Satisfying Justice The Other Lesson Geoghan Taught Us

Fitting Punishment to Crime

Paraphrasing the insights of this saintly woman’s autobiography, the real underlying threat of jail today was not serving time, but being placed in danger of being raped [or murdered] by fellow inmates. Judges, prosecutors, and police made innuendoes to this danger to break her will and force her to promise not to continue her non-violent protests. Thankfully God protected her.

Anyone who has seen The Shawshank Redemption — or for that matter served time — can probably relate to what Andrews wrote. In fact, with just about everyone in America aware of these huge flaws in the system, one may even wonder why Catholic bishops are attacked by the media while judges, prosecutors, police and wardens are never questioned for feeding “fresh meat” into the system to be raped and murdered by people known to pose this threat to others.

Besides the lack of diligence of judges, prosecutors, and wardens and the real need for reform of the prison and legal system, the issue of current Catholic discipline regarding the exercise of the death penalty surfaces again with the murder of ex-priest and convicted pedophile John Geoghan by a fellow inmate who was serving a life sentence for murder. The term “discipline” is used because the Catechism of the Catholic Church distinguishes between the moral right to enforce the death penalty and attempted prudential judgements to regulate its use: “The Church has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty” (#2266). Geoghan, though a depraved and ill criminal, would still be alive today had a neo-Nazi murderer been executed.

However, current discipline of many bishops in the U.S. is to make public pleas for stays of execution for any and all inmates convicted of capital offenses. In the process, the general Catholic populace has absorbed the belief from bishops and pastors that the death penalty in America is “immoral” because we can now safely incarcerate even the worst cold-blooded murderer, though the ability of the State to lock someone up for life has not appreciably changed since the times of those Doctors of the Church who said the State should execute murderers. Abolitionists of the penalty support their position by turning to the section of the Catechism that states, “If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives…public authority should limit itself to such means” (#2267). Yet, according to paragraph #2266, the decision as to the necessity of the death penalty’s proper use is left to the legitimate public authority, who cannot be charged as “immoral” for carrying out their legitimate function.

With many church-going Catholics now saying the death penalty is “immoral,” we ought to ask what is causing such a deviance from constant Church teaching that legitimate public authority has the right to exercise the death penalty. Jesus justified capital punishment when he said to Pilate, “You would have no power over me were it not given from above” (Jn. 19:11).

It was probably through this statement of Jesus that Saint Paul reasoned that (though the Mosaic Covenant had been superseded) the Noahic Covenant (Gen. 9:6) had not been superseded, and hence wrote, “Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God…But if you do evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword without purpose, but is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the evildoer” (see Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans 13:1-7 and Saint and Doctor of the Church Robert Bellarmine’s writings on the death penalty).

Communion Across the Centuries

Cardinal Ratzinger’s book, Called to Communion (Ignatius Press 1996), makes an important point with regard to interpretations of Church teaching. It is not enough that most of the bishops of today are in communion with each other, but they must also be in communion with the bishops of the past. On page ninety-nine he notes that the “we” of the bishops “extends not only synchronically [today] but also diachronically [through time]…. A majority that formed at some juncture against the faith of the Church of all times would be no majority: the true majority in the Church reaches diachronically across the ages, and only when one listens to this plenary majority does one remain in the apostolic ‘we’.”

While this does not apply to prudential judgments currently affecting the death penalty, but rather to faith and morals, nevertheless, if intellectuals of the Church today still believe murder is a sin that “cries out to heaven for vengeance” (#2268), should not they rather maintain the witness of Scripture, the Fathers, and the Doctors (Augustine, Aquinas, Bellarmine, Liguori) that for “the preservation of public order and the safety of persons” (#2266), legitimate public authority has the right to exercise the death penalty for 1st Degree murderers… cold-blooded killers? Should this not guide their prudential judgments?

It also makes one wonder where certain bishops of today stand on the belief that when voluntarily accepted “[punishment] takes on the value of expiation” (#2266), especially when they ask for commutation of death sentences that the criminal has himself accepted by refusing the appeal process. We must not forget Saint Therese of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church, and her experience praying for a condemned murderer. Having prayed for the murderer (Pranzini) about to be executed by the guillotine, she rejoiced when she learned he “thrice kissed the sacred wounds [on the crucifix offered by the priest].” She viewed him as saved from hell and the first of her spiritual children. This should also be a reminder that the Virgin’s statements at Fatima ninety years ago are just as important today, “Many souls go to hell because no one prayed for them.”

Yet it is probably because most intellectuals today no longer believe in heaven or hell that they no longer believe in the need for expiation. Cardinal Dulles, in his October 2000 McGinley Lecture, comments:

Many governments in Europe and elsewhere have eliminated the death penalty in the twentieth century, often against the protests of religious believers. While this change may be viewed as moral progress, it is probably due, in part, to the evaporation of the sense of sin, guilt, and retributive justice, all of which are essential to biblical religion and Catholic faith. The abolition of the death penalty in formerly Christian countries may owe more to secular humanism than to deeper penetration into the gospel.

It is a testament to the deep penetration of this country with biblical thought that most Americans, including Catholics, still favor the death penalty. In Texas, after many recent escapes and murderous rampages, the death penalty remains sensible to a majority.

Contrary to Cardinal Dulles, who does back-flips to side with the prudential decision against use of the death penalty in western civilization, it seems not enough merely to argue that “the classical tradition held that the State should not exercise [the death penalty] when the evil effects outweigh the good effects” (McGinley Lecture 2000), when one has not proved or demonstrated that the evil effects outweigh the good effects today. In fact, in the same lecture Dulles had previously pointed out that, “In cases where the criminal seems incapable of being reintegrated into human society, the death penalty may be a way of achieving the criminal’s reconciliation with God” by moving him to repentance. The death sentence often forces the convicted to recognize in this ultimate peer-pressure that he has sinned. Perhaps this is why so many are willing to repent who wouldn’t if the community were to just say, “Lock him up.” (Timothy McVeigh who went to Confession just before his execution is a good case in point.) Is not the salvation of the soul the most important rehabilitation and good effect after one has been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? Would not only the secular humanist argue otherwise?

The true classical tradition, then, is that of Saint Ambrose asking that the Church not actively call for the death of a person or serve as the executioner so that the condemned will not think that in his last moment even God is against him. The Church needs to be present to offer God’s mercy and reconciliation one last time to the condemned. The Church’s role is mercy, as the Gospel says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (Jn. 3:17). May the Church never stop proclaiming the mercy of God to the condemned. To confuse the mercy of God with reversal of a temporal death sentence would be a sad reduction indeed.

Assertions Without Evidence

Cardinal Dulles said, “The pope and the bishops, using their prudential judgment, have concluded that in contemporary society, at least in countries like our own, the death penalty ought not to be invoked, because, on balance, it does more harm than good” (same lecture). Not only is this prudential decision outside the authority of their office, as stated in the Catechism, but it demands factual evidence since it is not a matter of revelation. If Cardinal Dulles believes that “evil effects [are] outweighing the good effects” then upon what evidence does he believe this? The very reason the faithful are confused at what appears to be an innovation in church teaching is that “evil outweighing good” is something verifiable as a fact but no facts are presented, instead it is merely asserted. Whether or not our system of confinement today is better than in times past is a question of fact. Whether or not people can be held indefinitely is a question of fact. To what extent the death penalty works as a deterrent is a question of fact.

As an aside here we must note the following two points about deterrence: First no one can be put to death solely as a deterrent to the commission of crimes by others. To do so would not only be horribly unjust, it would be to use a human being as an instrument, something wholly against charity and the Catholic understanding of the dignity of the person. Since the State is already the legitimate public authority, its application of the death penalty to capital crimes is not for the sake of deterrent, but rather first and foremost because the punishment fits the crime.

Second, the death penalty forces the community to respect the dignity of life (which we are forbidden individually to take) when the community as a whole — by being forced to execute — renews its belief in the sanctity of life by saving the ultimate punishment for those who violate life’s sacredness. Deterrence, then, is a secondary benefit of forcing respect for life, not the first intended reason for execution. Thus, the common good is more fully served in the execution of the criminal because the whole community is forced to witness again the truth that life is so sacred that the penalty for violating it is to lose one’s own ultimate earthly treasure — life. While the deterrent effect may be statistically measurable (a matter of fact) its existence is clear from both reason and revelation.

Those who would claim the death penalty is not a deterrent are saying that you will slow down on the freeway at the sight of a cop in fear of getting a ticket but that if that same cop had the authority to shoot you in the head on the side of the road for speeding, you would blithely put the pedal to the metal. Worse, to argue that the death penalty is not a deterrent is to argue with God’s word. “Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst. The rest, on hearing of it, shall fear, and never again do a thing so evil among you” (Deut. 19:19). This is probably why God, through the mouth of Peter, executed Ananias and Saphira (not even for murder) at the start of the New Testament church: “And great fear came upon all who heard of these things” (Acts 5:11). Why have not certain princes of the Church pointed to revelation’s support of the common good being served by the death penalty, and instead, treaded in the area of questions of fact outside their jurisdiction?

Questions of fact are not the competency of the Church as are theological issues of faith and morals, as even the Catechism testifies. Rather — as with war — the “evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgement of those who have responsibility for the common good” (#2309).

If there really is such wholesale corruption of prosecutors and judges that they are not permitting valid evidence that would cause a reasonable doubt and hence condemning people unjustly, then let’s give these judges and prosecutors who knowingly put to death innocent men the death penalty and clean up the system. If we need to put the death penalty on hold a couple years to complete a finding of fact (and then reinstate it once these cold-blooded white collar criminals have been punished and replaced) that is another thing entirely from calling for abolition. Would the good Cardinal and like-minded bishops agree that once this alleged issue is addressed, the evil effects no longer outweigh the good effects and the death penalty should be reinstated?

To call into question “the common good” and what public authority “should limit itself to” (#2367) when the issue is a question of fact, is to call into question the relationship of temporal authority to Church authority. Do the bishops who are going to demand that legitimate public authority limit itself to “bloodless means” (#2267) intend themselves to become the “legitimate public authority”? Do they want to establish private prisons, certified by the state and guaranteed by their offices, wherein they can employ people to guard and attempt to reform the cold-blooded murderers imprisoned for life? Do they want to pay the insurance company premiums for when there is an escapee who murders someone and the family of the deceased sues those responsible for the prison?

More importantly, what has this hue and cry over the death penalty done to the defense of actually innocent people who are being condemned to death in abortion clinics? After all, even Cardinal Bernardin made clear, as Cardinal Dulles noted, “that capital punishment should not be equated with the crimes of abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. [And] Pope John Paul II spoke for the whole Catholic tradition when he proclaimed, in Evangelium Vitae, that ‘the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral’ (EV 57). But he wisely included in that statement the word ‘innocent.’ He has never said that every criminal has a right to live nor has he denied that the State has the right in some cases to execute the guilty” (Dulles’ McGinley Lecture Oct. 2000).

Many bishops are just as frustrated as the faithful as to what approach is best in fighting our pervasive culture of death. But the idea that fighting the legitimate and well-founded death penalty will turn our culture around is based not on biblical and Catholic principles, but on secular humanism. Is this the best way to preserve society’s view of “the dignity of the human person” (#2267)? Or, rather, does God’s wisdom still hold true which says human life is so sacred that “if anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has man been made” (Gen. 9:6)? Indeed reform of the legal system is needed, but let’s not disregard Scripture and revolutionize Church teaching by calling the use of the death penalty on cold-blooded murderers “immoral.”

Our bishops are guardians of the deposit of faith. Regarding the death penalty, thankfully, they have only treaded in the territory of prudential decision and not faith or morals. Its use on cold-blooded murderers is still moral, but left to the competency of the legitimate public authority to decide if they will exercise it. Which will it be? Cold-blooded murderers making expiation for their sins and satisfying justice or murderers running cell blocks and continuing to terrorize those within them?