by Christopher A. Ferrara
October 12, 2017
The very credibility of the Magisterium, the teaching office of the Holy Catholic Church, depends upon its universality and constancy down through the Christian centuries, being based, as it is, on the Deposit of Faith: i.e., divine revelation, including the Gospel and the Commandments of God as explicated by the same Magisterium. The famous formula of St. Vincent of Lerins captures this essence of the Magisterium, describing it as: “quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est (“what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all”). Like God who does not change His mind, the Magisterium cannot reverse itself to suit the views of a particular Pope. The Pope himself is bound to the Church’s constant teaching.
There is no question that the Church has taught constantly, from her beginning and through the reign of John Paul II, that civil authorities may have recourse to capital punishment for the gravest crimes. I have presented the proofs of this here, in an article I wrote for Crisis magazine. Not even John Paul II, who clearly disfavored the death penalty, went so far as to declare it per se immoral in any binding pronouncement, for that would involve a radical contradiction of the Magisterium by “the Magisterium,” which is impossible.
To the contrary, the Catechism that John Paul II promulgated (in § 2267) declares that “the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.” As for the phrase “only possible way of effectively defending human lives,” civil authorities and legislators, not the Pope on some case-by-case basis, are the ones who make that determination.
What, then, are we to make of the assertion in Amoris Laetitia — uttered in passing, moreover — that the Church “firmly rejects the death penalty,” which assertion is in turn based on nothing more than the manipulated Synod’s final relatio, literally foisted upon the Synod Fathers for an up or down vote on less than a day’s notice? And what are we to make of Pope Francis’ recent comment that the Catechism should be amended to state that capital punishment “is, in itself, contrary to the Gospel, because a decision is voluntarily made to suppress a human life, which is always sacred in the eyes of the Creator and of whom, in the last analysis, only God can be the true judge and guarantor”?
How can this view possibly be squared with clearly contrary “traditional teaching of the Church” affirmed in the Catechism? Clearly, what Pope Francis thinks and what the Church teaches are at odds. Consider the unequivocal teaching of Pius XII precisely on the matter of how one who commits a capital crime has forfeited his right to life in civil society:
“Even when it is a question of someone condemned to death, the state does not dispose of an individual’s right to life. It is then the task of public authority to deprive the condemned man of the good of life, in expiation of his fault, after he has already deprived himself of the right to life by his crime.” (AAS, 1952, pp. 779 et. seq.)
Now, reasonable arguments can be made about how the death penalty ought not to be applied for prudential reasons in today’s societies. One such reason is the significant number of those who have been wrongly convicted of capital crimes. But that is a far cry from simply declaring that the death penalty is per se immoral.
So, whom are we to believe? Francis or every Pope before him, as well as the Council of Trent, with whose constant teaching he evidently disagrees? If the Magisterium means anything, it cannot be subjected to reversal based upon the views of a single Pope. Nor can such a reversal be passed off as a “development” of doctrine. The Magisterium would have no credibility whatsoever if it could teach for centuries, up to and including the pontificate of John Paul II, that the death penalty is morally permissible only to turn ‘round and declare exactly the opposite as a “development” of its teaching.
Therefore, here, and in so many other instances during this most unusual pontificate, we can only be dealing with the personal opinion of a particular Pope which, as such, cannot be part of the authentic Magisterium. This pontificate is, in fact, a case study on what the Magisterium is and what it is not. And what it is not is a vehicle for enshrining as Church teaching the views of one Pope as against the teaching of all his predecessors. For if the Magisterium were really reversible on such a basic moral question, it would be no Magisterium at all but rather an uncertain trumpet whose every teaching would sooner or later be subject to change, and the Church would not be a divinely guided institution, teaching constantly and infallibly over the centuries in matters of faith and morals.
May Our Lady of Fatima deliver the Church from the confusion that afflicts her human element today.