Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition, Second Edition

E. Christian Brugger

Description

Why is the Catholic Church against the death penalty? This second edition of Brugger’s classic work Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition traces the doctrinal path the Church has taken over the centuries to its present position as the world’s largest and most outspoken opponent of capital punishment. The pontificate of John Paul II marked a watershed in Catholic thinking. The pope taught that the death penalty is and can only be rightly assessed as a form of self-defense. But what does this mean? What are its implications for the Church’s traditional retribution-based model of lethal punishment? How does it square with what the Church has historically taught? Brugger argues that the implications of this historic turn have yet to be fully understood.

In his new preface, Brugger examines the contribution of the great Polish pope’s closest collaborator and successor in the Chair of Peter, Pope Benedict XVI, to Catholic thinking on the death penalty. He argues that Pope Benedict maintained the doctrinal status quo of his predecessor’s teaching on capital punishment as self-defense, with detectable points of reluctance to draw attention to nontraditional implications of that teaching.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Theology
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Juan Pablo II
• Pope Benedict XVI
• Pope John Paul II
• Ethics
• Catholic
• Christianity
• Benoît XVI

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 septembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268075972
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 10 Mo

Extrait

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition

S E C O N D E D I T I O N

E . C H R I S T I A N B R U G G E R

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

Copyright ©2014by University ofNotre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved

Publishedin the United States ofAmerica

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brugger, E. Christian, (Eugene Christian), 1964– Capital punishment and Roman Catholic moral tradition / E. Christian Brugger. — Second Edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-268-02241-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-268-02241-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Capital punishment—Religious aspects—Catholic Church. 2. Capital punishment—Moral and ethical aspects. 3. Catholic Church—Doctrines. I. Title. HV8694.B78 2014 241'.697 dc23 2014016568

Dedicated to

Pope Saint John Paul II (r. 1978–2005)

Pope Benedict XVI (r. 2005–2013)

———

The human architects of the Catholic Church’s

turn toward abolition of the death penalty.

Contents

Preface to the Second Edition (2014): The Church and Capital Punishment since the Death of John Paul II

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

PART I

chapter 1

chapter 2

PART II

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chapter 3

■

SORTING OUT THE ISSUES

The Present Teaching of the Magisterium TheCatechism of the Catholic Church Evangelium Vitae Veritatis Splendor Theological Anticipations Conclusion and a Problem

The Justification of Punishment Punishment in theCatechism Strict Retributivism Utilitarian Accounts

ix

xxxi

1

9

38

THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH’S TEACHING

The Death Penalty and Scripture Old Testament New Testament

59

viii

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Contents

chapter 4

chapter 5

chapter 6

The Patristic Consensus Pre-Constantinian Writings Post-Constantinian Writings

The Medieval Testimony The Clergy Prohibition Changing Attitudes TheDecretum Gratiani Pope Innocent III and the Waldensian Oath Thomas Aquinas John Duns Scotus

74

96

Sixteenth Century to the Present113 The Traditional Teaching: Consolidation and Development The Church’s Turn toward Opposition

PART III RETHINKING THE CHURCH’S ■ TRADITIONAL NOTION OF JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE

chapter 7

chapter 8

Capital Punishment and the Development of Doctrine With What Authority? The Idea of Development of Doctrine Moral Doctrines and the Infallible Magisterium Development of Non-Irreformable Doctrines

Toward an Ethical Judgment that Capital Punishment Is Intrinsically Wrong The New Position of theCatechismDeveloped A Reformulated Catholic Teaching on Killing

Notes Bibliography Index of Authors Index of Subjects

141

164

191 251 271 275

Preface to the Second Edition (2014) The Church and Capital Punishment since the Death of John Paul II

More than a thousand people have been executed in the United States since Pope Saint John Paul II published his extraordinary teaching on the death penalty in 1995, which turned the Catholic Church irrevocably in the direc- 1 tion of abolition. That number seems large. But annual statistics show that public support in the United States for the death penalty is at a forty-year low. The Death Penalty Information Center reported at the end of 2013 that by almost every measure—number of executions, states imposing and carrying 2 out capital sentences, size of death rows—the death penalty is in decline. In the Catholic Church popular opposition to the death penalty is higher than it has ever been in the past. Echoes of the debate launched in the 1990s by the publication ofEvangelium Vitae(EV) can still be dimly heard: “The pope is only saying what the Church has always said”; “No, he’s saying some- thing new!”; “He can’t change the traditional teaching”; “He can if it’s not in- fallible”; and so on. But by and large, most Catholics have made their peace with the Church’s determined abolitionist stand and no longer bristle when the Holy See makes apodictic statements about the necessity of world aboli- tion. Pro-life Catholics, sometimes enthusiastically and sometimes reluctantly, have incorporated the death penalty into their catalogue of right-to-life issues; and, armed with due distinctions that overcome confusions with the “seamless garment” metaphor, they now oppose both the intentional killing of the inno- cent and the killing of criminals. But the doctrinal conversation over the morality of the death penalty has only just begun. Under John Paul II, the death penalty was conceived for the first time, at least in official Church teaching, as a community’s self-defensive

■

ix