Why does the Catholic Church oppose the d e a t h penalty - it chooses to keep it legal (in the Chatichism).

Question

The Catholic Church says it is opposed to the penalty of death and yet it is approved of in the Chatichism. If it really opposed this it would have eliminated it as an option from the Chatichism. It just seems to me that it wants it to be "rare but legal" to use language from other sourses. Seems kind of devious to me....

Answer 1

you could go to a priest or bishop or whatever and find out all you would like to know, and more!

Answer 2

The Catholic church teaches that it is the duty of a government to protect its people. Sometimes, that means using the death penalty to protect people from violent criminals. The Church teaches that is OK, but only in VERY rare situations where the fact that the criminal is even alive poses an immediate threat to the well being of people.

But- it should be used rarley and prudently- because face it- there is NO going back if you impose it wrongly!

Answer 3

The Catholic Church only believes in the death penalty if the prision system cannot contain their prisioners. This is mostly referring to many poorer countries where the prision system is corrupt and the worst of them are freed by their followers. With, the USA capable of containing prisioners, it would be wrong to use the death penalty.

Answer 4

From a Catholic point of view:

Jesus, John 8:1-11, spares a women guilty of adultery whom the Mosaic Law said should be stoned to death.

If the guilty person's identity and responsibility has been fully determined then non-lethal means to defend and protect the people's safety from the aggressor are more in keeping with the common good and the dignity of the human person.

The Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives.

However in today's modern society, the capability of rendering the offender incapable of doing harm - without definitively 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 non-existent.

With love in Christ.

Answer 5

It seems that all ages have their own views, relevant to the conditions in which life is lived.
We are constantly reviewing the Constitution through the Supreme Court...
but would we seek to remove any one of the Amendments?
No.

Answer 6

Does the word "hypocrites" ring a bell?

Answer 7

http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=2175