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The Catholic Church and the Death Penalty

In the aftermath of Christa Pike’s execution that failed to kill her and the federal government’s previously planned livestream of the Fort Hood shooter’s execution by firing squad, Pope Leo XIV has reiterated the Catholic Church’s opposition to the death penalty.

He specifically quoted Pope Francis’s 2018 revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says:

“The Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,’ and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”

So in today’s episode, I want to share how I see this as an authentic development of doctrine, but also explain the options for faithful Catholics who don’t share my view.

I also ask that you pray for Pope Leo, who recently had part of a lung removed after a lung cancer diagnosis.

Now, at the outset, I want to say this is a tough teaching for me to accept.

When I hear stories about criminals like the FedEx truck driver who murdered a little girl while she cried out for her mother, something deep inside of me wants this man to die for his crime.

I think many people who support the death penalty aren’t motivated by bloodlust or cruelty, but by a desire for justice—the desire to give people what they deserve.

But I also worry that, at least personally, I may be guided by warped intuitions about what people deserve.

That’s because a part of me doesn’t just want vile criminals to die. It wants them to die painfully and brutally over a long period, to experience unspeakable agony as they desperately want an end to their “just deserts.”

But then I look to the face of Christ, who said:

“Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.”

And I realize I can’t always trust my feelings on this matter.

So I turn to my faith to guide me on these questions.

How the Church’s Teaching Has Developed

Here’s how I affirm the Church’s teaching on the death penalty without compromising the Church’s teaching authority.

First, I recognize that there has been a development on this subject in the form of what execution methods are morally permissible.

Throughout history, even in Christian societies, people were often executed through methods we now recognize as unjust, like disembowelment, impalement, drowning, being broken on the wheel, and being boiled alive.

The Mosaic Law commanded that sexually immoral persons be burned to death, and Pope Leo X condemned the proposition:

“That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit.”

However, most modern people who support the death penalty would have no problem with the Catechism saying:

“In light of the Gospel, burning criminals to death is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

One might argue that even if burning people alive was necessary in the past to secure the common good of society through strong deterrence, it is no longer necessary and so it shouldn’t be done today.

But that’s the essence of the argument behind the abolition of all execution methods, and not just ones we immediately recognize as cruel.

Second, there has been a development in our understanding of which crimes deserve the death penalty.

For example, theft was long considered a capital offense in Christian Europe.

Before the Charter of the Forest in 1217, peasants could be killed for simply hunting game on the lord’s land.

One seventeenth-century English statesman said:

“Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen.”

And in 1797, a serial burglar named Giacomo dell’Ascensione was executed in the Papal States.

However, most modern people would say that since we have better ways to protect society from thieves, thieves shouldn’t be executed.

But once again, that’s the same argument recent popes like Leo XIV, Francis, and John Paul II have made against the death penalty in general.

Now, a critic might object that the death penalty is about more than just deterrence.

Thieves don’t deserve to die for their crimes, but murderers certainly do.

But how do we know that?

If it’s our intuitions, then how do we know they aren’t as mistaken as the people who previously believed adulterers deserved to die for their crimes?

The Bible allows for the death penalty for a wide variety of crimes that most people would consider non-capital offenses.

This includes rebelling against one’s parents, working on the Sabbath, and adultery.

The Christian emperor Constantine made adultery a capital crime, and the medieval village of Zwickau would bury adulterous couples alive while driving a stake through them.

Many Protestant regions like Geneva and Scotland also drowned adulterers.

The sixteenth-century Catechism of the Council of Trent said:

“The grievousness of the sin of adultery may be easily inferred from the severity of its punishment.”

But imagine the current Catechism were amended to say:

“In light of the Gospel, executing people for the crime of adultery is inadmissible.”

Once again, most of us wouldn’t bat an eye at such a statement, even though the Bible and many Christians throughout Church history affirmed the practice of executing adulterers.

So those are the minor arguments that help me make sense of this teaching.

Here’s my main argument, which is more in the form of a parallel case.

The Parallel Case of Debt Slavery

I want you to consider the issue of debt slavery.

I’m not talking about chattel slavery that reduces people to mere property, or slavery based on race like the kind in the pre-Civil War American South.

Exodus 21:16 says:

“Whoever steals a man, whether he sells him or is found in possession of him, shall be put to death.”

But while the Bible and Church history condemned unlawfully making someone a slave, they allowed lawful ways of enslaving people.

This could be as a punishment for a crime, which I’ve argued in previous episodes isn’t intrinsically evil, since we still make prisoners pick up trash on the side of the road—though it could certainly be abused.

Or it could be a means for a person to repay a debt they owe.

For example, imagine you’re a poor farmer and, to avoid starvation, you take on debt from the local brick factory.

Unfortunately, your crops fail and you have to work in the factory for the rest of your life to repay your debt, which is constantly being added to because you need to keep borrowing to avoid starvation.

You’re trapped in a constant cycle.

Well, you don’t have to imagine this scenario, because it happens all over the world.

Here’s one example in Pakistan:

Clip:

“The family borrowed money from the owner of the brick kiln more than two decades ago to pay a hospital bill.

“Now they spend long days breathing in dust under the scorching desert sun and firing bricks in massive underground kilns.

“And they don’t know if they’ll ever get out of here.

“The owner of the kiln tells them he’s keeping half of the money they earn to make payments on their loan, but they haven’t seen the contract since it was signed with a thumbprint 23 years ago.”

Now imagine the Pope revised the Catechism to say the following:

“In the light of the Gospel, debt slavery is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”

This would mean Christians are obligated to free any debt slaves they have, and someone in debt slavery could run away from that situation without sinning.

But if the Pope taught this 200 years ago, he would have been accused of being a heretic who disregarded the Bible and 1,800 years of Christian history.

The idea that you could simply leave your debt-slavery situation would appear contrary to passages like Colossians 3:22:

“Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord.”

As I noted in my book Hard Sayings, St. Paul’s teachings about slavery are rooted in an ancient Roman context very different from today.

Rome often banned freeing slaves in order to prevent slave uprisings. So one way to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s was to respect those slave laws.

However, as scholars note, the Bible’s insistence that owners treat slaves with kindness and as brothers in the faith was unique in the ancient world.

Unfortunately, acceptance of slavery persisted long after the fall of Rome.

Even as late as 1866, the Holy Office of the Catholic Church said:

“There are some just titles or causes by which a slave can be legitimately deprived of his liberty and legitimately retained by a master. . . . It is not repugnant to the natural and divine law that a slave be sold, bought, exchanged, or given, as long as in this sale, or buying, or exchange, or giving, the due conditions which those same approved authors widely follow and explain, are properly observed.”

But in May of 2026, Pope Leo apologized for the Church’s historical involvement in some aspects of slavery and wrote in his encyclical Magnificas Humanitas:

“There has been a continuous affirmation throughout history of the dignity of every human being, created in the image of God, even if it took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized.

“This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached.”

One of the difficulties in discussing the Catechism’s teaching on the death penalty is the fact that Scripture and Church history explicitly defended something that is now said to be contrary to the Gospel.

But I don’t think the Church is now teaching that capital punishment is intrinsically evil.

Though I wish Church teaching on this subject were clearer, a thing could be bad and harm human dignity but still be allowed because its absence could lead to greater violations of human dignity.

Debt slavery was long seen as this kind of bad thing because it was preferable to starvation.

You can see this in Genesis 47:19, where the people say to Joseph:

“Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for food, and we with our land will be slaves to Pharaoh; and give us seed, that we may live, and not die, and that the land may not be desolate.”

The text then says:

“As for the people, [Joseph] made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other.”

However, if social conditions changed and you could regularly prevent widespread starvation without enslaving people, then you should do that to protect their dignity.

But slavery persisted long after the ancient need to prevent people from starving.

It was often used in the modern world to regulate debts, which led to unjust situations.

Charles Dickens was so traumatized by his father being sent to a debtor’s prison over a forty-pound debt that in 1857 he published Little Dorrit, a novel about William Dorrit, imprisoned at London’s Marshalsea debtors’ prison, whose daughter Amy—Little Dorrit—grows up inside the prison.

English debtors’ prisons were abolished in 1869, and their U.S. counterparts were abolished decades earlier.

But de facto debtors’ prisons where children grow up as slaves still exist in the world today.

And we wouldn’t complain about the Pope declaring this practice inadmissible even though debt slavery is regulated and even commanded as a punishment in Scripture, just like the death penalty.

Exodus 22:3 says that a thief:

“Shall make restitution; if he has nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.”

Is the Death-Penalty Teaching Binding?

Moreover, whether it’s debt slavery or the death penalty, what is being debated is not an infallible teaching of the Church.

So it can change over time.

But it also isn’t a mere prudential judgment Catholics are free to ignore.

According to Vatican II, when the Church teaches in an authoritative way, it requires the religious submission of mind and will even when the Pope is not speaking ex cathedra.

The Pope can require this obedience, not when he gives an offhand remark at a press conference, but when he acts in an official magisterial way, such as by revising the Catechism specifically about what the Church teaches.

In response, some people say the Catholic Church cannot universally declare that the death penalty is no longer needed because that judgment involves an empirical question about crime and providing a basic need like public safety.

That, they argue, is not the Church’s expertise. The Church can teach on faith and morals, but not on the state of the world as it is.

But the Church has already made a similar universal judgment about debt slavery no longer being needed, even though that too involves empirical questions about economics, human flourishing, and how to make sure people’s basic needs are met.

The Catechism simply says:

“The seventh commandment forbids acts or enterprises that for any reason—selfish or ideological, commercial, or totalitarian—lead to the enslavement of human beings.”

There’s also evidence capital punishment is no longer needed to preserve the social order.

Even the world’s poorest nations, like Burundi, the Central African Republic, and Mozambique, have abolished the death penalty.

Most Christian countries have done the same, whereas Muslim-majority nations, China, North Korea, and the United States have not.

El Salvador abolished capital punishment in 1983 and, through rigorous incarceration methods, dropped its homicide rate from over 100 people per 100,000 in 2015 to just over one person per 100,000 in 2025.

El Salvador’s murder rate is three times lower than Texas and ten times lower than Mississippi, even though Texas has executed more people than any other U.S. state.

Some people say the death penalty is more merciful and Christian than life imprisonment because it encourages people to repent by giving them a deadline.

And that may be true.

But it could also be the case that people are killed during their more stubborn phase of life, and this deprives them of the much later time when they grow wiser and see the error of their ways.

This is why St. Augustine said:

“It is not their death, but their deliverance from error, that we seek.”

But let’s suppose it were true that executions motivate conversions.

If the death penalty is contrary to the Gospel, then it would be wrong to use the death penalty to get people to accept the Gospel.

After all, if you executed adulterers and thieves, this would make them more likely to repent of their sinful lifestyles.

But most people would consider it unjust to inflict the death penalty simply to obtain someone’s conversion if his crime were only something like theft or adultery.

The justification instead must go back to what criminals deserve.

And it is up to Christ’s Church to answer that question.

Can a Catholic Disagree With the Church?

But what if, despite everything I’ve said, you still think the Church is wrong to demand the abolition of the death penalty?

My colleague Jimmy Akin, in an article linked below, has outlined how someone can respectfully disagree with the Church on this and other teachings that are not infallibly defined doctrines.

At the bare minimum, you can’t publicly oppose the teaching even if you could privately fail to accept it after thoughtful deliberation under specific circumstances.

The former Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said:

“It can also happen that at the conclusion of a serious study, undertaken with the desire to heed the Magisterium’s teaching without hesitation, the theologian’s difficulty remains because the arguments to the contrary seem more persuasive to him.

“Faced with a proposition to which he feels he cannot give his intellectual assent, the theologian nevertheless has the duty to remain open to a deeper examination of the question.”

And one way to remain open, of course, would be not to participate in the behavior in question even if you personally do not think it is sinful.

That’s why Archbishop Broglio obliged Catholic service members in the armed forces to request excusal from Nidal Hasan’s execution by firing squad because, as the archbishop put it, it was:

“Contrary to the teaching of the Church.”

In fact, the third-century work Apostolic Tradition says:

“A military man in authority must not execute men. If he is ordered, he must not carry it out.”

All right.

Now that I’ve given an overview of why I accept this teaching and see it as authentic development, I want to talk about some of the arguments brought up by people who disagree with my position.

1. “I Agree With the Bible on the Death Penalty”

A Christian might say the death penalty is always justified because, unlike slavery, the death penalty is commanded in the Noahide law of Genesis.

Specifically, Genesis 9:6 says:

“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.”

But Genesis 9:4 says:

“You shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.”

And this was reaffirmed at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 when believers were told to abstain from blood.

However, Christians today don’t think it’s wrong to eat a rare steak or blood pudding.

So not everything said in Genesis 9, like many other parts of Scripture, is binding today.

And the Church has the authority to determine what is and is not binding.

Remember that when Protestants say the change on the death penalty allegedly disproves Catholicism.

Gavin Ortlund brought that up in our debate on sola Scriptura, to which I said:

Clip:

“If Protestants are able to resolve the tension from a Bible that commands the ability to pass on slaves perpetually to now saying slavery is evil, the Catholic Church can do the same thing in our application of the death penalty over a longstanding time.”

And in my conversation with Pastor Eric Huffman, we talked about Scripture, and I pointed out how Protestants have a problem with interpreting Scripture on this subject.

Clip:

“Let me ask you this question: Is it sinful, if you’re a slave, to run away from your master?”

“I would not categorize that as sinful.”

“But then, if that’s the case, why does Colossians 3:22 say, ‘Slaves, obey your masters’? Running away would be supremely disobedient.”

“Well, I would say, is it sinful for a woman to enter church without her head covered? I know there are commands in Scripture that should be rightly understood contextually, and that command, I think, in light of the rest of Scripture around slavery, was for a greater purpose.”

If Protestants can say that Bible verses about debt slavery applied in the first century but don’t apply today, then Catholics can say Bible verses about debt slavery and the death penalty don’t apply today either.

The difference is that Catholics have a mechanism to establish this kind of universal teaching, whereas Protestants only have sola Scriptura, which cannot provide anywhere near as clear a foundation for establishing doctrine.

So if you think the death penalty must be allowed today because it is clearly allowed in the Old Testament, then you also have to say debt slavery must be allowed today because it is clearly allowed in the Old Testament and regulated among believers in the New Testament.

But if you say not everything allowed in the Bible should be allowed today, then you must set aside the Bible alone as your source for modern morality and introduce another standard for answering these modern moral questions.

And the standard I choose is Christ’s one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.

2. “I Agree With the Church Fathers on the Death Penalty”

Many of the Church Fathers were actually against the death penalty and other forms of intentional killing.

Justin Martyr said Christians who once murdered would not even wage war and:

“Cannot bear to see a man killed—even if killed justly.”

Athenagoras opposed public executions.

And Lactantius said:

“With regard to this precept of God, there ought to be no exception at all; but that it is always unlawful to put to death a man, whom God willed to be a sacred animal.”

Now, some people might say that even if they opposed executions in practice, they never denied the state had the authority to do this.

But I’m sure they didn’t deny the state had the authority to regulate debt slavery and other forms of slavery either.

Indeed, many of the Fathers defended slavery as part of God’s plan for a fallen world and not merely something he tolerated.

St. Augustine spoke of:

“The inconceivable horrors of slavery.”

But he also said:

“The prime cause, then, of slavery is sin, which brings man under the dominion of his fellow—that which does not happen save by the judgment of God, with whom is no unrighteousness, and who knows how to award fit punishments to every variety of offense.”

St. John Chrysostom only objected to people owning too many slaves and being greedy, not to them owning slaves at all.

He said:

“It is no shame, that a gentlewoman should walk abroad with two servants [i.e., slaves], but it is a shame that she should go forth with many.

“Perhaps you laugh when you hear this. Believe me it is a shame. Do you think it a great matter to go out with many servants, like dealers in sheep, or dealers in slaves?”

Now, I want to be clear.

This doesn’t disprove Christianity, because it was Christians who eventually brought about the global abolition of slavery.

They also fought for slaves to be treated humanely in contrast to Greco-Roman, Muslim, and other non-Christian slave laws.

But in the Christian world, slavery was long considered necessary to maintain the social order, in the same way we might view credit-card debt or factory farming today—or how the death penalty was, as the Catechism says:

“Long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.”

But once the social order changed and slavery and the death penalty were no longer needed to maintain that order, the Church could authoritatively declare that both should no longer be practiced.

3. “I Agree With St. Thomas Aquinas on the Death Penalty”

All right.

But just because St. Thomas made an argument doesn’t mean it should be embraced today, especially when it contradicts what the Church currently teaches.

Thomas also said that husbands could use physical violence against their wives as a form of corporal punishment and that Jews could be kept in perpetual servitude because some Jews were involved in killing Jesus.

But most people who choose to discuss issues without hiding behind an anonymous internet profile would disagree with Thomas on those points.

Thomas also said, quoting Augustine, that prostitution could be kept legal to prevent the greater evil of:

“Uncontrolled lust.”

But today the Church calls prostitution a social scourge and seeks its abolition, noting that we now have better evidence to show prostitution causes a net harm to society and attacks human dignity.

So the Church’s social doctrine is strongly against it even if this contradicts the judgments of earlier figures like Augustine or Thomas Aquinas.

I’m also unpersuaded by Thomas’s arguments on the death penalty itself.

His main argument was that just as you can chop off a gangrenous limb that threatens the body, you can kill a criminal who threatens the body politic—which for Thomas included criminals guilty of things like severe theft or sacrilege.

But that argument only justifies removing a dangerous person from the community, just as you might remove a limb from the body.

It doesn’t necessarily justify intentionally killing the person.

Modern prisons can remove people from society.

In fact, Cardinal Cajetan, in his sixteenth-century commentary on Thomas’s Summa, says it follows that:

“When the safety of the good requires the killing of the wicked, they are to be killed. And when it does not, not.”

Thomas also said:

“Although it be evil in itself to kill a man so long as he preserve his dignity, yet it may be good to kill a man who has sinned, even as it is to kill a beast.”

But this argument is shaky because if murderers lose their dignity, then we wouldn’t offer them confession or Last Rites, since we don’t offer religious rites to beasts we slaughter.

Pope St. John Paul II even corrected this attitude by pointing out that God protected the first murderer, Cain, from capital punishment:

“Not even a murderer loses his personal dignity, and God himself pledges to guarantee this.”

In fact, it’s odd that even though defenders of capital punishment say Genesis 9:6 requires murderers to be executed, many murderers in the Bible are not executed by human authority, including Moses, David, Absalom, King Manasseh, and King Saul.

But even if Thomas’s natural-law arguments for the death penalty worked, that wouldn’t prove the Church would always be prohibited from forbidding it.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls people to a higher standard than the natural law, such as when he says we should give more to those who ask of us and love our enemies.

You can use natural law to prove the permissibility of enslaving people for just debts or using war to punish nations.

But the Gospel calls us to a higher standard of ethical behavior than simply what natural law permits.

And so the Church can say we must reject acts contrary to the Gospel’s call of universal love, including acts like debt slavery or the death penalty.

4. “I Agree With Nearly All the Previous Popes”

Defenders of the death penalty often cite Pope Innocent III because he required the Waldensian heretics to sign a statement of faith saying secular rulers do not sin mortally if they carry out the death penalty.

But this was not a statement for the universal Church, and it was not repeated in the statement of faith at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.

As a result, this teaching, like others, was subject to development.

Here’s an analogy.

Currently, it is permissible to adopt frozen embryos because the Church has not issued a formal teaching on the matter.

Now imagine one of the beliefs of a dissenting group is that it is gravely sinful to adopt frozen embryos.

The Pope might require members of this group to affirm that adopting frozen embryos is not sinful in order to remain in good standing with what the Church currently permits.

But because this isn’t a definitive teaching, the Church could later reach a resolution on the matter and conclude that adopting frozen embryos is sinful.

Now, you might say that’s silly—to judge someone merely on when in history he held a theological view.

But we do that all the time.

We don’t consider St. Jerome a heretic because of his views on the Deuterocanon, or St. Thomas Aquinas a heretic for saying Mary briefly possessed original sin, because the Church did not infallibly define dogmas related to those subjects until centuries after they died.

Also, if you’re going to say you just want to follow what Pope Innocent III taught, then fine.

But you’ll also have to confront his letter to the archbishops of Paris, where he said:

“Christian mercy receives the Jews, whom their own guilt has subjected to perpetual servitude.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean Jews have to remain second-class citizens just because Innocent III thought that was the case centuries ago.

Social doctrine on how to treat Jews and how to treat criminals has developed since that time.

Finally, some people say the Pope is a hypocrite for objecting to the death penalty because the Papal States executed many people.

One executioner named Giovanni Battista Bugatti served from the age of seventeen until he was eighty-five and executed over 500 people.

But the Papal States also supported slavery, as can be seen in Pope Alexander VII receiving slaves as a gift and Pope Paul III issuing a motu proprio defending Roman slavery under narrow “just titles,” such as prisoners of war.

Along with debt slavery, another common source of slaves were soldiers and even civilians captured in war.

Both Scripture and Church leaders approved this practice for a long time.

Deuteronomy 20, for example, allows for the enslavement of nations that surrender to Israel.

Fast-forward to the Middle Ages and the Papal States, with direct approval from the Pope, kept Muslim prisoners of war as slaves, especially to row galley ships in the papal navy.

Pope Nicholas V wrote in 1455 that the king of Portugal could:

“Capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans . . . and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”

This may have been considered justifiable in the past to preserve the social order and prevent prisoners from suffering worse fates like murder or starvation.

But today we recognize this is immoral—or, if you will, inadmissible.

The Third Geneva Convention, passed in 1949, makes it clear that prisoners of war can only be forced to work under extremely narrow conditions.

They must be paid for their labor and cannot be used in the war effort itself.

So once again, imagine the Pope wrote in the Catechism:

“The Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that enslaving prisoners of war is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

The people who complain about the change in teaching on the death penalty would have made the exact same arguments two hundred years ago about a change in teaching on slavery as a punishment for warfare.

Other people cite Pope Pius XII, who defended the death penalty in 1952, and ask how this could radically change by the time John Paul II said the justification for the death penalty was practically nonexistent.

Well, the same thing happens with slavery.

Pope Leo XIII called for its abolition in 1890, while the Holy Office defended slavery as having some just titles in 1866.

In 1839, Pope Gregory XVI condemned the slave trade while being ambiguous about existing slavery, which slavery defenders cited in their own defense.

They pointed out how the Pope praised the early Church, saying:

“Christians should regard as their brothers their slaves and, above all, their Christian slaves, but that they should be more inclined to set free those who merited it.”

But notice that the Pope did not say Christians should simply free all slaves in order to respect their human dignity.

So just because most popes in history affirmed or allowed slavery of various kinds did not mean nineteenth-century Catholics could ignore popes like Leo XIII, who sought the abolition of slavery.

And that also means that just because most popes in history supported the death penalty, it does not follow that twenty-first-century Catholics can ignore popes like Leo XIV, who seek its abolition.

The teaching authority of the Church is not found in a layperson’s tabulation of what he thinks Catholic history means.

It is found in the voice of the living Magisterium—the bishops in union with the Pope.

5. “I Agree With the Catechism of the Council of Trent”

Like any catechism, this sixteenth-century document, also called the Roman Catechism, contains a collection of statements about infallible and non-infallible Church teaching.

While infallible teachings themselves cannot be in error, what a catechism says about those teachings could be in error.

And the non-infallible teachings it describes could also undergo development.

You can see this in its treatment of the sacraments.

For example, the Roman Catechism says a marriage can be valid even when the bride at a wedding is silent:

“Provided the parents answer for their daughter.”

But this contradicts current canon law, which says:

“The consent of the parties, legitimately manifested between persons qualified by law, makes marriage; no human power is able to supply this consent.”

The Roman Catechism also says couples must abstain from intercourse for three days before receiving the Eucharist and that Anointing of the Sick is reserved for those who are sick.

It specifically prohibits giving this sacrament to people merely in danger of death, such as soldiers going into battle.

But today even those who are not in immediate danger of death, such as those preparing for major surgery, can be anointed.

Now, a critic might say these are not changes in doctrine but changes in sacramental discipline, which is a dubious distinction.

But we can still point to a change in social doctrine because the Roman Catechism treats slavery as morally normal.

In its section on the Ninth Commandment, it says the commandment:

“Includes slaves as well as other servants, whom it is not less unlawful to covet than the other property of our neighbour.”

At this time in Church history, a Christian was not obligated to free his slaves.

He simply could not steal slaves or covet slaves his neighbor justly owned.

But the Church now recognizes that a Christian should never own slaves to be coveted in the first place.

And so there has been a similar development regarding the death penalty even though it was considered a just practice in the past.

6. “If This Can Change, Anything Can Change”

And finally, number six:

If the Church can change its teaching on the death penalty, it could change its teaching on anything—including abortion and homosexuality.

This is the rainbow-colored, pink-and-blue-striped elephant in the room.

Many people who object to the change in the Catechism fear this will happen on other issues and excuse grave evils.

And many people who support this change in the Catechism secretly—or outright—hope it will result in other changes to Church teaching.

Christopher Kellerman is a theologian who has written extensively about how different kinds of slavery were understood throughout Church history.

However, he argues at the end of his book that this change in teaching on slavery means the Church should also change its teachings on women’s ordination and homosexual conduct.

John Noonan argued something similar in his book on contraception, saying the change in the Church’s teaching on lending money at interest would justify a change in Church teaching on contraception.

So how do we resolve this issue?

Some people claim that if something has been taught for the majority of Church history, then it falls under the Church’s ordinary and universal Magisterium and is therefore infallibly defined.

For example, no particular ecumenical council or Pope infallibly defined the wrongness of fornication or prostitution.

But Cardinal Ratzinger said the Church infallibly teaches these acts are wrong through the ordinary and universal Magisterium.

This would be in contrast to acts like in-vitro fertilization, which the Church teaches are wrong but which are so recent that the teaching has not risen to the same level of an infallible teaching.

However, a doctrine merely being taught for a long time does not make it part of the ordinary and universal Magisterium.

Lumen Gentium 25 says the bishops must be in agreement on one position as something:

“Definitively to be held.”

The teaching must be proposed as something definitive, because there have been longstanding teachings that changed.

For example, for most of Church history it was considered sinful to lend money at interest.

This made sense because, in more primitive economies, these kinds of loans were an easy way for people to become trapped in debt slavery.

But as society changed and economies became more advanced, a distinction was made between a just title for a loan with interest and an unjust title or justification for that loan.

In his 1745 encyclical Vix Pervenit, Pope Benedict XIV condemned lending at interest but also said:

“From these other titles, entirely just and legitimate reasons arise to demand something over and above the amount due on the contract.”

Throughout history and even into the nineteenth century, the presumption was that a title on a usurious loan was unjust and thus immoral.

But in 1830, in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, the Holy Office said that people who confessed to charging moderate interest on loans were not to be disturbed:

Non esse inquietandos.

Over the next two hundred years, the Church’s attitude shifted so that now loans that charge interest are presumed just unless something makes them unjust, like exorbitant interest rates.

And here is where I think we can find an asymmetry between unchanging teachings on abortion and marriage versus changing teachings on slavery, usury, and the death penalty.

In the latter cases, the teaching is primarily about society itself, which is something that changes.

And we see a gradual shift in the justifications for these acts—what we might call their “titles.”

The title for lending money at interest was presumed through most of Church history to be unjust.

But as society changed, just titles for loans became more and more common until such loans were presumed just unless there was evidence they were unjust.

Likewise, the title for enslaving someone to pay off a debt—which isn’t that far removed from the burden of paying back loans with interest—was presumed to be a just title.

But as society changed, the titles for debt slavery were seen as more and more unjust until debt slavery was generally presumed unjust unless there was strong evidence to the contrary, like forcing prisoners to pick up trash on the side of the road to make up their debt to society.

We also see this change in the teaching on war.

In the past, the justification for a just war was broad, even including punishing nations for their sins.

But today the justification for just war has become so narrow that recent popes have expressed skepticism about whether there could even be a just war today, given how modern warfare differs from historical warfare.

In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis said:

“We can no longer think of war as a solution, because its risks will probably always be greater than its supposed benefits.

“In view of this, it is very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a ‘just war.’ Never again war!”

And in Dignitas Infinita, the Church taught that war contradicts human dignity.

But an attack on human dignity could still be tolerated if it is foreseen and not intended—like merely foreseen civilian casualties—and if the alternative, such as surrender to an evil state, would result in greater attacks on human dignity.

Finally, with the death penalty, the title or justification for capital punishment was broadly seen as just, given the wide variety of crimes we’ve already seen that historically incurred the death penalty.

But as society changed, those titles came to be seen as more and more unjust until nearly all previous death-penalty crimes were considered unjust punishments.

The Church has now completed this gradual transition by saying that the death penalty itself should no longer be practiced.

Development Does Not Mean Anything Can Change

And this process of gradually coming to understand God’s revelation and how it works out in the world isn’t some modern invention.

It mirrors how God led his people in the Old Testament.

In Verbum Domini, Pope Benedict XVI said of immoral practices in the Old Testament:

“God’s plan is manifested progressively and it is accomplished slowly, in successive stages and despite human resistance.

“God chose a people and patiently worked to guide and educate them.

“Revelation is suited to the cultural and moral level of distant times and thus describes facts and customs, such as cheating and trickery, and acts of violence and massacre, without explicitly denouncing the immorality of such things.

“This can be explained by the historical context, yet it can cause the modern reader to be taken aback, especially if he or she fails to take account of the many ‘dark’ deeds carried out down the centuries, and also in our own day.”

So while the Church was given the Deposit of Faith 2,000 years ago, how to apply that faith in different and changing social contexts was not always obvious.

And some mysteries of the Faith required greater understanding and explanation, as can be seen in infallible teachings defined at later ecumenical councils.

So on some questions we see a change in Church teaching, especially when those teachings concern social conditions that themselves change throughout history.

But in other cases concerning things like human nature itself, we do not see similar change and have no reason to think there ever will be such a change.

Even liberal dissenters probably think the Church’s teaching on the evil of racism cannot change in the future because it is rooted in our immutable human nature.

And if that’s true, then teachings on other aspects of human nature—like the intrinsic value of human life and the procreative nature of marriage—cannot change either.

When it comes to abortion, we don’t have a gradual acceptance of cases like abortion because of rape or fetal deformity throughout history until we finally arrive at a point where the Church has basically accepted abortion.

Instead, the Catechism says:

“Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable.”

And when it comes to so-called same-sex marriage, we do not have the Church gradually allowing this throughout history until now it should simply be acceptable.

Instead, it has been universally condemned or not even imagined, despite—as I showed in a previous episode—claims that something like it occurred in the Middle Ages.

Ah, but what if liberal clerics in the Church finally crack the dam and the Church does allow abortions and so-called gay marriage in limited circumstances in the future?

What happens then?

Well, what if archaeologists find a bone box that says “Jesus of Nazareth” on it, along with confessions from the apostles saying they made everything up?

The faith I have in Christ and his Church gives me a peace that drives out fear related to hypothetical discoveries or situations that could falsify my faith.

That could be a discovery about what happened in the past that casts doubt on Scripture, or a hypothetical heretical act in the future that casts doubt on the Magisterium.

And given all the evidence presented, I do not believe this is cope or wishful thinking.

I believe this attitude is rooted in the Church undergoing sensible development while maintaining the core elements of the Deposit of Faith.

If you’d like more information on how the Church teaches and how its authority is understood over time, I recommend my colleague Jimmy Akin’s book Teaching with Authority.

Thank you all so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.