Posted on 04/10/2009 12:24:20 PM PDT by reaganaut1
Whenever I tell people about Obama and the Born Alive Act, they don’t believe me. My brother is a Republican, and even he didn’t believe me. I had to show him an article that gave the history of Obama not willing to vote for a bill that offered water, food, or warmth to babies that had survived abortions.
Oh, you don't have to tell me that...the EUSA (my church) is the most liberal of them (Protestant) all! However, more RC's have been cautioned from the pulpit about electing pro-abortion candidates while the very left protestant church members have been more-or-less urged to vote for them.
But not, alas, to be accurate.
Intentional half-truths are lies.
That policy would substantially silence Mr.Dogz
I suspect the truth is most of the people who respond to this survey have not been to church in years.
This is what the Catechism states:
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, non-lethal 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 to the dignity of the human person.
My point is that the prohibition against the intentional killing of the innocent is an exceptionless norm (it is always morally wrong) but the teaching on the death penalty is based on assumptions and conditions (the "ifs") which make it a prudential judgment. It can be done under certain circumstances.
I myself very much appreciate the Church's anti-death-penalty predeliction, but I also have come to realize how far society actually is from being able to guarantee life imprisonment for murderers. I read that 500 people are murdered annually in California alone, by ex-cons who had already been convicted of an earlier murder. When murderers are put back on the street (through parole, sentence overturned on a technicality, sentence reduction on appeal or for good behavior, etc) it is a grave injustice to society, which is subjected to an increased incidence of murder.
Pope John Paul II taught that the death penalty is not necessary if and when societies have other means by which to protect innocents from those who have previously murdered. In our country, we have a judicial and prison system that can keep these violent offenders away from the public.
In fact, on January 27, 1999 Pope John Paul II said that the death penalty is “both cruel and unnecessary.”
http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=877
From the: Encyclical Letter on the Value and Inviolability of Human Life
His Holiness Pope John Paul II
March 25, 1995
“In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: “If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must 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””
http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02ev.htm
From these statements, it is clear that Pope John Paul II and the Church opposes the death penalty except in cases where the society cannot protect its citizens against murderous offenders. Fortunately, we do not live in a society that lacks the means to adjudicate and incarcerate such offenders.
As for me, I support the death penalty but have great admiration for those fellow Catholics who are truly Pro-Life and abhor abortion and the death penalty.
I knew (can actually say I was friends with) an armed robber who was doing time at Attica in NY. In some ways a remarkble man, witty, funny, intelligent, even idealistic; in other ways deeply self-deluded.
Highly articulate, he made full use of all the opportunities he had to be a jailhouse lawyer. The strange thing is that, while we are actually friends, I was alarmed by his ability to con prison/judicial officials and argue his way into early release, and so forth. I knew that for society’s sake, and even for his own sake, he needed to stay in prison.
If I knew our legal system could actually keep violent felons off the street, I would oppose the death penalty on the grounds set forth in the Catechism. I sometimes think that if penal colonies could be brought into operation, with escape quite impossible, this would be by far preferable. I hate to see a man in a cage. But I hate to see a violent felon on the street.
This reminds me to pray for my friend “Yusuf”. I haven’t seen him for years. I don’t know if he’s living or dead. Christ have mercy.
The quotes cited do not indicate anything like a blanket anti-death-penalty stance by the Catholic Church. Certainly our court system does not protect its citizens against murderers, in fact just the opposite. In accordance with the marxist principle of chaos, our black-robed tyrants release murderers every day, especially if they are illegal aliens, in order to keep the populace in fear. Anyway, moot point. Our lib-fascist court system has made death penalty discussions academic as it is almost never used. Death penalty cases are merely vehicles for lib-fascist lawyers to enrich themselves at the public trough, so for that reason the DP should be abolished.
I’m talking about abortion, not the death penalty. To attempt to draw moral equivalence between an innocent unborn baby and a convicted murdering sociopath to me shows a level of mental depravity that is suspiciously close to that of your typical liberal fascist.
As a Catholic who is against abortion, but favors the death penalty, I understand that I am not in full compliance with the teachings of the Church.
Pope John Paul II did voice his opposition to both abortion and the death penalty.
As Pope John Paul II wrote in the “Evangelium Vitae” in 1995:
“It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/angel/procon/popestate.html
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