Fastiggi and Sonna on Catholicism and capital punishment (Updated)

Recently, theologian Robert Fastiggi was interviewed about the topic of the Church and the death penalty by apologist Suan Sonna on his podcast Intellectual Catholicism.  Fastiggi’s views are the focus of the discussion, but Sonna, who largely agrees with him, adds some points of his own.  Their main concern in the discussion is to try to defend the changes Pope Francis made to the Church’s presentation of her teaching on the subject. 

I appreciate their civility, and Fastiggi’s call at the end of the interview for charity in dealing with those who disagree.  But their attempt fails.  Much of what Fastiggi has to say are reheated claims that I have already refuted in past exchanges with him, such as the two-part essay I wrote in response to his series on the death penalty at Where Peter Is.  (You can find it here and here.  The essay was reprinted as a single long article in Ultramontanism and Tradition, edited by Peter Kwasniewski.)  Fastiggi simply repeats his assertions without acknowledging, much less answering, my rebuttals.  He also makes some new claims, which are no more plausible than the older ones.  Let’s take a look.

A straw man

In any fruitful discussion of this topic, it must constantly be kept in mind that there are two questions that need to be clearly distinguished.  First, is the death penalty intrinsically wrong?  And second, even if it is not intrinsically wrong, is it nevertheless morally better never to resort to it?  To answer “Yes” to the first question is to say that capital punishment of its very nature, and regardless of the circumstances, is wrong, and thus can never even in principle be used.  But someone could answer “No” to the first question and still answer “Yes” to the second.  To take this view is to say that while in theory the death penalty could be justified in certain circumstances, in practice those circumstances never obtain, at least not today, and that the moral considerations that tell against its use outweigh those that speak in favor of it.

People who comment on the topic of Catholicism and capital punishment very frequently ignore this distinction.  The result is that they often talk past one another and the discussion generates more heat than light.  Now, at the beginning of their conversation, Fastiggi and Sonna are, to their credit, careful to note the distinction.  But unfortunately, later in their discussion, they ignore it, and this leads them to attack a straw man.

In particular, Fastiggi claims (after the 35 minute mark in the video) that “people say, well, the Church has always taught, always allowed for the [death penalty].”  Arguing against this, Fastiggi cites some Fathers of the Church who were against capital punishment, and concludes that “it’s almost like a myth, this 2,000 year old tradition, but if it’s repeated enough by commentators and writers, then people begin to believe it.”  Similarly, Sonna remarks (around the 45 minute mark) that “a lot of people have this impression that the Church, as if it were this uniform block, this constant unchanging permanent wall, has just consistently said the death penalty’s fine, you know, go ahead and do it.”  But in fact, he continues, “historically, there was an uneasiness at times with the death penalty.”  Fastiggi and Sonna make a big deal out of this theme, as if it is a damning point against Catholic defenders of the death penalty.

But not so fast.  For here too we need to distinguish two claims, namely:

(1) The Church always taught for 2,000 years that the death penalty is not intrinsically wrong.

(2) The Church always taught for 2,000 years that the death penalty is not only not intrinsically wrong, but that it is generally a good idea and should be used.

I know of many Catholic defenders of capital punishment who have asserted claim (1), including myself.  But claim (1) is by no means a “myth.”  It is demonstrably true, as Joseph Bessette and I document in detail in our book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment.  Indeed, in his own book on the subject, E. Christian Brugger, the foremost Catholic theologian who argues against capital punishment – and someone who even claims that the death penalty is intrinsically wrong – admits that (1) is true.  In fact, even Fastiggi and Sonna appear to concede it.  Fastiggi acknowledges that the Fathers he cites “don’t necessarily challenge the state’s right to [execute],” but merely argue against exercising that right.  And Sonna admits that “maybe we can’t dispute that the state has the right, technically, to do it.”

By contrast, claim (2) is indeed false, for just the reasons Fastiggi gives.  But I cannot think of a single person who endorses claim (2) in the first place.  (Certainly Joe Bessette and I explicitly acknowledge in our book that some Fathers and popes held that it was morally better not to resort to the death penalty.)  So, when Fastiggi cites what certain of the Fathers say as evidence against a “myth” he alleges many are peddling, he is attacking a thesis that no one in fact holds.  It seems otherwise to him and to Sonna only because they ignore the distinction between (1) and (2).

Misrepresenting John Paul II

Sloppiness of this kind often leads Fastiggi to misrepresent the views of his opponents and the nature of their disagreement with him.  It also leads him to misrepresent a pope he appeals to in defense of his position, namely Pope St. John Paul II.  About seven minutes into the video, Fastiggi suggests that the Church now condemns not only killing the innocent, but “intentional killing” as such.  He says:

The reason why the Church has now developed her teaching to be opposed to capital punishment is because it involves intentional killing, and then the question of course of whether or not a murderer loses human dignity and the right to life.  And really, the turning point of this was St. John Paul II.  In Evangelium Vitae number 9, he says not even a murderer loses his dignity.

After the 50 minute mark, Fastiggi returns to the theme, and says:

I think a leap was made with the understanding that punishing people by intentionally killing them is an offense against the inviolability of life.  The theoretical question is, does a serious crime take away the right to life?  And John Paul II answered that in Evangelium Vitae 9.  That was the breakthrough, that not even a murderer loses his dignity and right to life.

This is sleight of hand.  It is true that Evangelium Vitae 9 says that “not even a murderer loses his personal dignity.”  But the encyclical nowhere says that a murderer does not lose his right to life.  Instead, it speaks of “the absolute inviolability of innocent human life,” “the inviolable right to life of every innocent human being” and again, of “fundamental human rights, beginning with the right to life of every innocent human being”; it says that “as far as the right to life is concerned, every innocent human being is absolutely equal to all others”; it teaches that “a law which violates an innocent person's natural right to life is unjust and, as such, is not valid as a law”; and it calls for “unconditional respect for the right to life of every innocent person” (emphasis added).  And it explicitly allows that the execution of those guilty of the gravest offenses is permissible “in cases of absolute necessity.”  That would not be possible if the murderer never loses his right to life.

It is true that Evangelium Vitae also says that bloodless means are preferable where possible because they are “more in line with human dignity” and “more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.”  But notice that that does not entail that capital punishment is not at all in line with human dignity, only that it is less in line with it.  (Compare: To say that Ricky is more talented than Fred does not entail that Fred is altogether untalented; to say that Ethel is more intelligent than Lucy does not entail that Lucy is altogether unintelligent; and so on.)  So, from the claim that (a) not even a murderer loses his dignity, together with the claim that (b) the death penalty is less in line with human dignity than milder punishments, it simply does not follow that (c) capital punishment is flatly incompatible with the murderer’s dignity, and neither does it follow that (d) the murderer does not lose his right to life.  Nor, again, does John Paul II draw those conclusions.

Perhaps Fastiggi would say that John Paul II should have drawn those conclusions, and that in failing to do so he was being inconsistent.  But there are several problems with such a response.  First, it wouldn’t change the fact that John Paul II did not in fact draw them, and thus did not in fact say the things Fastiggi attributes to him.  Second, for the reasons I have given, the conclusions do not in fact follow logically from John Paul II’s premises, so that the pope was not being inconsistent.  Third, if there are two ways of reading a papal document, in one of which it contains an inconsistency and in the other of which it does not, the second is to be preferred.  Hence, for that reason alone, we should reject Fastiggi’s reading.  Fourth, Fastiggi’s reading would imply that John Paul II was not only not consistent with himself, but also contradicted his predecessors – such as Pope Pius XII, who taught:

Even when it is a question of the execution of a man condemned to death, the State does not dispose of the individual's right to live.  It is reserved rather 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. (Address to the First International Congress on the Histopathology of the Nervous System, 1952, emphasis added)

Certainly, implicitly to accuse one pope (John Paul II) of inconsistency and another pope (Pius XII) of grave moral error is a strange way to try to defend a third pope (Francis)!

In any event, Joe Bessette and I provide a very detailed analysis of John Paul II’s teaching at pp. 144-82 of our book.  As we demonstrate there, when one considers the entirety of the evidence (and not just the usual cherry-picked phrases Catholic opponents of capital punishment like to quote), it is crystal clear that the pope’s teaching was in no way an alteration or even development of traditional doctrine, but simply a prudential judgment about how to apply that doctrine to contemporary circumstances.  Like so many of our critics, Fastiggi offers no response at all to the arguments we give there, but pretends they don’t exist.

Obfuscating on Pope Francis

Beginning at about 12 minutes into their discussion, Fastiggi and Sonna argue that Pope Francis has, in any event, not actually taught that the death penalty is intrinsically wrong.  They focus on the pope’s 2018 revision to the Catechism, and suggest that it implicitly acknowledges that capital punishment is permissible in theory, and simply teaches that it is inadmissible under current circumstances.

This is a defensible position, as far as it goes.  I have always myself acknowledged that the revision can and should be read in such a way that it is not teaching that capital punishment is intrinsically evil.  But that is only part of the story.  For one thing, the problem with the revision is that this is not a natural reading of it.  The revised text characterizes the death penalty as “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”  On a natural reading, that seems to imply that capital punishment is intrinsically at odds with human dignity (rather than being at odds with it only if certain conditions fail to hold), and thus intrinsically wrong.  Yes, it need not be read that way, but magisterial statements should be clearly consistent with traditional teaching, not merely consistent with it on a strained reading.

For another thing, other magisterial statements made during Pope Francis’s pontificate are much harder to reconcile with the traditional teaching.  For example, in a 2017 address, the pope asserted that “the death penalty is an inhumane measure that, regardless of how it is carried out, abases human dignity.  It is per se contrary to the Gospel” (emphasis added).  The italicized phrases are most naturally read as claiming that capital punishment is always and intrinsically wrong.

Some might reply that this entails only that the death penalty is contrary to the higher demands of Christian morality, not that it is contrary to natural law.  That would be bad enough, because (as I have shown elsewhere, such as in this article) the traditional teaching of the Church is that it is not contrary to Christian morality any more than it is contrary to natural law.

But to make matters worse, the declaration Dignitas Infinita, issued by the DDF during Francis’s pontificate, implies that capital punishment is contrary even to natural law.  For it asserts that “the death penalty… violates the inalienable dignity of every person, regardless of the circumstances,” and that this dignity is grounded in “human nature apart from all cultural change.”  The declaration also asserts that human dignity must be upheld “beyond every circumstance,” “in all circumstances,” “regardless of the circumstances,” and so on.  Here there is no wiggle room for saying that the document judges capital punishment to be contrary to human dignity only if certain conditions are not met.  For it flatly asserts that it violates human dignity “regardless of the circumstances.”  Nor is there any wiggle room for saying that the document nevertheless allows in principle for such a violation of human dignity under certain circumstances (which would be a bizarre idea in any case).  For it explicitly says that human dignity “prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter,” and so on.  The logical implication of all this is that capital punishment is absolutely ruled out as always and intrinsically wrong.  And that straightforwardly contradicts traditional teaching.

Sonna, at least, appears to acknowledge that the traditional teaching cannot be reversed.  So, if he is going to be consistent, he will have to admit that these statements issued during Francis’s pontificate are problematic – that they are poorly formulated at best, and erroneous at worst (which is possible in non-ex cathedra magisterial statements).

Parallel doctrinal reversals?

Fastiggi is another story.  At around 40 minutes in, he says: “But hasn’t the Church definitively taught that the death penalty is allowed?  No, it hasn’t.”  And earlier, at around 25 minutes in, he says that “even if the Church has not yet, maybe someday she’ll say it’s intrinsically immoral, but because it had been accepted for so long we don’t need to say that right now.”

But Fastiggi is simply mistaken.  When all the relevant evidence is taken account of, it is manifest that the doctrine that the death penalty is not intrinsically wrong has been taught by both scripture and the Church in an irreformable manner.  I set out some of this evidence in a long Catholic World Report article from some years back, and Joe Bessette and I do so in greater depth in our book.  Fastiggi says nothing even to acknowledge, much less answer, these arguments.  He merely begs the question against them.

Fastiggi also says that even if the Church does not hold that the death penalty is intrinsically wrong, it doesn’t follow that its teaching against it is merely a prudential judgment which Catholics need only respectfully consider but not necessarily follow.  For the Church has the authority to prohibit even certain practices that are not inherently wrong.  Fastiggi gives the example of cremation, which was for a long time prohibited by the Church but now is permitted under certain circumstances.  He also cites polygamy and divorce, which were tolerated under the old covenant but have been forbidden under the new covenant.

Fastiggi is right about that much, but these facts don’t suffice to show that the Church can do more than issue a non-binding prudential judgment against use of the death penalty.  The reason is that it is the state and not the Church which has the responsibility and right under natural law to do what is necessary to ensure the safety of the community.  This is why, after setting out the criteria for fighting a just war, the Catechism goes on to say that “the evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good” (2309).  In other words, the Church can teach that a war is just only when the cause is just, there is a serious chance of success, no other options are likely to work, and so on.  But the Church does not have the expertise or authority to determine how these criteria apply in a particular case.  For example, it does not have the relevant expertise to determine whether some option other than war would suffice to repel an aggressor in a particular case, or whether a certain military strategy is likely to succeed.  These are matters of prudential judgment, and it is the state rather than the Church that has the right and responsibility to make that judgment.

But the same applies, mutatis mutandis, to capital punishment.  The revision to the catechism claims, for example, that modern systems of imprisonment are sufficient to protect others against the most dangerous offenders.  But the Church has no more expertise on that sort of issue than it does on military strategy.  If government officials have good empirical reason to believe that the death penalty saves lives – for example, if they have evidence that it has a significant deterrent effect, or that it is needed to protect prison guards or other prisoners from the most violent offenders – then they have just as much a right under natural law to utilize capital punishment as they do to fight a just war. 

This sort of reasoning does not apply to cremation, which is why it is not an interesting parallel to the case of capital punishment.  The examples of polygamy and divorce also do nothing to help Fastiggi’s case, and not just because (unlike capital punishment) the state does not need to keep them open as options in order to do its job of protecting society.  There is also the following glaring disanalogy: The New Testament explicitly forbids divorce and clearly opposes polygamy too, as has the Church ever since.  But the New Testament explicitly allows capital punishment (e.g. in Romans 13), as has the Church ever since.  Cremation, polygamy, and divorce thus offer no precedent for an absolute prohibition on capital punishment.

Fastiggi and Sonna suggest other alleged doctrinal reversals that they think provide a precedent for a reversal on capital punishment.  But they are all bad analogies that provide no support whatsoever for such a reversal.  For example, Fastiggi points to the fact that theologians were once free to disagree about the Immaculate Conception, but later the Church made a dogmatic pronouncement on the matter so that such legitimate disagreement is no longer possible.

The problem with this purported analogy should be obvious.  To teach that capital punishment is intrinsically wrong would directly contradict what the Church had consistently taught for 2,000 years and what she had always understood scripture to teach.  Proclaiming the dogma of the Immaculate Conception involved nothing remotely like that.  In particular, it in no way involved the Church contradicting some doctrine she had previously taught.

Fastiggi alleges that there is also a parallel between capital punishment and the case of torture.  He contrasts a passing remark on the subject from Pope Innocent I, which left its use open, with the more recent teaching of the Church condemning torture.  Here too the alleged parallel is spurious.  The Church holds that scripture cannot teach moral error, and she has for two millennia acknowledged that scripture repeatedly sanctions capital punishment.  But there is no such scriptural sanction for torture.  The Church has also for two millennia herself consistently and clearly taught that capital punishment can under certain circumstances be licit, to the point of including this doctrine in major teaching documents such as the catechisms of Pope St. Pius V and Pope St. John Paul II.  The teaching was also endorsed by the Fathers (even those who opposed the use of capital punishment in practice), has been consistently affirmed by the Church’s greatest theologians (including many Doctors of the Church), and routinely endorsed in approved manuals of moral theology.  None of this can be said of torture. 

Fastiggi and Sonna also suggest that the development of the Church’s teaching on slavery provides a precedent for a change on capital punishment.  But this alleged parallel too is phony.  For one thing, here too Fastiggi and Sonna muddy the waters by ignoring long-established and crucial distinctions.  For the word “slavery” is ambiguous.  What most people think of when they hear this term is chattel slavery, which involves claiming ownership of another human being in the way one might own an animal or inanimate object.  The Church does indeed teach that this is intrinsically evil, but she has never taught otherwise.  Indeed, she has condemned this practice for centuries (as I document in my book All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory).  

There are, however, less extreme forms of servitude that the Church has taken to be at least in theory not unjust.  In particular, there is penal servitude, which is forced labor in punishment for a crime.  The idea here is that if the state can, in punishment for a sufficiently grave crime, take away an offender’s liberty for a prolonged period of time (even for life), then it can also require him to work.  And there is indentured servitude, a prolonged period of labor without payment as a way to repay a debt or in exchange for some benefit.  The idea here is that if someone can legitimately enter a work contract, or have his wages garnished in order to pay a debt, then by extension he can make himself a servant in order to pay a debt.

The trouble with these practices is that in concrete circumstances they are fraught with moral hazard, and were often used to rationalize what amounted to chattel slavery (such as when captives taken in war were enslaved on the spurious grounds that they were guilty of the offense of fighting an unjust war, and thus could be forced into penal servitude).  Hence, moral theologians settled on the view (quite correctly, I would say) that when all relevant moral considerations are brought to bear, it is clear that they ought flatly to be banned altogether.

There is also the consideration that in scripture, slavery is merely tolerated as an institution that happened to exist, rather than put forward as a positive good.  By contrast, the death penalty is not merely tolerated, but in some cases is positively sanctioned (not only in the Mosaic law, but in other contexts such as Genesis 9 and Romans 13).

So, when all the distinctions are made, the argument that “the Church reversed herself on slavery, so she can reverse herself on capital punishment” falls apart.  There was no such reversal, and thus no precedent for a reversal on capital punishment.

Magisterial credibility

This brings us to Fastiggi’s remarks about Genesis 9 and Romans 13, where he repeats claims that I have already refuted in my previous exchange with him.  And once again, he simply ignores rather than answers the objections I raised there.  I direct the interested reader to that earlier essay of mine.  (In particular, see the sections titled “Genesis and the death penalty” and “The Mosaic Law versus the Gospel?”)

Fastiggi acknowledges that, in the instruction Donum Veritatis, the Church affirms that Catholics have the right respectfully to raise questions about deficient magisterial statements and ask for clarification.  He says that this nevertheless gives Catholics no right to “dissent” from the teaching of the Church.  I agree with him about all that.  But Fastiggi seems to think that it rules out the sort of respectful criticisms that I and others with the relevant expertise have raised.  It does not, and I have many times given arguments that show that it does not.  These arguments too are ones that Fastiggi simply ignores rather than tries to answer. 

For example, the criticisms I have raised with respect to the 2018 revision of the Catechism have nothing to do with “dissenting” from some teaching of the Church.  Rather, the whole point is that the teaching is unclear – that it is far from obvious exactly what it is that Catholics are being asked to assent to.  True, the revision declares that the death penalty is now “inadmissible.”  But the trouble is that the force of this teaching is not obvious.  I have argued that there are only two ways to read it.  On the one hand, it might be read as claiming that the death penalty is intrinsically wrong and thus “inadmissible” in an absolute and unqualified way.  The problem is that this would contradict scripture and tradition, and thus amount to a doctrinal error (something that can occur in non-ex cathedra statements). Moreover, even Fastiggi and Sonna acknowledge that this is not the right way to read it.

But when we take account of all the relevant considerations (both from within the document and from the larger tradition of the Church), the only other way to read it is as saying that the death penalty is “inadmissible” unless certain conditions hold (such as that resort to it is necessary in order to protect society).  And if this is the case, then the teaching amounts to a non-binding prudential judgment.  For the “unless” part is not something concerning which the Church has any special authority.  For example, whether capital punishment has a significant deterrence effect, and whether modern prison systems really do afford the means of protecting others from all violent offenders, are empirical matters of social science, not matters of faith or morals. 

For seven years now, Fastiggi and I have been arguing about this issue, and in all that time I have never gotten a clear answer from him about what a third possible interpretation would look like.  In any event, if someone asks me “Do you dissent from the teaching of the revision of the Catechism?” my answer is “No, I do not dissent from it.  I assent to it, and interpret it in the only way I know of that makes sense – namely, as a non-binding prudential judgment.”  I also say, however, that the revision is badly formulated and potentially misleading.  And I have every right respectfully to raise such a criticism, by the norms set out in Donum Veritatis.  Fastiggi and others may continue to yell “Dissent!” but yelling is all they would be doing.  I have yet to hear an actual argument showing that my position amounts to dissent.

I acknowledge that my criticism of Dignitas Infinita goes beyond this.  Here, I think we have a document that is not merely ambiguous, but very hard (at best) to defend from the charge of flatly contradicting scripture and tradition and thus being erroneous.  But if someone has a plausible way of reconciling it with scripture and tradition, I’m all ears. 

Even if it is indeed in error, however, this is possible in non-ex cathedra documents.  Indeed, Fastiggi himself is implicitly committed to this thesis.  For, again, he holds that the Church could end up teaching that capital punishment is intrinsically immoral.  And if that were correct, it would follow that for two millennia, the Church got things gravely wrong on matters of basic moral principle and biblical interpretation.  That is a very radical claim, and indeed far more radical than anything I have said.  If I am right, then one pope has gotten things wrong about capital punishment.  If Fastiggi is right, then every previous pope who has taught on this topic has been wrong, as have the Fathers and Doctors of the Church (and indeed scripture itself).  Fastiggi likes to paint views like mine as extreme, but in fact it is his views that are extreme. 

The fact that he presents them politely and under the guise of obedience to the magisterium doesn’t change that one whit.  It is the content of the views that matter, and the content is radically subversive of the credibility of the Church, because it implies that the Church may have been gravely in error about a matter of natural law, the demands of the Gospel, and the proper understanding of scripture for her entire history until now.  And if she could be that wrong for that long, what else might she be wrong about?

At about one hour and three minutes into the interview, Fastiggi says, with no sense of irony: “There has to be trust in the Holy Spirit’s guidance of the magisterium.  And that’s what I find missing in many of these papal critics.  They don’t trust the Holy Spirit.”  Yet Fastiggi is the one suggesting that the magisterium may have, for two millennia, consistently erred about a grave matter of natural law, Christian morality, and scriptural interpretation.  Fastiggi is the one suggesting that the Holy Spirit might have permitted this.  But what is more likely – that that is the case, or that a single pope (Francis) issued a badly formulated catechism revision and permitted the DDF to slip a doctrinal error into a declaration?  I submit that, if the Holy Spirit truly is guiding the magisterium, the scenario I posit is manifestly more plausible than the one Fastiggi is positing.

The reality is that the critics do trust in the Holy Spirit’s guidance of the magisterium.  They trust that the Holy Spirit would not have allowed the Church to be that wrong for that long about something that important, so that it must be those who now contradict the past magisterium who are mistaken.  This has always been theoretically possible, because the Church has always acknowledged that non-definitive exercises of the magisterium can fall into error.  Indeed this has in fact happened before in the case even of papal teaching, as the famous examples of popes Honorius I and John XXII illustrate.  And Fastiggi’s own position entails it.  If, as he insists, it may turn out that two millennia of past teaching of the magisterium on capital punishment was wrong, then it follows logically that it is also possible that it is instead Pope Francis’s statements on the subject that are wrong.  And as I have shown elsewhere (here and here), the Church has also always affirmed that there can be cases where the faithful may respectfully criticize the magisterium, even a pope, for teaching contrary to the tradition.

What Fastiggi never seems to appreciate is that his approach damages the credibility of the magisterium by appearing to saddle it with what, in logic, is known as a “No True Scotsman” fallacy.  Suppose I say “No true Scotsman would be an empiricist,” and you respond “But David Hume was an empiricist!”  And suppose I reply “Well, then David Hume must not really have been a true Scotsman,” and that I insist that everybody has for 250 years been misinterpreting all the evidence that seems obviously to show that he was an empiricist.  Needless to say, this would not lend me or my thesis any credibility at all, but would do precisely the opposite.  It would reveal me to be intellectually dishonest and unwilling to look at the evidence objectively.

Now, the First Vatican Council declared that “the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine.”  The Second Vatican Council stated that “the living teaching office of the Church… is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on.”  Pope Benedict XVI taught that the pope “must not proclaim his own ideas… he is bound to the great community of faith of all times, to the binding interpretations that have developed throughout the Church's pilgrimage.”

But the liceity in principle of the death penalty has for two millennia been consistently taught by the Church, and has for two millennia been understood by the Church to be the teaching of scripture, which is the word of God.  Hence, for a pope to teach that the death penalty is intrinsically immoral would manifestly be a case of attempting to “make known some new doctrine.”  It would manifestly be a case of putting himself “above the word of God” instead of “teaching only what has been handed on.”  It would manifestly be a case of attempting to “proclaim his own ideas” rather than being “bound to the great community of faith of all times.”

Fastiggi, however, takes the view that if a pope were to teach such a thing, then the conclusion we should draw is that the liceity in principle of capital punishment must after all not really ever have been the teaching of scripture; that it must not really be a “new doctrine” but somehow implicit in what scripture and the Church have always taught; that it must not really after all have been among “the binding interpretations” to which a pope must conform himself.  And that is like dogmatically insisting that Hume must not really have been a true Scotsman after all.  It gives aid and comfort to Protestant and skeptical critics of Catholicism, who argue that the Church’s claim to continuity with scripture and tradition is a sham – that at the end of the day, the popes will just teach whatever they like and then arbitrarily slap the label “traditional” on it.

It may be that Fastiggi is not sufficiently sensitive to this problem, whereas I have always emphasized it, in part because of the differences in our academic and intellectual contexts.  Fastiggi is a theologian teaching at a seminary, the primary job of which is the formation of priests.  And it seems that he writes pretty much exclusively for Catholic audiences.  I’m a philosopher teaching at a secular college, who often writes on matters of apologetics.  And my writing is directed as much to the general public as it is to fellow Catholics.  When Fastiggi sees Catholics criticizing even obviously deficient magisterial statements, even in a respectful and well-informed way, his instinctive reaction appears to be: “It’s unseemly for Catholics to be doing that, no matter what the pope says!  Just keep quiet, and trust providence to sort it out.”  When I see Catholics tying themselves in logical knots trying to defend obviously deficient magisterial statements, my instinctive reaction is: “Those are manifestly terrible arguments, you’re making Catholicism look ridiculous!  Just frankly admit that there’s a problem, and trust providence to sort it out.”  What Fastiggi and I agree about is that providence will sort it out, but we disagree about what form this might take and what role respectful criticism of deficient magisterial statements can play.

At the end of the day, though, such psychological speculations are not what matter.  What matters is what the evidence of scripture, tradition, and the entirety of the magisterial history of the Church (not just the last few years of it) have to say.  And as I have argued, that evidence tells decisively against Fastiggi’s position.

UPDATE 10/18: At Substack, Suan Sonna offers some comments which clarify his position.  I thank him for his civil and charitable reply.