I have mixed feelings on Capitol Punishment. If there was a way of determining guilt or innocence, beyond any
doubt I would favor it for all unlawful killings---Including that by
intoxicated use of a motor vehicle. Baring that, I note that I am
more-or-less content with the law in Wisconsin where there has been no
legal executions for more than 150-years.
However, Archbishop Chaput (In his "Justice and Death"; NCR;
Sept. 23, 2012; Page-8) AND all who join him as to
opposing to all or most use of the death penalty on the following
grounds.
1. Jesus The Christ did not address this issue; His :"Forgive them..." statement appears to apply only to him as the Son Of God.
2. Saint Paul certainly approved of that penalty even if it were justly applied to him.
3. As my evangelical friends would state "Opposition to the death penalty is unscriptural".
4. The early "Fathers Of The Church" were divided on this issue and have left us no definitive resolution.
5. In providing an effective defense for the Church and its members , St. Bernard of Clairvaux supported the just use of deadly
force. [It appears that the State has the right to defend its
members by the same force as do individuals resisting criminal attacks
as provided for under Natural Law, as individuals OR as the State in this democracy in such jurisdictions as that penalty represents the will of the People.]
The
Archbishop is also wrong as to convicting and executing mentally ill.
After many, many,efforts to find a better test for either and both the
best test known to us is: Did the defendant know the difference between
right and wrong?". As challenges to the conviction of such as Terrance
Williams are core to the too many appeals allowed in such cases, it
would rationally appear that he has been found to have that
understanding and, according to the laws approved by the People of
Pennsylvania, is justly subject to execution.
Archbishop Chaput
was also very wrong in saying that the approval of the People (He used
the sub-set of
Catholics) for the death penalty does not make it right as the People
are the State as supported by St. Paul and the civil principles of our
Republic. They are not wrong because they disagree with him.
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4 comments:
The current new policy is an error and will get inmates killed because lifers will have nothing to fear as they kill in prison. That's how Jeffrey Dahmer and Fr. Geoghan both left this earth...at the hands of lifers in non death penalty states. Read Ludwig Ott, Introduction to Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, near end of next to last section:
With regard to the doctrinal teaching of the Church it must be well noted that not all the assertions of the Teaching Authority of the Church on questions of Faith and morals are infallible and consequently irrevocable. Only those are infallible which emanate from General Councils representing the whole episcopate, and the Papal Decisions Ex Cathedra (cf. D 1839). The ordinary and usual form of the Papal teaching activity is not infallible. Further, the decisions of the Roman Congregations (Holy Office, Bible Commission) are not infallible.
Virtually no Catholics on the internet realize this: the Holy Spirit is only perfectly guiding the Church in morals when infallibility is used. Converts especially are led to believe that the Church can't err in morals. Not true. She rarely makes a mistake because most morals are in the Bible. John Paul II erred on the death penalty in the same manner in which he erred on wifely obedience which as a result is no where in the catechism despite being 6 times in the New Testament. What he did in both cases was: he did not quote those scriptures that opposed his viewpoint. So on wifely obedience both in TOB and in Dignity of Women, he did not quote Col.3:18/ I Tim.2:11-12/ Titus 2:5/ I Pet. 3:1/ ICor.11:3.
He only quoted Ephesians 5 in its " be subject to one another" and the result was that no one in the couple has final say.
He did the identical editing technique in EV on the death penalty. He never cites Genesis 9:6 nor Rom.13:4... despite citing non death parts of 9:6
repeatedly...which means he saw the death penalty part and withheld it from the reader.
The current policy of the hierarchy will get inmates killed. No one will say it but a handful just as no one spoke up when Popes erred in burning heretics ( Exsurge Domine, art.33 condemned, Leo X).
Thank You Mr. Bannon!!!!
I will retain this item!!!!
I personally knew the sister of the critter who executed Jeffery Dahmer--As a prison inmate in a facility where I was the Social Worker. She seemed to have shared the same sickness-of-soul as her brother.
James,
If you wish to verify the wifely obedience Absent verses, here are the exact cites:
TOB ( General Audience of Wed., 11 AUGUST 1982....#89) and in
"Mulieris Dignitatem" VI/24.
What you'll note in EV is that John Paul spends protracted time on God exempting Cain from being killed by other people but what he never notes is that God was saving Cain from private revenge since governments did not exist at Cain's time. Later that same God issues a death penalty to both Jews and Gentiles when? When ( Gen.9:6) God is about to start the first kingdom under Nimrod in Genesis 10. At first governments guide the personal revenge of avengers of blood into a system of rules which include cities of
sanctuary.
Read both section 40 of Evangelium Vitae and the later section 42 of Verbum Domini by Benedict. Both men see OT violence mandates as not really coming from God even though Scripture has God giving these mandates in the first Person imperative. For them a primitive culture was really projecting its violence onto God. They are the first two Popes out of 265 Popes to say such things. Under both of them Fr. Raymond Brown served on the Pontifical Biblical Commission and Brown didn't even believe Mary said the Magnificat ( see his Birth of the Messiah, about page 345 or 349).
So they admired a biblical scholar who had a very bizarre sense of how casually one could reverse centuries if common sense belief of both Christians and of the liturgy.
Their motive? They are embarrased before secular Europe about Catholic violence in the past like the Inquisition and they are trying to change that image of the Church by going overboard in the other direction.
centuries of...not ....centuries if
centuries of common sense belief.
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