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The 1911 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia suggested that "the infliction of capital punishment is not contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church, and the power of the State to visit upon culprits the penalty of death derives much authority from revelation and from the writings of theologians", but that the matter of "the advisability ...
The Catholic Church holds that "all who die in God's grace and friendship but still imperfectly purified" undergo a process of purification after death, which the church calls purgatory, "so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven".
This is a list, in chronological order, of present and past offences to which the Catholic Church has attached the penalty of excommunication; the list is not exhaustive. In most cases these were " automatic excommunications", wherein the violator who knowingly breaks the rule is considered automatically excommunicated from the church ...
The Catholic Church had technically banned the practice of selling indulgences as long ago as 1567. As the Times points out, a monetary donation wouldn't go amiss toward earning an indulgence.
In addition to the eternal punishment due to mortal sin, every sin, including venial sin, is a turning away from God through what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls an "unhealthy attachment to creatures", an attachment that must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called purgatory. [2] "
The Catechism of the Catholic Church proclaims that "in the light of the Gospel" the death penalty is "an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person". [92] Pope Francis has also proclaimed that life imprisonment is a form of torture and "a hidden [form of the] death penalty". [93]
The death penalty is sought in only a fraction of murder cases, and it is often doled out capriciously. The National Academy of Sciences concludes that its role as a deterrent is ambiguous.
A traditional Requiem Mass. In Roman Catholicism, the practice of Gregorian Masses is an ancient tradition in which it is believed that a continuous series of thirty consecutive Masses said in thirty days for the soul of a deceased person will release them from the punishments of Purgatory.