Greg Daly
Catholic debate has revolved around a literal life-and-death issue since Pope Francis’ declaration last week that the death penalty is “contrary to the Gospel” and should be abolished.
As usual, it’s always better to read the Pope’s own words in full – for example at en.radiovaticana.va – than to get embroiled in others’ comments, but for all that, it’s interesting to see how the seemingly innocuous statement, rooted as it is in the Church’s longstanding teaching that all life is sacred, has sparked feverish reactions.
Predictably enough, Steve Skojec has called the Pontiff out at onepeterfive.com, maintaining that capital punishment finds its roots in both the Scriptures and the Magisterium. “Whatever the present Pope’s desire, therefore, to eradicate capital punishment, he can’t — because even a Pope lacks the authority to make such a change,” he writes.
Skojec acknowledges that the then Cardinal Ratzinger, before his election to the papacy, admitted that “Catholics had room to disagree on this issue” but argues that Francis has taken this position even further by saying that the Catechism should be revised to reflect this.
“In order to advance his position, Pope Francis would have to declare several of his predecessors — as well as St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, St Thomas More (who prosecuted heretics in an England where that was a capital offense), a papal decree, an apostolic constitution, and also divinely-inspired Sacred Scriptures — to be in error,” he writes.
‘Wrong’
Similar sentiments are expressed by ‘Aelianus’ at exlaodicea.wordpress.com: “This seems pretty much as explicit as it gets. Scripture is wrong. The Fathers are Wrong. The Doctors are wrong. The Ecumenical Councils are wrong. The Popes are wrong. The changing consciousness of the Christian people has told Pope Francis that the death penalty is always and everywhere inadmissible and he is jolly well going to change the Catechism to reflect it.”
These kinds of objections aren’t new. As early as 2015 Catholic commentators and scholars have objected to Francis’ position on the death penalty, when he called for its complete abolition. On thecatholicthing.org, Fr C. John McCloskey III said “the Catholic Church’s Magisterium does not and never has advocated unqualified abolition of the death penalty”.
But let’s get things straight – Pope Francis is neither breaking with tradition nor espousing heresy on some personal whim. In fact, he is vitally developing the work of his predecessors who have consistently limited the moral use of the death penalty. Catholicnews.com explains that although St John Paul’s original 1992 edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church allowed for the death penalty in limited circumstances, its legitimacy was dramatically narrowed in the 1997 edition.
Pope Francis is simply continuing this precedent, placing a clear emphasis on the increased recognition of human dignity that was so central to St John Paul’s 1995 encyclical Humanae Vitae and led the Polish Pope to call at Christmas 1998 for the death penalty, which he later called “cruel and unnecessary”, to be ended.
Capital punishment, the Pope said, “heavily wounds human dignity” and is an “inhuman measure”. Rather than flying in the face of Tradition, this is an example of how teachings develop in light of a growing and deepening of Faith. As the Holy Father better puts it: “Tradition is a living reality and only a partial vision would lead to thinking of ‘the deposit of faith’ as something static.”
So far, America editor Fr James Martin is one of few prominent Catholics to have praised the move, telling ThinkProgress.org: “It’s a strong and necessary statement of what we have long held in the Church: every life is sacred”, while Austen Ivereigh tweeted that this was an endorsement of the “consistent bold witness” of the US bishops on this issue as listed at usccb.org.
Instead of fixating on rigidity, and jumping on Pope Francis whenever he speaks, perhaps it would be more fruitful for his critics to take time to consider how Catholic Tradition grows and develops while paying homage to its history.