Book Announcement

The Lampstand Foundation’s imprint, Chulu Press, has published its fourth book, Capital Punishment & Catholic Social Teaching: A Tradition of Support, by David H. Lukenbill, and it is now available, (free to members of the LampStand Foundation) or for sale at Amazon.com.

An excerpt from the Foreword.

“This book is a defense of the scriptural and traditional Catholic position of support for capital punishment as expressed in the two universal catechisms, the Catechism of the Council of Trent, published by Pope Pius V in 1566, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published by Pope John Paul II in 1992 & 1997 (First & Second Edition), in response to calls for its abolition.

“Based on scripture and tradition, calls for abolition are premature, though the call has generated a renewed focus on not only the magisterial history of this most ancient of teachings, but also its theological resonance within the expression of that teaching by the Fathers of the Church—ancient and modern—who most deeply reflected on it.

“While Catholic social teaching has always supported capital punishment, it has been opposed by some in the Catholic hierarchy as an unnecessary criminal justice tool, with current criminal justice technology being presented as providing adequate protection of the innocent against the aggressor, meeting the criteria established by the Holy See (1997):

“2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, 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.

“If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.

“Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm—without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself—the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.” (Holy See. (1997) Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd Ed.) Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, # 2267. Retrieved July 16, 2009)

“Regarding the new restriction embedded in the traditional support, Flannery (2007) responds:

“It is true, of course, that traditional Catholic teaching does not exclude recourse to the death penalty; however, among traditional authors, it would be hard to find expressed the restriction, “when this is the only practicable way to defend lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor.” (Flannery, K. L. (2007). Capital punishment and the law, Ave Maria Law Review, 5, 399-428, p. 414) (Lukenbill, 2009, pp. 9-10)