Certainly one might come up with such an interpretation, but I think it wouldn't be one embraced by the Fathers or the traditional denominations.

Granted the death penalty is morally licit, I agree the Christian shouldn't be too quick to use it. But there are dangers the other way too. Opposition to its use can be sentimental and imply something of a lack of concern for responsibility and intrinsic justice. It can also, and seems to in our society, be connected to a lack of belief in life after death and postmortem punishment or vindication.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

But I'm just giving the basic interpretations of the traditional denominations. None of them has taken that passage to mean communism is morally obligatory, and the Benedictine rule obviously doesn't show that (given it is a rule for a voluntary religious order). You are giving novel interpretations, even if you think they are obvious.

You think my interpretations are novel, but by the same token your interpretations are far from basic. For one, you have no Bible verses to back them up. The one doctrine you mentioned - two swords - is as controversial as it gets when you look into its history. There has been no coherent historical purpose to it. There's flip-flopping about it on the Roman Catholic side (flip: The pope can appoint emperors and all princes should kiss his feet. Flop: The pope is your spiritual authority, not secular judge and law-giver.) and, on the Orthodox side, it was completely unusable for example under Ottoman rule, so it was hardly even mentioned. Such a doctrine is not basic.

@seigneur and Jeremy

On the subject of Church-state relations from the Catholic point of view (which I hold to be the authentic Christian view, needless, to say) I suggest checking out this wonderful website: https://thejosias.com/

Particularly this: https://thejosias.com/2016/03/03/integralism-and-gelasian-dyarchy/

Last edited by GeorgiusThomas (11/26/2017 1:24 pm)

@seigneur

My comment was at least partially precipitated by your assertion of 'flip-flopping' done by the Church in this matter. I think the corresponding view is mistaken, and that the linked materials can bear witness to that.

I also think the linked discussion is of somewhat more general scope, and is philosophically informed.  And then, the God of revelation has to be the same as nature's God, after all, and prima facie this can be relevant when assessing the historicity of the revelation in question. Unless of course your interest is purely speculative (it would be interesting to see the reasons for your position on authentic Christianity, and what it is). 

Last edited by GeorgiusThomas (11/27/2017 3:59 pm)

Let us.

Nota bene, though: unless you somehow prove your possession of a special grace of soul-reading or something equivalent, I submit that anything that presupposes judging internal dispositions of the popes whose behaviour you claim to be talking about is at least as uninteresting as Catholic appeals to the abscence of some propositions in magisterial texts or insufficient grounding within them. 

I propose to distinguish between popes qua vicars of Christ (visible heads of the Church) and popes qua secular rulers/bodies prescribed by particular constitutions. The papacy has never claimed political authority over what would become the Papal States on the basis of the first mentioned privilege: historically papal rule arose out of necessity caused by the decline of Byzantine authority in Italy (Ravenna's reach gradually diminished to the point of incapacity of enforcing imperial peace). This was confirmed in the Donation of Pepin and some employed the (forged, most probably by clerics in Gaul/Francia) Donation of Constantine, and in these documents direct political power of the papacy is presented as derivative: it's communicated to the popes by secular authorities (King Pepin III of the Franks and ever-august Constantine respectively) and viewed as competent to do that. 

Even popes like St. Gregory VII of Canossa fame didn't claim immediate supreme political power within Christendom in virtue of their Petrine charism. The Roman argument against lay investiture had never been that the Pope is a secular authority above the emperor. Investiture of clerics and monastics, whose ecclesiatical position had the status of imperial princes attached to it, wasn't claimed on the basis that the Pope and ecclesial hierarchy generally were superior princes anyway, but rather due to the relative eminence of ecclesial responsibilities compared to imperial ones.

The situation with further papal involvement in the 'constitution' Holy Roman Empire is more difficult, at least partly, I think, because this was generally a very complicated topic: just look up the controversy what the "German nation" part (although explicitly added to the name later, the discussion long precedes this, if I recall correctly). I believe that the power (exercised by Popes) to "depose" emperors stemmed from authority over all Christian "sacra", including oaths given by the electors and other princes to the Emperor (a 'minimalist' understanding), the Pope, as chief spiritual director, as it were, pronouncing his judgement on the moral effects of honouring certain oaths (not understood as unconditional in the first place) in light of the political situation in the empire (one can come up with relatively recent examples of public initiatives on the part of bishops, such as commanding the faithful to boycotte the Hollywood film industry in the US). But even if you follow a more ambitious theory, namely, that the Pope had a supervisory position in virtue of the papal institution of the HRE, it was still not done on the basis of Petrine primacy, but rather the imperial constitution (with the Donation in the background, although there's also the fact that the Church was the last remaining Roman corporation of public law in the West). At the very least, general papal statements on the subject are perhaps somewhat indeterminate and do not infallibly support either of these theories, and a fortiori the one I believe is implicit in your objection (that the Popes behaved and said what they did because they believed themselves to be super-imperial secular authorities). Abstracting from the Empire, you have things like voluntary (and largely ceremonial) swearing of fealty to the Pope by various Catholic monarchs, which seem to presuppose that they were not his -vassals- simply in virtue of being Christians, nor can I recall monarchs being threatened with excommunication or interdict in case of non-compliance (with a supposed, at least implicit, rule). 

Even claiming imperial Roman regalia, alleged to have taken place in the case of Boniface VIII, can be easily traced to the traditional reading of Daniel's prophecy concerning the four kingdoms ruling over Judea, the last being identified as the Roman empire, with the people of the children of God claiming it for themselves. The idea of St. Peter and St. Paul being the better Romulus and Remus, both undergoing martyrdom to found truly Eternal, spiritual Rome, so that she can, in the words of 
St. Prosper of Aquitaine, "in virtue of pastroral dignity, having become the head of the world, hold with religion that which she doesn't hold by strength of arms" (De ingratis carmen) goes back to the 4th century (holy apostles since that time commemorated by the Church on the same day as Rome's legendary founders, June 29). Given this tradtional context, these visible attributes by themselves do not amount to a declaration of imperial succession.

The reason I'm treating this in some detail is you seeming to neglect these distictions, as evidenced by your discussion with Jeremy. You write: 
"Doesn't Dr. Feser cite (favorably) in the book the CV of the most prolific official executioner of Vatican? How does this square with that the Church itself should not be practising the death penalty?"

The CV belongs to Giovanni Battista Bugatti, official executioner of the -Papal States-. This argument by Feser is indeed directed particularly at Catholics: were DP per se illicit for Christians, surely the Popes would've done away with it in a state where they had the greatest opportunity to reform society in a Christian way?". Master Bugatti was, naturally, Christian, but he wasn't a cleric nor a monastic, but rather a secular official in a state where Catholicism was the religion of state, of which the Pope was ruler. Even executed heretics were indeed not executed by the Church (understood as its hierarchy), but rather by "the secular arm".

Now, you may claim that these distinctions didn't mean much in practice. What's of import here, however, is that the Church insisted on making them, both in documents and discussions. You may think her ministers to have been engaged in gross hipocrisy over the centuries, but what cannot be legitimately concluded is that the Church really failed to -teach- all of this or allowed some other view to replace this one also in practice. So, no flip-flopps (at least in the relevant sense) that I can see.
 

Last edited by GeorgiusThomas (11/28/2017 5:35 am)