A highly recommended book that sheds the patient, clear light of reason on the issue of capital punishment. Every U.S. bishop should read it…
In recent years, position statements and lobbying efforts of the USCCB have ranged across a wide variety of prudential issues, from global warming and tax policy to immigration and the death penalty.
There are many policy approaches to such issues that might conform to the precepts of legitimate Catholic social teaching, so Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Church, requires that action on in this area be left to the laity.
However, leaders and bureaucrats at the USCCB routinely violate that magisterial teaching, and pretend that theirs is the only permissible “Catholic” position when they choose a particular agenda item to champion.
Over the years, this bad habit has put the faithful in a position of delicacy, patiently and charitably reminding the bishops that they are trespassing in the realm that is the property of the laity…
Feser and Bessette’s monumental work is so welcome in so many ways. It offers a model for the thorough, careful, and charitable approach that the faithful must embrace to address the myriad of issues that lie in the realm of the laity…
Regarding capital punishment, the bishops’ strenuous advocacy is well-known…
Yes, Popes St. John Paul II and Benedict have called for its abolition; they stressed that their opinions were not magisterial, but that rational voice has faded. So today it falls to the laity to explain the principles underlying the issues of crime and punishment, laying out the arguments to explain the principles in the light of the rich tradition of Catholic thought. After all, the laity has a fundamental right to the truth, including when it comes to capital punishment.
And the truth is exactly what Feser and Bessette offer in their impressive study. Since popular arguments against the death penalty are often based on sentiment, they take great care in presenting a clear and rational discussion to shed the patient, clear light of reason on the issue. The authors do a masterful job, addressing the issue of capital punishment from the point of view of the Natural Law, Church teaching, and theological and philosophical anthropology…
Yes, busy bishops must often assign to their staffs, lawyers, and advisers the detailed studies that inform the positions they take publicly. Well, it’s time for a change: Simply put, every bishop should read this book.
Can he deal with its rational analysis shorn of sentiment and opinion? The authors have written so clearly and cogently that the reader who supports abolishing the death penalty can at least say that he has honestly considered the best possible arguments against his own position. In fact, the authors make the bishops’ arguments better than they make them themselves! …
This beautifully researched and clearly written work will now become the standard Catholic work on capital punishment.