The Catholic Church’s position on capital punishment has evolved considerably over the centuries.
And as a result, “it is not a message that is immediately understood — that there is no room for supporting the death penalty in today’s world,” said a Vatican’s expert on capital punishment and arms control.
Because the church has only in the past few decades begun closing the window — if not shutting it completely — on the permissibility of the death penalty, people who give just a partial reading of the church’s teachings may still think the death penalty is acceptable today, said Tommaso Di Ruzza, desk officer at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
St. Thomas Aquinas equated a dangerous criminal to an infected limb thereby making it “praiseworthy and healthful” to kill the criminal in order to spare the spread of infection and safeguard the common good.
However, over the centuries, justice has evolved from being the smiting arm of revenge toward a striving for reform and restoration, much like today’s medical science, where amputation is no longer the only recourse for curing an infection.
Modern-day popes have reflected that change in attitude.
As far back as the 19th and early 20th centuries theologians pondered the seeming paradox between the Fifth Commandment, “You shall not kill,” and the church’s dark history of condoning state-held executions to deal with heresy and other threats and crimes.
Pope Paul VI took concrete action in distancing the church from this form of punishment, first by formally banning the use of the death penalty in Vatican City State, although no one had been executed under the authority of the Vatican’s temporal governance since 1870.
Pope Paul also spoke publicly against planned executions and called for clemency for death-row inmates. Pope John Paul II also would punctuate his Angelus and general audience talks with impassioned appeals to spare the life of a prisoner on the verge of execution.
Full Article: CNS
