Tennessee “Bishops” Betray Catholic Doctrine on Capital Punishment
The Catholic News Agency portal (November 11, 2025) reports that Tennessee’s “bishops” – J. Mark Spalding, David P. Talley, and Mark Beckman – issued a joint statement demanding abolition of capital punishment ahead of Harold Wayne Nichols’ scheduled execution. These conciliar sect officials claim “the Catholic Church upholds the sacredness of every human life” while citing antipope Leo XIV’s heretical equation: “Someone who says ‘I’m against abortion’ but says ‘I am in favor of the death penalty’ is not really pro-life.” Their statement reduces Church teaching to sentimental humanitarianism, omitting all reference to the state’s God-given duty to punish evil (Romans 13:4) and the Church’s immutable tradition.
Subversion of Thomistic Justice Through Naturalistic Sentimentality
The conciliar officials declare: “To take a life in punishment denies the image of God in which every person is made.” This directly contradicts St. Thomas Aquinas’ teaching: “By sinning man departs from the order of reason, and consequently falls away from human dignity… he falls into the slavery of beasts” (Summa Contra Gentiles III, 112). Pius XII in Discourse to Medical Specialists (September 13, 1952) affirmed: “When the State exercises its right to suppress the lives of criminals, it does not usurp a power over life that belongs to God alone.”
Their selective quotation of Church history omits the Catechism of the Council of Trent which taught capital punishment serves “the public good by removing from the world men confirmed in evil” (Part III, 5, 4). Pius XII’s Ci Riesce (1953) maintained the death penalty remains licit when required for “the efficacious protection of human life against the aggressor.” The “bishops'” claim that execution extinguishes “the chance for repentance” denies the Catholic truth that God grants sufficient grace for conversion even in the condemned’s final moments, as witnessed by saints like the Good Thief.
Heretical Conflation of Innocent Life With Criminal Guilt
Antipope Leo XIV’s quoted statement – “I’m against abortion… but am in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life” – constitutes formal heresy by equating the intrinsic evil of murdering innocents with the state’s potestas gladii (power of the sword). The Syllabus of Errors condemned proposition #64 which justified rebellion against legitimate authority, while Pius IX’s Quanta Cura denounced those who “falsely imagine that the power of the State is without any limits.”
By reducing justice to therapeutic concern for the criminal’s rehabilitation, these officials embrace the Modernist error condemned in Pius X’s Lamentabili Sane: “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Proposition 26). Their appeal to lethal injection protocols reveals utilitarianism – evaluating punishments by emotional reaction rather than moral principles.
Omission of Christ’s Social Kingship
Nowhere do these “bishops” reference Christ’s royal authority over civil society as taught in Pius XI’s Quas Primas: “Rulers of states… fulfill this duty themselves and with their people… let them fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.” Their statement reduces the Church’s mission to secular activism rather than demanding Tennessee’s laws conform to the Kingship of Christ.
The conciliar sect’s death penalty opposition constitutes part of its broader apostasy from Catholic social doctrine. As Archbishop Lefebvre warned in They Have Uncrowned Him: “This humanitarian religion seeks temporal happiness… It is the reign of man instead of the reign of Christ.” True shepherds would demand the state fulfill its divine mandate to “not bear the sword in vain; for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil” (Romans 13:4), not undermine its God-given authority.
Source:
Tennessee Catholic bishops call for an end to the death penalty (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 11.11.2025