Pope Francis changes Catholic Church teaching to say death penalty is ‘inadmissible’

Washington Post ^ | August 2, 2018 | Chico Harlan

[ebb tide]

ROME — Pope Francis has changed Catholic Church teaching to fully reject the death penalty, the Vatican announced Thursday, saying it would work to abolish capital punishment worldwide.

The change addresses several sentences of the catechism, the compendium of Catholic teaching, but it sharply amplifies the church’s opposition against one of the world’s most debated policies.

The church’s updated teaching states that capital punishment is “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” Previously, the church allowed for the death penalty in very rare cases, only as a means of “defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”

[Biggirl]

St. Catherine today is she was alive would be after the sexual abusers and their enablers bigtime, so sicken she would have been.

For the good of my soul, I must walkaway from Pope Francis.

[DuncanWaring]

Michael Dukakis/Willie Horton comes to mind.

[G Larry]

And what of all of the recent overturned convictions based on DNA evidence decades later?

[G Larry]

1

[daniel1212]

Obviously, then, Jesus Christ should have died in prison serving a life sentence without possibility of parole for our sins.

He [PF] has also long made prison ministry a mainstay of his vocation and even opposes life sentences, which he has called "hidden" death sentences. - http://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/ap-top-news/2018/08/02/pope-shifts-church-on-death-penalty-now-inadmissible

[daniel1212]

A passage in Romans states "It is good to fear the sword of the state, for it has its purpose." I had always cited this in defense of the death penalty, but I now see other considerations. 1 - The Pope is dealing with the rest of the world, who's law don't provide the protections afforded in the U.S. 2 - I've seen way too many examples of prosecutors aggressively pursuing high conviction rates, simply to further their political careers. Too many have been released from death row, in recent years, based upon DNA evidence. 3 - Just because we can cite cases where it is perfectly justified, doesn't mean we can insure against abuse in other cases.

1. The Bible is is dealing with the whole of the world, who's law don't provide all the protections or the penalties of the Bible, and is telling them how they should. Which means that capital punishment is sanctioned, if carried out according to the Biblical criteria and means.

And which requires 2 or 3 eye witnesses, and perjurers receiving the penalty their false testimonies incurred, and with the execution being by communal stoning, thus all having a hand in it, versus uninvolved, antiseptic execution by the state. See TheDeathPenalty

2 - I've seen way too many examples of prosecutors aggressively pursuing high conviction rates, simply to further their political careers. Too many have been released from death row, in recent years, based upon DNA evidence.

A minority, and such should face the Biblical penalty for false testimony. However, corruption simply does not necessarily translate into abrogation of laws.

3 Just because we can cite cases where it is perfectly justified, doesn't mean we can insure against abuse in other cases.

Just because we can cite cases where there was abuse, it doesn't mean we can insure against cases being perfectly justified.

[Mrs. Don-o]

No doubt this will involve endless hashing-out and lashing-out by the theologians and the canon lawyers.

For instance, I've heard people say that the death penalty being "inadmissible" is not the same as the death penalty being "intrinsically wrong."

That's just the kind of jesuit casuistry that gives jesuit casuistry a bad name.

It's a kind of lie that even has a name: "paltering." (Ya can look it up.) "Paltering" means saying something that is technically true (or sufficiently ambiguous) with the intent of deception.

It's like if somebody says "Do you know where Beverly is?" and you say "I really don't know" when what you mean is "She's in the car and headed west on Market Street towards the airport with a ticket to Atlanta, but I don't know if she's in the front seat or the back seat."

It intends to mislead. So it's not "ex cathedra," --- doesn't even attempt to be --- it's a heresy and a lie.

No, this new "thing" that Pope Francis said is not doctrine, because it contradicts Holy Scripture and the teaching of every Father of the Church and every other pope and every Apostle going back to Sts Peter and Paul, and even the Judeo-Christian conception of what "human dignity" means, going back to Genesis.

Genesis 9:6
“Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.

The only reasonable question is whether this is "material" heresy or "formal" heresy, and if it's --- as I think --- "formal" heresy (the morally imputable kind) then who has the right to judge a pope?

Another pope. How about 266 previous popes. Benedict?

We shall see.

[daniel1212]

>Unless of course you’re a heretic, then we can burn you alive at the stake, because the after party BBQ is great.<

Oh, but that changed (due to not being able to) as well.Thus in one century obedience to God for a RC meant exterminating all those Rom,e deemed to be heretics, while in another one is forbidden to even execute a Hitler.

Canons of the Ecumenical Fourth Lateran Council (canon 3), 1215:

Secular authorities, whatever office they may hold, shall be admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure, that as they wish to be esteemed and numbered among the faithful, so for the defense of the faith they ought publicly to take an oath that they will strive in good faith and to the best of their ability to exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church; so that whenever anyone shall have assumed authority, whether spiritual or temporal, let him be bound to confirm this decree by oath.

But if a temporal ruler, after having been requested and admonished by the Church, should neglect to cleanse his territory of this heretical foulness, let him be excommunicated by the metropolitan and the other bishops of the province. If he refuses to make satisfaction within a year, let the matter be made known to the supreme pontiff, that he may declare the ruler’s vassals absolved from their allegiance and may offer the territory to be ruled lay Catholics, who on the extermination of the heretics may possess it without hindrance and preserve it in the purity of faith; the right, however, of the chief ruler is to be respected as long as he offers no obstacle in this matter and permits freedom of action. (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.asp)

[daniel1212]

Whether or not the adherents of those different understandings think they can justify their position from Scripture, the fact remains that those positions have evolved considerably from what Calvin taught, which itself had evolved considerably from what Luther taught.

You are confusing the supreme standard for belief and some degree of variant interpretations of such, as with trad.evanagelicals, with men and their interpretations as in church being the supreme standard.

While the former can never go South, leadership can, and then the sheep must decide to either judge which teachings by the church are valid in the light of ancient church teaching, or follow current leadership as the definitive voice of God.

Both trad.evangelicals and trad. RCs do both, but with Scripture being the supreme standard for the former, and both see divisions within each group, but mostly with the liberals who elect liberals, as with your so-called hippie pope.

[Mr Rogers]

There is NO system of flawless justice. It certainly was not flawless in ancient Israel, either! But society has an interest is showing utter revulsion for certain crimes. That revulsion is not expressed through a life sentence. A public hanging would work far better.

The people on death row who make endless attempts to get their death sentence changed to life in prison is evidence that criminals view the death penalty as more severe than life in prison.

The modern concern for criminals isn’t actually a concern for justice. It is a lack of concern for the murdered, the raped, the sexually abused. It is like the campaign against hell. How could a just God condemn ANYONE to eternal punishment? Man judging God. But if we understood God correctly, if we viewed sin the way HE views sin, then we would understand hell IS justice!

And so is the death penalty! It cannot be administered by humans flawlessly, but a serious society needs to show it is serious about vicious crimes. I’m convinced those on death row are very close to 100% guilty. Maybe 99.9%. That is good enough. “The inviolability and dignity of [countless victims]” demands it. But the Pope is so concerned about the dignity of thugs that he rejects the dignity of victims!

[daniel1212]

You seem to have missed the fact that Pope Francis' whole pontificate is in dispute. If the 2013 conclave which voted for Jorge Bergoglio was invalid for whatever reason --- and if you want, I could list 4 plausible reasons --- we have a non-pope (some would say antipope) occupying the See of Peter.

Ah, the certainty that Rome provides. Now we are not even sure if the one who supreme authority on what is is valid, is valid.

This is gravely problematic but not unprecedented.

Which means that "unbroken succession" can mean just what sedevacantism argues, virtually unlimited years without a real pope. I hold to the same myself, there being no pope like Peter since, but who was not a Roman pope anyway.

Even a validly elected pope cannot rescind the Papal Magisterium, which is, the permanently authoritative teaching of previous popes.

Tell me what all the " permanently authoritative teaching of previous popes" consists of, and i will may you that this is subject to variant interpretations.

[daniel1212]

I’d argue that he just pushed many non-sedevacantists closer to accepting sedevacantism as a Catholic explanation for what is going on here. If not, it should.

Judging from the above, that would seem to be true.

[Mr Rogers]

“So I rounded Gross’s number up to 400 and multiplied it by ten, yielding 4,000 exonerations—far more than I believe exist for the time period. I divided the 4,000 by 15 million, the number of felonies committed during the same period, yielding a “rightful” conviction rate of 99.93%. My article in the New York Times[10] drew howls of protest, many attacking my math, pointing out that my base statistic of 15 million was all felonies.

Okay, so let’s refine the numbers down to just willful homicide and forcible rape. This is narrower than Gross’s sample and amounts to about 1.5 million. Move the decimal one point and you have a “rightful” conviction rate of 99.72%. Small consolation if you are in that .28 of one percent.”

https://www.cato-unbound.org/print-issue/193

[steve86]

“Even if the Pope were Satan incarnate, we ought not to raise up our heads against him, but calmly lie down to rest on his bosom."

A possible resolution to that quandary is that Francis is not a pope; at some point -- maybe just at the election of this man, maybe earlier, the chain of valid apostolic succession was ended.

[G Larry]

Cato?

Really?

[Mrs. Don-o]

See my response here

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3676069/posts

Please note that that thread is Caucused. Please do not violate the Catholic Caucus.

[Impy]

No one should give a damn what this joker’s opinion is, the Papacy is vacant.

[Impy]

Ping to 117

[ealgeone]

See my response here http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3676069/posts Please note that that thread is Caucused. Please do not violate the Catholic Caucus.

I'd say you've invited daniel1212 to that thread by posting it to him.

[imardmd1]

BigGirl: #NotMyPope.

ealgeone: He is per Unam Sanctam.

Me: He is because, and only because, of holding the false doctrine of Apostolic succession, IIRC.