In 1979, Father Anselm Günthör wrote that “the statements of the ecclesial Magisterium [on the death penalty] are occasional assertions and do not represent a fully definitive position; we must not undervalue them, but nor should we consider them to be unchangeable and perennially valid Magisterial statements.”[1] In other words, there was never any infallible teaching on the death penalty at that point.

There was a unanimous consensus among the Church Fathers on the death penalty. The Fathers allowed for the liceity of the death penalty, yet many still called for forgiveness. For example, St. Augustine, who was not averse to capital punishment in principle, still called for the forgiveness of criminals.

During the trial of the murderers of two priests, Saint Augustine asked the judge not to take the life of the assassins with this argument: “We do not object to your depriving these wicked men of the freedom to commit further crimes. Our desire is rather that justice be satisfied without the taking of their lives or the maiming of their bodies in any part. And, at the same time, that by the coercive measures provided by the law, they be turned from their irrational fury to the calmness of men of sound mind, and from their evil deeds to some useful employment. This too is considered a condemnation, but who does not see that, when savage violence is restrained and remedies meant to produce repentance are provided, it should be considered a benefit rather than a mere punitive measure… Do not let the atrocity of their sins feed a desire for vengeance, but desire instead to heal the wounds which those deeds have inflicted on their souls”.[2]

It should be noted that an unanimous teaching of the Church Fathers does not necessarily entail the teaching is infallible. As Jimmy Akin observes in his book Teaching with Authority: How to Cut Through Doctrinal Confusion & Understand What the Church Really Says,

It … isn’t sufficient to produce a catalogue of quotations from churchmen spanning many centuries to show that a teaching is infallible by the ordinary and universal magisterium. For that, the quotations must indicate that the teaching is definitively to be held. If, in their own day, the churchmen only taught in a way that required “religious assent of will and intellect” then the matter would be a longstanding teaching but not an infallible one. As in every other exercise of magisterium, definitiveness—not length of time—is the key to infallibility.[3]

We do not see a definitive magisterial statement on the death penalty in the first millennium. We see statements approving of the liceity in several local councils and statements of popes, but these cannot be considered definitive. As E. Christian Brugger notes in his book Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition, “the early-fourth-century Spanish Synod of Elvira and the late-fourth-century Council of Rome were local rather than universal councils, and the relevant writings of Popes Gregory I and Innocent I were personal letters, not documents promulgated with the specific intent to solemnly define doctrine.”[4]

Brugger further writes,

Pope Innocent III in 1210 had required members of the Waldensian sect as a condition of their reconciliation with the Church to profess (among other things) “that the secular power can (potest) without mortal sin impose a judgment of blood provided the punishment is carried out not in hatred but with good judgement, not inconsiderately but after mature deliberation”.... Did this constitute an infallible proclamation? It did not. The profession in which the statement appears was published in a personal letter to the group’s leader and not in a papal bull to the universal Church. If some proposition in the profession was not already a matter of faith, its inclusion in the Waldensian oath did not constitute it as such. So Innocent’s statement could have been mistaken.

It is not unprecedented for a non-dogmatic profession to teach error. The fifteenth-century “Decree for the Armenians” in the bull Exsultate Domino by Pope Eugene IV taught that the sacrament of Holy Orders is “conferred by handing over the chalice with wine and the paten with the bread”.... This, of course, is an error since the Sacrament of Orders is conferred by the laying on of hands by a Catholic bishop. Neuner and Dupuis confidently conclude that the Decree for the Armenians is “neither an infallible definition, nor a document of faith.” The same could be said of the Waldensian profession. The death penalty’s legitimacy has never been defined by a pope or ecumenical council.[5]

There was also the Roman Catechism commissioned by the Council of Trent. This catechism likewise approved the death penalty, but this section was not written with language to have defined the subject definitively. Moreover, the section relating to the death penalty mentions that civil rulers can without sin lawfully resort to the death penalty for “The end of the [Fifth] Commandment is the preservation and security of human life.”[6] But since prison systems have improved, resorting to the death penalty is unnecessary. Since a murderer can be imprisoned successfully to prevent further murders, the death penalty would be immoral, for it unnecessarily takes a life, even if that person is a murderer. Prison allows redemption, a strong message of the Gospel.

Pope Francis legitimately developed the doctrine on the death penalty when he updated the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which now reads, “the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”[7] The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith confirmed that “the new formulation of number 2267 of the Catechism expresses an authentic development of doctrine that is not in contradiction with the prior teachings of the Magisterium.”[8]

Even though prescriptions for the death penalty were recorded in the Old Testament, Jesus teaches forgiveness:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”[9]

God forgave Cain, David, and Paul for their involvement in murders instead of having them put to death, and we are called to do the same. This is why the current doctrine on the death penalty derives from the message of forgiveness from the Gospel.

Cardinal Sarah is an extremely well-read and insightful prelate, who has displayed his brilliance in books like The Power of Silence and God or Nothing. He was born in northern Guinea, which as of 2020 has an average IQ of 67.[1] Yet, he is a man who speaks three languages fluently, has degrees in theology and Sacred Scripture, and has distinguished himself by his orthodoxy.

He began seminary training at the age of 12 and has continued to avidly learn since then. It is evident that Catholic education is a powerful tool for developing the mind into an industrious intellect that seeks truth and success. And although many in traditionalist circles find refuge in him, he has maintained Catholic orthodoxy, such as when he said that “whoever is against the pope is, ipso facto, outside the church.”[2]

Cardinal Sarah is not some genetic outlier among the Guinea people. A healthy environment and dedication to success can create many more Sarahs.

The category of a Black race is arbitrary due to the spectrum of genetic variation, and the only objective identifier for race is the singular human race. Nevertheless, for ease of discussion this blog post will refer to those who identify as Black/African, although these terms in regard to IQ studies ultimately become meaningless, as will be shown.

According to hereditarians like Charles Murray, low Black IQ is due to genetics and cannot be significantly improved. This position is completely false. The Eyferth study is proof that the primary cause of IQ discrepancies is the environment:

In the 1950s, German psychologist Klaus Eyferth speculated that Black children raised apart from both the racism and ghetto culture that were then unfortunately prevalent in Black America could be expected to perform intellectually on par with whites. To test this thesis, he administered a German-language version of the standard Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) test to hundreds of children fathered by American servicemen with German mothers. Eighty-three of the children were white, and ninety-eight were mixed-race: the daughters and sons of Black GIs and white German girls. As a culturalist would predict, the children had almost identical SAT scores. The white boys beat the Black/mixed boys by four points—101 to 97—but the mixed-race girls whipped the white girls 96 to 93.

…

Some might object that selection by the U.S. Army of only soldiers within a certain IQ range slanted the results of the test, but we know from the work of Sowell and others that the IQ averages of different racial groups within the U.S. Armed Forces have ranged between 80 and 105, and generally reflect the IQ distributions in our larger society.[3]

This wasn’t the only study to show that race had a negligible effect on IQ:

According to a 2017 Brookings Institution report by Jonathan Rothwell, data from the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that there is “no [longer] any test score gap between white and multiracial high school students.” In reading and reading analysis, in fact, “multiracial students outperform other groups, including Asians” by a statistically significant margin.

This high performance was not due to any uniquely high level of socioeconomic status enjoyed by biracial teens; the average multiracial high school student comes from a family making $72,000, as opposed to $118,107 for whites and about $60,000 for Blacks. Nor are multiracial children an “exotic” population, resulting mainly from marriages between small high-performing groups like Asians and Jews. Most are just Black and white. According to Rothwell, “[n]early half of multiracial students aged fifteen to eighteen report having Black ancestry, and Black-white combinations are the most frequent interracial origin of multiracial children.”[4]

Reliable adoption studies have shown no significant difference in IQ:

A superior adoption study and one not discussed by the hereditarians was carried out at Arizona State University by the psychologist Elsie Moore, who looked at black and mixed-race children adopted by middle-class families, either black or white, and found no difference in I.Q. between the black and mixed-race children. Most telling is Dr. Moore’s finding that children adopted by white families had I.Q.’s 13 points higher than those of children adopted by black families. The environments that even middle-class black children grow up in are not as favorable for the development of I.Q. as those of middle-class whites.[5]

Further studies into IQ have elucidated other reasons for the apparent gap:

Important recent psychological research helps to pinpoint just what factors shape differences in I.Q. scores. Joseph Fagan of Case Western Reserve University and Cynthia Holland of Cuyahoga Community College tested blacks and whites on their knowledge of, and their ability to learn and reason with, words and concepts. The whites had substantially more knowledge of the various words and concepts, but when participants were tested on their ability to learn new words, either from dictionary definitions or by learning their meaning in context, the blacks did just as well as the whites.

Whites showed better comprehension of sayings, better ability to recognize similarities and better facility with analogies when solutions required knowledge of words and concepts that were more likely to be known to whites than to blacks. But when these kinds of reasoning were tested with words and concepts known equally well to blacks and whites, there were no differences. Within each race, prior knowledge predicted learning and reasoning, but between the races it was prior knowledge only that differed.[6]

Eugenicist Richard Lynn has noted that Scrabble is a cognitively demanding activity:

Scrabble is another cognitively demanding game involving combining letters to make words. It has been shown by Toma, Halpern and Berger (2014) that top scrabble experts have “extraordinarily high levels of visuospatial and verbal working memory capacities” and score 1.23d higher than elite college students who scored at the 93rd percentile of the quantitative SAT. There have been 38 winners of the American National Scrabble Championships 1978-2016 and 16 winners and runners-up of the Canadian National Scrabble Championships 1996- 2013. All of these have been men.[7]

Although the top players in Scrabble have high IQs, it turns out that Nigerians dominate competitive Scrabble, even though many live in poverty. Two of the top ten ranked players are from Nigeria, and 28 are in the top 100.[8]

James Flynn wrote of the closing Black-White IQ gap, noting how for the years 1970-2002, “Blacks gained 4 to 7 IQ points on non-Hispanic Whites between 1972 and 2002.”[9]

Rick Nevin has identified what may be the main cause of the Flynn effect: lead poisoning. It is known that “additive exposure to urban air lead and lead paint in deteriorated housing” has severe effects on the brain. An increase in violent crime is one example, and decreasing IQ is also drastic:

Extensive research shows a dose-response relationship between blood lead and IQ later in life. Preschool blood lead of 10 mcg/dl is associated with 7.4 IQ points lost relative to blood lead of one mcg/dl. Another 1.6 IQ points are lost with blood lead of 15 mcg/dl relative to 10 mcg/dl, and each mcg/dl over 15 lowers IQ by 0.23 points, on average. Therefore, blood lead of 40 mcg/dl is associated with an average loss of 15 IQ points, and a 60 mcg/dl level lowers IQ by almost 20 points.

…

The percent of children ages 1-5 with blood lead over 5 mcg/dl fell from over 31% in 1988-1991 to 2.6% in 2007-2010.

…

In the late-1970s, the average blood lead for black children under age 3 was 50% above the average for white children, but black children were six times more likely to have blood lead of 30–39 mcg/dl and eight times more likely to be over 40 mcg/dl. Those children were juveniles in the early-1990s, when the black juvenile burglary arrest rate was 60% higher than the white rate, but the black juvenile violent crime arrest rate was five times higher, and the black juvenile murder arrest rate was eight times higher than the white juvenile rate. The percent of black preschool children with blood lead above 30 mcg/dl fell by 90% from the late-1970s to the late-1980s, and the black juvenile murder arrest rate then fell 83% from the early-1990s through 2004, and fell to 87% below its early-1990s peak in 2012. The “chaotic families” hypothesis provides no insight into this stunning decline in black juvenile homicide arrests over the past two decades: The percent of black children living in two-parent families was 38% in 1990 and in 2012.[10]

As regulations to remove lead were incorporated in US law, the average IQ of Americans rose. The toxic chemical problem, while still not being completely eradicated from older homes and so low blood-lead levels in children still exist, has largely been solved. There have also been major improvements in developing countries. The United Nations reported in 2011 how a

California State University study cites the massive benefits the phase-out has brought, including more than 1.2 million fewer premature deaths annually, 125,000 of them of children, with tests showing lead in blood levels dropping dramatically by 90 per cent or more, particularly in cities.

Some 58 million crimes have been averted and IQs (intelligence quotient) have risen, with research indicating that children with lots of lead in their blood are much more likely to be aggressive, violent and delinquent. It is estimated that $2.4 trillion in costs have been saved each year, equivalent to 4 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP).

…

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that between 15 and 18 million children in developing countries currently suffer from permanent brain damage due to lead poisoning and, according to the results of the research, leaded petrol was responsible for some 90 per cent of human lead exposure.[11]

With improvements in the standard of living, it appears the trend of increasing Black IQ will continue.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country

[2] https://www.archbalt.org/cardinal-sarah-to-oppose-the-pope-is-to-be-outside-the-church/

[3] Reilly, Wilfred. Taboo: 10 Facts You Can’t Talk About (p. 68). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.

[4] Reilly, Wilfred. Taboo: 10 Facts You Can’t Talk About (p. 69). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/opinion/09nisbett.html

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/opinion/09nisbett.html

[7] https://www.unz.com/article/nigerians-jews-and-scrabble-an-update-on-the-iq-debate/

[8] https://www.unz.com/article/nigerians-jews-and-scrabble-an-update-on-the-iq-debate/

[9] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01802.x

[10] Nevin, Rick. Lucifer Curves: The Legacy of Lead Poisoning. BookBaby. Kindle Edition.

[11] https://news.un.org/en/story/2011/10/393292-phase-out-leaded-petrol-brings-huge-health-and-cost-benefits-un-backed-study

The American Revolutionary War is a source of celebration for all Americans. The claims of the Declaration of Independence are taken for granted, and it is considered to have been a just war. However, under scrutiny, this war cannot be considered just.

John D. Roche writes,

Historically, Christian thinkers have held that biblical passages such as Romans 13 clearly prohibit rebellion. Although a few Catholic writers such as John of Salisbury argued that tyrannicide may be justified in extreme circumstances, prior to the Protestant Reformation the vast majority of Christian thinkers rejected its legitimacy. Early Protestant leaders, including Martin Luther and John Calvin, initially accepted this view, but by most accounts they eventually embraced the position that inferior magistrates may actively resist tyrants. Within a generation, Calvinist thinkers such as John Ponet, Christopher Goodman, George Buchannan, and Samuel Rutherford had embraced this position. That Calvinists developed such a robust resistance ideology is particularly important in the American context as this tradition was, according to Sydney Ahlstrom, “the religious heritage of three-fourths of the American people in 1776.”

But it was not only Calvinists who argued that tyrants may be resisted. Particularly important in the American context is John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government (1689). Locke was likely influenced by earlier Calvinist thinkers, but he secularized and helped popularize the idea that the people themselves could justly overthrow tyrannical governments. As well, patriot colonists were influenced by the Whig political ideology which developed between the turn of the seventeenth and the early eighteenth century.[1]

It was this Protestant perversion of just-war theory which fermented in Britain and adopted by Americans that allowed the latter to justify what they claimed was resistance of tyranny.  Protestant clergy in the colonies preached that resisting tyranny was a duty, one such figure being the Boston Congregationalist minister Jonathan Mayhew who stated that “Common tyrants, and public oppressors, are not entitled to obedience from their subjects, by virtue of anything here laid down by the inspired apostle.”[2] There were other influential pastors like

the Presbyterian Abraham Keteltas. Keteltas preached a sermon entitled “God Arising and Pleading His People’s Cause” in 1777 during which he expounded upon the religious dynamics of the American struggle, arguing that “the cause of this American continent, against the measure of cruel, bloody, and vindictive ministry,” was “the cause of God” and that, since the colonies were God’s chosen people, Britain’s war against the colonies was “unjust and unwarrantable.”[3]

For American patriots, “the interrelated issues of taxation, representation, and Parliamentary sovereignty formed the central crux of the imperial debate and justification for their rebellion.”[4] But simply put, the tax situation did not justify armed rebellion.

When Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, the colonies were only paying £1,800 annually. Although Parliament did seek a thirtyfold increase, £60,000 annually with the Stamp Act, this amount would only cover seventeen percent of the £350,000 required to keep ten thousand regulars in the colonies. More importantly, the colonists’ tax burden paled in comparison to that of those living in England. Following the Seven Years’ War, Britons in the home islands paid an average of twenty-five shillings annually versus the colonists’ six pence of imperial taxes, which translates to fifty times the colonists’ tax rate.[5]

Although the Declaration of Independence claimed that “[King George] has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us,”[6] it was actually Americans who escalated violence from Lexington that led to complete warfare. British troops marched to Concord in an effort to prevent armed conflict by seizing weapons thought to be there. However, the Lexington militiamen refused to be disarmed since they insisted they had a right to self-defense. When these two forces met, British Major John Pitcairn ordered the militiamen to disperse, which they refused. Pitcairn never gave the order to his men to fire, but the shooting did commence, although we don’t know which side fired first. This outbreak of hostilities resulted in eight dead colonists and nine others wounded, while on the British side the only casualty was a soldier with a bullet through his thigh.

When the British finally made their way to Concord, they destroyed all the war material they saw. They also set fire to the town’s liberty pole, a fire which then spread to the courthouse nearby, which is when things got out of control. As Roche writes,

the town’s militiamen who had been watching from above the North Bridge mistakenly believed the British were burning the entire town. This prompted them to attack, and the New England militiamen harried the British troops all the way back to Boston. When the British had finished running their gauntlet, 73 were dead, 174 had been wounded, and another 26 were missing. On the American side, only 49 had died, 39 were wounded, and 4 were missing. The colonists followed up this assault by laying siege to the city of Boston with an Army of Observation. The patriots further escalated the conflict when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Army of Observation as the Continental Army on June 14, 1775, and made George Washington its commander. By this action, the Congress transformed a regional rebellion into a continent-wide civil war. Four days later, the New England troops enticed the British to attack them by fortifying Breed’s Hill. The final aggressive act the colonists made prior to the Declaration of Independence was the invasion of Canada. The Americans hoped to wage a war of liberation and make Canada the Fourteenth Colony. At a minimum, it seems reasonable to classify the patriots’ actions as something more than mere “self-defense.”[7]

Roche concluded:

By any measure, the War of Independence was not a war of last resort. The British were still willing to make compromises through the summer of 1776. Parliament proposed the Conciliatory Resolution in February 1775, which offered to allow the colonies to tax themselves as long as they contributed “their proportion to the common defence.” The Continental Congress rejected this offer. When Admiral Lord Richard Howe and General William Howe arrived in New York City at the head of thirty-two thousand troops in July of 1776, they came not only as military commanders but also as peace commissioners. They were authorized to settle the issue of taxation under the terms of the Conciliatory Resolution, as well as grant pardons and remove trade restrictions. Unfortunately for Lord Howe, the Americans declared independence eight days before he arrived.[8]

Because of the colonists’ drive for war, tens of thousands perished in an unjust war:

Throughout the course of the war, an estimated 6,800 Americans were killed in action, 6,100 wounded, and upwards of 20,000 were taken prisoner. Historians believe that at least an additional 17,000 deaths were the result of disease, including about 8,000–12,000 who died while prisoners of war.

Unreliable imperial data places the total casualties for British regulars fighting in the Revolutionary War around 24,000 men. This total number includes battlefield deaths and injuries, deaths from disease, men taken prisoner, and those who remained missing.

Approximately 1,200 Hessian soldiers were killed, 6,354 died of disease, and another 5,500 deserted and settled in America afterward.[9]