Daniel P. Horan, a Franciscan friar and assistant professor of systematic theology and spirituality at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, has written an article saying that Good Friday, the day of commemoration of the state murder of Jesus Christ by the Roman State, is the natural time to preach against the death penalty. He points out that this is the first Good Friday since Pope Francis has made it an official teaching of the official Catholic Catechism that the death penalty is in moral opposition to the most valid of moral authorities in Christianity, Jesus. From the Catechism:
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" and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.
Fr. Horan, no doubt to counter the many Catholic advocates of state murder, a number of them presently sitting on the Supreme Court of the United States, points out:
One of the traditional go-to justifications for supporting the death penalty among American Catholics had been a clause in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church that acknowledged the possibility that state execution of criminals could be justified as a last resort and for the sake of the common good. That document was promulgated under St. John Paul II, who was an outspoken critic of the death penalty (including in the United States) and who, according to reporting by Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese, didn't want to include the exception and would have preferred to see the practiced entirely abolished. "But some in the Vatican were concerned about how the church would explain its change in teaching," Reese explains. So, to avoid having to provide a difficult explanation, "John Paul had the catechism say that the death penalty was only permitted 'if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.' The catechism quotes John Paul, who stated that cases requiring the execution of the offender 'are very rare, if not practically nonexistent' (no. 2267)."
Last August, Pope Francis accomplished what John Paul could not during his own ministry as bishop of Rome. The pope instructed the prefect of Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to revise paragraph 2267 of the catechism.
Even as much of a critic as I am of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, they were quite consistent in opposing state murder.
In a year of bad news for Catholicism, of lapses in moral courage, this was one of the brightest spots, even as the sin it addresses it is a spreading mortal sin corrupting the United States.
I would wonder why the right-wing bishops who bar Catholics from receiving communion, even kicking their kids out of Catholic Schools for deviation from official Church teaching never, in my memory, bar Catholic politicians and Supreme Court Justices from communion over their support for and imposition of state murder, a serious mortal sin in probably every case even under JP II's narrow exception. Only, I don't ususally need to wonder hard about things like that. I would love someone to get Cardinals and Bishops such as Raymond Burke, Bishop Joseph Strickland, David Konderla, Robert Morlino, Daniel DiNardo, the odious TV bishop, Robert Barron or the rest of the right wing enemies of Pope Francis on record as to this issue. Let them prove that their "right to life" views are as seamless as those of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, himself the victim of right wing smears, by supporting this clear official teaching of the Church.
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