Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition:
Brugger, E. Christian & Doyle, Dennis M.
SAFE, LEGAL & RARE? Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition E. Christian Brugger University of Notre Dame Press, $50, 281 pp. Dennis M. Doyle fter giving this book a quick look, I...
...A larger Catholic theological discussion exists...
...Prior to Constantine, Brugger notes, the state's right to execute was recognized, but Christians themselves were not allowed to participate...
...0-8006-3684-8 176 pp paper $19.00 FORTRESS PRESS Augsburg Fortress, Publishers 1-800-328-4648 fortresspress.com and the Infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium," in which they claim that the immorality of artificial methods of contraception has indeed been taught infallibly...
...Theologians taking Brugger's method seriously may despair of ever being able to argue for change in church teachings...
...Commonweal "Exacting though Lawler's standards may be, he is not unreasonable either in his examples of factual errors and omissions, or in his incisive arguments...
...First, here was a serious alternative to Ford and Grisez's position...
...CREATIVITY Throughout the past thirty years, Gordon Kaufman's bold and highly regarded works have pushed theologians to examine honestly, if painfully, their most cherished assumptions about God...
...E. Christian Brugger demonstrates how the Catholic position on capital punishment has shifted not only from yes to virtually never, but also from the category of just retribution to the category of a society's legitimate self-defense...
...19.95 "This book is effective because it places the contemporary debate over the Holocaust into the more profound con-text of the on-going struggle in Roman Catholic Christianity for reformation and renewal...
...The criteria for judgment also changed, from an emphasis on legitimate public authority to the inviolable dignity of the human person...
...Brugger acknowledges in a footnote Francis Sullivan's position that there can be no infallible teaching regarding concrete moral norms, but he prefers to go with the weight of the tradition that suggests otherwise...
...Dennis M. Doyle fter giving this book a quick look, I gathered its subject would be as much about Catholic authority and doctrinal change as about capital punishment...
...Lawler who was holding down the left wing of the church...
...Second, it was an approach to understanding Vatican II's statements on infallibility more in harmony with the collegial spirit of the texts...
...Theological Studies FROM GOOD BOOKSTORES OR TO ORDER CALL 1-800-561-7704 A "The world's first solar-powered electric chair...
...Sullivan acknowledged many of the specific claims made by Ford and Grisez, but brilliantly demonstrated how the arguments, whether taken individually or as a whole, do not actually determine that the prohibition on contraception has been taught infallibly...
...Jews will never understand the Catholic response to the debate if they ignore this context which is instantiated in Lawler's sustained, deeply engaging, and well-crafted argument" —The Jerusalem Post "A polemical dissection of the rhetorical stridency and historical sleight of hand Lawler sees being used to reduce the papacy's complicated relationship with the Holocaust...
...has the credentials for the job...
...CAROL SIMPSON / ROTHCO Commonweal 2 9 September 24, 2004 GORDON D. KAUFMAN IN THE BEGINNING...
...His discussion of the Pope and the Shoah is balanced and insightful...
...I also thought it would be a progressive book that would argue significant, even dramatic, change is taking place in official Catholic teaching and that more radical changes can be expected in the future...
...He draws not only from Vatican II's Lumen gentium, but also and especially from a 1978 article in Theological Studies by John C. Ford and Germain Grisez, "Contraception NOW AVAILABLE in PAPERBACK...
...Dennis M. Doyle teaches at the University of Dayton and is the author of The Church Emerging from Vatican II (Twenty-Third/Bayard, updated 2002), and also Communion Ecclesiology: Vision and Versions (Orbis 2000...
...It was not until I read Francis Sullivan's 1983 Magisterium, in which he takes apart their argument point by point, that I found breathing room around the issue...
...He considers at length whether bishops, spread throughout the world, have taught in a consistent and unified manner that the legitimacy of capital punishment is to be held definitively...
...In other words, he plays the infallibility card in a way that limits the discussion of potential development in areas of church teaching...
...Although he tends to overemphasize infallibility, the fact that he takes magisterial teaching so seriously and places it so centrally is admirable...
...This major contribution to the theology-and-science debate invites us to think of God as creativity, to live with faith in this God, and to cooperate with the divine in meeting our most pressing challenges...
...He uses the all-male priesthood as his example of a definitive Catholic teaching that is founded on true propositions even though historically it may have been justified with false propositions about the inferiority of women...
...Yet it is here that Brugger's approach narrows...
...Brugger's focus on infallibility carries over to another subject as well...
...When I read that article as a first-year graduate student, I found it to be sad but probably true...
...More important, though, some enterprising theologians may be in-spired to find new ways to make the case for change, even ones that will catch the ears of the powers that be...
...The council's careful balancing of papal and episcopal authority did not seem in-tended to expand the church's infallible teaching to areas like contraception...
...Commonweal 30 September 24, 2004...
...I was right about the book's focus on doctrinal development, but I was far off the mark otherwise...
...The historical sections of Capital Punishment establish that none of the various versions of an overall consistent support for capital punishment has been taught infallibly...
...REFORM, RESENTMENT, H, HOLOCAUST JUSTUS GEORGE LAWLER Popes and Politics Reform, Resentment, and the Holocaust Justus George Lawler 256 pp...
...Now THAT should satisfy the liberals...
...Brugger sifts through the scriptural, patristic, medieval, and modem evidence, laying out themes and variations, commonalities and tensions, in the teachings of theologians and church officials...
...Aquinas defended the state's right to execute with the analogy of the gangrenous limb that must be cut off for the sake of the entire body...
...however, employing the idea of infallibility as a kind of clearinghouse that determines which teachings may be fair game for change is methodologically suspect...
...But, as McCormick, Tilley, and others also remind us, moral truth and doctrinal development are messy in ways that transcend a precise philosophical grasp...
...The argument that Catholic bishops worldwide have taught definitively and infallibly on this mat-ter had me reluctantly convinced, and I would not allow my intuition to over-rule Ford and Grisez's logic...
...Brugger, though, says nothing to suggest that Ford and Grisez may have gotten it wrong on contraception...
...The old joke that the document in which the church alters its stance on artificial birth control will begin, "As the church has always taught" will turn out to be prophetic...
...Still, he relies exclusively on the magisterial expressions found in the new catechism and in papal encyclicals...
...Brugger displays little engagement with views that might challenge his own, such as the proportionalism of Richard McCormick, the dynamics of doctrinal development as studied by J. Robert Dionne, the categories of "reversal" and "the novel" used by John Thiel in regard to Catholic tradition, and the concept of "invention" used by Terrence Tilley...
...Brugger's understanding of the dynamics of church teaching shows depth and sophistication...
...Brugger is right to remind us that as the emphasis of Catholic teaching shifts, the tradition as a whole needs to be protected with the zeal of a defense attorney and the painstaking precision of a philosopher...
...Theologians should always take into proper consideration the level of authority with which any teaching is put forth...
...After Constantine, the line between participants and nonparticipants gradually shifted to that between lay and clergy...
...In fact, Capital Punishment echoes their basic approach...
...Mod-ern Catholic commentators mostly followed Aquinas, but often were caught in the tension between church and Enlightenment thinkers, some of whom, such as Voltaire, Hume, and Fichte, fought to severely limit or to abolish capital punishment...
...I felt relieved on two counts...
Vol. 131 • September 2004 • No. 16
