It seems to me that the best explanation is that someone in the Vatican is trying to take some heat off of the liberals in the U.S. hierarchy by diverting some of the energy that could be put into treeing the hierarchy over the McCarrick scandal, which looks to have the potential to finally blow open a coven of corruption.
Of the two dozen or so nations that actually executed people in 2017, with more than 2500 judicial executions, only three of them, Belarus (2), the South Sudan (4), and the U.S. (23), even have Christian majorities. South Sudan has the highest Catholic percentage (37%) as well as the highest per-capita execution rate (they have a population of 12 million, Belarus a population of 9).
They also have a per-capita income of under $760 dollars.
It would be interesting to make an argument from the perspective of South Sudan, but somehow I don’t think that this thing is being addressed here, or at China, where the majority of the executions occur, or at the Islamic nations that account for nearly all of the executions outside of China.
I think U.S. Catholics are being trolled.
Could be right.
Just one more point:
The Pope's sweeping new doctrine, in practice, would make it morally obligatory for every nation to equip itself with modern maximum security prisons to provide for the type of hyperaggressive offenders who would otherwise face the death penalty: narco-criminals, serial murderers, terrorists, and other highly dangerous felons.
For the average maximum security prison, the cost is $62,730 (U.S. dollars) per year for EACH prisoner.
It can go higher. In Rhode Island alone, violent criminals cost the state up to $200,000 for EACH prisoner in a recent fiscal year, according to cost-per-offender data released by the Department of Corrections (DOC).
These annual costs include salary and benefits for department staff, operating expenses, medical costs, probation and parole costs and home confinement expenses along with overhead and capital costs (which I think means the amortized costs of building and equipping the prison to begin with.)
The department spent $190 million in one year for the 90 prisoners at the High Security Center in Cranston, RI.
OK. One of the countries that executed convicted criminals last year, was South Sudan, where 66% of the population is living on less than $2 a day. Last year they had a total government budget of $259.6 million, 98% of which comes from state-controlled oil revenues.
If this country built a SuperMax prison to accommodate just 130 prisoners, it would consume their entire annual government budget.
I don't think I need to draw a picture of what this would mean to the already suffering, destitute people of South Sudan who must deal with both poverty and hypercrime.
This is problem with simply waving one's papal hand and stipulating that the death penalty is no longer needed to secure society from violent aggressors in the light of the "fact" that modern penal systems are now available.