Capital Punishment: Death by Immolation, In Our Time???!!!

 Capital Punishment: Death by Immolation, In Our Time???!!! 

Preamble: 

Someone wrote: “I would like to ask, Father. Now I totally accept Catholic teaching on the death penalty. But is it necessary to use immolation (at least in our time)? Can we execute just by shooting or hanging?” 

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Good evening from Nigeria!

Thanks for your question. 

I may not have a satisfying response to your question ... But let us look at it from this perspective…

Explaining the exceptions to the prohibitory part of the 5th commandment, the “Roman Catechism”; - the actual Catechism of the Catholic Church - states thus on the “Execution Of Criminals”

Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment- is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence. Hence these words of David: In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land, that I might cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the Lord.   

Now, once we accept the traditional doctrine of the Church that capital punishment is not opposed to divine law, nor is it required by this law as a necessary thing; but that it's necessity depends on circumstances, it would seem that it is negligible what method is used for it: the method judged to be from a practical standpoint a great deterrent against crimes for which no other intimidation seems to be inadequate…

If the fear of immolation (in our time) would deter people from crimes for which death by immolation is the punishment, then that punishment, for practical reasons, is the most appropriate for such a crime... Since no other intimidation would bring the same result... 

I hope this helps... 

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Further…:

Thank you, Father. Happy St Patrick’s day…  

Father, according to Catholic teaching, which crimes should be punished by the death penalty?

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If I find a list, I will share it with you! 

The authors in moral theology whose works are available to me, when speaking of the death penalty, simply treats it from the point of view of its lawfulness as such, without getting into details on the list of crimes worthy of such a penalty. 

But , it appears that such crimes are left to the determination of the state which has the right to self-defense, both with respect to an internal and an external aggressor...  The question redounds to the extent a crime either undermines the very foundations of social order or the welfare of the whole community... 

Thus, the guiding principle is safeguarding the common good: a practical example - under the military code, crimes such as treason and desertion are punished by the death penalty...  To maintain a firm discipline in the military forces...

Of course, there cannot be an arbitrary list, and care must be taken to avoid erroneous condemnations... 

The irony is that those states or countries where capital punishment is condemned: there still exists a standing army... And, such a state would gun down armed or violent  protesters  who cannot be contained by any other means effectively…

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Comes in the Reigning Modernist Papal Impostor:

by their fruits, i.e., doctrine, we know them...
how sad the many have eyes and ears but do not see nor hear...

In a so-called “impromptu address” to the Delegation of the International Commission against the Death Penalty on Monday, Dec 17, 2018, the present modernist papal impostor with the stage name “Pope Francis”, said that: 

“The certainty that every life is sacred and that human dignity must be safeguarded without exception has led me, from the beginning of my ministry, to work at different levels for the universal abolition of the death penalty,”

  

Earlier in August of the same year, he had ordered a revision of the paragraph 2267 of the modernist catechism falsely called the Catechism of the Catholic Church in which he called the death penalty “inadmissible” in the ‘light of the Gospel” because “it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”. 

Sure enough, consistent with modernist hypocrisy, at the phase of their revolution in which the so-called “Catechism of the Catholic Church” was first published, the traditional Catholic teaching on death penalty was simply reproduced, certainly paying lip service to the conservative elements in their ranks. The original paragraph, we are told, read thus: 

"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."

Following the Bergolian intervention, true to the deepest liberal modernist aspirations, it now reads thus:  

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”, [Francis, Address to Participants in the Meeting organized by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, 11 October 2017] and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.

Dead on arrival. 

Notice that the call for the abolition of the death penalty rests on the argument based on ‘inviolability and dignity of the person’; ‘the increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes’; death penalty ‘depriving the guilty the possibility of redemption’

By this, it seems that the modernist papal impostor had right before his nose the text of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae treating the question “whether it is lawful to kill sinners?; while fuming with an unmatched modernist hatred. The reason for such supposition is that he sort by all means as it were, to contradict almost word for word the refutation of his argument as made by the Angelic Doctor. Responding to an argument St. explains: 

By sinning man departs from the order of reason, and consequently falls away from the dignity of his manhood, insofar as he is naturally free, and exists for himself, and he falls into the slavish state of the beasts, by being disposed of according as he is useful to others. This is expressed in Ps. 48:21: Man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he hath been compared to senseless beasts, and made like to them, and Prov. 11:29: The fool shall serve the wise. Hence, although it be evil in itself to kill a man so long as he preserve his dignity, yet it may be good to kill a man who has sinned, even as it is to kill a beast. For a bad man is worse than a beast, and is more harmful, as the Philosopher states (Polit. i, 1 and Ethic. vii, 6). [ST.II-II.Q 64.A2.Rep3]

From this it is clear that Bergoglio’s argument for the abolition of the death penalty was dead on arrival. What Bergoglio attributes to the "Church" is his own wishful modernist thinking, utterly contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church whose authority he impersonates -an impersonation so diabolical which could only have been contrived from the pit of hell.

The so-called “increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes” is on the contrary a sad, nay diabolical, retrogression in rationality.

Now, of course, we are the least surprised: speaking of the Modernists, Pope St. Pius X tells us that “Their whole system, with all its errors, has been born of the alliance between faith and false philosophy” [Pascendi Dominici Gregis, no. 41]