Fred Martinez
Tuesday, December 18, 2018St. Bellarmine: Francis’s Death Penalty Teaching is “Heretical;” is “Analogous to Denying” Holy Trinity, has “Implications for the Pro-Life Movement [that] would be Catastrophic” & would let loose Murderers like Ted Bundy
Pope Francis just taught, again, a heresy according to Doctor of the Church St. Robert Bellarmine that contradicts the “teachings of scripture [the Revelation of God], the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and previous popes”:
“[T]he Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that death penalty is always inadmissible for the Church is attentive to the inviolability and dignity of the person… the Magisterium of the Church believes that perpetual punishment [life imprisonment], which removes the possibility of moral and existential redemption for the benefit of the condemned person and the community, is a form of hidden death penalty.”
[https://www.lastampa.it/2018/12/18/vaticaninsider/the-pope-moratorium-on-the-death-penalty-no-to-arbitrary-executions-H4nLalvbjc2PzhQ0WXn0fO/pagina.html]
Renowned Catholic philosopher Edward Feser explains why the Francis teaching is Orwellian error, contradicts past teachings and is judged “heretical” by a Doctor of the Church:
“[Doctor of the Church] Bellarmine judged it ‘heretical’ to maintain that Christians cannot in theory apply capital punishment.”
“… Pope Francis, by contrast, wants the Catechism to teach that capital punishment ought never to be used… he justifies this change not on prudential grounds, but ‘so as to better reflect the development of doctrine.'”
“… Nor does the letter from the CDF [Francis’s Vatican doctrine office] explain how the new teaching can be consistent with the teaching of scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and previous popes. Merely asserting the new language “develops” rather than “contradicts” past teachings does not make it so. The CDF is not Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, and a pope is not Humpty Dumpty, able by fiat to make words mean whatever he wants them to. Slapping the label “development” onto a contradiction doesn’t transform it into a non-contradiction.”
(First Things, “Pope Francis and Capital Punishment,” August, 3 2018)
Moreover, Feser shows that it is “analogous to denying the doctrine that there are three divine Persons”:
“Once again the Pope both appears to condemn capital punishment as intrinsically wrong and claims that his remarks are consistent with past teaching. He tries to justify the claim that there is no inconsistency by saying that the Church has always affirmed the dignity of life. But this is analogous to denying the doctrine that there are three divine Persons and then claiming that this is consistent with past teaching, on the grounds that the Church has always affirmed that there is only one God. In fact, the doctrine of the Trinity requires us to say both that there is only one God and that there are three Persons in God. Similarly, consistency with scripture and previous papal teaching requires us to say both that life has dignity but also that an offender can in principle lose the right to his life. To fail to affirm both of these things is precisely to contradict past teaching, not ‘develop’ it.”
Heresy in itself is a great evil, but this erroneous teaching could, also, bring about the evil of promoting more abortions while claiming to be “pro-life.”
Dr. Joseph Shaw, as early as October 20, 2017, showed how the Pope’s death penalty heresy plays into the abortionist game plan with “implications for the pro-life movement [that] would be catastrophic”:
“The Pope speaks in this address with a level of technical precision not always
to be found in his remarks. He says:”
‘It is per se contrary to the Gospel, because it entails the willful suppression of a
human life that never ceases to be sacred in the eyes of its Creator and of which –
ultimately – only God is the true judge and guarantor.’
“This logically implies that the ‘willful suppression of life’ in self-defence and war is also always and everywhere ruled out.”
“This aligns his position with that made famous by the American theologian Prof
Germain Grisez (who, as a matter of fact, wrote an open letter to Pope Francis
protesting about the undermining of the teaching of the Church on marriage, with his longstanding collaborator Prof John Finnis). Grisez argues that warfare is morally possible if we think of soldiers not intending to kill, but intending to incapacitate.”
“This raises the question of whether Pope Francis or his collaborators would like at
some point to take advantage of another implication of Grisez’s position. Grisez’s
view is that it is intrinsically wrong to intend to take a life, and that this is always
wrong (even in a just war). On the other hand, it would be permissible to remove anon-viable fetus from the womb, if the intention was not to kill but to remove the fetus from the womb for the sake of the mother’s health. Indeed, to facilitate this removal, it would be permissible to cut the fetus into pieces first.
(See Germain Grisez ‘Towards a consistent Natural-Law ethics of killing’ American Journal of Jurisprudence 15 (1970) p4; cf. Finnis, Boyle, and Grisez Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987) p311)”
“This view was condemned by Pope St John Paul II in Evangelium vitae 62 (cf. §§40,
60, 63). It should be emphasised that Grisez and his collaborators accepted the
position of Evangelium vitae as binding on Catholics.
The condemnation of the death penalty in all circumstance could be part of a
strategy to adopt this understanding of a consistent pro-life ethic [seamless garment]. While it looks at first like a very strong ‘pro-life’ position, it allows so-called ‘therapeutic abortion’, and
adopting it would enable the Church to make an enormous concession to the
practice of abortion.”
“Is should be noted that the great majority of abortions are carried out under the
justification of the ‘health of the mother’, whether physical or mental, and while
Grisez would insist that few could be truly justified on his theory, it would not be easy
for legislators to distinguish which were and which were not. The practical result of
adopting this approach would be the end of the Catholic campaign against legal
abortion, and the resolution of the confrontation between the Church and the world on this most explosive of issues.”
“In short, the implications for the pro-life movement would be catastrophic.”
(LifeSiteNews interview on the ‘Death Penalty’ address of Pope Francis with Dr.
Joseph Shaw, Oxford professor, October 20, 2017)
Not only is Francis unambiguously professing the material heresy that “the death penalty is inadmissible” which apparently will promote more abortions, but on top of that, he wants to let loose the Ted Bundys to rape and kill or else he is senile or so out of touch with reality that he thinks serial rapist and murderers are miraculously going to stop raping and killing.
[Francis’s material heresy:http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2018/08/unambiguously-pope-francis-formally.html?m=1]
Bundy was a serial murderer and rapist who, also, tortured the victims and even engaged in necrophilia with their bodies.
If Ted Bundy had not received the death penalty and was instead given a sentence of life imprisonment would Pope Francis want Bundy set free?
In 2014 and now in 2018 Francis said:
– “[T]he Magisterium of the Church believes that perpetual punishment [life imprisonment], which removes the possibility of moral and existential redemption for the benefit of the condemned person and the community, is a form of hidden death penalty.”
– “A life sentence is just a death penalty in disguise.” (edwardfeser.blogspot, “The curious case of Pope Francis and the ‘new natural lawyers,'” June 3, 2017)
Pray for Francis because something appears to be seriously wrong with the poor man if he wants to free dangerous criminals and serial predators from prison to kill and rape innocent people.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church.
Pray for Francis because something appears to be seriously wrong with the poor man if he wants to free dangerous criminals and serial predators from prison to kill and rape innocent people.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church.
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