I’ve already written at length about the longstanding Catholic teaching about the death penalty and why Pope Francis is wrong in his attempts to change it. I won’t, therefore, rehash those arguments here. For the purposes of this particular debate, what matters most is for Catholics to understand that the authority for civil powers to…
The debate over the pope’s recently announced changes to the Catechism on the subject of capital punishment are being hotly debated in every corner of the Catholic world. Some are saying this change is a mere “development of doctrine.” Some think it’s not a change in doctrine at all, but an adjustment to practical application.…
Just as the latest round of homosexual network and sex abuse allegations in the Church are reaching a fever pitch, Pope Francis – who has been eerily quiet of late – dropped a nuclear theological bomb into our midst. From Crux: According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the death penalty now is no longer…
In light of today’s news that the pope has “changed the Catechism of the Catholic Church about the death penalty, saying it can never be sanctioned,” we are reprinting this as a reference point for concerned Catholics. –SS, 8/2/2018 When the first version of this column was originally published in March 2015, it was occasioned…
In a two-part essay at Public Discourse (here and here), E. Christian Brugger has responded to Edward Feser and Joseph M. Bassette’s new book on capital punishment (By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment). Feser and Bessette argue that the Church’s traditional teaching on the moral permissibility of the death penalty…
By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment Edward Feser & Joseph Bessette Ignatius Press, 2017 500 pages $21.20 Paperback Sometime in the mid-1990s in Colombia, Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos lured a 6-year-old boy into an isolated spot and sodomized and murdered him. There were bite marks and other evidence…
Though the most fervent discussion on capital punishment has died down (we had our say a few weeks ago), a recent treatment of the subject is worth your consideration – in particular because it addresses some of the common objections, such as dealing with unjust governments and the scandal of innocent men sent to die.…
The ongoing debates about the authentic Catholic position on the death penalty have grown particularly exasperating. Perhaps the worst thing of all is that we’re wasting time arguing over teaching that is incredibly well-established throughout the majority of Church history. The Church’s stance on capital punishment has always been more than merely permissive; the idea that “rendering harmless”…
