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I predict that support for abortion and support for the death penalty have a strong negative correlation. Do you predict the opposite or is there some other meaning to your claim?
That’s true. My point was a true religious person would be against abortion and against the death penalty. All life is sacred.
Only in so far as you can abolish the civil state can you abolish the death penalty, and I think you'll find many zealots don't make Christian Anarchism a priority.
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Which is my position, as a Catholic, and both fed the other: if I don't think even a vicious, sadistic murderer should be executed, why would I think it's fine to execute a child in the womb? If there is a right to life for the unborn, then the right to life applies to all humans.
I've held this position for decades, which is why all the "hypocrites! you support the death penalty!" smarming by the pro-choicers never had any effect on me.
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No, some not-insubstantial portion of religious Catholics and smaller numbers of ‘liberal’ protestants(I don’t just love this term, but I haven’t heard of a better one) hold that view. Almost all other Christians hold that abortion and the death penalty aren’t directly comparable because their acceptability hinges on totally different questions.
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See my reply to sliders.
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Admittedly I’m speaking from a Catholic perspective and tend to have view other sects as make it up as you want Christians. Being as Catholics are the preferred faith for pro-life Supreme Court justices I think I am correct in saying true pro-lifers are against abortion and the death penalty. And Catholic doctrine is quite clearly against both.
The death penalty is one of the few areas where I’m disappointed in Desantis and believe he’s doing something for political game versus true beliefs.
I hadn't realized that DeSantis is a Catholic so I will cede your characterization of him in particular as not living up to the ideals he professes in that regard. I think your insistence on using "true pro-lifers" to refer to the Catholic position is obnoxious but there's no point in an extended argument about a label.
It’s probably obnoxious.
Honestly how did you not know Desantis was Catholic? I have a more obvious Italian last name but that’s still looks very Italian to me.
As I think about it this morning I wish the church would get aggressive and ban him from communion over his death penalty stance and make him apologize. It would make them look more honest when they talk about doing it with Biden.
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With the partial exception of Barrett, the catholic pro-life justices are not notably more anti-death penalty than they are pro-abortion. ‘Consistent life ethic’ is clearly a minority position among intellectual Catholic circles in the US even as it’s a politically correct consensus view.
They are not in communion with Rome on that issue. As someone who went to the same school as ACB and who went to pro-life marches a person who is Catholic first would be against the death penalty. The evangelicals have always been anti-abortion pro death penalty vibes but I don’t think an intellectually honest (most people aren’t) could view life as sacred and take that view.
But I also think the old slur about a Catholic politician having to bend the knee to Rome is true. It’s what makes us undesirable POTUS to most but very desirable for the Supreme Court when Rome and a political movement have an agreement on an issue.
I don't think this means what you think it means, or anything at all for that matter. "In communion with Rome" does not in itself have very much to do with moral views and you can make the argument that Desantis and Thomas are committing heresy(which does not actually in itself take them outside of the communion of the Catholic church) because of their stances on the death penalty, but you run into the fact that the RCC is not George Lucas- it can't make arbitrary changes, and previous infallible declarations(and the literal words of the scripture) have found the death penalty at least potentially permissible. The justification for the declaration that the death penalty is inherently inadmissable is the claim that advances in penal technology have eliminated the necessity to the use of the death penalty. This is a prudential claim which can't be infallible in itself- it's perfectly possible to claim that the death penalty is necessary either because of unfixable deficiencies in the criminal justice system or due to the deterrent effect, and whether those claims happen to be right or not doesn't have very much to do with whether or not they are heresy.
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killing babies is wrong because the babies are innocent. Executing murderers is not wrong, because they are not innocent. "If a man sheds blood, by man shall his blood be shed." How is that incompatible with a view of life being sacred?
Ok fair enough. But I don’t think that works for a Christian. Jesus ate with hookers. The whole Christ narrative is that he died for our sins and his resurrection redeemed us.
Even the “worst person in the world” toddler raper can be redeemed and the sacredness of his life isn’t his deeds but that he was made in gods image.
So while I agree that your logic can work I don’t think it fits with being a Christian which most pro-life people claim some kind of Christianity. The sacredness of their life isn’t related to their deeds it’s sacred because they are human.
I’m against the death penalty. I only view it as viable to when there are no other options like someone whose killing in prison and you need to protect other inmates. Solitary is an option but some have done bad there and solitary can be a very cruel punishment perhaps worse than death.
So I can agree your logic can work but I don’t think that was Christ message and I’m labeling them evangelicals but I think they are wrong.
None of that has anything at all to do with systems of earthly justice. Salvation from sins is not a free pass from the consequences of sin here and now. Stealing and repenting of it doesn't mean you don't go to jail, and in fact the proper thing to do is to take the penalty willingly because you agree it is just.
The life they took was also sacred, and they violated that sanctity through murder. Executing them is a balancing of the scales. It's not about revenge, or anger or hatred, it's about what is just.
It's entirely Christian to reject one's own claims to justice, to forgive someone who has stolen from you, to deny that they have stolen by stating that you give what they took freely. Notably, the victims of murder cannot actually do this, and it is at least highly questionable whether others can meaningfully do it on their behalf. It is not Christian to attempt to overthrow the entire concept of earthly justice, to try to enforce this sort of forgiveness on those unwilling or unable to offer it freely.
The whole point of justice, of laws, is that it is supposed to be impartially and uniformly enforced. The whole point of Christianity is that it is a free choice by the individual, an acceptance of a gift freely offered. The two have a lot less to do with each other than people imagine.
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