Catholic Church and Capital Punishment Term Paper

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" (Overburg, 2000) Jesus implores his followers to turn the other cheek.

The example of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, also reminds Catholics "in the prophetic tradition Jesus rejected violence, oppression and alienation. His life and teachings invited people into a new style of living: the reign of God. Intimacy and trust, compassion and forgiveness, concern for justice and nonviolence were key aspects of this new life." (Overburg, 2000) in other words, it is easy to forgive small offences. To forgive large offenses in the tradition of Christ is what is difficult. "What should we forgive? The first response to this question is, quite simply, everything we can," as Catholics, suggests Maria Harris. (Harris, 2000)

She provides the humbling examples in other parts of the world where different groups have struggled with the issue of forgiveness of the most horrifying acts. For instance, Australians have proclaimed a day of forgiveness for sins against aborigines. The bishops of France have apologized for the Church's silence during the Nazi occupation. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has worked for the past several years not only to hear confessions from those who tortured and killed during apartheid, but also in many cases to grant them amnesty. (Harris, 2000) These examples are examples of forgiveness for mass killings, not isolated acts of murder.

Yet in the past history of the church, some theologians have allowed for the practice of capital punishment. For St. Thomas Aquinas the answer to the question if the death penalty should ever be allowed is "if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good."(Campion 1967, 80). Modern, Catholic opponents say Aquinas' position is commensurate with killing for self-defense, but not formal, state-sanctioned death when the offending sinner is incarcerated and no longer dangerous to the community.

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Kevin Overburg might add, in continuation of his discussion on adapting morality to the times, that Aquinas lived in a harsher world than today, and the modern system of prisons allow us to shield us from offending, infectious souls, and the world community of democracies rejects the practice of capital punishment. But to argue community judgment would also require Catholics to accept abortion and birth control in America. In fact, in the middle ages, although the death penalty was practiced, there were also quite lenient penalties for murder that would be unacceptable today, as such "other alternatives were made possible as "the custom spread of permitting an offender to perform a pilgrimage to some famous religious shrine in place of another penalty for murder or other grave crime."(Campion 1967, 80).

Regardless, this example, and the diversity of reasoning deployed even by the faith's most devoted adherents of the past and today, and on the same side of the death penalty debate within the Church, shows that this issue of the death penalty and capital punishment is far from resolved. A consensus within the faith community indicates capital punishment is contrary to the teachings of Christ, but in terms of the theological reasoning and justification for this -- that still remains a point of contention, rhetorically and in terms of Church rationales.

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