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The Death Penalty in the Early 21st Century

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"At no point are we not going to value the sanctity of life," said prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon. "We would resuscitate him," then execute him.

All I'm saying is, sometimes we try a little too hard to make everybody happy.

Hat-tip to Roman Rob, studying hard, I presume?

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Who's muddying the waters?

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A pro-life news service that specializes in hysteria says (emphasis added):

However, any equivocation between abortion and the death penalty is, according to Catholic teaching, thoroughly false. According to the Catholic Catechism, and the longstanding tradition of the Church, capital punishment is justifiable under certain grave circumstances, and as such Catholic's are free to support its use. Abortion, on the other hand, according to Catholic teaching, is always and everywhere a grave moral evil and punishable by automatic excommunication.

Is that what the Catechism says? Let's open up our Catehism at random and see where we land... aaaaaand OK... here we go (again, emphasis added).

2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."

So according to the hystericists, I can support the death penalty even though the circumstances where its use is licit do not exist in my country?

I happen to agree (albeit with significant reservations) with the notion that a flashy campaign against the death penalty is not the best use of the Church's resources at this time (after all where is the CCEA to go along with the CCEDP? ), but what good is it to dispense with the teachings of the Church in order to belabor the point? Or to put it another way, what will it profit a man...?

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January 2006: Monthly Archives

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This page is a archive of recent entries in the Capital Punishment category.

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