Cardinal Dulles and capital punishment

December 31, 2008

Writing today in The Weekly Standard, Mark Tooley, a Methodist, takes note of the late Cardinal Avery Dulles’s contribution to the discussion within the Church on capital punishment. Cardinal Dulles emphasized that “the Catholic magisterium does not, and never has, advocated unqualified abolition of the death penalty. I know of no official statement from popes or bishops, whether in the past or in the present, that denies the right of the State to execute offenders at least in certain extreme cases.”

“The death penalty,” Cardinal Dulles continued, “is not in itself a violation of the right to life. The real issue for Catholics is to determine the circumstances under which that penalty ought to be applied. It is appropriate, I contend, when it is necessary to achieve the purposes of punishment and when it does not have disproportionate evil effects.” Echoing the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Dulles added, “I say ‘necessary’ because I am of the opinion that killing should be avoided if the purposes of punishment can be obtained by bloodless means.”

In a talk at Emory University, Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta offered a positive assessment of Cardinal Dulles’s position.

 

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Further information:

• Dulles and the Death Penalty: Upholding the classical Catholic tradition about capital punishment (Weekly Standard)
• Cardinal Dulles: Catholicism and Capital Punishment (First Things)
• Archbishop Gregory: The Church's Evolving View on the Death Penalty (Catholic Culture)