The Pope and Capital Punishment
The latest papal backpedalling from biblical truth concerns capital punishment. The Pope has rewritten the Catechism of the Catholic Church in order
to promote the view that capital punishment is such an assault on “the inviolability and dignity of the person” that it is always inadmissible and that the Roman Church will now work “with determination” for its worldwide abolition.
We certainly do not expect the Pope to give a sound interpretation of the teachings of the Scriptures. The Word of God, however, solemnly teaches the inviolable requirement that the sin of murder be punished by the infliction of the death penalty upon the murderer (Gen 9:5,6). So we have another example of how Rome seems to be able to change its position on issues which, for centuries, it has held as fixed. At the same time, the Papacy still has the audacity to claim to be the infallible interpreter of Christian truth, with unchanging authority over the consciences of men. As one commentator has written, “If the [Roman Catholic] Church has been that wrong for that long about something that serious, why should we trust anything else she teaches? And if all previous popes have been so badly mistaken about something so important, why should we think Pope Francis is right?”
AWM