What Cardinal Avery Dulles said about capital punishment

Blithe Spirit 1 Minute

From a Fr. George Rutler essay:

One essay, “Hanging Concentrates the Mind”, particularly caught my attention. Fr Rutler is not of the view that capital punishment is always wrong. Indeed, he quotes Cardinal Avery Dulles: “If the pope were to deny that the death penalty could be an exercise of retributive justice, he would be overthrowing the tradition of two millennia of Catholic thought, denying the teaching of several previous popes, and contradicting the teaching of Scripture.”

As reviewed by Francis Phillips in the Catholic Herald.

Well, Francis has never been a fan of tradition, whether he knows it or not . . . Nor has he shown himself overly familiar with papal teaching. As for Scripture, he has a way of quoting it to his purpose.

I’d say he’s ready for a Pauline conversion. Lots of us are, for that matter. Woe.

Published by Jim Bowman

Jim Bowman covered religion 1968-78 for the Chicago Daily News, since then has written books, articles, etc., mostly on corporate history but also on religion (Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968), and more recently on politics (Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters -- Lulu.com, Kindle). Longtime Oak Park, Illinois, resident, he lives now on Chicago's North Side, where four of his and Winnie's six children live close by.

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