Reader Comment on "The Death Penalty"

Folks,

The following is a response from a friend concerning the previous post, "The Death Penalty."

I tried to post this reply to your blog page but for some reason it wouldn't publish it. Gotta love technology some times. I'll try to repost it later.

Anyway here it is:

I agree with you on the Davis case - too many questions. What would... have been the harm in giving him life and letting the questions get cleared up?

This question of the morality of the use of the death penalty fascinates me. The author of the quote you published is correct. The Church has always recognized the power of the state to inflict death as punishment. I'd go even further and say that it also recognizes the power of the individual to inflict that same punishment due to our right to self defense.

All this was muddied up by JP II and the ambiguous and contradictory statement he had inserted into the Catechism regarding capital punishment in paragraph[s 2266 and] 2267:

"2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people's rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people's safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.

2267 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.""

I say this statement is ambiguous because it provides no clear cut way of defining how society can be kept safe from the criminal. Lock him up for life? OK, but what if he kills another behind prison walls? Didn't that person deserve protection? And how do we defend the safety of others from potential harm if the criminal spreads lies and errors in prison, convincing others that lies are truth, for example turning others from God Himself? Isn't this causing harm?

Of course it is. It seems to me that short of locking a person of real evil in a hole with no contact whatsoever with the outside world there is no way to ever be sure we are protecting others from harm.

Secondly, I say that the Pope's opinion is contradictory because it avoids or denies the truth in the paragraph that precedes it: "When it [punishment] is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation." In 2267 JP II says that the death penalty definitely takes away the possibility of redemption from the condemned. How can this be when 2266 states clearly and unambiguously that punishment brings expiation if it is willingly accepted by the one being punished?

Both statements cannot be true.

We must follow the consistent teaching of the Church and recognize that the recourse to the death penalty is legitimate. I think that JP II is right, for the most part, about using it only in the most heinous of circumstances but he goes too far in essentially calling for the end to capital punishment.

But that still leaves the question of what crimes deserve death open for discussion. And it seems that God has given the authority to decide this to the state, using the natural law as a foundation.

Those that deny this are not doing God's work - they are in fact undermining it. And in my weak little mind that means that, good intentions or not, what they are doing is evil. And because of this it's our duty to speak out against it.