(This article courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald.)
The issue of capital punishment is indeed a highly debated issue in America. For Catholics, the issue is more problematic because of the Church’s teaching regarding the sanctity of human life and the dignity of the person, which at first glance would seem to preclude the taking of any human life. However, the right to life is premised on the duty to protect and preserve one’s own life: “Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore, it is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow” (Catechism, No. 2264).
The same principle applies to the duty of the state. First, the state has the duty to preserve the common good and to protect its citizens from harm. Therefore, the state may declare and wage a just war against an aggressor outside of the community as well as recognize the individual's legal right of self-defense.
Second, the state has the right and the duty to impose just penalties on those individuals who commit crimes and threaten the well-being of society. However, justice demands that a punishment fit the crime — the penalty must be proportionate to the injury. Such punishment does not mean simply “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth”; rather, just punishment seeks to restore the peaceful order violated by the crime. As such, punishment entails proper retribution, deterrence, and reform.
As a form of retribution, punishment specifically restores the order of justice which the criminal violated. For example, if a criminal stole something, restitution must be made, such as the return of the stolen property or some other form of payment. The criminal may also be deprived of certain freedoms through, for instance, incarceration or fines. Just retribution attempts to heal the injury caused by the crime and restore the order of justice.
Along this line of thought, punishment ought to deter future crime. If justice is rendered fairly and swiftly, specific punishments for specific crimes ought to prevent further crime by either the criminal himself or others. Punishment should not only protect society from a particular criminal but also deter individuals from committing the same crime in the future.
In the end, the punishment of a criminal should incite his reform. The criminal being punished is hopefully moved to see the error of his ways, to repent, and to change his life.
Just punishment strives to balance all three perspectives — retribution, deterrence, and reform. Note also that in applying such punishment, the state must insure to the best of its ability that the person receives a fair trial and that only a legitimate authority imposes any sentence.
Following this perspective of punishment, the Catechism teaches, “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” (No. 2267).
In this statement, the Catechism admits that the exercise of capital punishment is part of the “traditional teaching of the Church,” which is attested to first of all in the Bible. For example, the Old Testament laws permitted the use of capital punishment for serious sins: “If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has man been made” (Gn 9:6) and “Whoever strikes a man a mortal blow must be put to death. When a man kills another after maliciously scheming to do so, you must take him even from my altar and put him to death” (Ex 21:12, 14).
However, capital crimes in the Old Testament included not just premeditated murder, but also kidnapping, cursing or striking of parents, sorcery, sodomy, bestiality, and idolatry. These sins were so heinous in the eyes of God and so threatening to the spiritual and physical welfare of the community that justice mandated capital punishment as proper retribution. The order of justice could only be restored through the execution of the criminal.
Please keep in mind that while the Old Testament lists various capital crimes, it does speak of God’s divine mercy: “As I live says the Lord God, I swear I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked man, but rather in the wicked man's conversion, that he may live” (Ez 33:11). “That he may live,” though, may not so much focus on physical life as it does on the spiritual life, whereby the repentant sinner would avoid eternal punishment in hell. Moreover, the exercise of mercy must ensure the restoration of peace, for there is no mercy when a community lives in fear of an unrepentant heinous criminal.
Note too that Pontius Pilate pronounced a capital sentence upon our Lord, and ordered His crucifixion. However, nowhere in the New Testament is there a condemnation of the right of the state to execute a criminal.
In examining these passages, albeit briefly, one must not fail to question whether the intent and duty of the state to protect the community against such crimes and such criminals can be exercised today in a different way, but in a way that achieves the same end: Can the state uphold the law, disarm the criminal, protect the community, restore justice, and deter future crime but avoid taking life?
St. Thomas Aquinas further elaborated upon the right of the state to execute a criminal. To protect society, capital punishment may be used to punish “malefactors,” i.e. people who freely choose to commit a heinous crime. St. Thomas Aquinas asserted that through sin, a man departs from the order of reason and falls away from the dignity of being an individual made in God's image and likeness. Some crimes are so brutal that one must ask, “What kind of a human being could possibly commit such a crime?” A man who commits a heinous crime, he argued, is even worse than a brute beast and even more dangerous because he can corrupt other individuals and harm the community. Perhaps some individuals have become so filled with evil, blinded to truth and good, and have no remorse for the crimes they have committed, that, as St. Thomas Aquinas would posit, they must be extricated from society permanently: Just as an infectious or diseased organ would be removed to preserve the health of the entire body, so a person who is dangerous or infectious to the community may be executed rather than corrupt or bring harm to the community. (Cf Summa Theologiae, II-II, 64, 1.)
Here St. Thomas Aquinas makes an important distinction between “a malefactor” versus an “innocent person,” and this distinction continues in current Catholic teaching. Human life is indeed sacred in all forms and all times, and an innocent human being has a sacred, inviolable right to life. The Church carefully underscores the inviolability of this right for “innocent life”: In the Declaration on Euthanasia (1980) the Church asserted, “Nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, an old person, or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying.” In the Declaration on Procured Abortion (1974) the Church asserted: “Divine law and natural reason, therefore, exclude all right to the direct killing of an innocent man.” Pope John Paul II in his encyclical “Evangelium Vitae” confirmed, “…The direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral” (No. 57). The Catechism, quoting the instruction “Donum vitae,” states, “God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being” (No. 2258).
However, in the traditional teaching of the Church, when a person freely commits such a heinous crime, he can no longer be considered “innocent,” but is rather an unjust aggressor. If he is judged as a threat to society as a whole, he may be punished with incarceration, and for truly heinous crimes, he may relinquish the right to life in this society, this time, this space, and be executed. Just as an individual may take the life of another as a last resort to protect himself or someone else, just as a state may declare war as a last resort to protect itself, so can a state as a last resort (“the only possible way”) use capital punishment to defend citizens from the unjust aggressor.
St. Thomas would also argue that the capital sentence could also deter future crime: Removed from society permanently and sent to God for divine justice, the criminal would never inflict injury again. St. Thomas Aquinas affirmed that if the good citizens “are protected and saved by the slaying of the wicked, then the latter may be lawfully put to death.” Moreover, the execution of a criminal should also deter others from committing like crimes.
Finally, according to St. Thomas, the capital sentence could inspire reform: The condemned criminal, facing the imminent loss of his life and knowing he will appear before God in judgment, would hopefully be moved to repent.
Given this reasoning, the Catholic Church has in principle upheld the right of the state to execute certain criminals, again, “if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor” (Catechism No. 2267). However, next week we will address the application of this teaching in our present society.
