Breda O'Brien
The View
During St John Paul’s pontificate, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) was amended regarding the death penalty. Capital punishment was hedged about with so many conditions that the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity were considered to be “very rare, if not practically non-existent”.
In other words, the death penalty was only justified in the rarest of cases – where “non-lethal means” were not capable of “effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor”.
So while in theory capital punishment was admissible, in reality, in modern times it would never be necessary as secure incarceration was available as an alternative.
Pope Francis has gone even further. The text in the CCC now reads: “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.”
Inspired
For many faithful Catholics, such as Sr Helen Prejean, the nun whose life inspired the film, Dead Man Walking, Pope Francis’s amendment of the CCC is a moment of great joy.
For others, it is more proof that Pope Francis’ pontificate is full of dangerous innovations. The latter group may or may not approve of the use of the death penalty.
Some, such as author Edward Feser, who along with Joseph Bessette wrote By Man Shall His Blood be Shed: A Catholic Defense of the Death Penalty, do not believe that it is necessarily just to administer the death penalty. However, Feser does believe that it is legitimate for a State to have the right to administer the death penalty.
However arcane a distinction it may seem, the concern of Feser and others like him is that if the Church once taught that the death penalty is a legitimate punishment for a State to wield but now says that it is “inadmissible”, is that not the same as saying the Church was in error for decades?
If certain Popes believed it was a legitimate punishment in the arsenal of the State, does this not mean that the Popes are capable of teaching error and so Pope Francis could be in error, too?
Moral views
Others, like influential Orthodox blogger, Rod Dreher, go further. If the Church can apparently change her mind on this, can she also not change her mind on something like the permissibility of sexual relations between gay people?
I can understand Feser and Dreher’s concerns that what is known as ‘development of doctrine’ can be a cover for smuggling in moral views that are antithetical to what the Church has taught for centuries.
Without resorting to the simplistic “what would Jesus do?” rhetoric, which can often become ‘“what do I think Jesus would do, given my favourite biases?”, I do think that there is a useful question about any development of doctrine.
Does a teaching represent a radical departure from a path on which the Church had been travelling, or does it represent a journey further along an already well-trodden path?
In the case of Pope Francis’ decision on the death penalty, I believe it is the latter. The conditions in which the Church originally endorsed the death penalty, which included protecting society, no longer pertain.
The Church has always had a clear proscription against killing the innocent. It is very much in tune with the need to emphasise non-violent solutions to declare that today, the death penalty is inadmissible even though a person is guilty, in order to increase the chances of the person seeking redemption.
On the other hand, while treating our fellow human beings who are gay or lesbian with compassion and respect is certainly what Jesus wishes his followers to model, the teaching on marriage cannot be changed.
To change marriage would not be a development of doctrine but a radical departure from centuries of explicit teaching. It is central to God’s plan that we have been created male and female and that marriage is between a woman and a man.
In Amoris Laetitia, 251, Pope Francis re-affirms that “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family”.
While understandable, I believe Feser’s and Dreher’s fears are misplaced. The “inadmissibility” of the death penalty in the circumstances pertaining today is a good development.