with the following info:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07790a.htm
I. TRUE MEANING OF INFALLIBILITY
"It is well to begin by stating the ecclesiological truths that are assumed to be established before the question of infallibility arises. It is assumed:
that Christ founded His Church as a visible and perfect society; that He intended it to be absolutely universal and imposed upon all men a solemn obligation actually to belong to it, unless inculpable ignorance should excuse them; that He wished this Church to be one, with a visible corporate unity of faith, government, and worship; and that in order to secure this threefold unity, He bestowed on the Apostles and their legitimate successors in the hierarchy -- and on them exclusively -- the plenitude of teaching, governing, and liturgical powers with which He wished this Church to be endowed."
Your following comment is actually true: "Church men were given no such promise". I don't think you may realize it, but that statement actually supports the argument against capital punishment. Basically, man is by his very nature sinful and flawed and therefore prone to error. Human beings and their institutions make mistakes, sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose. Human life is too precious in the eyes of God for human beings to play at being God.
Romans 12:
17 Repay no one evil for evil. Respect what is honorable in the sight of all men.
18 If it is possible, as much as it is up to you, be at peace with all men.
19 Don't seek revenge yourselves, beloved, but give place to God's wrath. For it is written, "Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay, says the Lord."
20 Therefore "If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing so, you will heap coals of fire on his head."
21 Don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
“Not that you and your personal insults deserve an "explanation", because you don't.”
Says the person who responds to comments about his *arguments* with genuine personal insults.
“I actually think that is one of the stupidest comments I've ever had the unfortunate chance to read on FR.”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left us with a deep and valuable insight when he wrote, “Mediocrity knows nothing better than itself.” This explains why we so often see those of mediocre intellect slinging charges of stupidity about when they are unable to keep up with the discussion.
“You lost me with that "logic".”
That, unfortunately, would appear to be no great feat.
“The Catechism shows that John Paul II and those that agree with him are wrong?”
Yup. Sorry that you couldn’t keep up.
“Your post gives credence to the premise that human beings are just too stupid”
See comment above re Sir Arthur.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
The Holy Father could be wrong on prudential matters, and I don't think his argument stands against those of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, or the different opinion of the present pope.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Science and the Catholic Church are not mutually exclusive. You are right about that! The Church supports science, but always with the understanding that science serves man, not the other way around.
http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c2a5.htm#II
[2293 Basic scientific research, as well as applied research, is a significant expression of man's dominion over creation. Science and technology are precious resources when placed at the service of man and promote his integral development for the benefit of all. By themselves however they cannot disclose the meaning of existence and of human progress. Science and technology are ordered to man, from whom they take their origin and development; hence they find in the person and in his moral values both evidence of their purpose and awareness of their limits.
2294 It is an illusion to claim moral neutrality in scientific research and its applications. On the other hand, guiding principles cannot be inferred from simple technical efficiency, or from the usefulness accruing to some at the expense of others or, even worse, from prevailing ideologies. Science and technology by their very nature require unconditional respect for fundamental moral criteria. They must be at the service of the human person, of his inalienable rights, of his true and integral good, in conformity with the plan and the will of God.
2295 Research or experimentation on the human being cannot legitimate acts that are in themselves contrary to the dignity of persons and to the moral law. The subjects' potential consent does not justify such acts. Experimentation on human beings is not morally legitimate if it exposes the subject's life or physical and psychological integrity to disproportionate or avoidable risks. Experimentation on human beings does not conform to the dignity of the person if it takes place without the informed consent of the subject or those who legitimately speak for him.]
The hidden rationale is the same: I am a liberal or conservative or Republican or Democrat before I am a Christian.
The bottom line is also the same: I am the Supreme Authority over what I will and will not believe, and if the Church doesn't like it, the Church can stick it!
Wrong. God delegated that authority to human government. The command for the death penalty appears closely after the Ten Commandments.
The fact is that the Church long ago adopted the doctrine of the Two Swords. That implies that the state can administer justice, is in fact bound to administer justice. The alternative, given human nature, is the law of personal revenge. Deny to the state the monopoly of taking life and the practical result is lex talonis admiinstered by private persons. One might protest: this does not happen in modern Germany etc. It will in America, because those against the death penalty are partnered with the crazed libertarians of the ACLU, who demands rights for brutal murderers that
are clear violations of justice. If you agree to put into the hands of our police the clearly defined authority enjoyed by the Politizei, if you agree to a criminal code that is not designed by common lawyers to provide financially for the members of their guild, then I say, yes, we can do what Germany has done traditionally, which is to put murderers ougt of sight as long as needed.
However, I suspect that the misplaced sympathy for men of violence is eroding justice even there. The Constitiutional Courtt --envious of the almighty power of the US Supreme Court is beginning to ape its imperialism.
We in America bow before judges who exercise their private judgement in a most public way in a way that does not serve the public good.
"It never fails to amaze me that the strongest critics of so-called cafeteria Catholics are self-described traditionalists who trash every teaching of the Church they dislike by invoking "prudential judgment" in the very same way the liberals invoke "conscience."
I'm not sure I completely agree with that. I don't know whether I am a conservative because I believe according to the Apostle's and Nicene Creeds, or I am a Catholic because I am a conservative.
My problem is the novelties introduced since the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I find conflicts between conservatism and these novelties, but not between conservatism and pre-Modernism Catholic dogma, Tradition, and teachings.
I think one must use judgement and prayer to try and determine which Church authority is correct when a novelty that contradicts centuries of Catholic teaching is introduced. Less judgement is required when a novelty that contradicts Scripture is introduced, but modernists will vilify their opposition in either case.
In the cases above, is a person pitting his "prudential judgment" against "every teaching of the Church they dislike," or is he sincerely striving to discern which competing authority is speaking with the authentic voice of the Church?
It is sad that a Catholic would be in such a position, but since the smoke of Satan entered the sacristy, it has become commonplace.
We humans like for things to be symmetrical. We like to think that the Republicans are as bad as the Demonrats, that the "Christian right" is as bad as the secular far left, that traditionalists are as guilty as modernists of the pride that says, "I am the Supreme Authority over what I will and will not believe, and if the Church doesn't like it, the Church can stick it!"
Unfortunately for our love of symmetry, none of the above propositions is true.
Where traditionalists question, they seek to discern the authentic voice of the Church that they may obey. Modernists just say, "We are now the voice of the church, and if the traditionalists don't like it, we'll just ram it down their throats."
There really is no parallel. All leftist thought is of and from Satan, whether it be economic, political, or theological.
Very rare. Justice is marked by the application of God's righteousness.
Whosoever sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. Genesis 4:15, 24
The Catechisms, and the Pope speaking as a theologian, are acts of the "authentic" magisterium. The "authentic" magisterium is not infallible.
The ordinary infallible Magisterium is the reiteration of established teaching in the Church, for example when a Pope says, "the teaching of the Church has always been such and such as our venerable predecessor stated, 'X, Y, and Z'..."
From the CCC: 2267... "the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty"
This is part of the ordinary infallible Magisterium. Capital punishment, "the legal and judicious exercise of which they [civil authorities] punish the guilty and protect the innocent is just" (Trent Catechism) is supported (not merely 'not excluded' like the CCC states- an example of why the CCC is a bad catechism) by the constant teaching of the Church, both Scripture and Tradition.
Continued from the CCC...
"...if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor"
This is novel theological speculation. That is why there is no reference in the CCC to Scripture or Tradition supporting it. It may be part of the authentic fallible magisterium, but it is odds with the Ordinary Infallible Magisterium.
Agreed. However the article you cited is an example of "the legal and judicious exercise of which they [the civil authorities] punish the guilty and protect the innocent".
"Justice" in often flawed, incomplete, and in many cases, non-existent in this world. God's justice, on the other hand, is perfect.
Agreed.
An innocent Man (and God) died on Calvary, that sacrifice being the ultimate example of human injustice.
The Innocent Man, God the Son, acknowledged the judgement of the civil authority as God's will and embraced it.
"Pilate therefore saith to him: Speakest thou not to me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and I have power to release thee?
Jesus answered: Thou shouldst not have any power against me, unless it were given thee from above." John19:10-11.
but remember, the Church taught that the earth was flat at one time too,
No, it didn't. And if it had it would not be a matter of faith and morals and therefore not binding so that is irrelevant.
Basically, man is by his very nature sinful and flawed and therefore prone to error.
Sure, because of our corrupted nature we are prone to sin and error, that is why Our Lord gave the Church and the pope the charism of infallibility in certain circumstances, to protect the Church from formally teaching and binding the faithful to error.
Romans 12:...
Your private interpretations of these scripture verses to support an anti capital punishment position are at odds with the infallibly protected constant teaching of the Church which supports the legitimate use of capital punishment by civil authorities to punish the guilty and to protect the innocent as just. I'm going to go with the latter.
Nobody in the sixteenth century knew how to build a cage?
You learn something new every day....
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