15) Pontius Pilate said to Jesus, “You do not speak to me? Do You not know that I have authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify You?”

Jesus answered, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above.”(John 19:10-11). “Jesus reminds Pilate that the implementation of the death penalty is a divinely entrusted responsibility that is to be justly implemented. Prof. Carl F.H. Henry, 45th Annual N.A.E. Convention, “Capital Punishment and The Bible”. Jesus confirms that the civil authority has the lawful right to execute Jesus, and others, and that this right has been given to that authority by God.

16) ” . . . pronouncements about divine behavior (in the Hebrew Bible) correlated in the judicial context to attitudes toward death as a proper punishment. Quite clearly, the New Testament carries on the earlier mentality.” As Jesus described in the Sermon on the Mount, “Obedience will be rewarded with life; disobedience will be punished with destruction. A God who rewards with life and punishes with death is One whose laws provide for death as a judicial punishment.” Dr. Baruch Levine, “Capital Punishment,”

Jesus ‘HE WHO SPEAKS EVIL OF FATHER OR MOTHER, LET HIM BE PUT TO DEATH’ (Matthew 15:1-9).

contd

13) God, through the power and justice of the Holy Spirit, executed both Ananias and his wife, Saphira. Their crime? Lying to the Holy Spirit – to God – through Peter. Acts 5:1-11. By executing two such devoted Christians for lying to Him, does the Holy Spirit show confirmation of His support for His divinely instituted civil punishment of execution for premeditated murder or does it show His rejection of capital punishment? And read all of Revelation.

14) Jesus “You have heard the ancients were told, ÀúYOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER” and “Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court”. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever shall say to his brother, “Raca”, shall be guilty before the supreme court and whoever shall say, “You fool”, shall be guilty enough to go into fiery hell.” Jesus, Matthew 5:17-22. Should any explanation be necessary, Jesus is saying that even as execution is the required punishment for murderers, as per the Old Testament, He tells us that those who speak ill of others and have hatred in their heart shall suffer in hell. Not only does Jesus never speak out against the civil authorities just use of execution for murder, He prescribes a much more serious, eternal punishment for those who hate and speak ill of others.

contd

“Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made man. “

SEE Pope John Paul II: Prudential Judgement and the death penalty,
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2007/07/23/pope-john-paul-ii-his-death-penalty-errors.aspx

Therefore, it’s amendment into the catechism was also an error. As time goes by, I think that many more, such as the scholars above, will come forward and that will be made more clear.

Only time will tell.

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 more in conformity with 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 definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself — the cases in which the execution of the offender is an abolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.” (John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 56)”

Since you are interested in citations, having mentioned John Hardon and Avery Dulles, I suspect you are willing to read the magesterium on the iusse. You might find the following to be of value as you continue to struggle with a Catholic perspective of the Death Penalty:
1. USCCB: Catholic Ampaign to End the Death Penalty: http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/national/deathpenalty/dpvatican.shtml
2. Pope John Paul II in 2001: “The Holy See has consistently sought the abolition of the death penalty and his Holiness Pope John Paul II has personally and indiscriminately appealed on numerous occasions in order that such sentences should be commuted to a lesser punishment, which may offer time and incentive for the reform of the guilty, hope to the innocent and safeguard the well-being of civil society itself and of those individuals who through no choice of theirs have become deeply involved in the fate of those condemmed to death.” DECLARATION OF THE HOLY SEE TO THE FIRST WORLD CONGRESS ON THE DEATH PENALTY http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/documents/rc_seg-st_doc_20010621_death-penalty_en.html
3. Intervention by H.E. Archbishop Renato R. Martino. Apostolic Nuncio, Permanent Observer
of the Holy See to the United Nations before the Third Committee of the 54th Session of the General Assembly on Item 116A: Abolition of the Death PenaltynNew York, 2 November 1999
“It is well-known that Pope John Paul II has personally intervened on numerous occasions to appeal for clemency for individuals sentenced to death. He has appealed for a moratorium on recourse to the death penalty, at least on the occasion of the forthcoming Jubilee Year. On 27th January of this year in St Louis, he said: ‘A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is cruel and unnecessary’.” http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/documents/rc_seg-st_doc_02111999_death-penalty_en.html
4. On Monday, January 7th, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI TO THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS ACCREDITED TO THE HOLY SEE FOR THE TRADITIONAL EXCHANGE OF NEW YEAR GREETINGS. Here is an excerpt concerning the Death penalty:
“11. The Holy See for its part never tires of reaffirming these principles and rights, founded on what is essential and permanent in the human person. The Church willingly undertakes this service to the true dignity of human persons, created in the image of God. And on the basis of these considerations, I cannot but deplore once again the continual attacks perpetrated on every continent against human life. I would like to recall, together with many men and women dedicated to research and science, that the new frontiers reached in bioethics do not require us to choose between science and morality: rather, they oblige us to a moral use of science. On the other hand, recalling the appeal made by Pope John Paul II on the occasion of the Jubilee Year 2000, I rejoice that on 18 December last the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution calling upon States to institute a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, and I earnestly hope that this initiative will lead to public debate on the sacred character of human life.” http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2008/january/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080107_diplomatic-corps_en.html

I hope these might be a little light from the Church’s perspective on the affront to Human Dignity that the Death Penalty and how it insults the very Image of the Creator among us.
fr. Charles

Death Penalty Support: Modern Catholic Scholars
Dudley Sharp

There are thoughtful writings on both sides of this debate, but the pro death penalty side is much stronger. Any Catholic in good standing can call for more executions, if their prudential judgement calls for it.

1) Avery Cardinal Dulles

The Church may return to a “more traditional posture” on the death penalty and just war. ” . . . used sparingly and with safeguards to protect the interests of justice, both the death penalty and war have, over the centuries, been recognized by the church as legitimate, sometimes even obligatory, exercises of state power.” “An unpublished interview with Avery Dulles”, All Things Catholic, John L. Allen, Jr., NCRcafe.org, 12/19/08, http://ncrcafe.org/node/2340

2) Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., considered one of the most prominent Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century.

“There are certain moral norms that have always and everywhere been held by the successors of the Apostles in communion with the Bishop of Rome.” ” . . . they are irreversibly binding on the followers of Christ until the end of the world.” “Such moral truths are the grave sinfulness of contraception and direct abortion. Such, too, is the Catholic doctrine which defends the imposition of the death penalty.” “Most of the Church’s teaching, especially in the moral order, is infallible doctrine because it belongs to what we call her ordinary universal magisterium.”

Pope Pius XII insists “that capital punishment is morally defensible in every age and culture of Christianity.” ” . . . the Church’s teaching on ‘the coercive power of legitimate human authority’ is based on ‘the sources of revelation and traditional doctrine.’ It is wrong, therefore ‘to say that these sources only contain ideas which are conditioned by historical circumstances.’ On the contrary, they have ‘a general and abiding validity.’ (Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 1955, pp 81-2).” “Capital Punishment: New Testament Teaching”, Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., 1998, http://www.therealpresence.org/archives/Sacred_Scripture/Sacred_Scripture_014.htm

3) Romano Amerio, a Vatican insider, scholar, professor at the Academy of Lugano, consultant to the Preparatory Commission of Vatican II, and a peritus (expert theologian) at the Council.

“The most irreligious aspect of this argument against capital punishment is that it denies its expiatory value which, from a religious point of view, is of the highest importance because it can include a final consent to give up the greatest of all worldly goods. This fits exactly with St. Thomas‚Äôs opinion that as well as canceling out any debt that the criminal owes to civil society, capital punishment can cancel all punishment due in the life to come. His thought is . . . Summa, ‘Even death inflicted as a punishment for crimes takes away the whole punishment due for those crimes in the next life, or a least part of that punishment, according to the quantities of guilt, resignation and contrition; but a natural death does not.” ” . . . expiation is primarily a recognition of the divine majesty and lordship, which can be and should be recognized at every moment, in accordance with the principle of the concentration of one‚Äôs moral life.” “. . . (the death penalty) has the highest expiatory value possible among natural things, precisely because life is the highest good among the relative goods of this world; and it is by consenting to sacrifice that life, that the fullest expiation can be made.” “Amerio on capital punishment “, Chapter XXVI, 187. The death penalty, from the book Iota Unum, 5/25/07, http://www.domid.blogspot.com/2007/05/amerio-on-capital-punishment.html

SEE Pope John Paul II: Prudential Judgement and the death penalty,
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2007/07/23/pope-john-paul-ii-his-death-penalty-errors.aspx

copyright 2006-2009, Dudley Sharp Permission for distribution of this document, in whole or in part, is approved with proper attribution.