Posted on 04/24/2023 6:08:38 PM PDT by ebb tide
Catholic organisations have called a new Florida law that ends the unanimous jury requirement in death penalty sentencing “stunning” and a “thinly veiled attack on human life”, while the state’s Catholic governor and potential 2024 presidential contender Ron DeSantis argues the law allows proper justice to be served.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that allows capital punishment with a jury recommendation of at least 8-4 in favour of the death sentence, replacing the state’s previous unanimous requirement of 12-0 for such cases.
In response, Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of the anti-capital punishment organization Catholic Mobilizing Network, called the move deeply disturbing, saying in a statement: “in no uncertain terms, DeSantis has signed into law a thinly veiled attack on human life.”
The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a statement that it’s “stunning” that DeSantis and the Florida legislature would reverse the “common-sense” law from just six years ago that required a unanimous agreement from a jury to sentence someone to death. The new bill received bipartisan support from the Florida legislature.
DeSantis, a Republican, has advocated for the legislation ever since a divided jury voted 9-3 last October in the case of Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz, sparing him from the death penalty. Cruz killed 17 teenagers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018. He eventually pleaded guilty to 17 murder charges and 17 attempted murder charges.
The verdict angered the victims’ families, as Cruz instead received a life sentence without the possibility of parole. DeSantis signed the new law in a private ceremony with the families of the Parkland victims.
Prior to 2018, the Catechism of the Catholic Church recognised “the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty.” However, that has since been revised by Pope Francis to “the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.” I still to this day, do not really understand what “inadmissible” means. This was a controversial change at the time and should remain so.
Catholic teaching tells us that it is always and everywhere wrong to deliberately take an innocent human life, but clearly if someone has been tried for a very serious crime such as murder in extreme circumstances we are no longer dealing with an innocent human life. Some people also say that the commandment “thou shalt not kill” alone prohibits the death penalty. This is not correct as it would rule out acting in self-defence or fighting in a just war. The commandment in its original Hebrew says “thou shalt not murder”. The death penalty, if imposed in a just manner, does not constitute murder.
I believe there are certainly crimes committed that, morally speaking, reach the threshold where the death penalty can be justly imposed. The deliberate terrorising and murdering of 17 teenagers in the sanctuary of their own school obviously passes that threshold. I believe it is no longer a case then of imposing the death penalty.
Indeed, in America there are many such cases where in principle the death penalty is justified. A triple murder which was covered in a documentary on Netflix, “The Family Next Door”, to me was particularly chilling.
In the early hours of August 13, 2018, Christopher Watts murdered his pregnant wife Shanann by strangulation and his daughters Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, by smothering them. He buried Shanann in a shallow grave near an oil-storage facility and dumped his children’s bodies into crude oil tanks. (Watts in fact avoided the death penalty as part of a plea bargain, but it clearly passes the threshold.)
The details are chilling. During his confession Christopher Watts told police that after murdering his wife it took him 45 minutes to drive to a remote oil field with Shanann’s body in the back of the truck while his daughters, who were still alive at the time, sat clinging onto each other in the backseat. “During the ride, the girls were dozing on and off, held each other, and laid in each other’s laps,” Watts said.
Before burying his wife’s body in a shallow grave, Watts suffocated his youngest daughter Celeste in the backseat. After dumping her tiny body, he returned to suffocate Bella who asked in a low voice: “Is the same thing gonna happen to me as Cece?'” before uttering her last words, “Daddy no!”
In my view, Christopher Watts deserved the death penalty as a matter of justice. I also happen to believe that popes down the years should have spent more time arguing for the protection of innocent life than worrying about whether child killers should be spared the death penalty. Christopher Watts did not have to murder his two helpless, innocent, tiny daughters. He could have turned the car around in that 45 minute drive. But he didn’t. He went on and smothered those girls. In doing so he has sacrificed his right to life, no one else did that for him.
De Santis is well within his rights to change the requirements for a sentence of death. What procedural requirements should be satisfied are rightly subject to hot debate, but are separate from the moral question of whether the death penalty can ever be justified.
Personally, I think the threshold of all 12 jurors agreeing to the penalty is set too high, as it means a single person can veto it. However, I think DeSantis is wrong to set the threshold at 8-4 in favour. Given the gravity of the penalty, something that can never be reversed, I would ask for a 10-2 requirement. It is also the case that there are significant and serious racial biases in American society and the criminal justice system that should mitigate against the imposition of such a penalty.
Finally, I agree with Murphy when she says, “The death penalty should not be used to score political points. Human beings should not be used as political pawns — including human beings on death row.”
In some cases, the death penalty is morally justified. However, how it works in practise must be carefully considered.
So one guy on an obscure radio show backs into the truth in a roundabout way.
Meanwhile all the other Catholics and KJV-only zombies stumble around in ignorance.
It gives the appearance of using the death penalty to score political points. Brings back memories of Pope John Paul II asking Bush to pardon a death row inmate. Bush ignored the plea for the political appearance of being tough on crime.
It is a loss of points for DeSantis on this one for me.
Absolute nonsense.
Agreed, they should get out of that habit.
Well the Catholics are of a branch that rarely consult the bible for whats right.
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How old are you?
And therein lies the rub.
Diving justice is inerrant.
Human justice is not.
Divine justice is inerrant.
Well the Catholics are of a branch that rarely consult the bible for whats right.
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Exactly what all Pentecostal snake handlers are taught to believe. Look, you should stop writing such nonsense and find someone to teach you how to compose grammatically correct sentences! You’re embarrassing other Freepers!
Meanwhile all the other Catholics and KJV-only zombies stumble around in ignorance.
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Don’t know about the “zombies” but any Christian teaching/doctrine/belief that is contrary to the doctrines of the Faith as set forth by the Council of Trent is, ipso facto, WRONG (and always will be wrong)!
Diving justice is inerrant.
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You mean like the inerrancy of this sentence you posted?
Exactly Secret Agent Man's point.
Who needs the Bible when you have church dogma and councils to dictate "truth"?
If the death penalty is wrong, why did Christ pay it for us?
Incarceration is a penalty.
Execution is the permanent removal of a human being who has proven to be so hideous a threat to society that the action perfectly eliminates the chance that society will ever again be harmed by this monster. This is not a “penalty”, rather it is a firm solution to protect us all.
p.s. Incarceration should mandate working to pay for your own room and board, fitness facility, cable TV etc. Non criminals don’t get these things for free and neither should the incarcerated.
...that is all
Rather, aside from use of Scripture for devotion and doctrines that are actually taught therein, they search the bible for texts which support distinctive Catholic teachings are not manifest in the only wholly God-inspired, substantive, authoritative record of what the NT church believed (which is Scripture, in particular Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels)
Which includes the novel and unScriptural premise of ensured perpetual magisterial veracity as per Rome, whereby the word of God only authoritatively consists of and means what she asserts, which includes the aforementioned premise.
For Rome has presumed to infallibly declare she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, which renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares, and presumes protection from at least salvific error in non-infallible magisterial teaching on faith and morals.
Who needs the Bible when you have church dogma and councils to dictate “truth”?
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Yes, that’s exactly right! Just as back in the day when the masses of peasants were completely illiterate, and therefore had to be taught the truths of the faith from those who were literate! Later, as the peasants gradually became literate they were able to get hold of copies of the Scriptures, some accurate and some not, and decide for themselves what they meant. Result: the equivalent of the Tower of Babel on a universal scale! Muhammad and other such prophets have been smiling ever since!
How dare you ignore the understanding of your "living magisterium" as explaining what past RC teaching really means, even if it appears to contradict past teaching. And which lack of submission to present leadership is contrary to many papal teachings from the past:
'the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors," "to suffer themselves to be guided and led in all things that touch upon faith or morals by the Holy Church of God through its Supreme Pastor the Roman Pontiff," "of submitting with docility to their judgment," with "no discussions regarding what he orders or demands, or up to what point obedience must go, and in what things he is to be obeyed... not only in person, but with letters and other public documents ;" and 'not limit the field in which he might and must exercise his authority, " for "obedience must not limit itself to matters which touch the faith: its sphere is much more vast: it extends to all matters which the episcopal power embraces," and not set up "some kind of opposition between one Pontiff and another. Those who, faced with two differing directives, reject the present one to hold to the past, are not giving proof of obedience to the authority which has the right and duty to guide them," "Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent." (Sources http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3578348/posts?page=14#14)
In making the veracity of modern RC teaching subject to your judgment as to what historical teaching meant then in essence you are acting like Bible evangelicals are to, except for them historical teaching is the only wholly God-inspired, substantive, authoritative record of what the NT church believed, meaning Scripture. And which has resulted in the various TradCath schisms and sects which submission to your "living magisterium" seeks to avoid. Even though the NT church actually began in dissent from the historical magisterium.
Huh?
If the death penalty is wrong, why did Christ pay it for us?
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Excellent question! I’ve never maintained that it is wrong.
Even though the NT church actually began in dissent from the historical magisterium.
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Huh?
Forget Rome, I’m going to learn the truths of the Christian faith from the Bible exactly as it interpreted by you, or if not you, by me, or if not by me, by Martin Luther, or if not by Marty, by Calvin, or if not be Cal by the Holy Rollers down the street, or if not by them by the Snake Handlers up there on the mountain, or if not by them by old Beelzebub Herself!
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