![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2016\/07\/sling-1222466_1280-1024x747.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In today\u2019s news, the dramatic announcement\u00a0that, as the New York Times phrases it in its headline, \u201cPope Declares Death Penalty Unacceptable in All Cases<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Pope Francis has declared that the death penalty is wrong in all cases, a definitive change in church teaching that is likely to challenge faithful Catholic politicians, judges and officials in the United States and other countries who have argued that their church was not entirely opposed to capital punishment.<\/p>\n Francis added the change to the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church. . . .<\/p>\n Francis\u2019 decision is likely to put many American Catholic politicians in a difficult position, especially Catholic governors, like Greg Abbott of Texas and Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, who have presided over executions.<\/p>\n And it could set off a backlash among American Catholic traditionalists who have already cast Francis as being dangerously inclined to change or compromise church teaching on other issues, like permitting communion for Catholics who have divorced and remarried without getting a church annulment. . . .<\/p>\n Abolishing the death penalty has been one of Francis\u2019 top priorities for many years, along with saving the environment and caring for immigrants and refugees.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now, I have to admit that I find it odd that the death penalty is such a priority for a Pope from Latin America, where, per this handy-dandy map<\/a>, with few exceptions, the entire continent has abolished it entirely or \u201cexcept in extreme cases.\u201d\u00a0 The only country over which the Catholic Church has any influence, which has the death penalty, is the United States, and the remaining such countries are ones where a papal campaign would make no difference.\u00a0 Conceivably, this \u201ctop priority\u201d is a carry-over from the fact that Argentina only abolished the death penalty a decade ago<\/a>.\u00a0 But in 2018 America, this seems a campaign that\u2019s as likely to have the undesirable effect of pushing Catholics from public life in death-penalty states as it is to have its desired effect.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s really just a preamble to the larger question:\u00a0 did the Pope clearly and directly change Catholic doctrine and, hence, communicate that doctrine is changeable if you have a good enough reason?<\/p>\n The National Catholic Register article<\/a> on the subject strikes me as trying, however strained an interpretation it might be, to emphasize continuity:<\/p>\n The Vatican Thursday altered the Catechism\u2019s wording on the permissibility of the death penalty, which the Church teaches is legitimate in extreme cases, stating it is \u201cinadmissible,\u201d and its elimination will be sought.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What does \u201cinadmissable\u201d mean, and does the reporter\u2019s use of the present tense mean that she still understands this core \u201clegitimate in extreme cases\u201d teaching to be true, just that the Pope rejects that in the world of 2018 no such \u201cextreme cases\u201d exist?\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure.<\/p>\n But there are more skeptical, more worried perspectives.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s Ross Douthat, writing on twitter (apologies for the long set of links but I\u2019m not sure what the best practice is for citing from a tweetstorm) that Francis is once again engaged in changing doctrine with some degree of plausible denyability:<\/p>\n There are anti-death penalty Catholic thinkers who argue that past teaching on this question was real but not authoritative\/infallible, and therefore a reversal is possible. This is the position taken, for instance, by E. Christian Brugger in this debate:https:\/\/t.co\/frOE9FffR0<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) August 2, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n