Posted on 08/06/2025 7:00:08 PM PDT by ebb tide
It was announced last week that Pope Leo XIV will be declaring St. John Henry Newman to be a Doctor of the Church. As the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, the Church proclaims someone to be a Doctor on account of “eminent learning” and “a high degree of sanctity.” This combination makes a Doctor an exemplary guide to matters of faith and morals. To be sure, the Doctors are not infallible. Their authority is not as great as that of scripture, the consensus of the Church Fathers, or the definitive statements of the Church’s magisterium. All the same, their authority is considerable. As Aquinas notes, appeal to the authority of the Doctors of the Church is “one that may properly be used” in addressing doctrinal questions, even if such an appeal by itself yields “probable” conclusions rather than incontrovertible ones (Summa Theologiae I.1.8).
Indeed, though the Doctors of the Church are not individually infallible, it would be absurd to suppose that they could all be wrong on some theological issue about which they are in agreement. For given their high degree of sanctity, how could all of them be wrong about some matter of Christian morality? Given their eminence in learning, how could all of them fall into error on some point of doctrine or scriptural interpretation? Given that they are formally recognized by the Church as exemplary guides to faith and morals, how could they all collectively lead the faithful into grave moral or theological error?
Consistency with the consensus of the Doctors has, accordingly, been regarded by the Church as a mark of orthodoxy in doctrine. For example, in 1312 the Council of Vienne defended a point of doctrine by appealing to “the common opinion of apostolic reflection of the Holy Fathers and the Doctors” (Denzinger section 480). Also relevant is Tuas Libenter, in which Pope Pius IX stated:
[T]hat subjection which is to be manifested by an act of divine faith… would not have to be limited to those matters which have been defined by express decrees of the ecumenical Councils, or of the Roman Pontiffs and of this See, but would have to be extended also to those matters which are handed down as divinely revealed by the ordinary teaching power of the whole Church spread throughout the world, and therefore, by universal and common consent are held by Catholic theologians to belong to faith…
[I]t is not sufficient for learned Catholics to accept and revere the aforesaid dogmas of the Church, but… it is also necessary to subject themselves… to those forms of doctrine which are held by the common and constant consent of Catholics as theological truths and conclusions, so certain that opinions opposed to these same forms of doctrine, although they cannot be called heretical, nevertheless deserve some theological censure. (Denzinger sections 1683-1684, emphasis added)
Here Pius IX held the consensus opinion of Catholic theologians to have such a high status that even if opposed views are not strictly heretical, they nevertheless “deserve some theological censure.” Now, the Doctors of the Church are the theologians on whom the Church has placed a special stamp of approval, putting them forward as models. It stands to reason that if there is a consensus among them on some thesis of faith or morals, that is powerful evidence that it must be correct.
Now, consider the topic of capital punishment. Even if we just confined ourselves to scripture, or to the consensus of the Fathers of the Church, or to the consistent teaching of the popes down to Benedict XVI, there can be no question whatsoever that the Church has taught irreformably that capital punishment can be licit in principle. That is not to deny that some of the Fathers and some of these popes have recommended against using it in practice, but the point is that even they acknowledged that it is not intrinsically wrong to inflict the death penalty. Joseph Bessette and I demonstrate this at length in our book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment. I have also done so elsewhere, such as in my Catholic World Report article “Capital Punishment and the Infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium.”
All the same, it is useful to consider what the Doctors of the Church have said on the matter, because they too are in agreement that the death penalty can in principle be a legitimate punishment. This would be a powerful argument for the liceity of capital punishment even if we didn’t already have scripture, the Fathers, and two millennia of papal teaching. Adding the Doctors to the witnesses on this matter puts icing on the cake, as it were, highlighting the futility of thinking that this is a teaching the Church could reverse. The Doctors who have addressed the topic of capital punishment include St. Ephraem, St. Hilary, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Peter Canisius, St. Robert Bellarmine, and St. Alphonsus Liguori. (The earliest of these thinkers are, of course, Fathers as well.) All of them agree that it can be morally legitimate in principle, even those among them who recommend against using it in practice. (See the book and article referred to above for the details.)
We can now add St. John Henry Newman to this consensus. The death penalty was not a topic Newman said a great deal about, but what he did say is important. For example, in Lecture 8 of Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England, Newman cites the following example of the way a practice can be embodied in the tradition of a nation like England rather than in explicit law: “There is no explicit written law, for instance, simply declaring murder to be a capital offence, unless, indeed, we have recourse to the divine command in the ninth chapter of the book of Genesis.” (This statement is from a longer passage first written when Newman was a Protestant, which he quotes in order to comment on it. As he immediately goes on to say about the passage, “I see nothing to alter in these remarks, written many years before I became a Catholic.”)
Newman’s reference here is to Genesis 9:5-6, which states:
For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning; of every beast I will require it and of man; of every man’s brother I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.
Newman understands this passage to be an “explicit written law… declaring murder to be a capital offence,” and one that holds of “divine command.” Note that this is diametrically opposed to modern attempts to reinterpret this passage as merely a divine prediction that murder would as a matter of fact lead to retaliation. For Newman, God is not merely predicting but indeed commanding that murderers should be slain, and as a matter of punishment. And here he is, of course, simply reiterating what the traditional understanding always said.
In a series of letters to his nephew, Newman addressed questions about whether the Church has behaved in an immoral way over the centuries. Among the points he makes are that one must distinguish between, on the one hand, the state’s having the power justly to punish offenders with death, and on the other hand, specific cases where this power was used in a cruel manner. He writes:
It is on the Inquisition that you mainly dwell; the question is whether such enormity of cruelty, as is commonly ascribed to it, is to be considered the act of the Church. As to Dr. Ward in the Dublin Review, his point (I think) was not the question of cruelty, but whether persecution, such as in Spain, was unjust; and with the capital punishment prescribed in the Mosaic law for idolatry, blasphemy, and witchcraft, and St. Paul's transferring the power of the sword to Christian magistrates, it seems difficult to call persecution (commonly so called) unjust. I suppose in like manner he would not deny, but condemn, the craft and cruelty, and the wholesale character of St. Bartholomew's Massacre; but still would argue in the abstract in defence of the magistrate's bearing the sword, and of the Church's sanctioning its use, in the aspect of justice, as Moses, Joshua, and Samuel might use it, against heretics, rebels, and cruel and crafty enemies.
Note first that Newman says that capital punishment is “prescribed” in the Mosaic law for various offenses, and that such killing is to be understood “in the aspect of justice.” This should, of course, be obvious enough to anyone who reads the first five books of the Old Testament, but occasionally people will suggest that the Old Testament merely permits the death penalty without actually commending it. Clearly, Newman would have no truck with such sophistry.
The second thing to note is Newman’s allusion here to Romans 13: 3-4, which says:
For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.
This has traditionally been understood as sanctioning capital punishment, and Newman clearly has this interpretation in mind when he refers to “St. Paul's transferring the power of the sword” and “the magistrate's bearing the sword, and of the Church's sanctioning its use.” With this passage too, death penalty opponents sometimes propose strained reinterpretations, but Newman would not agree with them.
But there is more to be said. For note that Newman refers, specifically, to “St. Paul's transferring the power of the sword to Christian magistrates.” This too is part of the traditional understanding, and yet another thing that modern day abolitionists sometimes resist. For it is sometimes proposed that, even if the death penalty is licit as a matter of natural law, its use is not compatible with the higher demands of specifically Christian morality. Newman would clearly reject this claim as well. Again, he holds that St. Paul’s teaching authorizes the use of capital punishment for Christian rulers in particular, not merely for states governed only by natural law.
In short, we now have the testimony of yet another Doctor of the Church that the liceity of the death penalty is the teaching of Genesis 9 and Romans 13, and that this teaching is a matter of Christian morality no less than of natural law. This directly contradicts those who claim that the Church could teach that capital punishment is intrinsically wrong, or that scripture merely tolerates rather than sanctions it, or that it is contrary to the higher demands of the Gospel even if it is consistent with natural law.
Now, Newman is best known for his theology of the development of doctrine. Could claims like the ones we’ve just seen him reject nevertheless be justified by Newman’s own criteria as “developments” of Church teaching on the death penalty? Clearly not, because Newman, like St. Vincent of Lerins (the other great theologian of doctrinal development), insists that a genuine development can never contradict past teaching. Newman writes:
A true development [of doctrine], then, may be described as one which is conservative of the course of antecedent developments being really those antecedents and something besides them: it is an addition which illustrates, not obscures, corroborates, not corrects, the body of thought from which it proceeds; and this is its characteristic as contrasted with a corruption… A developed doctrine which reverses the course of development which has preceded it, is no true development but a corruption. (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Chapter 5)
Suppose you say “All men are mortal, and Socrates is a man.” If I add “So, Socrates is mortal,” I have said something that can be said to be a development of what you said, because it follows logically from what you said. It adds something, insofar as it says something you did not yourself say. But nevertheless, what it adds was already implicitly there in what you said, and I have simply drawn it out.
By contrast, if I added something like “So, all men are redheads,” I could not be said to have developed what you said, because my addition in no way follows from what you said, and indeed has nothing at all to do with what you said. Even more obviously, if I added either “Some men are immortal” or “Socrates is immortal,” I would not only not have “developed” what you said, but, on the contrary, I would have reversed and contradicted what you said. For the claim that “Some men are immortal” directly contradicts your statement that “All men are mortal.” And the statement “Socrates is immortal,” though it does not explicitly contradict what you said, does contradict what was implicit in your remarks.
Similarly, to say that the death penalty is intrinsically wrong, or that it is not sanctioned by scripture, or that it is never permitted by the higher standards of Christian morality, would contradict and reverse what scripture and tradition have consistently said. Hence to teach such things would, by Newman’s criteria, not count as a development of doctrine, but rather as what he calls a “corruption” of doctrine that attempts to “correct” rather than corroborate it, and which “obscures” rather than illuminates it.
Newman, then, gives no aid and comfort whatsoever to Catholics who would like a doctrinal reversal on this matter. On the contrary, his words clearly condemn them.
[Originally published on personal blog - reposted with permission.]
Ping
Someone needs to ready their Bible: (Noah, after the flood)
Genesis 9
4 “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. 5 And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.
6 “Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made mankind.”
God ordained Capital Punishment - not for revenge - not for deterrence - not to prevent others from killing. But because we are made in the image of God, and this must be honored. The person who takes a life must pay with their own life. It’s what God said - and it’s just that simple. And this predates Jewish law, so we cannot hide under the claim that this was “abolished” by Jesus. God does not change - and neither does this.
I have posted this information before but it’s interesting.
Giovanni Battista Bugatti served as the official executioner for the Papal States from 1796 to 1865. During his tenure, he carried out 516 executions under six popes and the French government. The methods of execution varied, including beating, beheading, and hanging. The Papal States also employed other methods like the guillotine, the mazzatello (crushing the head followed by throat-cutting), and drawing and quartering in some cases.
After the French occupied Rome, the guillotine became the primary method of execution, but other, more gruesome methods like the “mazzatello” (crushing the head with a mallet and cutting the throat) and drawing and quartering were still used for especially heinous crimes. Bugatti’s career spanned a long period, and he was known for offering snuff to condemned prisoners before carrying out their sentence.
His successor was Vincenzo Balducci.
The Vatican abolished capital punishment in 1969.
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