Editor’s Note: Writing in the Sunday bulletin of the Church of St. Michael in New York City, Fr. George W. Rutler talked of the “web of contradiction [that] becomes more entangled in our day when politics are complicated by moral inconsistencies.” He cited three examples:
“First, the birth of Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana occasioned celebrations, as the birth of any baby should. During the royal pregnancy, no one referred to the unborn princess as anything other than a baby, and attention was focused on whether the infant was a boy or a girl, and what name would be given. Yet by the laws of the realm, she was a potentially disposable fetus. No one raised the question of the civil consequences should the unspeakable be done, and the child be aborted if judged unsuitable for the line of succession.
“Second, there was rioting in Baltimore — and demonstrations in the streets of many cities — over the death of a young man in police custody. Though that case has yet to be decided in a court of law, it absorbed national attention, while at the same time the public slaughter of hundreds of Christians by ISIS received scant commentary. Although no one still calls these ISIS murderers ‘Junior Varsity,’ there persists an ideological aversion to admitting that they are engaged in a most heinous kind of religious persecution.
“Third, the shooting of two Muslims in Texas evoked editorial indignation at the provocative art display that had engendered their wrath. Not long ago, some of the same editors defended as ‘legitimate expressions of free speech’ the touring exhibition of a picture of the Crucified Christ in urine by Andres Serrano, and an image in the Brooklyn Museum portraying the Virgin Mary covered with obscenities and elephant dung by Chris Ofili, who was awarded the Turner Prize for his body of work.
“Such commentators were negligent of their own inconsistencies.”
Q. I have a religion paper due in my high school class in three weeks and all the sources we use have to be books that were/are imprinted in the Catholic Church. My topic is capital punishment, more commonly known as the death penalty. I wanted to know if you had any recommendations on books or any of your books I could use for this paper. — C.N., via e-mail.
A. In discussing the pros and cons of the death penalty in one of our books (Catholicism & Life: Commandments and Sacraments, pp. 87-88), which has both an imprimatur and the approval of the U.S. Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee to Oversee the Use of the Catechism, we pointed out that the Church has always recognized the right of a society “to defend itself through the use of capital punishment or the death penalty against persons who have committed grievous crimes. This right is based on Scripture and the teaching of the Church. For example, St. Paul says that ‘it is not without purpose that the ruler carries the sword; he is God’s servant, to inflict his avenging wrath upon the wrongdoer’ (Romans 13:4). And Pope Pius XII said in 1952 that in executing a criminal, ‘the state does not dispose of the individual’s right to live. Rather, it is reserved to the public authority to deprive the criminal of the benefit of life, when already, by his crime, he has deprived himself of the right to live’.”
In recent years, however, the Popes and the Catholic bishops of the United States have come out against capital punishment, and Catholics are expected to form their consciences according to paragraph 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. While saying that “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,” that paragraph also says that “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.”
The paragraph concludes by quoting from St. John Paul II, who said in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae that the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare if not practically nonexistent” (n. 56).
We would assume that your paper on capital punishment would include some discussion of the Boston Marathon bomber, who has been found guilty of a terrorist act and has been sentenced to death. There is considerable public support for executing him, but your conclusion ought to be based not on the public outcry, but on the Church teaching cited above.
You might also consider in your paper a practical matter: Which would be of more value to the Jihadist assault on America: the execution of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, which would turn him into a martyr for his cause, or a sentence of life in prison, which would have much less public impact?
Q. No surprise for me if sometimes I find some incorrect items in your replies; we are not perfect. This time I’d like to say something about Hell. Our doctrine is that a person who dies with a mortal sin, without repentance, goes to Hell. Jesus stated that the majority of people go to Hell (Matt. 7:13). Too many! In the lives of the saints we can find many true stories about this (too bad, and because of this Our Blessed Mother wept so many times and Our Lord Jesus as Divine Mercy calls the sinners to conversion while there is still time. The Church canonizes and declares saints to their glory and to our benefit so that we may imitate them, but doesn’t declare someone as condemned. . . . The judgment belongs to God, to Jesus our Lord (John 5:22). Now in Judas Iscariot’s case, we don’t judge, we just tell the truth (Matt. 5:37). . . .
In these last decades, the enemies of God who spread the weeds in the Church emphasize and teach only the mercifulness of God. Sure, God is infinitely merciful, but He is also infinitely just. Let us remember that and remind our friends of this. — J.F., Hong Kong.
A. We’re not sure where we are in need of correction since we agree with much of what J.F. said, although we think he is reading more into Matt. 7:13 than is justified. Jesus didn’t say that “the majority of people go to Hell.” Here is what He said: “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.”
Bible scholars have speculated for years about the meaning of the words “many” and “few,” but no consensus has been reached as far as we know. That Hell will not be lacking in occupants, we are sure, but there is no evidence that it will be a majority of those who lived and died on this Earth.
Rather than speculate about this, however, we could better spend our time following the Lord’s advice to watch constantly so that we may be numbered among the blessed in Heaven and not the damned in Hell.
As for the fate of Judas, we have in the past cited biblical passages that would not seem to bode well for the betrayer of Christ. For example, Jesus said at the Last Supper that it would have been better for Judas “if he had never been born” (Matt. 26:24). He also said to His Father that He had guarded all the men given to Him, “and none of them was lost except the son of destruction” (John 17:12), a reference to Judas.
A year earlier, after Christ’s discourse on the Eucharist had caused many to walk away from Him, Peter said that he would never abandon Jesus because “you have the words of eternal life.” To which the Lord responded, “Did I not choose you twelve? Yet is not one of you a devil?” (John 6:69-70). John said that Jesus was “referring to Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot; it was he who would betray him, one of the twelve” (John 6:71).
After the Ascension, when the apostles were preparing to choose Matthias to succeed Judas, Peter said that the election was necessary “to take the place in this apostolic ministry from which Judas turned away to go to his own place” (Acts 1:25). It doesn’t sound as if that place was Heaven. But we will still have to wait until the next life to discover the fate of Judas.
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