New law could mean death penalty for doctors

[Aloysius]

[quote name='ardillacid' date='Sep 2 2005, 01:01 AM']ROFL that sounds funny...why just the God of the Old Testament? God surely cannot change!

But the Church teaches Capital punishment is to be used only in rare cases
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the Church teaches that it should be used with prudential and cautious judgement by the competant authorities.

the prudential judgement of the pope in regards to modern conditions is that it should be rarely if practically never used.

that's important to understand.

[thessalonian]

[quote name='avemaria40' date='Sep 1 2005, 07:53 PM']i thought the Catholic Church opposed the death penalty.   [/quote]

Let's put the proper perspective on this so that we can see that the Church is not opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances. However the view from the Magesterium is generally that, other non-lethal meanse are available in order to protect the public, so that lethal means should be very rare or non-existant.

2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church [b]does not exclude recourse to the death penalty[/b], if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - [b]the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically non-existent."[/b]

Edited September 2, 2005 by thessalonian

[son_of_angels]

Actually, though, that section of the Catechism does also mean that recourse to the death penalty could not only be applied in cases of murder, but in the case of anyone from whom society is unable to be protected.

Murder is, in general, a more preventable, correctable crime than, say, rape or even abortion (by a doctor). These types of people believe they have the right, or the ability to claim the right to kill and influence people's lives negatively, and will continue to do so before and after incarceration. However, murder often is a one-time thing that can be almost a punishment in and of itself.

[popestpiusx]

I say go for it.

It is not murder to execute a murderer. It is called 'justice', which also happens to be virtue. Anyone who attempts to claim that the Catholic Church is against the death penalty (per se) either does not know what the Catholic Church teaches, or is intentionally misleading people to support the leftist cause to end what is a right and duty of natural and divine law possessed by the state.

[Socrates]

[quote name='popestpiusx' date='Sep 2 2005, 04:50 PM']I say go for it. 

It is not murder to execute a murderer. It is called 'justice', which also happens to be  virtue.  Anyone who attempts to claim that the Catholic Church is against the death penalty (per se) either does not know what the Catholic Church teaches, or is intentionally misleading people to support the leftist cause to end what is a right and duty of natural and divine law possessed by the state.
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True. I've gotten sick of having to explain in every debate where the topic gets brought up that the death penalty does not in itself go against Catholic teaching.

This seems ot have been an unfortunately successful tool by the political Left to confuse moral issues - especially the way a politician's stance on the death penalty seems to always equivicated with and "weighed against" supporting abortion.