By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment by Edward Feser (PDF)

Description

The Catholic Church has in recent decades been associated with political efforts to eliminate the death penalty. It was not always so. This timely work reviews and explains the Catholic Tradition regarding the death penalty, demonstrating that it is not inherently evil and that it can be reserved as a just form of punishment in certain cases. Drawing upon a wealth of philosophical, scriptural, theological, and social scientific arguments, the authors explain the perennial teaching of the Church that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate―not only to protect society from immediate physical danger, but also to administer retributive justice and to deter capital crimes. The authors also show how some recent statements of Church leaders in opposition to the death penalty are prudential judgments rather than dogma. They reaffirm that Catholics may, in good conscience, disagree about the application of the death penalty.Some arguments against the death penalty falsely suggest that there has been a rupture in the Church’s traditional teaching and thereby inadvertently cast doubt on the reliability of the Magisterium. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, the Church’s traditional teaching is a safeguard to society, because the just use of the death penalty can be used to protect the lives of the innocent, inculcate a horror of murder, and affirm the dignity of human beings as free and rational creatures who must be held responsible for their actions.By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed challenges contemporary Catholics to engage with Scripture, Tradition, natural law, and the actual social scientific evidence in order to undertake a thoughtful analysis of the current debate about the death penalty.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Based primarily on the natural law, this excellent and much-needed book will be valuable to Catholics and readers of any faith who ask why capital punishment is justified.” –J. Budziszewski, Ph.D., University of Texas”At long last, we have a serious and intelligent look at all aspects of the death penalty its causes, its justification, its consequences for the victim, the criminal himself, and for civil society.” –James V. Schall, S. J., Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University”An illuminating study of a subject often clouded by emotions. An essential read for anyone who wants to understand this thorny subject.” Robert Royal,President, Faith and Reason Institute”The arguments in this book have clarified many of the contentions of this critical issue in my mind.” –Fr. Robert A. Sirico, President, The Acton Institute About the Author Edward Feser is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. Called by National Review “one of the best contemporary writers on philosophy,” he is the author of The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, Aquinas, Scholastic Metaphysics, and many other books and articles.Joseph Bessette is a Professor of Government and Ethics at Claremont McKenna College (CMC) in Southern California, and also teaches in the Dept. of Politics and Policy at the Claremont Graduate University. He has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. Prior to arriving at CMC, Bessette worked nine years in criminal justice.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This book is an exhaustive defense of traditional Catholic doctrine. Even if you’re not especially interested in the question of the death penalty, it will strengthen your understanding of the necessity for a consistent teaching of Catholic dogma over generations. As John Henry Newman made clear, development of teachings is both good and inevitable. But, in recent years, development has given way to outright invention in the minds of many Catholics, not a few of them mitered. This book is a strong remedy for that brand of intellectual poison.

⭐This book was a God send for me, literally. In 1992 I converted to Catholicism and always felt cradle Catholics knew more than myself about the church. I believe firmly in the death penalty and know that the Holy Scriptures support that belief and always have. No one of any religion can say the scriptures are wrong and still believe in God-what would be the point? Without the Bible you could pick and choose whatever you decided to believe, it could even be an atheistic treatise-take your pick.Catholics are constantly telling me that a Catholic can not support the death penalty and still be a true Catholic and take communion. Naturally this is disturbing to me since the scriptures say otherwise and the Catholic Church definitely follows the scriptures. When I saw, By Man shall His Blood Be Shed, advertised I immediately ordered it and devoured it like a starving lady.This book has restored my faith in the Church and helped me to see that strong Catholics now and through the ages knew God did not expect mankind to live amongst horrific murderers; that have done deeds no one could ever imagine a human being would or could do. This book explains to all reasonable folks that life is in the blood and God made know the sacredness of life from the beginning of time. My thanks goes to Mr. Feser and Mr. Bessette for researching and writing this book. May God bless their effforts.

⭐Dr. Feser presents a very carefully argued position for the death penalty. But you get far more in this book, an excellent presentation of traditional Catholic ethics. You can see how reasonable, how so logical the positions he discusses. It reminds me of Judge Bork’s book The Tempting of America, which, after reading it, you realize that it is the only book an educated person (aside from those who are in the legal profession) would ever need in the field of Constitutional Law. This book appears to me the same way. You will never need any other reference about the death penalty than this book. All of the contrary arguments are simply decapitated.

⭐This book is the most valuable addition to the capital punishment discussion since Pius XII’s explicit and principled support for it. Every Catholic should read it and take it to heart, and every opponent to capital punishment should read it and be quiet until they can refute its well-argued conclusions. Not that they will ever be able to refute the conclusion from Church teaching that explicitly holds that capital punishment is morally licit, that is stance irreformable.What the average Catholic won’t know, before reading this book, is the extent (overwhelming) of the confirmation in Church teaching in support of the basic morality of capital punishment. The multiplicity of biblical citations, the uniformity of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the universality of the theologians before 1960, just completely eliminates the notion that there is any room for debate on the point in Church doctrine. Read it and see. The so-called leaders in the Church who pretend that they can say capital punishment is immoral in principle do so only by neglecting to actually consider and reflect on Church teaching throughout 2000 years. Just in the last half of the 20th century alone, Pius XII and John Paul II both explicitly affirmed the moral licitness of capital punishment, basing this conclusion on the inherent nature of proportional retributive punishment.If the book has any defects, it is that the authors made some arguments too briefly. Any book on teaching or apologetics must balance fullness with readability (and cost), so this isn’t much of a criticism (hence the 5 stars). More than likely, the fuller support for the underlying premises are to be found in the arguments for Scholastic Metaphysics, which (fortunately) Feser has also written for us.

⭐Great book, addresses every angle imaginable. I started with the presumption that the death penalty was not pro-life and thought that was the Catholic teaching. This completely changed my position. Well argued and well documented.

⭐Throughout its history, the Catholic Church has never forbidden use of the death penalty, despite what you hear these days. One example of justification of the death penalty: recently a security guard admonished to customer to put on a mask. The customer refused, went home and obtained a gun and shot the security guard dead, who was the father of either 7 or 9 children. An obviously premeditated act like this deserves the death penalty, applied sooner rather than later.

⭐This is an excellent book, but readers should approach it with an open mind. Many reviewers have lambasted it, accusing the authors of all kinds of un-Christian motivations or Scriptural illiteracy. One notorious Catholic blogger even suggested the authors were looking for arguments in favour of killing as many people as possible! And when I posted about the book on social media, I was confronted with the same accusation of bloodthirstiness– by a Facebook friend who I quickly “unfriended.”This is a scholarly and reflective work, not a polemic. It simply makes the case that the legitimacy of capital punishment is irreformable Catholic teaching, and also that capital punishment is sometimes justified in practice– for particularly heinous homicides.Feser and Bessette put together a pretty impressive collections of quotations from Scripture, Fathers of the Church, Doctors of the Church, Catechisms, and Popes, all defending the right of lawful authority to take human life, or “bear the sword” as St. Paul put it (Romans 13:4).Of course, Pope Francis is a staunch opponent of the death penalty, and since the book’s announcement he has changed the Catechism to describe the death penalty as “inadmissible”, while insisting that doctrine has not changed. Many will argue that the Pontiff wields supreme authority in such matters. Others, such as the authors of this book, argue that even the Pope can be mistaken on a matter in which he is not speaking ex cathedra. Arguments over infallibility, its nature and limits, are always quite perplexing. The section of the book in which Feser and Bessette tackle this is quite complicated. They certainly make a strong case that the defence of the death penalty is well-established Catholic tradition, but is it “irreformable”, or does the Pope retain the prerogative to change it, or develop it? I’m not sure. There are strong arguments on both sides.The book also makes a secular, criminological case for the death penalty, though I found this less powerful. The most powerful argument of abolitionists is, perhaps, that capital punishment is not a deterrent. Feser and Bessette argue that this is not an established fact, and that research to this effect is rather overstated, but they don’t establish the contrary, either.Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is its potted history of abolitionism amongst Catholic bishops in America. This is of much more recent vintage than one might suppose. The single passage which impressed me the most in the book was the following: “The firm and unalterable opposition of the Church to abortion, euthanasia, homosexual behaviour, and “same-sex marriage”, divorce and remarriage, fornication, and other practices common in contemporary society puts Catholic bishops in the position of facing relentless and harsh criticism from opinion makers, politics activists, academics, and dissidents within the Church. The temptation to find some common ground, some way to seem to the wider culture to be progressive rather than reactionary, can be overwhelming. Vigorous opposition to the death penalty appears to them to fit the bill.” I think that is all too true.Highly recommended.

⭐Chapters 1, 2, and 4 were informative and well written, perhaps too much lenghty quotation in ch 3, but overall very informative and touches on a broad base of relevant topics.

⭐Just read this book. Wether you are interested in m Theology, Law, Philosophy or Ethics, just… Just read it.

⭐A thought provoking and scripturally sound defence of capital punishment from a Catholic perspective.

⭐Excellent

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