Kwasniewski, Fr. Murray, Death Site News promote falsehoods on capital punishment.

n Ray­mond P.W. Arroy­o’s anti-Fran­cis pro­pa­gan­da show The World Over, Fr. Ger­ald Mur­ray, of the posse, said he had no idea, none, why the pope would think the death penal­ty vio­lates the dig­ni­ty of the human per­son. Mur­ray is mys­ti­fied. Death Site News tells the tale of his woe.

Pos­si­bly Pope Fran­cis might think so because Pope St. John Paul II had already said it him­self. Just a guess. It’s in Evan­geli­um Vitae. Per­haps Fr. Mur­ray has read it; though, I begin to won­der whether he mere­ly skimmed it for the parts about abor­tion. It’s been known to hap­pen.

What­ev­er the case might be, JP2 explains to us very ear­ly in the text why God pro­tect­ed Cain from the death penal­ty. It’s in §9; tolle, lege. “Not even a mur­der­er,” he says, “los­es his per­son­al dig­ni­ty.” That is to say, had Cain been exe­cut­ed for the mur­der of Abel, it would have reflect­ed, in some way, a loss of “per­son­al dig­ni­ty.”

Lat­er, when speak­ing again of the death penal­ty, St. John Paul II lauds the “grow­ing ten­den­cy … to demand that it be applied in a very lim­it­ed way or even that it be abol­ished com­plete­ly.” “Penal jus­tice,” he says, must be “ever more in line with human dig­ni­ty.” It is more in line with human dig­ni­ty to reha­bil­i­tate a crim­i­nal than exe­cute him.

So I am afraid that Pope Fran­cis did not just make this up. I hate to break the news to the mys­ti­fied Mur­ray. I do great­ly won­der that P.W.’s Posse, not all that long ago, lament­ed with great lament­ing that Pope Fran­cis some­how con­tra­dict­ed Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio; yet now, that wery same posse sits in shock at what any fool can read in Evan­geli­um Vitae. You explain that.

But it was­n’t just St. John Paul II. Pope Bene­dict XVI said the wery same thing. Even he. In a Gen­er­al Audi­ence of Novem­ber 30, 2011, B16 urged leg­is­la­tors to “elim­in­nate the death penal­ty and to con­tin­ue the sub­stan­tive progress made in con­form­ing penal law both to the human dig­ni­ty of pris­on­ers and the effec­tive main­te­nance of pub­lic order.” Abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty is more in keep­ing with “the human dig­ni­ty of pris­on­ers.”

Per­haps I err, but I don’t recall P.W. round­ing up a posse to decry the hereti­cal inno­va­tions of Pope Bene­dict XVI. I don’t recall skulls melt­ing at Death Site News. I don’t recall Phil Lawler claim­ing to be con­fused in those years.

But yes, Pope Fran­cis got it from Bene­dict XVI, too. I mar­vel at Fr. Mur­ray’s igno­rance. I mean, these quo­ta­tions are all in the let­ter that Pope Fran­cis sent to bish­ops. Did Mur­ray not read that let­ter before he gath­ered once more with the posse? Very care­less.

Not to be out­done, Dorothy Cum­mings McLean at Death Site obnox­ious­ly adds: “LGBT ‘Catholic’ groups have already put for­ward the posi­tion that if the Pope can reverse Church teach­ing on the death penal­ty, then he should be able to do the same for homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.”

But the pope has­n’t “reversed” any­thing. Pope Fran­cis has devel­oped the teach­ing in the very direc­tion it had been going in the first place: Don’t kill unless you have to. In 2018, we don’t have to. This should be cause to rejoice if you are pro-life as you claim.

If the pope want­ed to “reverse” the teach­ing, he would have said some­thing like: “You know, that JP, he told us that legit­i­mate rea­sons for the death penal­ty aren’t much to be found these days. He said we should do away with it. So did Papa Ben. But who needs rea­sons? Round the bas­tards up. I’m telling you to kill, kill, kill. I want to see blood and gore and guts and veins in your teeth. Kill! Kill!”

That would be a rever­sal.

Now, it’s pos­si­ble Death Site News does not know what the mean­ing of the word “reversed” is. That’s kinder than oth­er things that could be said.

But then, in his absurd arti­cle, Dr. Peter Kwasniewski—the Infal­li­ble Petrus K. himself—claims that the pope has made it all up out of thin air. (Well, he says ex nihi­lo, because you have to say it in Latin.) The rea­son Petrus K. knows it was ex nihi­lo is because Fran­cis only cites his own words on Octo­ber 11, 2017.

That’s false. Dr. P.K. seems not to have read the let­ter to bish­ops either. Where do Arroyo and Death Site find these slop­py shirk­ers? (Don’t answer that.) Let’s look at the pope’s cita­tions.

He cites Evan­geli­um Vitae. “Not even a mur­der­er los­es his per­son­al dig­ni­ty,” St. John Paul II writes, “and God him­self pledges to guar­an­tee this.” (Are you pay­ing atten­tion, Fr. Mur­ray? Petrus, you got your ears open?) The pope cites John Paul II’s under­stand­ing that the cas­es in which the death penal­ty is jus­ti­fied “are very rare if not prac­ti­cal­ly non-exis­tent.”

(Inci­den­tal­ly, when you go from “prac­ti­cal­ly non-exis­tent” to “non-exis­tent,” that’s a devel­op­ment, not a “rever­sal.” Death Site News should invest in a dic­tio­nary.)

The pope cites John Paul II’s Christ­mas Mes­sage of 1998 and his words in the Unit­ed States the fol­low­ing month. JP2 urged an end to the death penal­ty. He said it was “cru­el and unnec­es­sary.” “The dig­ni­ty of human life,” he said, “must nev­er be tak­en away.”

Are you pay­ing atten­tion, Fr. Mur­ray? Petrus, you got your ears open? This is John Paul II who says this. Quite a lot here about the death penal­ty tak­ing away the dig­ni­ty of human life. But no, Fran­cis just made it all up, you see. EWTN should take a close look at some of the scan­dalous non­sense get­ting vom­it­ed almost dai­ly on Mr. Arroy­o’s show. They won’t but they should. But you know, if John Paul II is urg­ing an end to the death penal­ty and say­ing it is “cru­el and unnec­es­sary,” that’s pret­ty close to “inad­mis­si­ble,” don’t you think? Where’s the “rever­sal,” Death Site? Where’s the ex nihi­lo, Petrus?

He cites Bene­dict XVI, who also urged an end to the death penal­ty. Pos­si­bly Bene­dict XVI may also have thought that it is “inad­mis­si­ble.”

So none of this is exact­ly ex nihi­lo, regard­less of what Dr. P.K. or Fr. Mur­ray say to the con­trary. For these rea­sons, the pope explains in his let­ter, the update to the Cat­e­chism is “in con­ti­nu­ity with the pre­ced­ing Mag­is­teri­um.” It is “authen­tic devel­op­ment of doc­trine that is not in con­tra­dic­tion with the pri­or teach­ings of the Mag­is­teri­um.”

That is exact­ly right. Either you are igno­rant of the teach­ing of John Paul II and Bene­dict XVI on this point, and just need to have it point­ed out to you. Or, you know per­fect­ly well what they taught and—but I will end this post here.