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Dulles argues that the Church teaches that punishments, including the death penalty, may be levied for four reasons: [22] Rehabilitation – The sentence of death can and sometimes does move the condemned person to repentance and conversion. The death penalty may be a way of achieving the criminal's reconciliation with God.
One of the changes in the 1997 update consisted of the inclusion of the position on the death penalty that is defended in John Paul II's encyclical Evangelium vitae of 1995. [28] [better source needed] The paragraph dealing with the death penalty (2267) was revised again by Pope Francis in 2018. The text previously stated (1997): [29]
The moral liceity of the death penalty had support from early Catholic theologians, though some of them such as Saint Ambrose encouraged members of the clergy not to pronounce or carry out capital punishment. Saint Augustine answered objections to capital punishment rooted in the first commandment in The City of God. [2]
It calls on States that maintain the death penalty to establish a moratorium on the use of the death penalty with a view to abolition, and in the meantime, to restrict the number of offences which it punishes and to respect the rights of those on death row. It also calls on States that have abolished the death penalty not to reintroduce it.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church proclaims that "in the light of the Gospel" the death penalty is "an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person". [92] Pope Francis has also proclaimed that life imprisonment is a form of torture and "a hidden [form of the] death penalty". [93]
By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of the Death Penalty (with Joseph M. Bessette) (Ignatius Press, 2017) ISBN 978-1-62164-126-1 Five Proofs of the Existence of God (Ignatius Press, 2017) ISBN 978-1-62164-133-9
The death penalty is contrary to the meaning of humanitas and to divine mercy, which must be models for human justice. It entails cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, as is the anguish before the moment of execution and the terrible suspense between the issuing of the sentence and the execution of the penalty, a form of “torture” which ...
A culture of life describes a way of life based on the belief that human life begins at conception, and is sacred at all stages from conception through natural death. [1] It opposes abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment (also known as the death penalty), [note 1] studies and medicines involving embryonic stem cells, and contraception, because they are seen as destroying life.