The Death Penalty Abolition Push: A Modernist Subversion of Divine Justice
Catholic News Agency reports on a coalition involving Catholic groups like the Catholic Mobilizing Network and Sister Helen Prejean, alongside secular organizations such as Amnesty International and the ACLU, advocating for the abolition of the death penalty in the U.S. The article highlights rising execution numbers (44 in 2025), declining public support (52%), and claims of systemic unfairness. Sister Prejean frames capital punishment as a “semi-secret ritual,” arguing that exposure to its realities would turn public opinion against it. The coalition seeks bipartisan state-level bans, citing racial disparities, risks of wrongful convictions, and a “pro-life perspective.”
Naturalism Masquerading as Catholic Social Teaching
The coalition’s rhetoric reduces the Church’s eternal doctrine to secular humanitarianism. Quas Primas (1925) unequivocally states that civil authority derives its legitimacy from Christ the King, who delegates the power to “reward and punish men even during their lifetime” (Pius XI). The article’s emphasis on statistical trends (“public support at a 50-year low”) and emotional appeals (“harms inflicted on everyone affected”) ignores the permanent teaching that the state, as God’s minister (Rom. 13:4), may licitly execute grievous offenders to uphold justice and protect society.
Sister Prejean’s misuse of Psalm 85:12—”truth will spring from the earth”—to justify experiential activism (“truth springs up from the experience of people”) epitomizes Modernist subjectivism condemned in Lamentabili Sane (1907): “Revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” (Proposition 20). Her dismissal of the death penalty as a tool for the “worst of the worst” contradicts St. Thomas Aquinas: “The care of the common good is entrusted to those in authority… to punish malefactors by death is not contrary to the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’” (Summa Theologica II-II, q. 64, a. 2).
Collusion With Anti-Catholic Forces
The coalition’s alliance with groups like the ACLU—which champions abortion and gender ideology—exposes its theological bankruptcy. The Syllabus of Errors (1864) anathematizes the notion that “the Church ought to be separated from the State” (Proposition 55) and that “Catholics may approve of… education unconnected with Catholic faith” (Proposition 48). By joining forces with entities hostile to Christ’s reign, the Catholic Mobilizing Network subordinates divine law to the relativistic “dialogue” Vatican II inaugurated.
Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy’s claim that abolishing executions “honor[s] the dignity of all life” ignores the Church’s distinction between innocent life (e.g., the unborn) and guilty aggressors. Pius XII affirmed in 1952: “When it is a question… of suppressing a member of society, the State does not dispose of the individual’s right to life. Rather, it reserves to itself the right to deprive the criminal of life in expiation of his crime” (Address to the First International Congress of Histopathology).
Erasure of the Primacy of Justice
The article’s focus on racial disparities and poverty as death penalty determinants subtly advances Marxist class warfare, a theme Quas Primas warned against when decrying societies “distant from God.” Nowhere does the coalition acknowledge the moral necessity of just punishment. Leo XIII’s Libertas Praestantissimum (1888) clarifies: “The eternal law demands a social order governed by truth… that the license of wrongdoers be restrained.” By reducing capital punishment to a sociological flaw, the coalition denies the objective gravity of sin and the state’s God-given duty to punish it.
Demetrius Minor’s assertion that conservatives increasingly oppose executions “from a pro-life perspective” inverts Catholic priorities. The Catechism of St. Pius X teaches: “The power of life and death is permitted to certain civil magistrates because theirs is the responsibility under law to punish the guilty and protect the innocent.” To equate the execution of murderers with abortion—the slaughter of innocents—is a grotesque moral equivalence.
Omission of Divine Judgment and the Common Good
Most damning is the coalition’s silence on the supernatural ends of justice. Capital punishment, when applied justly, mirrors God’s final judgment and deters evil (Gen. 9:6; Wis. 6:7). The article’s purely utilitarian arguments (“risk of executing innocents,” “costs”) reject the ordo justitiae upheld by pre-1958 popes. Pius XII warned against “exaggerated humanitarianism” that prioritizes the criminal’s comfort over societal protection (Address to Military Doctors, 1944).
Sister Prejean’s activism—focused on humanizing criminals rather than vindicating victims—exemplifies the conciliar sect’s inversion of mercy and justice. As St. Augustine wrote: “Mercy without justice is dissolution; justice without mercy is cruelty” (City of God, XI.12). True Catholic charity demands both compassion for the repentant and firmness against unrepentant evil.
Source:
Catholics join coalition opposed to the death penalty amid execution surge (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 03.12.2025