Pope Francis and a Capital Gain

On Thursday August 2, 2018, the New York Times reported the following:

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.

The article went to say that this change would be made to “The Catechism of the Catholic Church,” and it seems, from all evidence, that it is now the authoritative teaching coming from the Roman Magisterium.

Within hours Social media was all a buzz with complaints from the usual suspects, especially very conservative Roman Catholics of what is called, in the street lingo of online theological gang rumbles, the “Trads,” that the Pope had taught error. Once again it was proved right that an acceptable definition of a modern western Roman Catholic is “One for whom the pope is infallible, and usually wrong.” Also in the buzz was one opinion by a somewhat well-known neo-Anglican that Pope Francis had single-handedly overturned previous infallible Church teaching based on his authority as pope, and that this was “huge.”  

As one who has no dog in the internal papal infallibility fight (in terms of trying to describe and define it by artful tactics designed to affirm it in principle when forced to deny it in practice, thus remaining among the faithful), it is of no particular interest to me how the Trad gangs, when meeting by their motorcycles in their leather jackets and sharpening their switchblades, settle the issue. I know that Social Media is not likely to spare me the unpleasant sight of the rumbles as they ensue, nor from the hue and cry of those seeking the head of Pope Francis on a spike. Nonetheless, as a Christian who admires much about the current Pontiff, I consider his statement to be the only moral position that is in any way that of the Spirit of Christ.

Some of you have read the debate between my younger brother, David Bentley Hart and one Edward Feser, in which my brother firmly rejected the idea that any Christian has any business trying to argue for and support Capital Punishment, as Edward Feser had tried to do. My brother hit the nail on the head, so to speak, as he was wrapping up his position.

I do not believe that anyone can possibly truly absorb the moral and spiritual teachings of the New Testament and conclude anything other than that there can be no genuinely Christian support for the death penalty. And the history of the early Church bears luminous witness to this. In later centuries, admittedly, as Christendom progressively displaced the earlier, purer, and more perilous forms of Christian life, things did indeed become more confused. Loyalty to Christ and loyalty to the civil order were now no longer antithetical to one another, which meant that neither loyalty could remain uncompromised by the other.

This brings me to what I regard as a more important consideration than what Pope Francis may, or may not, have done to Papal Infallibility – whatever it is when all is said and done. As someone who respects the man and his episcopal office, I am more concerned by the probability that this is the moving of the Holy Spirit. No, I do not mean to imply that the Holy Spirit has contradicted Himself, but rather that He would assert His own Lordship over what the Trads call “the Church.” I know that sounds like chaos to those who need the security of an authority system that, like dominoes lined up, cannot endure the fall of so much as one detail. Personally, I would not feel my faith to be secure if it rested on innumerable details, all of which must be infallible in order for the essential and undeniable truths of revelation to stand.

No. For me this brings up something my other brother wrote, my older brother, Addison Hodges Hart, who precedes me in the way of senility, but not so far along that path before he had written a good book that speaks clearly to this matter, indeed, that speaks to it in the very title itself, Strangers and Pilgrims Once More, subtitled, Being Disciples of Jesus in a Post-Christendom World.

Far too long, really since the days of the late Roman Empire, the Church has played the part of chaplain to kings, princes, and in modern times democracies and republics. This has been true more in the western Church over the centuries, but has been the case in the Eastern Church as well except under Muslim rule, or Communist oppression. My own beloved Anglicanism has certainly not been free from the charge of Erastianism, although I find that criticism to be quite lame in the historical context of Christendom as a whole. Whether one was in London or in Rome, up until very modern times, the order of the day was Erastian.  

And, the problem with the Church playing the role of State Chaplaincy is that it weakens its prophetic role. Instead of speaking against the evils of the the world’s governments, as St. Augustine did so fearlessly (likening the various princes and governments of his time to large scale gangsterism), calling them to account for their sins, like John the Baptist addressing Herod in the spirit of Elijah who addressed Ahab, the subordinate Chaplaincy Church blesses the state, and takes part in all of its endeavors. That includes wars whether they can be described by anybody as Just or Unjust, substituting some matters of good and evil as black and white with a politically suitable gray scale.

What Pope Francis represents in his bold declaration against Capital Punishment is liberation for the Church from its chaplaincy role, and a rediscovery of the authority and freedom to prophesy against the evils of kings, princes, and states of every kind. He may well be following the Spirit. “Now the Lord is that Spirit: And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (II Cor. 3:17).”