It isn't going to be good news to a lot of American Catholics, either.
The change is a new paragraph 2266 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Capital punishment has been a big problem for that book. The first edition of the Catechism allowed the death penalty if proper authority said it was needed. But then Pope John Paul applied brakes to that. The now-sainted pope said yeah, proper authority could use the death penalty if it had to, but there are hardly any conditions -- "rare, or non-existent" -- in the modern world when it would have to. That is how execution stood in more recent editions.
Pope Francis removed the qualifiers, and the Catechism now says:
2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.
Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.
Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.
Pope Francis actually made the change to the Catechism last May, and it's based on something he said last October. (The Church has never learned to shout, "Stop the presses!")
See how easy it can be to change what "the Church has always taught"?
At my age, a lot of Catholic males wouldn't turn on the TV if they heard the Church was teaching the Playboy Philosophy, but they do still dwell on their God-given right to kill some S.O.B. who "needs it." I suppose Francis didn't take that right away -- not really -- because he said it was "inadmissible," but he didn't say "mortal sin." So we can expect explications that, while professing strict adherence to the Catechism, allow exceptions for drug-dealers and illegal immigrants and serial killers.
But the most of us know what Francis means.
As of this moment, the Vatican website's version of the Catechism (in English) still has the old paragraphs up. Here they are, for the sake of posterity:
ReplyDelete2266 The State's effort to contain the spread of behaviors injurious to human rights and the fundamental rules of civil coexistence corresponds to the requirement of watching over the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime. the primary scope of the penalty is to redress the disorder caused by the offense. When his punishment is voluntarily accepted by the offender, it takes on the value of expiation. Moreover, punishment, in addition to preserving public order and the safety of persons, has a medicinal scope: as far as possible it should contribute to the correction of the offender.67
2267 The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor.
"If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should 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.
"Today, in fact, given the means at the State's disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender 'today ... are very rare, if not practically non-existent.'[John Paul II, Evangelium vitae 56.]
The St. Charles Borromeo site, which I also use from time to time (they have a good search engine) still has the old paragraphs up, as of now.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a coincidence that the last three popes, who are the proximate causes of this development in church teaching, all come from societies in which the death penalty, in the form of political killings, were widely administered.
ReplyDeleteI admit I don't know enough about 19th and 20th century Italian history to know whether that was the case for their Italian predecessors. The only political killing that springs to mind is Mussolini.
Since we were recently discussing the case of St. Maria Goretti, it is worth noting that her assailant, Alessandro Serenelli, was spared the death penalty because he had not yet reached the age of legal majority, which was 21. This was in 1902, in Italy. I know for a fact that in the USA many people who were not yet 21 have gotten the death penalty.
DeleteGermany abolished the death penalty while Josef Ratzinger was pretty young, in its 1949 Constitution. None of the countries in the European Union (our enemies) have it anymore. That would include Poland. 95% of the world's death penalties are imposed by China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Pakistan and Iraq -- mostly our civilized trading partners (except for perfidious China).
DeleteWell, this is good news as far as I'm concerned, though I live in Michigan which bans the death penalty. This is kind of an interesting blog post about it:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.executedtoday.com/2012/09/24/1830-stephen-simmons-last-executed-by-michigan/I
My dad was a boy when the feds forced the state execute bank robber Anthony Chebatoris, and he remembers listening with his grandfather, both of them aghast, to the reports of the hanging in the radio on Grampa's porch.
I still think they should allow the bloody execution of robocall company executives. Sorry. Maybe that's a job for the private sector.
ReplyDeleteWonder what our governor, Pete Ricketts, is going to make of this. He is Catholic, makes much of his pro-life creds. But he spent $200,000 of his own money (and his father contributed $100,000) to reinstate the death penalty after the state legislature did away with it in 2015. This was by means of a petition drive to put it on the ballot. Now he is itching to have our first execution since 1997. But there is a problem getting the drugs to do it with. Guess they night have to bring Ol' Sparky out of retirement.
ReplyDeleteI have been critical of the Ricketts family for their financial support of the death penalty in Nebraska; also for Pete's efforts, also financial, to try to pack our unicameral legislature with partisans who are favorable to his policies. So it is only fair to note something good that Joe (the senior Ricketts) has done. He has founded and endowed a retreat center, The Cloisters on the Platte. Its focus is silent Ignatian retreats. In our noisy world silence and contemplation is a need. Sometimes it is good to keep in mind that few people do all bad things, or all good things.
DeleteHey is that the same Ricketts family that owns the Chicago Cubs? I happen to have the Cub game on the radio as I write this (just waking up from a nap, and Cub radiocasts are the very best for snoozing to). They paterfamilias is a conservative political donor I believe.
DeleteYep, Jim, that's the ones.
DeleteP. K., you shoulda lived forever. The current guys can't be as bad as the last guy (although they must be trying).
DeleteWell, looks like Pistol Pete is doubling down.
DeleteRegarding the reference to the Supreme Court in the headline of this post: I don't have strong views on Supreme Court jurisprudence on the death penalty - those cases were decided when I was in middle school and high school and I wasn't really paying much attention in those days, so I missed those arguments.
ReplyDeleteBut I'd note that the death penalty is administered both by the federal government (pretty rarely, I believe) and by individual states (not so rarely - looking at you, Texas). But we know individual states can stop administering the death penalty. Jean reports that Michigan has done so. So has my state, Illinois (a change initiated unilaterally by a Republican governor, no less). And the Supreme Court has not intervened in those decisions. So I don't think we need to rely on the Supremes on this one. We can all work through our state and federal representatives to put a stop to the death penalty.
A good source for info on capital punishment is the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center (not much creativity in choosing a name) at https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/ They have a data base that lets you search by state, by year, etc. Coincidentally the lead on their home page today is Pope Francis.
DeleteMy own opposition to the death penalty is less Christlike than the pope's. The justice system is badly flawed. It will and has executed innocent people. And a strong factor is undoubtedly the financial status of the accused. I am more concerned with the fate of the innocent than that of the guilty. If I were truly Christlike, I would care about both equally but I'm not there yet.
ReplyDeleteOne of my deacon friends emailed: "If you have the capital, you can avoid the punishment." (Well, I never heard it before.)
Delete