Posted on 08/05/2026 10:12:38 AM PDT by ebb tide
It would seem Pope Francis had a rather odd answer to the question of whether it would be justified to kill baby Hitler: he wouldn’t kill adult Hitler had he survived the war. If every pope was correct in all his deliberations, there would be no disagreements among them. If a pope preaches something potentially contrary to historical Church teaching, intrigue naturally befalls the error. The truth of yesterday suffers to the point of death; the truth of today lives without history.
Inconsistency is the mother of debate even in the postconciliar era. Whereas Francis revised the Catechism in 2018 to declare the death penalty “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” in all circumstances, the 1992 Catechism promulgated by John Paul II reads, “the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty.” While it goes on to state that such instances of necessity are extremely rare to the point of being practically nonexistent, it does not necessarily dispute key biblical verses such as Romans 13:4, which reads:
For [the ruler] is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.
Indeed, St. Augustine and St. Aquinas, to name just two Doctors of the Church who testified on behalf of capital punishment, both understood its occasional necessity. One need not reach all the way back to the Old Testament to realize God is judge, jury, and executioner.
It is as wrong to perpetrate a genocide as it is right to be executed for perpetrating one. This statement is not the summation of a darkness ignorant to spiritual realities. Rather, it is the only conception of justice that matches the terrifying gravity of the transgression. Just as all moral roads lead to Rome, many arguments about immorality lead to Hitler.
In the Holocaust, the mentally and physically disabled were no more spared than the Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and Slavs. The rhetoric of annihilation found its home in action, and Catholics were not immune. Part of Hitler’s Generalplan Ost was “to kill without pity or mercy all men, women and children of Polish descent or language.” So-called Untermenschen were treated to the command of the Führer. Of the roughly two million non-Jewish Polish civilians killed by the Nazis during the war, most of them were Catholic. Little did we know, Nuremberg was an inadmissible evil.
Hitler should not serve as the completion of the argument though. Dr. Josef Mengele, a torturer and murderer by trade, deserved the punishment he escaped. “The Angel of Death” should have received the reward of his deeds—which included subjecting countless children to unspeakable horrors. The late pontiff would no doubt have been aware of the infamous crimes of Mengele, who was protected in and around the late pontiff’s hometown of Buenos Aires for a decade.
God’s mercy is not granted absolutely—Hell persists as a reality regardless of its terrestrial acknowledgment—because justice would then become inconsequential. Just as killing can be evil, refraining from doing so can compound the original crime. Indeed, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, and Joseph Stalin should have had as much to answer for in this life as the next.
Mercy is a wisdom susceptible to villainy. It could be said false mercy, one of the great and most pernicious afflictions currently visited upon the Church, often finds itself in sympathy with evil. In the same way one discovers death in sin, absolving certain sins of their gravity is the revenge of the original lawlessness. Love is not an anarchic creation, and to be its steward is to pursue its order.
Indeed, love is a synonym of order—virtue makes it so. Thus, when order is compromised to a horrible degree, love can suffer proportionally. Unfortunately, the response to restoring divine order has been shielded from the light of truth and simultaneously determined to be an extension of love. Yet such is the nature of love that its strength is only found in fierce conjunction with the death of monsters. Bloodlust inflicted on a mass scale summons Michael the Archangel through its own flaming sword.
One of the many projects of the devil seeks to find moral strength in moral cowardice. Divine judgment is thus accorded the shame of sin. In seeking the darkness of this lie, one finds an enticing and corrupt illusion of peace mistaken as the boundless fortune of love. In many cases, the alleged human dignity dissuading from what must be done masquerades as its own morality, as a false projection of love, and becomes weaponized against righteousness.
Love is given wings through freedom. But freedom is fated by responsibility—where responsibility for one’s freedom collapses into barbaric calamity, a terminal decree for the thug’s earthly fate becomes not simply the justice of men but the revelation of God’s will. Freedom is a treasure that renders the terrible possible. To safeguard the choices inherent to the enterprise, it can be necessary to conclude a life. This shouldn’t be understood as a person dying before their appointed hour; it should be understood as a person dying of their own volition.
As Catholics, we are tasked by God to be peacekeepers. But in the depths of our tolerance, we cannot succumb to the miseries of barbarians. In other words, the logic of our morality must contend with catastrophe. It is by way of disease that love can mutate into a gruesome facsimile. In championing the ascendence of life in all cases, a paradox emerges whereby the very preciousness of life itself becomes undervalued. This is to say that it is precisely because human life is so cherished by God, because we are created in His image and likeness, that capital punishment can be a well-deserved destiny. Should one doubt this proposition, merely turn to the Word of God and the illustrious history of His Church.
Ping
Punishment? Justice..
Hitler evidently believed he deserved to die.
I have no problem with the morality of capital punishment.
But I have seen enough in my lifetime to recognize that the U.S. criminal justice system is incapable of rendering justice in any meaningful. I have so little confidence in the honesty and integrity of judges, prosecutors and jurors that it's hard to make the case that we have any moral authority to put people in jail -- let alone execute them.
I once had this conversation with a well-meaning liberal friend of mine.
Me: I am in favor of capital punishment.
Liberal: But isn’t that just legalized murder?
Me: Just as imprisonment is legalized kidnapping.
Liberal: Ah, well…
To be honest, I don’t think his last response was very good.
Killing a baby hitler might have prevented WWII and all the misery that came with it. It also would have left in place Stalin with far more resources at had to fund his control of Eastern Europe and possibly allow a deeper reach into Western Europe.
The US might have continued its way into isolationism. The world today might be an isolated US possibly joined with Canada and Mexico, a USSR dominated Europe, China as a vassal state of the USSR and the rest of Asia answering to Japan. South American and Africa would be test beds for proxy wars among the powers.
Just some speculative thoughts.
Jesus recommends a millstone, a rope and deep water for certain crimes.
Before WW2, Stalin was wrecking the Soviet economy and purging the army of his best officers.
Had there been no Hitler, Stalin’s stupidity would have continued. And perhaps Germany would have allied with Poland, as the UK did. That would have kept Stalin in check. In Central Europe at least.
You make an interesting point in regards to Japan. No Hitler means no warlike Germany. And then probably no “Pact of Steel”, and no Pearl Harbor.
So I guess Japan would have to content itself with aggression in Korea and China.
Captial Punishment does more harm then good.
Justice was served 2000 years ago on the cross of Christ and as a result, God does not impute the world’s sin to the inhabitants of the world including Hitler (2 Cor. 5:19). If God forgives them, then man should forgive them and instead proceed with the best non-lethal punishment.
The cross of Christ is a finished work. Captial punishment tries to complete a completed work, commits double jeoaprdy, and is an exercize in futility.
The reason for punishment in the Judical System of Law should be deterence and protection of society including life imprisonment if that is just.
“The reason for punishment in the Judical System of Law should be deterence and protection of society including life imprisonment if that is just.”
AI
Harvey Marcelin (New York): Sentenced to life in 1963 for killing his girlfriend, Marcelin was paroled decades later, killed another woman in 1985, returned to prison, and was paroled again. In May 2026, at age 87, he was convicted yet again for the murder and dismemberment of Susan Leyden, resulting in a life sentence without parole.
Albert Flick (Maine): Convicted of killing his wife in 1979 and serving 25 years, Flick was later released. After subsequent assault convictions, a judge gave him a short sentence in 2014, believing he was too old to remain a violent threat. In 2018, aged 77, he stabbed and killed Kimberly Dobbie in front of her children.
Lawrence Bierton (United Kingdom): Released on licence after serving time for murdering two elderly sisters, Bierton was placed back in the community where he went on to murder a 73-year-old neighbor,
Pauline Quinn, in 2021, prompting a high-level probation service review.Reginald Lively (Maryland): Convicted of separate murders in 1986 and 2000 and paroled multiple times after serving only fractions of his sentences, Lively was arrested and charged for bludgeoning another man to death in an apartment building in late 2025.
Dennis Prager argues that capital punishment for murder is the only specific law repeated across all of the first five books of the Bible (the Torah or Five Books of Moses), showing how deeply the text values human life. He also emphasizes that the sixth commandment states "do not murder" rather than the mis-translation "do not kill," meaning the Bible prohibits unlawful killing while simultaneously demanding the death penalty for deliberate murderers.
“The reason for punishment in the Judicial System of Law should be deterrence and protection of society including life imprisonment if that is just”
No, first I don’t want to pay for them to live after proving they cannot be trusted. Secondly, they have proven they can’t live among society so take out the trash. The only reason it is not a deterrence is the way it is enforced, if at all.
The Old Testament is the under the old covenant of the law.
If you carefully study the book of Hebrews you find we’re no longer under the old covenant of the law but under the new covenant of grace whereby God remembers our sins and iniquities no more (Heb. 8:12-13).
A more important question is whether the death penalty really fulfills its function as a deterrent, and what could be done to make it so if it does not. I'm certainly not opposed to capital punishment in the name of justice (and to rid the world of violent criminals, as opposed to keeping them alive as permanent wards of the state), but one thing it fails to accomplish is to act as a deterrent. Most violent criminals are proven psychopaths or so lack impulse control that deterrents of any kind are non-existent.
Moreover, it takes so long (decades) to actually carry out an execution that any semblance of punishment for the criminal act vanishes. Perhaps that would change if those on death row were only allowed a single appeal and a law existed to require execution within (say) a year of the said appeal.
“ Captial punishment tries to complete a completed work, commits double jeoaprdy, and is an exercize in futility.”
Only if the offender is truly repentant and asks forgiveness, accepting Christ.
There’s no qualification to 2 Corinthians 5:19. God does not inpute anyone’s sin to them. That is a done deal.
The focus has shifted from sin to Christ.
If they don’t receive Christ they will not be saved from hell.
However, the death sentence on earth has already been judged and punished on the body of Christ. Nevertheless, let the other reasons for punishement, deterrence and protection of the community, be prescribed as adjuicated.
The clearest biblical text cited is Romans 13:4:
The sources also cite other biblical passages as supporting this principle:
From these texts, the Church teaches that:
So, biblically, the sources present capital punishment as supported by Scripture and by divine authorization of civil authority.
To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.2 Corinthians 5:19.
New testament grace which supplants old testament law does not support capital punishment but does of course support keeping civil order short of punishment by death. Of course if one resists the cops they may get killed (Rom. 13:4). If you defend yourself with lethal force you may be killed by lethal force (Matt. 26:52). None of those examples applies to capital punishment.
Jesus' blood was shed so ours is not (Gen. 9:6). So, as I said, capital punishment tries to complete a completed work, commits unjust double jeoaprdy, and is an exercize in futility against scriture. Deterrence and protection for civil order, yes. But for punishemt that was completely administered by God on Jesus body 2000 years ago, no.
Not true. The New Testament does support capital punishment:
Romans 13:1-4
Acts 25:11
John 19:10-11
Matthew 18:6
Mark 9:41
Luke 17:2
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