of Catholicism is pretty often jumbled and messed about by (perhaps) well meaning people who ought to know better.

it is completely appalling how few people who profess to be Catholics have taken the trouble to read and even try to understand the Catechism of Vatican 2. It is the core document of our creed, and a powerful lot of people, without having any familiarity with it, consider themselves capable of ‘interpreting” what it means. This is of course ludicrous, because the catechism IS the “interpretation”

IN a way, this is like the way the Rambam and Rashi codified and clarified Hebrew law- with the exception that the Catechism is not considered a holy text. This may not be a good analogy, but it is what I got.

A specific example which comes out over and over again, is the death penalty. There is some herculean misunderstanding of the Church’s position and when I point out that misunderstanding I am usually given grief- but I seek only to prevent people from going off the reservation. The official stance of the Catholic Church is that the death penalty and the power to enforce it lie in the hands of the Government. This is where supposedly good Catholics bristle and come back with “The government is not responsible for life or death” implying that only the Church should make those decisions and that the Church will always choose life. Nothing is further from the truth; in fact, the Church has always separated itself from civic law and punishment. The church does not hand out speeding tickets, try people for robbery, theft, or rape. In fact it is the blue fairy godmother of all bad ideas for any church to have it’s fingers in any civil law, at all- and I’m looking at YOU, Sharia.

No. The Church has always and will always recognize the right of the State to establish and prosecute the death penalty. Just as the Church recognizes the right of the State to make war, and the individual to defend himself. The death penalty is no different than that; anyone who feels they deserve to defend themselves against an aggressor but does not consider it acceptable for the State to prevent that aggressor from further aggression is being a hypocrite. Claiming the death penalty is wrong in all circumstances does not make you a good Catholic, it makes you ignorant.

The argument is most often given, pursuant to the Catechism, that “So long as life imprisonment exists, the death penalty is unnecessary” This is clearly true; however, you have to go below the surface to understand what this means. It means LIFE IMPRISONMENT. it does not mean “Life until the governor grants me clemency so I can go out and rape/murder seven more nurses” it does not mean ‘Life until an activist judge overturns the previous conviction allowing me to wander free again” it means LIFE.

There is NO life penalty in this country, so far as I am aware. There is nobody doing time in this country who cannot be pardoned or set free, and that is the very litmus test for capital punishment. You can disagree with this, you can let it offend your delicate sensibilities, but it is the law, and it isn’t up to you to change it. The Churches purview is the next world, not this one. The mercy and forgiveness of God is NOT YOURS TO DISPENSE.

All you have to do is pay attention, and read. The information is all out there and easily enough obtained. Making statements based on something you heard someone else read about something JP2 said is NOT HELPING.

Another thing that is not helping is the comparison to abortion. The simple fact of the matter is, abortion is all about the absolute innocence of the infant. It has done nothing, committed no sin, except to be an inconvenience to the mother. The death penalty should not be dispensed based on inconvenience.

The death penalty in America is dispensed based on the commission of an act heinous enough to require that the individual be separated from humankind, because his/her continued existence is detrimental to and in fact potentially dangerous to other humans. The state reserves the right to these actions, and the Church reserves the right to make sure the individual’s soul has been clarified prior to meeting his maker. Should the individual of his own free will reject salvation, it is his choice to make. This world, the next world. Get it?
it is most egregious to compare the innocence of an infant to the willful aggression of the average death row inmate, and it benefits nobody to accept that this comparison is valid.

The Pope has most often been taken out of context on this- you have to remember two things: 1: Pope JP2 was NOT speaking ex cathedra when he made the call for the end of capital punishment, and 2: if you bother to read the document you will see what he is talking about is predominantly the filthy shitholes of the middle east and south America and asia, where life is valueless and people treated like cattle to be slaughtered on a whim.

I get a lot of shit from Catholics for pointing this out, I always do. But I do so because not to is to let otherwise good people wander off the reservation into the land of liberal bullshit, because that’s all this is.

The case can be made that the Government fucks everything up and is not capable of administering the death penalty appropriately- in other words, screwing up and killing an innocent person. Is that a reason not to do anything? No. It’s a reason to fix the system. In any event, there are much bigger fish to fry, from the standpoint of Catholicism, than making sure all the scumbags on earth get three hots and a cot until some moron lets them out of jail to murder rape and steal again.

It does not fall on us to interpret G-ds Law, just to follow it. Here is an excellent piece by Colin Donovan, STL. The STL means sacrae theologiae licentiatus;n other words HE has the LICENSE as supplied by the CHURCH to “Act as a theological resource”, in other words, to keep people from wandering off the reservation and making up their own Church as they go.

Footnote: When I was in seminary, we would go each year to the ordinations in Columbus and stay, along with seminarians from dozens of other schools, at the Josephenum, the only Pontifical school in America, and once upon a time, the only place in America you could get a sacrae theologiae licentiatus. I watched four of my classmates prostrate themselves there, a memory that still fills me with great joy.