Of all the post-enlightenment heresies to afflict the Church, Seamless Garment "theology" is among the most pathetic. Its' one thing for an idea to be heresy; its wrong and must be crushed. But its' special when a hersy is just... weak. As in, the very meat of the heresy only stands with a backbone of gelatin. This is the case with Seamless Garment "theology" in two ways.
BUT FIRST, I'll define this belief for those who don't know of it (by name, at least). National Catholic Register - a Catholic news/opinion site that very much supports it - defines the Seamless Garment as follows:
The Church proposes what is called a “consistent ethic of life”. It must, of course, do so because it is bound by sacred tradition to the proposition that all human beings, without any exception whatsoever, are made in the image and likeness of God and that Jesus Christ died for all human beings, without any exception whatsoever. Therefore each human person—without any exception whatsoever—is sacred and is the only creature that God wills for its own sake. [I]
Like many heresies, this doesn't sound all too bad, and it even sounds orthodox. But also like many heresies, the Devil is (literally) in the details. The last sentence, that "each human person - without any exception whatsoever - is sacred..." is applied to mean that the death penalty is not to be exercised except for when it is absolutely necessary for the physical protection of the community. This is more or less a softer version of the argument, made popular by Pope John Paul II (JPII), who coined the "Seamless Garment" ethic. But it has grown more aggressively anti-death penalty since the article was published (2014). In 2017, Pope Francis made a change to catechism 2267, the section on the death penalty. The reading replaced by Francis was itself a replacement by JPII that established the Seamless Garment foothold on the death penalty, saying:
Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent." [II]
Again, this itself is a revision of the earlier teaching, specifically from the 16th century Catechism of the Council of Trent, which affirmed a straightforward right of the state to execute murderers, going as far as to say that such is "an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder." [III]
But according to Francis, JPII's garment wasn't so seamless. So he felt the need to revise it once again, strengthening the immorality of the death penalty in absolute terms:
Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.
Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.Consequently, 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. [IV]
Francis clearly had in mind a more blunt moral condemnation of the death penalty, otherwise he wouldn't have felt a need to revise JPII's revision. The second half in particular makes the immorality of the death penalty more explicit, and Francis makes obvious what JPII made implicit, that use of the death penalty as a societal defence is no longer necessary.
So now you should have a decent idea of the Seamless Garment case against the death penalty. Now we will see why I titled this post "Seams in the Seamless Garment".
A Thorn in Rome's Side - Scripture
Unfortunately for Francis et al, there is one passage of scripture that is particularly damning of Seamless Garment ethics, that being Genesis 9:5 - 6:
וְאַךְ אֶת-דִּמְכֶם לְנַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם אֶדְרֹשׁ, מִיַּד כָּל-חַיָּה אֶדְרְשֶׁנּוּ; וּמִיַּד הָאָדָם, מִיַּד אִישׁ אָחִיו--אֶדְרֹשׁ, אֶת-נֶפֶשׁ הָאָדָם
שֹׁפֵךְ דַּם הָאָדָם, בָּאָדָם דָּמוֹ יִשָּׁפֵךְ: כִּי בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים, עָשָׂה אֶת-הָאָדָם
And even your blood for your lives I will require, from the hand of every living thing I will require it. And from the hand of man, from the hand of a man's brother, I will require the life of man.
Whosoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For in His image did God make man.
A very clear command in verse 5, followed by a pretty based chiasm [V] in verse 6. And I can attest to it being just as clear in the Hebrew (and the Septuagint Greek [VI]) as it is in English versions. It is important to include verse 5 as well because most tend to only debate verse 6, being the clearer (and cooler) portion of the passage. And this is how some scholars can argue that God didn't give a "command" to execute murderers per say, but gave some vague poetic saying emphasizing the seriousness of murder. Of course, when we include verse 5, we have a very clear, non-poetic command. The incredibly fundamental nature of the command must also be mentioned. First, this is a command given to all of post-flood mankind before the larger body of statutes were given to Moses. Second, it is presented just after God gave the extremely basic and universal right to eat meat. Death for murderers appears as normative as eating meat.
So what issue does this pose for the Seamless Garment? Most obviously, it denies the very premise that because all humans are made in the image of God, all killing is wrong unless it is practically necessary at specific moments and time periods for the safety of the community. But here, the scriptures not only prescribe death for such practical situations, but for spiritual and moral reasons too, as shown in Genesis 9:6b. Now, citing various crimes that warranted death in the legal codes of Israel would open up a separate "but Christ abolished the Law!" tangent . Silly and unbiblical as that opinion is, we can cut this all out by appealing to a command so fundamental that it was given beside the right to merely eat meat.
So, like many Roman doctrines, the scriptures present a major defeater to the Seamless Garment. But in like fashion, Roman apologists have interpretive wands stuffed up their sleeves for situations just like this.
One of easiest and more common magic tricks they employ is scholarly obfuscation. That is, dump a dozen quotes from scholars who disagree on a passage's interpretation, and then declare (if only implicitly) that because some scholars are in disagreement on interpretation, any argument for a definitive interpretation should be disregarded. This is how Roman apologist David Armstrong responds to the passage, in his own response [VII] to Edward Feser's use of Genesis 9:5 - 6 in his excellent book "By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment". Rather than actually address Feser's arguments for the historical, mainstream interpretation of the passage (David himself admits he doesn't intend to argue interpretation), he just quote dumps a bunch of scholars who say "this means X" or "there is disagreement". That's it. He just shrugs and says "Well scholars X and Y think Genesis 9:6 is proverbial, not binding".
Without giving even a minor argument for why we should believe their claims (again, intentional on David's part), he turns around and says that these interpretations that avoid supporting the death penalty are "possible" and "plausible". But why? Why should I believe these are even "possible" or "plausible", let alone true? I, and Feser, don't care about what's theoretically possible, but what actually is. That is, don't obfuscate with a thousand opinions ala the Talmud, but give us answers. Until you give us an actual argument that demonstrates a better interpretation for the passage, then I see no reason to dump my current, well-argued position.
Armstrong does more than what many Roman apologists do and actually addresses the elephant that is Genesis 9:5 - 6. I've argued about the death penalty on a couple of occasions with my traditionalist Catholic friends trying to defend this Seamless Garment teaching, and when I raised Genesis 9:5 - 6, both times they didn't know of the passage and were either stumped or had to gish gallop around it.
I could write more on this, but I don't think it is necessary, and this was only meant to be a short writeup. A basic knowledge of scripture is enough to refute many heresies, including the Seamless Garment. And in a massive show of irony, God's command in Genesis 9 proves that death for murder actually values life even more so than the Seamless Garment position. That one must be put to death for killing even a lowly peasant shows how valuable life is, how ultimate its value is. It has always been a basic assumption of law that the more severe a crime, the more severe the punishment. This is why assault gives you more jail time than petty theft, or rape more than public defecation. How much more valuable must life be that to take it warrants death, the ultimate punishment?
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I - Seamless Garment article, by Mark Shea
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/the-seamless-garment-what-it-is-and-isn-t
II - JPII's catechism (death penalty: 2267)
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a5.htm
III - Catechism of the Council of Trent, the Fifth Commandment
http://www.catholicsociety.com/documents/Catechism_of_the_Council%20of_Trent.pdf
IV - Francis's 2017 revision to Catechism 2267
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20180801_catechismo-penadimorte_en.html
V - "A chiasm (also called a chiasmus) is a literary device in which a sequence of ideas is presented and then repeated in reverse order."
https://www.gotquestions.org/chiasm-chiastic.html
VI - καὶ γὰρ τὸ ὑμέτερον αἷμα τῶν ψυχῶν ὑμῶν ἐκζητήσω, ἐκ χειρὸς πάντων τῶν θηρίων ἐκζητήσω αὐτὸ καὶ ἐκ χειρὸς ἀνθρώπου ἀδελφοῦ ἐκζητήσω τὴν ψυχὴν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου.
ὁ ἐκχέων αἷμα ἀνθρώπου ἀντὶ τοῦ αἵματος αὐτοῦ ἐκχυθήσεται, ὅτι ἐν εἰκόνι θεοῦ ἐποίησα τὸν ἄνθρωπον.
VII - Armstrong's article
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2017/12/genesis-96-capital-punishment-contra-ed-feser.html
