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On Traditionalist Bullies, and the Death Penalty

On Traditionalist Bullies, and the Death Penalty

Last updated on: October 13, 2026 at 12:01 pm by Mary Pezzulo

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On Traditionalist Bullies, and the Death Penalty 2026-10-13T12:01:09-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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We need to talk about the death penalty again: or, rather, a certain group of Catholics’ response to the death penalty.

This article probably isn’t about you.

If you are a “Consistent Life Ethic” kind of Catholic who tries to carefully observe ALL of the Church’s rules, from womb to tomb, from the ones that annoy liberals to the ones that annoy conservatives, good for you. I’m not talking about you. If you are a “bruised reed” kind of Catholic who still loves Jesus and hopes Jesus loves you but are really so exhausted you don’t know where you stand on a lot of issues, come sit right by me. I totally get it. I’m not talking about you. If you are a Catholic who has deconstructed and reconstructed what Sister Mary Catechism told you in the second grade and you love our Faith but you’re just not sure about one or two rules, you’re not alone. I’m of the opinion that if we were perfectly honest with one another, we’d all realize we were cafeteria Catholics. If you’re a Catholic who doesn’t LIKE the death penalty, but you think it’s a little too naive to think we should just abolish it because some criminals are so dangerous that it’s the only way to keep society safe, I think you are mistaken but I respect you and we can talk. This isn’t about you either. And if you’re not Catholic but here for some other reason, welcome aboard.

This article is about the bullies.

This article is about the Traddy type of people. It’s NOT about the people who genuinely enjoy the smells and bells of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass and think it’s cool to wear a mantilla and read sermons by the Curé d’Ars. It’s about the people who believe that, by being traditionalists, they’re better than other people and the only true Catholics. It’s about the people who bully others about their supposed lukewarmness and demand that the rules should be difficult and painful for everyone. It’s about what they’re saying right now, on the death penalty.

If you live in the United States, you probably already know that the death penalty is all over the news.

At the very end of last month, the public watched the astonishing botched execution of Christa Pike, who was given a double dose of a lethal injection and failed to die. She spent several days on a ventilator in the hospital and is now back in prison, with brain damage and burns all over her arms. Shooting her would have been more humane. And speaking of shooting people, it’s just been announced that we’re going to have a public, televised, firing squad execution in December. The victim of the execution will be Nidal Hasan. Hasan is a terrorist who killed thirteen people and Pike is a murderess who tortured a young woman and smashed her skull, as I’ve already written about earlier. There’s no question of their guilt. If anyone deserves the death penalty, they do. But the official line from Rome is that they don’t because nobody does.

Pope Leo has been saying over and over again that the death penalty is inadmissible and must be abolished. He’s even said that you’re not pro-life if you’re only against abortion and not the death penalty. Archbishop Paul Coakley, the president of the USCCB, has also expressed his horror at the upcoming public execution. Timothy Broglio, the archbishop assigned to the US Armed Forces, has stated in no uncertain terms that any Catholic ordered to take part in the public execution must refuse. This is not a situation with a lot of room for personal interpretation.

And Pope Leo is not making up a new rule, but insisting on what Pope Francis insisted when he revised Paragraph 2267 of the Catechism in 2018. Francis was also not making up a brand new rule but building on Pope Saint John Paul the Second’s stance on the death penalty. In Evangelium Vitae, John Paul built on top of the Church’s long established teaching that all direct killing is grave sin, but that a person may react to a deadly threat with deadly force if it’s absolutely necessary. We’re not allowed to kill for revenge or to prove a point or to punish a sinner, but only if it’s the only possible way to defend ourselves or others against a killer who is going to strike again. He declared we must only execute prisoners “in cases of absolute necessity, in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today, however, as a result of steady improvement in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.” All Francis did was close the loophole by saying that such cases are not practically nonexistent but definitely nonexistent. Leo agrees. They didn’t make up a new rule. They developed the doctrine in response to changing circumstances. If you’re Catholic and you want to dissent from three Popes’ interpretations of thousands of years of tradition, I’m not going to yell at you about that, but you should know you’re absolutely not adhering to the teaching of the Catholic Church. No, not even if you can quote-mine the Bible or a saint to support your position. Rome has spoken.

And the Trads, not all the people who like the Latin Mass but the bullies I mentioned earlier, the ones who think they’re more Catholic than the Pope, have gone wild.

They’re offended that they are being told they can’t watch or participate in a firing squad. They think Pope Leo is spoiling the austere and strident traditions of the Church. They’re even calling the Pope an antipope. They’re furious that the Pope says they can’t have the snuff film that they want.

I find it interesting that the same people who constantly bully others because the teaching of the Church is hard, can’t stand it when they’re told they don’t get the fun they were promised.

These bullies are the ones that not only bully people on birth control, but insist that you mustn’t use natural family planning either but have to be a providentialist because life isn’t supposed to be fun or easy. It’s not enough for them that you save sex for marriage, but you have to follow their own eccentric rules for modesty and “avoiding scandal” or they treat you like a doxy. They excoriate LGBTQ people and demand that they either pretend to be straight or ignore their every desire from the waist down forever, because rules are rules and you ought to offer it up. They want a battered spouse to stay with their abusive partner and pray for them like Saint Monica no matter how bad it gets. They not only want to insist on the Church’s teaching that you mustn’t get an elective abortion, but sometimes expect women with ectopic pregnancies to put off surgery until they pop and that women in the middle of a painful miscarriage hold on until they get sepsis, because life is about sacrifice and you shouldn’t think about yourself.

And now they’re being told they mustn’t rejoice in a public execution. They can’t enjoy the spectacle they wanted. They have to deny themselves and offer it up. And they’re throwing a tantrum. They think the Pope is the Antipope.

That’s telling, isn’t it?

Never listen to those people again.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to “The Little Portion” on paypal or Mary Pezzulo on venmo

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