Civil War in the Catholic Church, Part XXIV

The current Pope, a Jesuit with a bad case of running-mouth, has managed to muddy the clear waters of Catholic teaching on more than one occasion.  For the past year, his deliberately ambiguous statement on divorced-and-remarried Catholics have been under attack by hundreds of clergy and laymen.  (N.B.:  the term 'divorced-and-remarried' is short-form, not nuanced.)  He loosed another swirl of foofoodust with his effusive praise of Luther, managing to confuse the grace/works doctrine in the process. 

Now the Jebby Pope has gone even farther into the swamp of confusion with his remarks on the death penalty. 

Ed Feser is a Catholic and a professor of philosophy in California.  Feser has studied the question of the death penalty extensively.

...“When Pope Francis says that capital punishment is ‘in itself contrary to the Gospel,’ and ‘inadmissible … no matter how serious the crime,’ he seems to be contradicting traditional teaching,” said Dr. Edward Feser, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in California...

Some of you remember that JPII modified Church teaching on the DP, suggesting that in wealthy societies (i.e., most of the West), life imprisonment could be substituted for the DP.  But JPII did not say that the DP is intrinsically wrong.

...Both the Old and New Testaments indicate that the death penalty can be legitimate. For instance, Genesis 9:6 states: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.” Or again, St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans teaches that the state “does not bear the sword in vain (but) is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.”

Feser said previous popes have “consistently” reaffirmed the legitimacy of capital punishment and have “insisted that accepting its legitimacy is a requirement of Catholic orthodoxy.”...

For clarity:  I am NOT a fan of the DP; I think JPII's idea is perfectly serviceable in the US.

Here in Milwaukee we had a microcosm of this under the reign of Rembert Weakland.  There was a benefit:  Catholics who cared were forced to study up on the Catechism.  I guess it's time to start that study all over again.