“Oh well, alrighty then, lmao.”
Before you unhinge your jaw laughing at others, you should rid your own position of the false moral equivalence.
When aimhigh said that “The church shouldn't be circumventing the government in fulfilling its responsibility to ‘execute wrath on him who practices evil.’ (Romans 13:4),” you restated his position by implication, saying, “The Church doesn't ‘circumvent’ governments.” Well, he didn’t say the Church should never oppose governments; he said the Church shouldn’t circumvent government when they are acting in accordance with the Word of God in this particular matter.
Putting words in a person’s mouth by restating his position to be something other than what he actually said is not honest.
When aimhigh responded, correctly, that the Church circumvents government when it fights against capital punishment for convicted murderers, you came back with a classic false moral equivalence; to wit, “Well, the Church, to use your word ‘fights’ against abortion too, and that's legal.... I guess you're saying that abortion is ok, then, since it is ‘legal?’ ”
Just as there is a difference between pushing a little old lady into the path of a speeding bus and pushing a little old lady out of the path of a speeding bus, there is a moral difference between fighting against the death penalty and fighting against abortion. The first is reprehensible; the second is our duty to God.
LisaFab then cited the CCC, which should pretty much have ended the argument with the conclusion that John Paul II and those who agree with him are just simply wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Mistaken as to fact, and the application of reason to such facts as do exist. Demonstrably, egregiously in error.
I’m not really surprised by this. After all, as a young priest, John Paul II managed not only to survive, but to thrive under the Communists. I think it highly unlikely that his thinking was not to some extent, however slight, affected either by Communism or his (presumed) struggle against it.
The doughty Aquinasfan then advanced the argument that it is possible for the State to imprison murderers for life without them representing a threat to society. I disagree with this position. We do not take the extreme measures that would protect not only society, but his guards and fellow prisoners, from the hardened murderer. Not only do leftist judges let them out to kill again, they escape and kill, and they kill guards and fellow prisoners. Even, therefore, if this argument were valid (which it patently is not), the facts show us that it is not applicable.
Next, murphE did us all a service by noting that it is the men currently in positions of power in the Church who have advanced these “changes,” and not anything in the nature of the Church or its understanding of Scripture.
Your reply, “If you can form a cogent argument, go right ahead, but your current ‘opinions’ don't cut it,” would seem to indicate that you failed to understand murphE’s extremely trenchant point. It appears that you skipped over the excerpt from the Catechism of Trent entirely, which is a shame. Church history did not begin with Vat II.
Having already descended to referring to murphE’s restatement of the Church’s position as his ‘opinion,’ a debate ploy more at home at Daily Kos or DU than here, you resort to the despicable, loathsome, and puerile “lmao” as a substitute for an argument you weren’t up to making.
Goldstategop is correct: “To deny the death penalty is to insist on life for evil. If the most hardened criminal goes unpunished, we adhere to a system that denies life to those whose persons were violated. This grants life to those who commit evil acts.”
The only way to show that we regard the proscription against murder with adequate gravity is to levy the ultimate punishment. Otherwise, the evil know that we’re just not serious about it.