Richard Hooker, Tradition, and the Death Penalty
Yesterday Pope Francis revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church in several places. Most notably, he basically removed the "wiggle room" found in the original version with regard to the death penalty, saying that it was "inadmissible" in at least all modern situations (whereas before, the Catechism said it was likely improper in all modern situations). This should not have come as much of a surprise--as Jack Jenkins notes in his piece, Francis more or less telegraphed that he was going to do this last year, and both Popes John Paul II and Benedict have been consistent in their opposition to capital punishment. The merits of this move (which I support fully, for what it is worth) are less interesting to me than the meta-conversation surrounding it. Immediately, the usual suspects jumped to the fore , decrying the move as a repudiation of previous teaching, and thus a repudiation of the Magisterium of the church, and thus creating a divide by zero error that ...