Capital Punishment in the Vatican City.

I was very surprised when I came across this a while ago.. Capital Punishment was legal between 1929 and 1969 for attempted assassinations on the Pope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Vatican_City

It was never used as there was never an attempt in that period but surely the fact it was in legislation goes against Christian values regarding forgiveness?

Fanny Cradock

Deleted User wrote: »

I was very surprised when I came across this a while ago.. Capital Punishment was legal between 1929 and 1969 for attempted assassinations on the Pope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Vatican_City

It was never used as there was never an attempt in that period but surely the fact it was in legislation goes against Christian values regarding forgiveness?

Wherever about the right or wrongs of capital punishment - it's wrong, IMO -
you seem to be confusing forgiveness with the absence of punitive or reform sentencing. You can forgive someone but still desire that they be subject to justice.

PDN

Deleted User wrote: »

I was very surprised when I came across this a while ago.. Capital Punishment was legal between 1929 and 1969 for attempted assassinations on the Pope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Vatican_City

It was never used as there was never an attempt in that period but surely the fact it was in legislation goes against Christian values regarding forgiveness?

Not at all. Forgiveness does not absolve the criminal from paying the legal penalty for his crime.

For example, if you steal my car then, as a Christian I have to forgive you in that I cannot hold bitterness against you. But any civilised state will arrest you and haul your sorry ass through the courts.

Well the courts and justice are designed to rehabilitate.. I know it's not a Christian value to forgive with no consequence.
Execution is a different kettle of fish though. What do you think of the fact that men of the cloth enacted a law that killed instead of forgave?

PDN

Deleted User wrote: »

Well the courts and justice are designed to rehabilitate.. I know it's not a Christian value to forgive with no consequence.
Execution is a different kettle of fish though. What do you think of the fact that men of the cloth enacted a law that killed instead of forgave?

Actually the courts and justice are there to protect society. Btw, I don't believe in the death penalty myself, but the argument that it is incompatible with Christianity is a tough one to make.

Fanny Cradock

Deleted User wrote: »

Well the courts and justice are designed to rehabilitate..

Are they? Perhaps it depends on the country. But I certainly can't imagine how one could say that the Irish judicial system is at all interested in rehabilitation. Mt. Joy, for example, is a disgrace. It is unable to offer acceptable basic living conditions let alone rehabilitation programs. On a larger scale, the likelihood of becoming a repeat offender is worryingly high in certain countries. Furthermore, one certainly can't say that the capital punishment that is still meted out all over the world is anything but punitive in nature.

Interestingly, your quote seems to assume that the courts recognise that all offenders can be rehabilitated. I would say that it really depends on the criminal and the nature of their offence. It would seem that some criminals can not (or will not) be rehabilitated.

Depending on the legal system, the nature of the crime and the sentence, it seems fair to say that the courts are designed to provide on or a mixture of the following: punishment; rehabilitation; removal of the criminal from society.

Deleted User wrote: »

Execution is a different kettle of fish though. What do you think of the fact that men of the cloth enacted a law that killed instead of forgave?

Well, we don't know that they didn't forgive. Nor can we say that it was necessarily their place to forgive. The victim is never supposed to be the presiding judge, after all. The legal system is supposed to be dispassionate and even-handed. This, of course, doesn't mean that they were right to execute those found guilty.

hivizman

The Wikipedia article cited by the original poster puts this into context as a secular rather than religious issue. From 1871 until 1929, after the Kingdom of Italy annexed the Papal States, the Holy See existed in a sort of legal and diplomatic limbo. In 1929, the Lateran Treaty regularised the relationship between the Papacy and the Kingdom of Italy, and created the Vatican City as an independent state. Under the law of Italy at the time, the death penalty applied for attempts to assassinate the King, and as a byproduct of recognising the Pope as a sovereign with the same status as the King of Italy, the same provision was included in the basic law of the Holy See.

If there had been an attempt on the life of the Pope between 1929 and 1969, and the culprit had been sentenced to death, then I would expect a forgiving Pope to commute the sentence to one of imprisonment. Although it came outside the period in question, the example of the assassination attempt on John Paul II on 13 May 1981 is worth looking at. The Pope is reported to have met the convicted assailant, Mehmet Ali Ağca, in prison, and to have asked people to "pray for my brother, whom I have sincerely forgiven".