Pope Francis, the Death Penalty, the 2nd Amendment and Fundamentalism

It reads like a headline from the Babylon Bee: 

Catholics Upset Because Pope Francis Doesn't Want Them To Kill People Anymore.

The truth is often stranger than fiction, as the saying goes.

Pope Francis has recently updated Catholic Church teaching by declaring that the death penalty is "inadmissible."

Controversy has erupted. Some argue over whether Church teaching can truly "change" at all. Others take issues with the updated teaching itself.

I wonder why so many people seem to want the death penalty. I can understand (though not necessarily agree with) the argument that the death penalty may at some times be regrettably necessary. But even so, it should always be a last resort and something very sad. It means all other options have failed (and that those other options have been tried and tried again), and that's nothing to celebrate. I wish I saw as much passion from people working hard for envision alternatives to the death penalty as I do from those who want to keep it.

Still, I've been struggling with trying to figure out what actually happened with Francis' pronouncement. I wholeheartedly support the Church moving more clearly in the direction of love, life and nonviolence, but when I try to "work out the theological math" so to speak, I have been left skeptical. My issues have nothing do with whether or not doctrine can develop (as some argue), because I'm convinced it can and has (see below under the section "Fundamentalism"). My questions are about the theological implications of the pronouncement itself.

Here's why:

If the death penalty is "inadmissible" in every single case and condition--including cases of absolute self-defense--then the Catholic Church has taken a step toward a paradigm of nonviolence and pacifism. That would be huge.

If not, then what has happened is that Francis has simply clarified the teaching that was already there and changed the wording to prevent misunderstandings. The real leap forward came with Pope John Paul II.

As I explained in a previous article, the death penalty has already been de facto inadmissible in the previous version of the Catholic Catechism. That Catechism contains this line: "the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty." However, what follows is a very strict conditional clause: "if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor." It even goes on to spell out that such cases where the death penalty could be admissible in modern society "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent." If that weren't enough, the Catholic Church even put this section about the death penalty under the category of "Legitimate Defense" just to make sure there would be no confusion. 

In short: The Church is not supporting the right of nations to dole out God's punishments, but it does not deny the right to legitimate defense, even if such instances are only hypothetical in the modern world.

For reasons that I have a hard time understanding, many people took that to mean the death penalty was still up for debate. It's not. Simple reading comprehension will tell you that. And this was long before Francis.

The U.S. 2nd Amendment and Other Matters of Interpretation

Church teaching is one thing; how that teaching is interpreted is wholly another.

Catholic blogger Jack Quirk penned a blog entry that gets to the heart of the matter. He mentions how Francis' update to the Catechism negates "prudential judgment" interpretations. This is key. Many take some parts of Catholic Church teaching more literally than other parts. To that latter category, they apply "prudential judgment," which is a fancy way of saying they take the teaching prayerfully and seriously but not authoritatively or literally. Francis is saying that you cannot apply prudential judgment to this teaching--it speaks from a higher level of authority.

In addition, a lot of people were reading the Catechism on the death penalty the way many American conservatives currently read the 2nd amendment: They read the first part divorced from the second part in a manner reminiscent of Justice Scalia. In the 2nd amendment, the opening clauses states that the people have to right to bear arms, but that right is nestled within the necessary condition of a well-regulated militia. Most Constitutional scholars have read it that way since the passing of the Bill of Rights. However, the more recent Scalia style of interpretation separates the first part from the latter context. In other words, the "right to bear arms" now stands alone, largely divorced from its context, namely, the condition of a "well-regulated militia."

Many apply that same interpretative style to the Catholic Catechism on the death penalty. As stated above, the first part says that yes, the Church cannot totally rule out the use of the death penalty. But then there is the conditional clause: There must be no other way to save lives and/or protect the common good. With current resources for incarceration and sociological studies overwhelmingly denouncing the death penalty as a deterrent, it is almost impossible to claim the death penalty is "necessary" for protection. However, many Catholics just read the first part saying the Church cannot rule out the use of the death penalty and stood it on its own. They regarded the prevalence of executions through history as the backing of tradition and they just ignored or downplayed the second part about necessary defense. The door was open just a tiny crack but they attempted to drive a truck through it. That's the problem Francis was trying to address, I think.

If we read carefully the previous Catechism, the death penalty is not actually supported--only self-defense is a legitimate use of force, not the death penalty. However, the previous Catechism seems timid about saying that outright, even though that's really the only logical conclusion to take from the text itself. So I see Francis as saying 'let's quit beating around the bush and just tell it like it is.' I don't think Francis is taking away the option for "legitimate defense" and moving the Church towards pacifism, even though he may personally want to do that and I would be sympathetic to that, as well, but that would be a rather significant can of worms to open. 

Maybe I'm wrong and Francis has indeed introduced pacifism. Case in point: Moral theologians will say that through "double effect" reasoning, an execution--which is "inadmissible"--could still happen, but the primary motive would be to protect the common good and the death of the prisoner would be a regrettable secondary outcome. Others (like Stephen Schloeder) argue that Francis has put the death penalty into a category that makes double effect reasoning null and void, as "inadmissible" sounds a lot like "intrinsically evil." This is fodder for moral theologians to hash out in the coming years.

I believe all that Francis did was try to put an end to opportunistic readings of the Catechism in regards to the death penalty. The Church is against it and this is authoritatively said--no more prudential judgment readings nor separating out isolated statements out of their context.

Fundamentalism

Most of the controversy about this move by Francis is over whether doctrine can truly "change" at all. Some claim that everything that appears to be a change in Church teaching is only an adaptation to the signs of the times and not actual doctrinal evolution. Others--especially Church historians--cite instances of legitimate change in Church teaching over its 2,000+ year pilgrim journey.

The whole controversy over doctrinal development is really just the Catholic Church wrestling with its own form of fundamentalism.  In Protestant Fundamentalism, the defining issue is the literal interpretation of the Bible. In Catholic fundamentalism, the claim of fundamentalists is that the teaching authority of the Church (the Magisterium) can never be wrong on matters of faith and morals. Both camps deny history, deny the written word and bend over backwards to try to make all the pieces fit, instead of just admitting that an absolute, unchanging, literal interpretation of either Scripture of Magisterial pronouncements is the actual error.

Just War Theory

Many have noted the similarities between the theologies of the death penalty and Just War Theory. A change in one could bring about a change in the other. Stay tuned . . .

2 Takeaways from Pope Francis Statement on Capital Punishment

Pope Francis recently made bold comments on capital punishment. He called it "contrary to the gospel" and flat out "inadmissible." In these words, we are seeing the culmination of what's been building over the course of several pontificates—John Paul II, especially, but other popes, as well.

There are, at least, two developments happening in Church teaching that I see:

1. Defense, Not Punishment. I assume that Catholic theology would still support some executions if they meet the conditions for the moral category of "necessary defense."  

What I think Pope Francis is saying is that if the death penalty is administered to defend human lives, then it is not actually the death "penalty" at all. It's not done as a punishment. Through double-effect reasoning, the intention would be to protect life rather than to punish wrongdoings. If somehow God's justice if done through this, that's frankly none of our business.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church comes very close to saying this. However, the language is muddy enough to allow confusion: "The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor" [See Catechism, #2267, emphasis added by me.]

The clause that begins with "if" seems to be lost on supporters of the death penalty. The state is not charged with doling out God's punishment. Take away the necessary aspect of defense and the act of executing an aggressor loses any moral justification.

The classic example is a wagon train moving westward in the mid 1800s American frontier. If someone attacks the wagon train and puts the lives of others at risk, the pioneers may have no choice other than to execute the attacker, even if they successfully capture him. There are no prisons to speak of or even any law enforcement at all. They simply don't have the resources to render the attacker "harmless." They have every reason to believe that if they were to release him he's simply going to kill again. As unfortunate as it may be, execution may be the only option to protect the lives of the pioneering party. This is, however, not an act of carrying out God's justice by doling out punishment; rather, it's primarily an act of self-defense—doing what is necessary to protect the common good.

I'd still like to believe that Jesus has opened up a way that would not require any violence, even in the most tragic circumstances. It would also not surprise me in the least if Francis were completely nonviolent himself. However, traditional Catholic teaching has supported the use of some violence in limited circumstances to protect the common good, and I don't read Francis as contradicting that.

2. The State is Not the Arbiter of God Justice. Francis is distancing the Church from the unfortunate theology that sees the state as the administrator of the justice of God. Proponents of this theology like to cite Roman chapter 13 as a proof text.  However, they are forgetting the larger, more consistent biblical message that only God is the Lord over life and death (see 1 Samuel 2:6 and Deuteronomy 32:39).  

The notion that the political state is always* the administrator of God's justice is seriously problematic at best and absurd at worst *("always" added later due to comments below).

The church has always respected the role that governments play and acknowledges they have a legitimate realm of decision-making—true. Governments are charged with protecting the common good, and to the extent that they do that, they may indeed be a conduit for the goodness of God—absolutely. That is why Christians can and should prophetically challenge governments in our quest to make way for the Kingdom of God.  

But given the evil in the world perpetuated by governments, to say that governments are sanctioned by God to do what they do is to deny the obvious. Governments made legal the practice of human trafficking in the form of slavery. The government of Nazi Germany attempted the extermination of the Jewish people and ended up killing over 6 million people in death camps. The government of communist USSR killed millions and sent untold numbers of thinkers, artists and outcasts to die in Siberian work camps. The list could go on and on of heinous acts carried out under the mantle of "justice" by various state entities.

The human tendency to abuse power is bad enough without the underlying (false) belief that this power is sanctioned by God.

What is "sinful" and what is "illegal" are not always the same thing. For example, most governments no longer punish adultery outright through the courts, yet it still remains one of the most serious sins for a Christian. Yet, few people still believe it is the job of the government to settle the score on behalf of God. Adultery is a wound that needs considerable work to heal and atone for, but few see the government as having the authority to do that. In a likewise manner, a murderer does indeed have issues to account for with the victims and with God, but it is not necessarily the job of the state to settle every bit of that.

Christians apply Romans 13 very selectively. It seems to only pertain to the death penalty and a few other affairs but they fail to bring it up on any number of other issues. It makes no sense that we should just blindly submit to the state when it is conducting executions yet challenge the government on everything else it does. Besides, it surprises me that many of the same people who mistrust the government implicitly on just about everything seem to blindly trust the same government to make decisions of life and death in a very flawed criminal justice system.

Pope Francis is making it clear that governments cannot claim Catholic Church support for executions any longer. Francis is on solid ground to state that the Church revokes all support for the death penalty. The Church would not deny the state the right to punish criminals. But it is saying that punishing with an execution is not moral:  The right to life of the convinced criminals, coupled with the opportunity to repent and reform, should come before whatever punishment the state deems appropriate.