The Death Penalty Teaching Hasn't Changed

So, some people are upset because Pope Francis explained the teaching on the death penalty. Non-Catholics, such as the men and women of the Chicago Tribune, claim Pope Francis has changed Catholic teaching. Some who claim to be "conservative Catholics" have sided with the Chicago Tribune and promoted this erroneous understanding.

Now, Catholics know it is impossible to change Catholic teaching. So what is going on?

To begin, let us recall the first principle of Christian understanding. Just as you cannot use one Scripture to attack another Scripture, so you cannot use one papal statement to attack another papal statement. We cannot start with the supposition that this Pope is contradicting previous teaching. That is not how Catholic teaching works. So, what is he doing?

The pope is pointing out a change in circumstance which is forcing a change in the discipline. He is not announcing a change in doctrine. What does this mean? It means the APPLICATION of the doctrine has to be changed. The practice has to change. That's a disciplinary change.

To take an example, every human being has a right to eat meat, a right given by God Himself in Genesis 9. So, if this is a right given by God, why do Catholics refrain from eating meat on Fridays? Well, in order to keep fresh the remembrance that God took on flesh so that He could suffer and die for our salvation, and that He chose to do this on a Friday, the Church requires every Catholic to abstain from eating the flesh of land animals on Fridays.

So, when we deliberately eat meat on Friday, the sin does not lie in the eating of meat per se, rather, the sin lies in our refusal to commemorate God's sacrifice for us. It is a sin of disobedience against a discipline. We have the right to eat meat, given in Genesis after Noah lands the ark. But it is the specific circumstances of when we do it that creates the sin.

In the same way, every country has the right to apply the death penalty. That is settled doctrine, and that doctrine cannot change. In ages past due to the general subsistence level poverty most human cultures lived, this was a necessary right. Societies could not afford to permanently house a large, non-working population of inmates. They couldn't guarantee dangerous people could be jailed for life. The death penalty was often the only way to protect the general population from great misery.

What the Pope tells us today is that things are no longer what they were. The world's social institutions have become so wealthy and powerful, they no longer have the excuses of poverty and weakness to invoke. With great power comes great responsibility.

The sin involved in the death penalty derives NOT because the state doesn't have the right to the action. Of course the state has the right to the action. But the circumstances in which the action can be undertaken have essentially disappeared.

While previous epochs in human history may have suffered from such a basic poverty that there was no other recourse, this kind of poverty no longer exists. The Pope merely points out (and the statistics clearly support him) that no such region of the world remains. If any society is too insecure or poor, that is no longer due to an inherent poverty built into the current fabric of human existence, but due to the corruption of its governing officials, who refuse to allocate resources in a just way.  As Hans Rosling pointed out several years ago, the Pope is absolutely correct:

As Rosling points out in his video, for most of the Church's history, all of mankind has lived in a very small box of short-lived poverty. Within the last 200 years, every country on earth has moved out of that box. This change in circumstance requires a change in how doctrines are applied.

It has been pointed out that the death penalty is linked to the right to self-defense, even self-defense that involves taking the life of the aggressor, and the right to wage a just war. Both individuals and states have the rights to defend themselves from unjust aggressors. That hasn't changed. But when I defend myself by taking another human being's life, I only have the right to do so because I have a poverty of choices: I am unable to stop the aggressor with anything less than lethal force.

My right to kill the aggressor in that situation is still intrinsically a violation of the light of the Gospel, and this is reflected in the teaching on self-defense. After all, it has always been standard Catholic teaching that, if I am able to stop the aggressor with less than lethal force, I cannot kill the aggressor. Killing the aggressor in that situation would absolutely be a sin. What is true for individuals is also true for society at large.

Today, governments have no excuse. Any society which is poor suffers from poverty because the murderers and thieves are in the government, not in the street. The unjust aggressor isn't the man on trial, it is the government that tries the man. In the modern world, we are now treated to the spectacle of one extremely powerful murderer and thief (the corrupt government) putting a petty murderer and thief to death in order to cover up and distract from its own sins.

And, to be fair, the death penalty has always had a basic problem. It assumes infallibility on the part of the police and the courts, that they have found and convicted the correct man. Since only the Pope is infallible, and even then only on points of morality and doctrine, that basic presupposition has always been suspect. Honest men and women have always acknowledged this basic flaw.

But today's level of social wealth has laid this flaw bare for all to see. The death penalty is now a sin used by a corrupt government to cover up and distract from its own sins. The United States is one of a rather small list of countries that still use the death penalty. Is there anyone here who would truly try to support the idea that the US government is free from corruption? One sign of our corruption is precisely our insistence on the death penalty.

The Pope exhorts us to recognize what science already tells us: the circumstances in which the state can use the death penalty have disappeared. That is all. The doctrine hasn't changed. The circumstances have changed. The Church is taking official notice of that fact.

All Catholics are required to recognize that the reality on the ground is different. We no longer live in the tenth century. This is a reason for celebration. So, rejoice! We can finally implement the fullness of mercy that God calls us toward.

"A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary." (Homily at the Papal Mass, St. Louis, Missouri, January 27, 1999).

P.S.
The American Conservative understands how this works.


P.P.S.
Pope Saint JP II and Pope Benedict both agree with Francis

"A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary." (Homily at the Papal Mass, St. Louis, Missouri, January 27, 1999).

P.P.P.S A note from Miriam Westen

"The 1917 Code of Canon Law barred from sacred ordination: 1) judges who imposed the death penalty. 2) Also, those who assisted as executioners could never be ordained to the priesthood.

From the 1957 Woywod & Smith Commentary on Canon Law:
"The sixth irregularity from defect (which permanently prevents a man from being ordained priest) is that incurred by a judge of a criminal court who has issued a death sentence against a criminal.

"The spirit of the sacred ministry is a spirit of mercy and forgiveness, wherefore the Church declares it improper to raise to the sacred ministry a person who has concurred in procuring the execution of a man, no matter how legitimate and guiltless such action may have been.

"From the earliest times of the Church men who have shed human blood, even apart from any guilt, were refused admission to the sacred ministry" (p. 598 "Practical Commentary on the Code)."