{"id":1992,"date":"2013-03-23T17:12:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-23T17:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/03\/why-i-loved-the-catholic-approach-to-capital-punishment.html"},"modified":"2013-03-23T17:12:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-23T17:12:00","slug":"why-i-loved-the-catholic-approach-to-capital-punishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/03\/why-i-loved-the-catholic-approach-to-capital-punishment.html","title":{"rendered":"Why I loved the Catholic approach to Capital Punishment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
I\u2019ve been accused of not caring about Church teaching (despite the hell I\u2019ve put my family through to become Catholic). \u00a0This is usually because I ask questions in the wrong environments. \u00a0One of the issues I\u2019ve been bothered by is the Church\u2019s recent change regarding its position on Capital Punishment. As I said here<\/a>, I\u2019m far from pleased with the recent turn of events, and consider almost laughable the Church\u2019s reliance on the infallibility of our penal system to protect the innocent as the slam dunk reason to abolish the Death Penalty.<\/div>\n
For me, who always opposed it on the principle that we could execute an innocent person, I admitted the opposite problem was also a possibility: an innocent person could be murdered by an individual who might otherwise have been executed. \u00a0And unlike the man on death row who will be given months to years to make his peace with God, that individual\u00a0murdered\u00a0in the blink of an eye will not have that chance, which all but nullifies using the importance of salvation in the equation (unless we only care about salvation for the criminal).\u00a0<\/div>\n
So I warmed quickly to the\u00a0Church\u2019s\u00a0rather common sense, and darn well Christian, view that the Death Penalty should be avoided at all possible costs, unless there is clearly a threat or danger to the widow and the orphan, to the innocent and the good. \u00a0I actually changed my position and was glad to do it. Unfortunately there have been major changes and alterations in not a few\u00a0positions\u00a0in recent\u00a0decades, and under\u00a0Benedict\u2019s\u00a0leadership, the Church has moved to call for an abolition of all\u00a0capital\u00a0punishment. \u00a0Period. \u00a0<\/div>\n
Problem is, well here<\/a>. \u00a0A story in which a man who would have been executed but wasn\u2019t because W. Virginia had abolished the death penalty, organized a mass breakout that resulted in the murder of an off duty police officer and another innocent person. \u00a0That\u2019s the dark flip side of my favorite\u00a0reference\u00a0point<\/a>\u00a0for opposing the death penalty. \u00a0I knew it was a problem, which is why I loved the Church\u2019s\u00a0position:\u00a0 mercy in all possible ways, but not at\u00a0the\u00a0sacrifice of the innocent. \u00a0If I want to die for the faith,\u00a0great\u00a0 \u00a0But it isn\u2019t for me to let other innocent people die for my faith. \u00a0The Church had hit a home run as far as I was concerned.<\/div>\n
Now, it not only sweeps aside the balance and invites the very problems I struggled with without so much as\u00a0acknowledging\u00a0them, and also inadvertently encourages that rascally old\u00a0Ebeneezer\u00a0approach to ethics, it bases its change on the most convoluted reasoning\u00a0imaginable:\u00a0 the efficacy of the American judicial and penal systems (apparently since 1981). \u00a0Wow. \u00a0It makes me remember that the Catholic Faith is Truth, but the Catholic Church has had its fair share of zigging when it should have zagged, and I don\u2019t\u00a0believe\u00a0that\u2019s something that the Church has outgrown, or ever will outgrow. \u00a0I\u2019m sorry to say, this may be one of those instances that drives this unhappy point home.\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been accused of not caring about Church teaching (despite the hell I\u2019ve put my family through to become Catholic). \u00a0This is usually because I ask questions in the wrong environments. \u00a0One of the issues I\u2019ve been bothered by is the Church\u2019s recent change regarding its position on Capital Punishment. As I said here, I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy I loved the Catholic approach to Capital Punishment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I've been accused of not caring about Church teaching (despite the hell I've put my family through to become Catholic).  This is usually because I\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/03\/why-i-loved-the-catholic-approach-to-capital-punishment.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" 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