Papal eraser

1. Pope Francis has rewritten the Catechism to forbid capital punishment across the board. Here's the official announcement:

http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2018/08/02/0556/01210.html#letteraing

And here's the newly worded position in the CCC: 

Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.

Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.

Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.

2. There are two ways to evaluate this reversal: One is to judge it by an external standard of comparison. Namely, the biblical warrant for capital punishment. The other is to judge it by an internal standard of comparison. Namely, consistency or inconsistency with traditional Catholic teaching. I'll begin with the first. 

i) The locus classicus for capital punishment is Gen 9:5-6. That grounds capital punishment in the imago Dei. Murder is an assault on divine image-bearers. That's a timeless rather than a timebound principle. So long as humans bear the image of God, and that's an essential feature of our humanity, then the underlying justification for capital punishment remains the same. 

In addition, the required punishment is poetic justice or lex talionis. A fitting symmetry between the nature of the offense and the nature of the penalty. 

As such, the warrant for capital punishment is primarily retributive justice, and not its deterrent value. Even if the death penalty had no deterrent value whatsoever, the rationale would remain unaffected. It's a matter of principle, not pragmatics. 

ii) In addition, the text doesn't put the "dignity" of the murderer on a par with the dignity of the murder victim. To the contrary, if we're going to use that category, the affront to the dignity of the victim, or to God's honor, since the victim represents God via the imago Dei, trumps the dignity of the murderer.  

3. I believe Germain Grisez kicked off this debate among the Catholic intelligentsia: 

http://www.twotlj.org/OW-ajj5.pdf

4. Reaction to the change is varied. Elite Catholic thinkers like Robert George, Ryan Anderson, and Christopher Tollefsen, who share the outlook of Grisez, have no problem with the change. Let's sample some other respondents:

Adrian Vermeule

Obedience to an epistemological authority only becomes genuine when the authority asserts an X that you disagree with, perhaps vehemently. If you only “obey” when you happen to agree with X independently, it’s not obedience at all.

Catholic apologists like Bryan Cross use the same argument. However, one problem with that argument (bracketing other objections) is that it only works if the epistemological authority is consistent. If, however, the new position represents a reversal of traditional Catholic teaching, then it's not possible for Catholics to be obedient since there's no one epistemological authority to obey, and different epistemological authorities take divergent positions, thereby making contradictory claims on the allegiance of Catholics. Are Catholics supposed to obey the epistemological authority of traditional Catholic teaching, or its abrogation under John-Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis? You have papal traffic cops giving discrepant directions. 

Peter D. Williams

No teaching has changed. Sooo... there goes that false argument. What is happening here is a contradiction, but Ecclesiastical mangling of a Catechism do [sic] not & cannot change the unchangeable Deposit of Faith. Catholics are not hostages to the mistakes of the institutional Church.

But according to his fellow Catholic spokesman (Adrian Vermeule), Catholics are hostages to the institutional church. Obedience is only genuine when you submit to something you disagree with. If you do it just because it coincidentally agrees with what you already believe, that's not obedience at all. To say this reflects a "mistake" of the institutional church or contradiction with past settled teaching, is insubordinate. 

Peter D. Williams

The Catechism is not Church doctrine. A Catechism is a descriptive compendium of Church teaching found in other sources.

That may be true in a narrow technical sense, but isn't the CCC designed to be the primary reference work for the laity? If they want to know what Catholics are supposed to believe on doctrine and ethics, that's the first thing they should reach for. That's why JP2 & Ratzinger promulgated the CCC in the first place. To provide an authoritative interpretation of post-Vatican II theology. To lock in the interpretation favored by JP2 & Ratzinger. It's intended to give Catholics a reliable, fairly systematic overview of official Catholic teaching. Not just a compendium, but a trustworthy compendium.

By Peter's logic, the CCC is untrustworthy. You need to read it with two or more magic markers of different colors to distinguish the infallible bits from the errant bits. But that defeats the purpose of having the CCC in the first place. The CCC is supposed to function as a benchmark, and not something Catholic readers must evaluate by comparing it to some other benchmark. 

Trent Horn

Regarding the death penalty 1) The Catechism is not infallible and has been changed before 2) Non-infallible teachings can change 3) changes in the world can change the morality of some acts (like how markets made non-usurious loans possible).

Several issues: 

i) John Paul II declared the CCC to be a "sure norm for teaching the faith", and Catholic apologists incessantl contrast certain truths of Catholicism to the uncertain beliefs of Protestants. 

ii) Yes, "changes in the world can change the morality of some acts", yet the fundamental rationale for capital punishment isn't prudential but based on the nature of man as the imago Dei. That's invariant in time and place. So long as humans are human, the warrant and obligation to inflict the death penalty in case of murder is unalterable. 

iii) By the same token, the text says the death penalty is "inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person." But while the world has changed in some respects, human nature remains the same. So the repeal of traditional Catholic teaching in this respect can't be defended by appeal to changing circumstances. 

iv) Moreover, it's a wild overgeneralization to say circumstances are so different throughout the world that the original rationale is defunct. There's no empirical justification for such a sweeping claim. Rather, this is a case where recent popes what to change the status quo, and cast about for ad hoc excuses. The blanket statement has no factual tenability–as if conditions in the modern world are uniform. 

v) This is not a development of immemorial tradition, but a development of John-Paul II's theological innovations. A doctrinal fiat ex nihilo. 

vi) Circular justification. How do you know when Catholic teachings are fallible? Only if they change. That means you don't know ahead of time what's fallible or infallible. When Catholic teaching changes, you know after the fact that it was fallible. So the distinction is retrospective rather than prospective. Future, not present. That means Catholics are routinely in the dark, thanks to the doctrine of development. They can see behind, but not ahead. With the benefit of hindsight, you can know some things are fallible, but you never know what's infallible. Catholic teaching is written in pencil rather than ink, and every pope has a jumbo eraser.