>>On the flip side, capital punishment is something that is obviously murder (as in thou shalt not kill) and I am personally involved since I pay for the justice system with my taxes. I think its morally repugnant, it goes against the Catholic doctrine, yet I have to participate in it.<<

The Catholic Church does not teach that capital punishment is always wrong. If you read Evangelium Vitae, you will see that the Pope says that capital punishment should only be used in cases of necessity, and that in modern society those cases would be rare, if not practically nonexistent. This is not the same as saying that capital punishment is always wrong or is obviously murder. In fact, it would be up to proper state authority to determine exactly when or if capital punishment is warranted in a particular case.

That's also the case with implementation of just war theory. The church pronounces what the criteria are that the politicians should follow when deciding whether to go to war, but the church does not decree when these conditions have been met. If the pope made a private statement that the Iraq war was an unjust war, that's only a private opinion, not a pronouncement of doctrine. The pope is not the President of the United States, and it would be dereliction of duty for a President to say that the word of the pope on the justice of a particular war should be determinative as to whether the United States does or does not go to war.

Kevin Clark