Pope abolishes death penalty in catechism, evangelicals cheer

The Pope recently changed the catholic catechism making capital punishment always unacceptable. Not a surprise from this Pope. From the NYT

Pope Francis has declared the death penalty wrong in all cases, a definitive change in church teaching that is likely to challenge Catholic politicians, judges and officials who have argued that their church was not entirely opposed to capital punishment.

Before, church doctrine accepted the death penalty if it was “the only practicable way” to defend lives, an opening that some Catholics took as license to support capital punishment in many cases.

But Francis said executions were unacceptable in all cases because they are “an attack” on human dignity, the Vatican announced on Thursday, adding that the church would work “with determination” to abolish capital punishment worldwide.

Francis made the change to the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, the book of doctrine that is taught to Catholic children worldwide and studied by adults in a church with 1.2 billion members. Abolishing the death penalty has long been one of his top priorities, along with saving the environment and caring for immigrants and refugees.​

But many evangelicals are cheering the move. From Red Letter Christians,

With America’s next executions scheduled for Thursday (Aug. 9) in Tennessee and next week (Aug. 14) in Nebraska, there couldn’t have been a better time for Pope Francis to wholeheartedly denounce the death penalty — and for Christians worldwide to double down on their commitment to end it.​

They go on to disparage Christians as the main reason capital punishment has survived in America.

Wherever Christians are most concentrated in America is where the most executions have taken place. While we Christians have prided ourselves on being pro-life on the issue of abortion, too often we have proven ourselves to be anti-life when it comes to capital punishment. The truth is that the death penalty has survived not in spite of Christians but because of them.​

One contributor there offered God's pardon of Cain as proof that God was against the death penalty.

Curious your thoughts.

 

This Pope rarely gets any of God's memos. And Red Letter Christians missed the memo that God later exercised capital punishment on all of Cain's descendants in the flood.