Vatican Official: Death Penalty ‘Never Justified’ as Legitimate Defense

Breitbart ^ | 11/29/18 | Thomas D. Williams

[marshmallow]

The Vatican’s foreign minister said that capital punishment may never be considered a form of legitimate defense Wednesday, adding that it constitutes “cruel and degrading treatment.”

Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Vatican Secretary for Relations with States, said that the death penalty “is never justified as a hypothesis of legitimate defense,” in his address at a conference at the Italian parliament on “A World Without the Death Penalty.”

The meeting, which was attended by Ministers of Justice from 25 countries, was organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio.

Saint John Paul II had taught that the only way that capital punishment could be justified was under the principle of legitimate defense. In his 1995 encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae, John Paul wrote that legitimate defense “can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another’s life, the common good of the family or of the State.”

“This is the context in which to place the problem of the death penalty,” he wrote, while recognizing that “there is a growing tendency, both in the Church and in civil society, to demand that it be applied in a very limited way or even that it be abolished completely.”

[sparklite2]

The death penalty is not a defense, but a punishment.
This entire reasoning is a gigantic non sequitur.

[Jeff Chandler]

Saint John Paul II had taught that the only way that capital punishment could be justified was under the principle of legitimate defense.

And he was dead wrong.

[Salvavida]

Pssst.........hey religious dude. Why did God invent the death penalty?

Riddle me that Batman.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

TRANSLATION: Mooslims have a license to kill and there is nothing you can do about it.

[ebb tide]

The Catechism and the death penalty: are Catholics right to be worried?

The problem is that Church teaching on this point is remarkably well-established. As Edward Feser reminded us yesterday, the saints and the popes (up to St John Paul II and Benedict XVI) have consistently taught that the death penalty is in principle legitimate. Some popes have seen it as a litmus test for orthodoxy.

[SunkenCiv]

• Pope Francis: Church closings a ‘sign of the times,’ should not cause anxiety
• Be celibate or leave the priesthood, pope tells gay priests

[faithhopecharity]

The Vatican has been saving money too damned long. It’s time they bought a few Bibles

[Lurker]

So say the people who’ve been buggering young men and women for decades and covering it all up.

L

[MIchaelTArchangel]

We need the death penalty for pedophiles. Oh, maybe that’s why these queer child molesters masquerading as Catholic priests (no, I am not condemning any of the good priest out there) want to abolish the death penalty.

[DuncanWaring]

So Jesus Christ should not have been crucified?

“My sins are forgiven because Jesus Christ died while serving a 20-years-to-life-without-possibility-of-parole sentence in a Roman prison” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

[Telepathic Intruder]

When did the Vatican become Moveon.org?

[boatbums]

The Vatican’s foreign minister said that capital punishment may never be considered a form of legitimate defense Wednesday, adding that it constitutes “cruel and degrading treatment.”

Maybe he should take it up with Almighty God:

And surely I will require the life of any man or beast by whose hand your lifeblood is shed. I will demand an accounting from anyone who takes the life of his fellow man: Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed; for in His own image God has made mankind. (Genesis 9:5,6)

[exDemMom]

Huh?

Given that the death penalty is only applied after a lengthy trial and sentencing, and that killing in self-defense usually happens pretty quickly... I think that the Vatican’s minister is hugely confused.

[shanover]

Imagine this azzhole during the crusades!

[Luircin]

Is this one of those doctrines that Catholics are not allowed to dissent against, or are they allowed to believe different?

[the_daug]

Hmmm! It didn’t count if you refused to submit to Papal Rome.

[Secret Agent Man]

Quite frankly the vatican can FOAD on this and just about any other “moral” value they spout out their clown holes.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Is he (the communist) arguing that no one has the right to defend their family, their house or property?

[impactplayer]

The death penalty is not a punishment - it is reverence for life! It was instituted by God in His Covenant with Noah after the flood. Man is created in the image of God, thus any (animal or human) who take a life must pay with their life.
Jesus fulfilled (completed) the Covenant with Moses, but left in tack the Covenants with Noah and Abraham. Paul relies heavily on the Covenant with Abraham in his defense of the Gentile converts. I can see no Biblical case against the death penalty for the taking of a human life. Please let me know if you can find one.
Thanks!