Few issues more starkly show the chasm between the traditional Catholic Church and whatever we have now than the death penalty. The idea that morality is determined by citing the calendar would have struck almost all Catholic thinkers prior to 1950 as bizarre at best, heretical at worst. The late Cardinal Dulles, in 2001, wrote an article in First Things, go here to read it, in which he stated:
The Catholic magisterium does not, and never has, advocated unqualified abolition of the death penalty. I know of no official statement from popes or bishops, whether in the past or in the present, that denies the right of the State to execute offenders at least in certain extreme cases. The United States bishops, in their majority statement on capital punishment, conceded that “Catholic teaching has accepted the principle that the State has the right to take the life of a person guilty of an extremely serious crime.” Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, in his famous speech on the “Consistent Ethic of Life” at Fordham in 1983, stated his concurrence with the “classical position” that the State has the right to inflict capital punishment.
I don’t think that is any longer correct. Pope Francis stated that the death penalty is always inadmissible. Pope Francis was attempting to change the magisterium of the the Church by using the weasel word “inadmissible”. How a Pope can condemn what God in Scripture sanctions I will leave to wits wiser, or more sophistical, than mine.
“Few issues more starkly show the chasm between the traditional Catholic Church and whatever we have now than the death penalty. “
the point was never the death penalty.. because in woke Revolution the point is never “the thing” itself but always the Revolution .. the point is always to raise consciousness towards the Revolution.
we are now “saved” from this “gross error” … i.e… The Guidance From the Holy Ghost was always a Fable …
Francis was a messianic prophet.. now we have Leo his appointed .. “attitudes must change”.
(No.. Catholics must obey the Church and the Office of Peter.. what we have had is one.. & now two popes who undermine and are an enemy to that Office.)
p.s. this is way above my pay grade. and I’m stupid.. but I’m not that stupid.
“You will be hanged by the neck until dead.” The injection execution was fixed… but not by the murdered victim.
The death penalty is the temporal punishment for taking innocent life out of God’s hands.
Atheists believe that there is no life after death. So do Francis and Leo.
To answer Mr. Wixter’s complaints, let’s craft an appeals process which takes eight years, max and four years on average and lets put malefactors in front of firing squads. Somehow I don’t think he’d be pleased with either situation.