The bishop is again calling for the abolition of the death penalty, this time related to an Oklahoma man on death row appealing his case to the Supreme Court, as reported by the Catholic News Agency. He is very much for abolishing the death penalty.
As a traditionalist, I disagree, and according to then Cardinal Ratzinger of the traditional Holy Office, a Catholic can legitimately hold views for or against it. For nearly 2000 years the popes have upheld the right of the state to use the death penalty. St. Thomas defended it. The Council of Trent upheld it against Luther’s protest of using capital punishment for heretics. It was always upheld until Pope John Paul II taught it should be rare if ever since there are other means to defend society. Yet, the state can use it also to rehabilitate the criminal, deter heinous crimes, and for restitution.
It is true the death penalty has been used unjustly, when those giving the sentence do so out of hatred and an animalistic sense of revenge. Yet the state has the right and at times the duty to exact God’s revenge on the gravely unjust, even a jury giving the sentence since in a sense the jury is in the role of government, that is judging. Ordinary citizens are forbidden by divine law to revenge. But God gave the authority for just revenge to the state.
What about a man who raped and murders a hundred women, like Ted Bundy, showing to the jury no remorse or reasonable hope of being reformed, who is a threat to his inmates? What about those hundred women he murdered? And their grieving families? What about the evidence that states that use the death penalty have less heinous crimes? That often murderers end up murdering again in prison? What about those inmates murdered by then? And their grieving families? Does not being pro-life mean the state may have to take guilty life in order to defend and uphold the sanctity of human life? That abolishing this undermines a society that upholds the sanctity of human life.
The death penalty does not take away the right to life; rather the criminal forfeited their right to life in the heinous crime. According to Pope Pius XII.
Lastly, I do realize Pope Francis changed the new catechism to say the death penalty is “inadmissible.” I have yet to hear an authority in the Church explain this. To me it does sound like a total prohibition, but it doesn’t say that explicitly, so I don’t see how we can say he officially forbids it under pain of sin, like the statement inserted by Pope John Paul II. Yet a according to our 2000 year old Tradition, every state always retains the right to use the death penalty. In many cases the Church urged the state to exercise it. I respect the office of pope of those last three popes who called for its abolition, but I believe this is a departure from Tradition. Perhaps the contemporary Church can call for the death penalty to be used more judiciously but also uphold the right of the state.