The Church, the State and the Death Penalty.
Guest post by Bell.
From his weblog: Bell in the Breach
In 2018, the Catholic Church (for which read, “Pope Francis”) made the following change to it’s Catechism: Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.
Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.
Consequently, 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. (Paragraph 2267, Catechism of the Catholic Church)
This change caused some dismay and not a little controversy within the Church, but not for the reasons that non-Catholics and, more generally, the non-religious assumed. Anecdotally, I can say that there is little enthusiasm or evangelistic fervour among the Catholic faithful, lay or clerical, for capital punishment as a thing in itself. Far more troublesome to the Catholic world view is that on a plain reading of the above text, Pope Francis had driven a coach and horses straight through the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
What the Magisterium actually is may be simply stated as the Church’s authority to define and develop dogma, the “heritage of faith” entrusted by the apostles to “the whole of the Church”. Simply stated, much more difficultly described, which is why the Catechism has an extended section on this topic. (Part One, Section One, Chapter Two, Article Two)
Nevertheless, some points need to be noted.
The Church is the Body of Christ, and Christ is the Second Person of the Trinity. He is God. God has certain characteristics, one of which is that He is immutable, timeless, unchanging. Which means the Church – and the Magisterium – are likewise. This immutability is the key point to understanding the controversy around Francis’s change in the Catechism. It is, of course, within the office of a pope to change the wording of the Catechism, but he can only do so within certain parameters. The foundational assumption is that everything you need, Jesus has given; all that is required is how to apply it in the changing circumstances of the world. Thus, when Jesus prohibited divorce and remarriage, that’s it. There’s no valid “yeah, but times have changed” argument. Times have only changed inasmuch as men can make them change, but men themselves don’t change. That’s one of the great fallacies of socialism, but that’s for another essay.
Sometimes, however, it’s not immediately clear how old wisdom should apply to a new age, which is where the pope and the Magisterium come in. But the pope is not the Mormon prophet, he doesn’t make new dogma as such, he just reinterprets the old, or more accurately, he clarifies it. Thus, if the dogma says no divorce, and some Sola Scriptura type says, “...but what about Matthew 19:9”, divorce in the case of adultery, a good pope should explain that the word Matthew uses in that verse is not the more usual Greek word for adultery, moicheia, but the comparatively rare porneia, which has a more specific meaning relating to incest. In such a case, of course, there would have been no natural or valid marriage to begin with, which significantly changes everything that follows. The pope would thus have made clear what was previously implicit, but obscure. That’s development. What no pope can say, however, is, “You know what? That Bronze Age ‘to the death’ stuff was fine 2000 years ago, but now it’s time for something new and improved.”
That might just be heresy.
In like fashion, a lot of Catholics had a lot of trouble with Francis’s change to the Catechism concerning capital punishment, not so much because they didn’t think there were enough people being hanged, but rather because it was, and has always been the position of the Church that execution was a matter for the state; if the prince decreed it necessary, it was his right – and very possibly his duty – to carry it out. If, suddenly, the Church is calling it an attack on human dignity, then it’s always been an attack on human dignity, and that would be news to the literally dozens of popes who, in their office as temporal princes of the Papal States, signed hundreds of death warrants over the centuries for convicted criminals. Simply put, it would mean the Church has been preaching error for 2000 years.
A careful reading of the new sections seem to indicate that Francis, or his advisors, are aware of this, and if you’re an accomplished and naturally gifted contortionist, it’s just about possible to argue that the new paragraph may be interpreted to mean that in current circumstances capital punishment cannot be justified and is therefore immoral. Were that the case, then the principle remains intact, and could, theoretically, be revived if circumstances were to change again, thus consistency of doctrine would be maintained, although you really do need to be a 10th Dan Jesuit to make the ends of this one meet.
Yet even then, there are real problems with such a charitable view. For starters, the appalling lack of clarity. Is that the correct interpretation of the new paragraph? We don’t know because the Church has ignored requests to make it clear whether it is or not, and it’s the Catholic way that there is always a right answer, however harsh it might be, and it will always be trackable back to scripture. This just isn’t.
And that brings up another issue . Is the ambiguity deliberate? Because if it is, that’s a real problem. It would indicate a mindset which reasons along the lines of, “we know we can’t just say sacred tradition is wrong, but if we act like it is and ignore what it tells us, we can create, for practical purposes, a New Magisterium”. If this is the case – and I don’t know that it is, but from outside the Jesuit/Vatican bubble, it sure looks like that – then the Church now curiously reflects the world in that it is increasingly run by an administrative caste who just “know better” than the culture and tradition which gave rise to them and was honed and fashioned over centuries. It’s why, for example, free speech is becoming an outmoded concept: we don’t need it anymore now that history has delivered the “right” people to positions of power, so if anyone does have something to say against them, why, they must be “fascists”.
Hence the proliferation of all these odious “hate speech” laws. Do you start to see the problem Catholics are having? It’s the same one secular folks are having with an ever-encroaching state seemingly intent on taking the individual rights and liberties built up over centuries. That may seem counter-intuitive, since, to the secular world, the Church has always made demands on personal liberty – the right to sleep around being the most obvious – which the non-religious would find intolerable, but actually, it’s perfectly consistent once you understand that the personal liberty the Catholic faithful want above all others is the right to follow and practice the Faith as it has been handed down to us from the apostles. Those who subscribe to the New Magisterium don’t seem to understand that the Church is not supposed to be reflective of the state. It’s supposed to work the other way around.
Beyond the confusion of the paragraph, there is the presumption of it. The rights of the state are part of the natural order. Like the rights of the Church, they are constrained within certain parameters, but they are not gifts of the Church, privileges which may be revoked at will. It is the duty of the prince, not the pope, to protect the citizens, both domestically and from outside threat. In that respect, it is for the prince, not the spiritual authority, to decide on the necessity of capital punishment, just as it is in the office of the prince, not the prelate, to decide when the state goes to war or under what circumstances it makes peace. Quite simply, in light of 2000 years of sacred tradition, I am at a complete loss to understand where the authority comes from to make a statement like “...the death penalty is inadmissible”, and so were a lot of other people when this came out.
To be a Catholic it is necessary to be in communion with the pope, but the pope in his turn must be in communion with Sacred Tradition, and when millions of Catholics are not feeling he is – rightly or wrongly – then, Houston, we have a problem.
Comment by Happy Jack on the development of moral doctrine
We have found that the doctrines concerning the biblical mysteries of faith, such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Eucharist, do not develop in the sense of acquiring more growth, but rather the Church’s understanding develops. However, within the Church’s doctrinal moral teaching there is, in a sense, a growth of the doctrines themselves that is achieved, again, by means of the Church’s fuller understanding.
I will provide two examples. St. Paul takes for granted the slavery that existed at his time and which had been in existence for centuries (see Eph. 6:5–10; Col. 3:22–25; Philemon). However, as the Church grew in its understanding regarding the dignity of all men and women, it slowly became evermore convinced that the institution of slavery was immoral, and, thus, must be condemned as an iniquitous practice. While numerous popes eventually condemned it, its eradication was a slow process, and tragically slavery continues today in what is now referred to as “trafficking,” especially of young women. Presently, the Church is newly confronted with a multitude of “gender” issues. In addressing these concerns, the Church’s magisterium has had to stress that God created only two complementary sexes—male and female. Moreover, one cannot transition from one sex to another either mentally or physically, by bodily mutilation. Positively, the Church has articulated anew a Christian anthropology about the inherent goodness of men and women, and the natural and sacramental character of marriage being between one man and one woman. These illustrations make evident the constant growth in the Church’s moral teaching as it ever confronts new ethical issues. The foundational basis of every ecclesial response is the Bible itself. The application of the biblical doctrine develops, grows, and matures through the course of time.
This is simply a development of the teaching that the death penalty is undesirable and only to be used in extreme cases.
ReplyDeleteThe 1992 Catechism discouraged the state from administering the death penalty.
2266 Preserving the common good of society requires rendering the aggressor unable to inflict harm. For this reason the traditional teaching of the Church has acknowledged as well-founded 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.
2267 If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority should 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.
In 1997, the Catechism was revised in light of Pope St. John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae.
2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, nonlethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm—without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself—the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent”
In 2011 Pope Benedict XVI told attendees at the 'No Justice without Life' that 'I express my hope that your deliberations will encourage the political and legislative initiatives being promoted in a growing number of countries to eliminate the death penalty and to continue the substantive progress made in conforming penal law both to the human dignity of prisoners and the effective maintenance of public order.'
If Pope Francis has driven a coach and horses through the magisterium, he has two other popes - one of whom is canonised - co-driving.
Exactly so.
DeleteThe Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries — Ambrose, Chrysostom, Augustine — recognized the right of the state to execute criminals, but urged rulers not to exercise that right. St. Ambrose told a Christian judge named Studius: “You will be excused if you do it, but you will be admired if you refrain when you might have done it” (“Letter,” 50).
Ambrose’s disciple, St. Augustine, characterized the good Christian ruler as “slow to punish, but ready to pardon” (“City of God,” 5.24). He justified capital punishment when there was “no other established method of restraining the hostility of the desperate.” Then, he said, “perhaps extreme necessity would demand the killing of such people” (“Letter,” 134).
Augustine recognized the state’s right to wield the sword, but he hoped that lethal use would be extremely rare. “As violence is used toward him who rebels and resists, so mercy is due to the vanquished or the captive, especially in the case in which future troubling of the peace is not to be feared” (“Letter,” 189).
The later Fathers synthesized the various testimonies of their predecessors and concluded that mercy should predominate among Christian peoples, and life should be spared in all but the rarest cases. In this they speak with the same voice as the Catechism of the Catholic Church, St. John Paul II (Evangelium Vitae, 56) and indeed all the recent popes.
As I stated in the post, few Catholics are evangelical about capital punishment. The point is that it is a matter for the state, not the Church, and this has always been conceded by the Church. Popes preceeding Francis have always accepted this, however grudgingly. They've always allowed IN PRINCIPLE capital punishment was permissible. This is the key point, that it was not intrinsically evil. This is the place where Francis has driven his coach through the magisterium.
DeleteThey've always allowed IN PRINCIPLE capital punishment was permissible.
DeleteNo, they haven't. They've allowed that it's permissible in certain and heavily conditional circumstances, and this is the part you're overlooking. The consistent teaching of the Church is that those circumstances have become fewer as the options for non-capital punishment have increased in the modern world. Francis had simply drawn the words of JPII and B16 to their logical conclusion: the world has changed sufficiently that the circumstances in which the use of capital punishment is moral and permissible no longer exist. It may be permissible in principle, but it is no longer permissible in practice.
That is a distinction without difference. Either it's permissible in principle, or it's not. The fact that it MAY be impermissible in practice is neither here nor there. Francis is trying to create an impression that it IS impermissible in principle. The circumstances which create the practice can change, and then they can change back. That it may, for moral reasons, be impermissible IN PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES, does not preclude the possibility that circumstances may revert to a previous norm. This is what materialist simply will not countenance, the idea that social progress is NOT on some kind of ratchet which prevents society slipping backwards.
Delete@ Bell
Delete"That it may, for moral reasons, be impermissible IN PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES, does not preclude the possibility that circumstances may revert to a previous norm."
Well, exactly. Isn't that the position Pope Francis has adopted? Hence the use of the term "impermissible". He hasn't indicated capital punishment is intrinsically immoral.
That is a distinction without difference.
DeleteOf course it's not.
"All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not."
Or, just because you can doesn't mean that you should.
The rest of your comment is arguing for the argument you're arguing against.
For example: is it intrinsically wrong for a Catholic priest to be married? No - because convert clergy and Eastern Catholic priests can marry.
DeleteIs it generally permissible for Catholic priests to be married? No.
If all the Eastern Catholics left the Roman Communion and there were never any more converts, would it still be permissible in principle for priests to be married? Yes. Would it be permissible in practice? No, not under those circumstance. And would it be acceptable for that discipline to be reversed and all priests allowed to marry? Yes.
As for what Pope Francis' intentions are beyond the written text, that's entering the territory of mind reading, judgment and possibly calumny - not the most edifying waters to swim in.
@ Lain
DeleteIt's not quite the same thing as the discipline of priestly celibacy, It's a development of doctrine based on a greater appreciation for the dignity of the human person as well as context. A better comparison would be the developments on slavery and torture.
Here’sa copy of the CDF letter explaining the change.
雲水,
DeleteI think Bell's right, it's a distinction without difference. Or did Pope Francis mean that it's 'impermissable' temporarily, perhaps until he changes his mind?
I get "the options for non-capital punishment have increased in the modern world." Electronic ankle tags? The option of no longer being to send convicts to e.g. Australia has rather decreased the options.
I mean "...I *don't* get..."
Delete@ Jack - no, it's not quite the same, but it's similar enough: it's not wrong for priests to marry in principle, but it's not permitted in practice. Priestly celibacy is also a teaching that's evolved.
Delete@ Gadjo - there's a clear difference. Something that's impermissible in principe is something that's morally evil and never permitted. Something that's impermissible in practice is something that's inappropriate in certain circumstances.
Compare St. Paul's advice to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols (1 Cor. 8). Is it permissible in principle to eat meat sacrificed to pagan gods? Yes, because 'we know that an idol is nothing in the world'. Is it permissible in practice? No, because 'this liberty of yours [may] become a stumbling block to those who are weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge [that idols are not really gods] eating in an idol’s temple, will not the conscience of him who is weak [i.e., who believes they are really gods] be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols? And because of your knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died? But when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.'
As Christ had overturned dietary purity laws for Christians (Acts 10:15), were the early Christians going around complaining that Paul had changed Church teachings, wanted everyone to believe that eating meat was impermissible in principle and that it was a distinction without a difference?
The purpose of criminal justice is twofold: the punishment (or rehabilitation) of the criminal and the protection of society. In days gone by, if someone was dangerous enough then it wasn't possible to achieve these aims without capital punishment - the Israelites didn't have an advanced prison system, for example, so the OT law permits murderers to be put to death. Similarly, in medieval Britain, prisons were insecure, few in number, and designed for holding prisoners awaiting trial rather than for long term punitive incarceration. When a murderer was convicted, there was nothing else to 'do' with them to stop them from reoffending. This was pretty much the case into the early Victorian era when prison building and penal reforms took place. The commutation of a death sentence for transportation illustrates Pope Francis' point: even in the 18th/19th centuries, it was recognised that the death sentence, while a valid option, was the least desirable one of alternatives exist.
In contrast, the modern justice system is quite capable of securely holding prisoners for life, where they're punished by being deprived of their liberty and society is protected from them. There's no longer any need to execute anyone. Execution then becomes about revenge - X deserves to be executed - which usurps the role of God and is specifically forbidden for Christians (Rom 12:19).
雲水,
DeleteOk, I think I get your idea that there are 2 forms of impermissability, either due to objective moral reasons or "because we say so" (perhaps for sound "best practice" reasons). But Pope Francis's addition to the Roman Catholic catechism is that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”. I've never been too sure about the use of the word 'dignity', but 'inviolability' is surely an unchanging, objective moral principle.
Yes, modern prisons have for a while now been housing dangerous criminals to reasonably good effect, but this is very expensive. Just say that as a society we soon don't have as much money as we used to have (or felt we had), how would you balance the cost of life sentencing with, say, medical care for sick children? Is a return to the practices of a century or two ago permissable?
@ Gadjo
DeleteThe key word in that sentence is "attack", not "inviolability". The Church is teaching that in the absence of sound reasons to execute human dignity takes precedence over killing.
How would you balance the money spent on modern armaments over killing criminals or caring for the sick?
@ Lain
DeleteThe third principle of punishment is the achievement of justice.
Here's a comment by Feser:
"According to classical natural law theory, which is defensible on secular grounds but also happens to be endorsed by the Church, the primary purpose of punishment is retributive justice, which is a matter of inflicting on an offender a proportionate penalty.
As the Catechism says, “Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense.” And there are some crimes that are so heinous that nothing less than death would be a proportionate penalty. Think, for example, of a serial killer who rapes and tortures his victims. Life imprisonment, which someone might merit for far less serious offenses than that, is simply not proportionate to the nature of this kind of crime.
Now, if we accept the principle that offenders deserve a punishment proportionate to the gravity of their crimes—which is, again, a principle that both secular natural law theory and the Church are committed to—then it follows that there are going to be crimes for which nothing less than death is a suitable punishment.
We can debate which crimes these are, exactly, but it cannot reasonably be denied that there will be some such crimes. Now, if you do deny this, then you are implicitly denying that offenders deserve a proportionate punishment, and if you say that, then we argue that you are really implicitly denying that people can deserve any punishment at all."
What Feser omits is the full text of the Catechism:
“The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behaviour harmful to people’s rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and the duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense.” (#2266)
Justice demands that punishment fit the crime– the penalty must be proportionate to the injury to deter crime and reform individuals. So, just punishment strives to balance all three perspectives– retribution, deterrence, and reform.
The questions then are: Does capital punishment successfully deter future crime? Could not imprisonment, including for life, just as effectively protect society from a criminal, provide a chance for his genuine reform, and deter future crime? Does not capital punishment constitute a cruel punishment which brings anguish to the criminal and his family? And by abolishing capital punishment, would society break “the cycle of violence” and make a positive statement about the sanctity of human life and forgiveness?
@ Gadjo - Catholic teaching holds that some acts are intrinsically evil - in other words, they are evil in and of themselves and can never be used for good however nobly one carries them out (most notably formulated by Aquinas in his writings against, I believe, Peter of Abelard who taught that intentions were more important in determining whether an act was evil). This is why, for example, the Church won't allow abortion even in 'extreme' cases: abortion is always unconditionally evil.
DeleteTaking a human life isn't intrinsically evil (as God cannot command evil, and the OT law included capital punishment): it's perhaps better described as an undesirable outcome. It's not evil per se to take a life in, for example, self defence, for a solider to kill an enemy combatant in a just war, for a police officer to use justifiable lethal force, or for the state to legally execute criminals (since God has granted the sword to earthly rulers). But because humans are created in the image of God, such an action is only permissible where there is no other option - it is an evil act if a soldier shoots a non-combatant, a police officer kills a random person, a man beats another to death for looking at him funny, if the state 'disappears' dissidents, and so on. Recall - 'whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.'
By 'an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person', Pope Francis is referring to the intrinsic value of a human life because it is created in imago dei - even criminals. People cannot, therefore, simply be put down when they become inconvenient, like an old sheep dog, if other solutions exist. One must also consider the immortal soul of the offender, and give them every reasonable chance to repent - clearly the death penalty precludes this. Okazaki Kazuaki, for example, was a member of the death cult Aum Shinrikyo, which carried out the gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. While on death row between 2005 and his execution in 2018, he repented and sought to make atonement for his crimes (albeit he became a Zen Buddhist rather than a Christian). A rapidly administered death penalty (instead of a drawn out and cruel process) would have prevented him from so ordering his soul.
Yes, modern prisons have for a while now been housing dangerous criminals to reasonably good effect, but this is very expensive.
So is execution. People spend years, sometimes decades, on death row as all the appeals and legal fail-safes are exhausted. A 2017 independent study—An Analysis of the Economic Costs of Capital Punishment in Oklahoma—estimated that an Oklahoma capital case cost $110,000 more on average than a non-capital case.
Also consider that, historically, those who have the financial resources to hire good lawyers more often avoid the death penalty than those who do not: it becomes a punishment of the poor.
Lastly, financial viability cannot be an argument for the extinction of human life. It's the same reasoning as 'I can't afford a baby at the moment, I'm off to the abortion clinic'.
@ Jack, yes, I had a nagging feeling I was missing one!
DeleteFeser sounds Hegelian to me, here.
Punishment is the right of the criminal. It is an act of his own will. The violation of right has been proclaimed by the criminal as his own right. His crime is the negation of right. Punishment is the negation of this negation, and consequently an affirmation of right, solicited and forced upon the criminal himself.
But this is repaying evil with evil.
Yes, it's "an eye for an eye" reasoning.
Delete@Jack,
DeleteI thought that what "The Church is teaching" was in fact the subject under discussion here, as Pope Francis's addition to the catechism makes that unclear.
I would prioritise caring for the innocent (including the sick) over caring for the murderous; defense spending actually isn't generally that great, but in fact it has exactly the same priority. What would you prioritise? Assume we have limited resources (which is most cetainly the case).
@Lain,
As you intimate, people have plenty of opportunity to repent on 'death row' whether they be there for years or just weeks. Taking the life of an innocent baby is hardly the same as judicially taking the life of a murderer - I'm afraid I find that comparison a bit sick. Reiterating what I said to Jack, I'll leave you to decide how to spend the increasingly limited resources money in the society in which you live.
(By the way, both of you, if it's if any interest at all, I've never particularly been a "string 'em up" type myself, more a fan of reformers like Elizabeth Fry, a good Quaker Christian, when that was still a thing).
@ Gadjo
DeleteHJ doesn't consider Pope Francis' amendment to the Catechism as unclear or in contradiction with earlier Catholic teaching on capital punishment.
The cost of incarcerating the most dangerous offenders (not all of whom are murders) cannot be used as a moral argument for killing them!
The UK spent approximately £5.42 billion on its prison system in 2021/22; with an average cost per prisoner (in England and Wales) of £46,696 a year. Since Europe's first privately run prison was opened in East Yorkshire in April 1992, prisons have become increasingly privatised and run for profit. As of 31 December 2022, there were 66 whole-life prisoners.
In 2021/22, the UK spent £45.9 billion on defence.
In 2021/22, the UK government spent approximately £216 billion on welfare benefits.
In 2021/22, the UK spent £115.78 billion on pensions.
UK healthcare expenditure in 2021 was £277 billion and £21.2 billion on adult social care,
@ Gadjo
DeleteAs you intimate, people have plenty of opportunity to repent on 'death row' whether they be there for years or just weeks.
I don't know how you got to me intimating that people could repent in weeks from my anecdote about a man being on death row of 13 years. The practice of keeping people on death row for years is barbaric and inhumane, and the kind of capital punishment permitted in scripture - i.e., summary and immediate - gives very little time to repent. As a Christian, which other sections of society do you believe don't deserve the maximum chance at repentance? Whose souls are unworthy of salvation?
Additionally, you're arguing against yourself here. On one hand, you're complaining that incarcerating criminals is expensive. On the other, you're saying that all that (expensive) time on death row is sufficient for repentance. You can't have it both ways: either you keep convicts alive long enough for them to have a fair chance at repentance, or you save money and dispatch them quickly, but potentially snatch them from Christ's fold.
Taking the life of an innocent baby is hardly the same as judicially taking the life of a murderer - I'm afraid I find that comparison a bit sick.
Which is, of course, not what I said. I said that reducing human life to cost effectiveness is the exact same rationale that people use to justify the abortion of a burdensome baby. If you find it distasteful in the case of abortion, perhaps reconsider having recourse to it in the case of criminals.
It's also not up to us to create a hierarchy of the value of human lives, which is what you're doing in saying that an innocent baby (and doesn't Christian theology teach that nobody is truly innocent anyway?) is of greater worth than a convicted criminal. This is not true with God, and it's one of Christ's hardest teachings. Remember that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 'innocents', that Christ didn't come to save the healthy, and that the only person to whom the Lord guaranteed salvation in the Gospels was the crucified λῃστής - a violent criminal, possibly a murderer.
I'll leave you to decide how to spend the increasingly limited resources money in the society in which you live.
I'm afraid that you overestimate my influence! I'll also refer you to my previously linked study that found capital punishment was more expensive then incarceration. And I'll reiterate, once you start attaching price tags to people's lives, you slide very quickly down a very dark slope. £216 billion on welfare, £115b on pensions, £227b on healthcare £21b on adult social care? Wouldn't it make financial sense if we could encourage some of those dole scroungers, long term disabled and the elderly to follow Lord Carey's advice and take up the offer of a bit of compassionate Christian euthanasia? Just to balance the books, of course. Resources are limited.
@Jack,
DeleteI didn't know the figures and you make a good case along those lines - I guess it'll be the welfare benefits to go first, then, when the economic sh*t hits the fan. (And the prisons would get sh*ttier.) Another case with the most dangerous criminals bring kept long-term in prison is that they can end up actually running the place, to the huge detriment of the other prisoners. The hard reality is that cost is a factor used regarding whether somebody dies and somebody lives; health services do it all the time (some would argue that they should do it more). The 'killing' in this case would be judicial execution, sanctioned by the Church for 2000 years.
雲水,
One could repent in a day or two, certainly in a year. Knowing that you are going to be executed focuses the mind in a way that being left to do your own thing really really might not. Perhaps you underestimate the ability of a criminal to think like you or I do - we are, after all, as you remind us, all made in God's image. And you yourself give the perfect example of crucified λῃστής - who only had a few hours!
Right, what you actually said was that a violent criminal (or an unborn baby) should not be popped off for being 'inconvenient, like an old sheep dog". Please feel free to use that wonderful analogy when you speak with the relatives of a murderer's victim.
No, my Christian theology doesn't teach me that me that babies are anything other than truly innocent. I believe I'm right in saying that yours doesn't either, though HJ's does.... wise to avoid that Augustine chap.
I don't create a hierarchy of the value of human lives - and I personally feel no desire for "revenge' - I'm following 2000 years of Church practice. If you want to change that, then ok. I'm actually open to persuassion on the subject, and this has been fascinating.
I'm disappointed that you continually ignore the point, and that you seem to feel that some human lives are of such little value that they should be terminated to avoid the cost of maintaining them. Perhaps, like the Pharisee praying in the Temple, you're secure enough in your own righteousness that you can afford write off the souls of other sinners. But do meditate on the fact that you will one day have to explain to Christ those questions that you decline to answer here.
DeleteI don't know what the Baptists teach, but whatever you're following certainly isn't 2000 years' worth of Christian teaching (which is a fallacious appeal to authority in itself).
雲水
DeleteWhat questions have I declined to answer?? (Of course you would never in 1000 years reply to my question about prioritising limited resourses...) I never said that some human lives don't have any merit; I have said consistently here - as does your church - that people need to repent, both the guilty and the very very guilty, and the example you yourself give shows that this is perfectly possible and needn't take forever. The fact that 2000 years of Church teaching has said that judicial execution is permissable is hardly my fault, and given your affiliation I thought you might have more respect for the position. You want to change that? You may be right that it couid be a good idea pragramatically speaking, but it's new 'tradition' for the Church.
I am very much not "secure in my own righteousnes". The progressive liberals are new Pharisees, so that's the end of this conversation for me.
What questions have I declined to answer??
Delete- which other sectors of society do you consider unworthy of maximising their chances of repentance?
- which other human lives do you consider disposable in order to save money?
- why do you persist in assuming that capital punishment is an effective cost cutting measure when the evidence indicates that it's more expensive than incarceration?
Of course you would never in 1000 years reply to my question about prioritising limited resources...
Because it's morally irrelevant and based on a factually incorrect presumption of scarcity. Jack noted that the UK spends £5bil. on its prison system. This is a drop in the ocean; the government chucked an extra £5.4bil. at the NHS in September 2021 alone, on top of the £220bil. it already spends, just to help it with the Covid backlog ... and it made no discernible difference whatsoever. The government spent about £1bil. on advertising during Covid. Exterminate your entire prison population, and you might pay for a new Pride coloured paint job at a few hospitals, or a couple of Sunak's jaunts abroad. What's a little massacre in comparison with that kind of saving?
The fact that 2000 years of Church teaching has said that judicial execution is permissable is hardly my fault [etc.]
One of the things I find most distasteful about Christianity (and religion in general) is people's willingness to wash their hands of their own unpalatable opinions by passing the buck onto God/the Bible/the Church (take your pick) instead of owning it themselves. It seems to me that a fair number of Christians have real problems with using the sacred to justify their own violent tendencies, ironic as Christ died as a scapegoat (although we seem to have collectively failed to learn from that). As Anton used to argue, 'if you don't like genocide and infanticide, take it up with God, he commanded it in the OT'. I don't have much time for an argument that tells me to disengage my brain and heart and blindly accept things that are morally grotesque because X says so.
In any event, you are incorrect. 2000 years of Christian teaching is that the death penalty is permissible in increasingly limited circumstances. It is never compulsory, and it is always a tragedy. What you are advocating, on the other hand, is that it's financially prudent and removing the option to resort to it is somehow a great deprivation.
I am very much not "secure in my own righteousnes".
In which case, I'm sure that you'll realise that any time you've been angry with another person you've made yourself as deserving of the fires of hell as any murderer (Mt. 5:22), which one would think would temper your feelings towards criminals.
The progressive liberals are new Pharisees, so that's the end of this conversation for me.
Oh, of course, of course.
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself: 'Thank you, God, that I'm not like those progressive liberals!'
This is why I'm not a member of the Orthodox.
Delete
Delete雲水,
Sorry, but you have so many straw-man arguments there that nobody should bother with it.
(Addressed to the wrong person first time around, apologies):
Lord Carey's opinions are really no concern of mine; I am not in favour of euthanasia on moral grounds. If you are genuinely interested in getting involved in cases of the innocent getting euthanised, please look up the case of Grace Schara, 19, who was helped into the loving arms of Jesus at the Roman Catholic St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Wisconsin.... etc.
雲水,
DeleteOne of the things I find most distasteful about Christianity....
Lain, we need a time out. Christianity is the only way, regardless of one's denomination. I for one am not going to comment on this conversation any more here; Jack might like to - he has more experience and somehow a soothing balm in his voice! Best wishes.
@ Gadjo
DeleteThis has yet to be determined by a court. The hospital denies “each and every” one of the family’s claims about this death of this young woman. Grace, a 19 year old with Down Syndrome, was being treated for a viral infection, pneumonia, and low oxygen saturation.
Here’s the hospital's full response to the claims.
@ Bell - ah, no counter argument just your anti-Orthodox prejudice again! I agree that you shouldn't be part of the OC - we tend to expect obedience to the hierarchy instead of constant bitching, so I think you'd find it difficult. The Protestants may be more to your liking.
Delete@ Gadjo - please do me the courtesy of not patronising me. I've tried my best to reason with you (despite your determination to misrepresent, ignore and misunderstand everything I've said) without treating you like a five year old. If, as you've stated, you wish to engage in apologetics, you might perhaps like to work on actually understanding your interlocutor's position before resorting to fallacies and condescending triumphalism, because I assure you that does nothing to commend the Kingdom that you claim to be part of. Let Jack know if you need it explained to you in a soothing fashion. Have a good day!
@Jack,
DeleteI'm very sure that the hospital denies “each and every” one of the family’s claims about this death of this young woman. I understand that they also outsource their staffing somehow so as not to be directly responsible. But reading further there appears to be a pattern. One needs to look at the drugs being used and the misleading statements repeated said to such patients and their families. But, hey, maybe everything's alright after all.
雲水
DeleteLain, I really wasn't trying to patronise you, or be ironic, I was genuinely concerned. Quite possibly we have had some misunderstandings during this conversation on this difficult topic. I hope to speak with you again.
There are certain accusations that the present-day Church finds acutely embarrassing and is consequently prompted to deny more emphatically than it used to. One that applies to all Christians, not just Catholics, is that the Bible tolerates slavery. Another is that the Catholic Church, specifically, is not opposed to the death penalty. This concern, I think, was what prompted Pope Francis to rewrite CCC No. 2267.
ReplyDeleteFor a flashback to the past history of the Church and the death penalty, it can be instructive to read the chapter entitled “Rome” in Dickens’s Pictures From Italy. At a time when every Pope was still the secular ruler of the Papal State, Dickens joined the crowd to witness a public execution by guillotine.
https://archive.org/details/picturesfromital00dickrich/page/164/mode/2up
I think teaching on the death penalty has been remarkable consistent. The Church has always taught that the state can execute criminals, not that they must, and that they shouldn't unless there are no other options. If anything, I think Francis' revision was overdue - JPII all but ruled out its use in 1995.
DeleteIncidentally, I think it's high time that Just War theory was similarly revisited. I'm not convinced, given modern technology, that any contemporary war can fulfil its criteria.
In June last year, Pope Francis said: “I believe it is time to rethink the concept of a ‘just war’. A war may be just; there is the right to defend oneself. But we need to rethink the way that concept is used nowadays. I have said that the use and possession of nuclear weapons are immoral. Resolving conflicts through war is saying no to verbal reasoning, to being constructive.”
DeleteThe Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
The strict conditions for legitimate defence by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
- there must be serious prospects of success;
- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.
The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.
CCC #2309
Yes, it's the last condition that I'm not sure can ever be met in modern warfare. While a modern war may have a just cause (jus ad bellum), it seems to me that modern technology will almost always make its execution unjust (jus in bello).
DeleteThe 'problem' then is: what can a nation or the world do if confronted by the likes of a Hitler or a Putin?
DeleteLeave the future to the Providence of God?
That's the problem the Church needs to tackle. Just War Theory arose in an age of relatively primitive weapons where even indiscriminate rampages of delinquent armies cost relatively few lives. It couldn't have anticipated the mechanised slaughter of the First World War or the development of, e.g., carpet combing and nuclear weapons (the use of which are both examples of unjust acts in a war with a just cause). How does one respond when one's enemies have such capabilities? The issue then is that it quickly slips into nationalism: it's better to kill 100,000 enemy non-combatants than allow them to kill 100,000 of my co-nationalists, whose lives are implicitly worth more due to the fact that we inhabit the same arbitrary piece of geography.
DeleteSpecifically with Putin, Russia's war against Ukraine is unjust, and its execution is unjust. Ukraine's counter-war against Russia is arguably unjust, given its chances of success but, if we say that it is just, its execution can still be unjust - if it sends drone strikes against non-military targets in Moscow, for example.
Then you have the interference of outside agents: America, which is happy to weaken Russia with Ukrainian lives, and China, which is happy to weaken the West with Russian lives - neither of which seem to have the intention of ending the war, rather prolonging it for as long as possible to weaken the other side as much as possible. How does JWT apply to proxy wars?
HJ believes the Church would judge proxy wars as unjust because they are driven by ulterior motives and are intended to prolong killing and not ending war. The only 'beneficiary is the arms industry.
DeleteTo quote Pope Francis:
“This evening, I ask the Lord that we Christians, and our brothers and sisters of other religions, and every man and woman of good will, cry out forcefully: Violence and war are never the way to peace. Leave behind the self-interest that hardens your heart, overcome the indifference that makes your heart insensitive toward others, conquer your deadly reasoning, and open yourself to dialogue and reconciliation.”
Quite so. I was pleasantly impressed by Trump's answer during his CNN interview when asked if he wanted Russia or Ukraine to win the war:
Delete'I don't think in terms of winning and losing. I think getting it settled so stop killing all these people ... I want everybody to stop dying. They're dying. Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying.'
Interesting post, Mr Bell, thanks for your input here.
ReplyDelete"It would mean the Church has been preaching error for 2000 years." For this to be a shock, you may need to make a convincing case that the Catholic church has not changed doctrine/dogma during some of this time.
It doesn't necessarily take a 'Sola Scriptura type' to look up porneia (no, not in that way) and find that it has a wide range of meanings to do with sexual immorality, of which incest is only one, and is not even the main one, or indeed to surmise that 'divorce' has surely changed since biblical times - I doubt that back then a man could find himself being divorced (and stripped of his material assets) against his will only for the reason that his (perhaps adulterous) wife had become bored of him.
In the interest of balance, here's a good overview of more 'traditional' thinking from the SSPX. This was published before Pope Francis amended the catechism. It's also worth stating that many of the saints quoted are not infallible, nor are they the magisterium. And the Church's teaching on this is open to development both in terms of its understanding of human dignity and also in terms of changes in society and the criminal justice system.
ReplyDeleteDoctrine on social and moral issues develop.
That said, these views of St Aquinas are of interest. He gave two main reasons for the use of capital punishment. One is the common good:
"Now every individual person is related to the entire society as a part to the whole. Therefore if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and healthful that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good, since ‘a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump."(1 Cor. 5:6).”
(Summa Theologiae, II, II, q. 64, art. 2)
His other consideration is the good of the criminal.
"They…have at that critical point of death the opportunity to be converted to God through repentance. And if they are so obstinate that even at the point of death their heart does not draw back from malice, it is possible to make a quite probable judgment that they would never come away from evil.”
(Summa contra gentiles, Book III, chapter 146)
This latter consideration, given modern prison systems, doesn't necessitate the death of the individual. It also speaks to a Christian society where the death penalty was not seen as an act of vengeance
It's also worth mentioning to any Catholics reading this, that this doctrinal development qualifies as authoritative teaching (as opposed to theological opinion), and as a non-definitive (i.e., non-infallible) Church teaching. According to Vatican II, such teachings call for “religious submission of mind and will” on the part of the faithful.
I assume Jack is referring to Lumen Gentium here. If so, it should be noted that the Latin used -- "obsequium" -- is better translated as "respect" or "deference", than "submission".
Delete.
Depending on context, the word means: yielding, compliance; deference, allegiance, obedience.
Delete[Btw, many thanks fpr this article. HJ may not agree, but it's good to discuss the issues]
HJ Agreed it's being interesting to follow.
DeleteFrom an article posted on a more 'progressive' website; one that HJ was banned from because he refused to change his avatar and stop speaking in the third person (because his avatar was "smug" and the written style "pretentious"). The cheek! So much for inclusion and diversity!
ReplyDeleteStill, this is a reasonable article:
The Death Penalty Doctrine
That's a fair article. I still struggle to understand how those who proclaim themselves the staunchest and most faithful Catholics justify their pick 'n' mix approach to the Church's teachings. I don't think that Francis has been a particularly good pope, but he hasn't said anything inherently heretical. If one takes the attitude that every papal teaching has to be run past oneself and approved or rejected based on one's own personal preferences, how is that different to being an effective sedevacantist or Protestant? Many Protestants enjoy Benedict XVI's scholarship or some of JPII's teachings, while ignoring those that they disagree with.
DeleteBan Happy Jack? Maybe you were not in communion with their magisterium lol. Below is Feser's reply to the cited article. It's quite long and academic, but Feser is an academic and a philosopher. His prose is quite accessible to the layman, but he does one the curtesy of not dumbing down the concepts he's dealing with. After all, most of us here are old enough to have escaped modern University "education". We can actually handle big ideas, such as disagreeing with others without declaring them evil!
ReplyDeletehttp://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-catechism-and-capital-punishment.html
Interesting - but popes are entitled to develop the social and moral teachings of the Church.
DeleteA lot rests on the term "inadmissible". This suggests that in the present context capital punishment is not required as valid alternatives exist. This may change and there's no suggestion its evil in and of itself.
Ah, it's been a long tine since I was on Feser's blog; I hope he is still active and going well.
DeleteHe is. I recommend him to all. Basing your philosophy on Thomas Aquinas, you can never go far wrong.
DeleteExcellent. An article here on Thomism would be a joy (I for one and far from being an expert).
DeleteThat's a lot of words for a debate that HJ summed up in fewer than 40.
DeleteA layman who purports to understand the Magisterium better than the pope and the CDF had best be very sure of their position. Even Feser notes that theologians raising questions about magisterial matters occurs only 'in exceptional cases' (until this pontificate, anyway; now everybody with an internet connection is a theologian and canon lawyer).
It's very close to saying that one doesn't accept the teachings of the pope 'Unless I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by clear reason'.
I may have missed it, but what did the church say about the falsely executed? The mistakes of justice?
ReplyDeleteI'm congratulate Francis for this change.
I not I'm! Oh for an edit button.
DeleteAs well as mercy and human dignity, it's another reason the Church made this amendment. No criminal justice system can be free from error, as history demonstrates.
DeleteAnother factor is the societal imbalance in convictions and executions; for e.g., consider the socio-economic and racial profile of those imprisoned and executed in the USA. Money buys a good lawyer.
"Impermissible" - not permitted.
ReplyDeleteImmoral acts are either intrinsically or extrinsically evil.
An act is intrinsically evil when its wrongfulness is part of the nature of such activities - murder, abortion, euthanasia, theft, adultery, etc.
An act is extrinsically evil when its wrongfulness comes from outside factors - executing a person when it's not necessary.