{"id":6326,"date":"2016-06-25T11:22:34","date_gmt":"2016-06-25T11:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/06\/25\/pope-francis-on-capital-punishment\/"},"modified":"2016-06-25T11:22:34","modified_gmt":"2016-06-25T11:22:34","slug":"pope-francis-on-capital-punishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/06\/25\/pope-francis-on-capital-punishment\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis on Capital Punishment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The man is a sorry specimen, a disgrace to the papacy. What a come-down from the brilliant and penetrating Joseph Ratzinger.  Part of Bergoglio's latest outburst<\/a>:  <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cNowadays the death penalty is unacceptable, however grave the crime of the convicted person,\u201d the Pope said in his June 22 message to the Sixth World Congress against the Death Penalty, which is being held in Oslo this week.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I stopped reading after this idiotic comment which contains two, count 'em, two mistakes.  'Nowadays' implies that in the past the death penalty was acceptable. So moral truth has changed?  That's one egregious blunder.  Then: "however grave the crime"?<\/span><\/p>\n

So murdering with premeditation  50 night-clubbers and trying to murder them all does not deserve the death penalty?  How about blowing up Manhattan?  Would that deserve the death penalty?  If you say No to either question I pronounce you morally obtuse.  You do not understand the PFC principle: "the punishment must fit the crime."  I am always astonished  when people confuse PFC with some such lex talionis<\/em> principle as "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."  No one, leastways not in the enlightened West, thinks that the rapist ought to be raped, or that the eye-gouger ought to have an eye gouged out.  PFC is a principle of proportionality:  the gravity of the punishment must be adjusted to the gravity of the crime.<\/span><\/p>\n

I can do no better than to refer you to Edward Feser's writings on the topic, for example, In Defense of Capital Punishment<\/a>.  I gather that Ed is at work on a book on the topic.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anecdote.  Dale Tuggy and I were discussing our mutual friend Ed a while back.  I asked, "How does Ed do it all: teach 10 courses a year, write numerous books and articles, give lectures, maintain a consistently excellent weblog, raise six kids (at last count)?"  <\/span><\/p>\n

Dale, who has published on mysterianism<\/a>, replied, "It's a mystery."<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
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\"\"<\/a>'The Punishment Must Fit the Crime' and Lex Talionis<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Pope Francis' Attempt to Put a Christian Face on Islam<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The man is a sorry specimen, a disgrace to the papacy. What a come-down from the brilliant and penetrating Joseph Ratzinger.  Part of Bergoglio's latest outburst:   \u201cNowadays the death penalty is unacceptable, however grave the crime of the convicted person,\u201d the Pope said in his June 22 message to the Sixth World Congress against … Continue reading “Pope Francis on Capital Punishment”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}