Dear Matthew and Mary,
Thank you for your well reasoned article on the death penalty. I agreed with it from start to finish. You said things that are correct but rarely heard these days. Justice Scalia and other Catholics have been wrongly criticized when they respectfully disagree with the current trend and support the Church's perennial teaching permitting the prudent use of the death penalty. Thank you again for this article. I look forward to more in the future.
Yours in Christ,
Mark Kemna
To Catholic Exchange:
The article by Matthew Tsakanikas and Mary Kochan is one of the best articles I have seen in evaluating and explaining Pope John Paul II’s teaching on capital punishment as contained in The Catechism of the Catholic Church and in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae. Whereas some (including some Catholic clergy) have thought the Pope’s teaching on capital punishment constituted a clear condemnation of capital punishment and have propagandized this tendentious view effectively (thereby causing confusion on the Church’s moral teaching), our authors have emphasized that the Pope’s teaching cannot be regarded as declaring an absolute prohibition of the death penalty being exercised by civil governments in the developed nations.
Pope John Paul II’s expressed teaching that the death penalty be rarely applied does not exclude its application in the most horrific and sadistic cases where the death penalty may constitute both an act of justice and legitimate retribution. The exercise of the death penalty by governments remains conditioned by other factors which have to be taken into account by governments (including the need to determine whether worse evils to society may result from a total abandonment of the death penalty). Catholic doctrine remains in place: capital punishment is not intrinsically immoral but civil authorities must abide by the moral principles laid down by the Church in making those prudential judgments that justify the use of capital punishment. This article (not exempt from some harsh comments on Catholic prelates) will be helpful to those Catholics who have been tragically misled into thinking that the Pope’s teaching on the use of capital punishment constitutes a radical break with and contradiction of the biblical and classical Church doctrine on the subject.
James Likoudis
Catholic author and writer
Dear Editors:
Concerning Satisfying Justice The Other Lesson Geoghan Taught Us by Matthew Tsakanikas and Mary Kochan, I respectfully disagree on a number of points.
MT and MK discuss the Cathechism’s affirmation of the authority of the State to decide as to the necessity of the death penalty (#2266) and the statement, “If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives…public authority should limit itself to such means” (#2267), arguing that “the ability of the State to lock someone up for life has not appreciably changed since the times when those Doctors of the Church who said the State should execute murderers.”
Pope John Paul II, whom I believe will one day be called St. John Paul the Great, and who, for all I know, may even one day be a Doctor of the Church, said: “[T]he nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent” (Evangelium Vitae, #56).
Our Holy Father is not infallible in his judgement about the improvements of the penal system, but the fact that this is his opinion makes the authors’ point compellingly debatable, especially in the case of the United States.
Did Jesus really justify capital punishment when he said to Pilate, “You would have no power over me were it not given from above” (Jn 19:11)? He was teaching about where authority comes from, but the fact that authority comes from God does not mean that those who have it will always exercise it justly and with impunity.
Although the imminence of the death penalty may move a criminal to repentance, in other cases the more time a criminal has to live the greater his chance of repentance could be, especially since wisdom, or an increase in it, often comes with advancing age.
While the death penalty points to the dignity of life of victims, it can mask the dignity of life criminals. It can reinforce the prevalent approval of revenge and the attitude that revenge helps victims, whereas another death should be a source of more suffering, not solace.
Concerning vengeance Our Holy Father called us to consider Cain And yet God, who is always merciful even when he punishes, “put a mark on Cain, lest any who came upon him should kill him” (Gen 4:15). He thus gave him a distinctive sign, not to condemn him to the hatred of others, but to protect and defend him from those wishing to kill him, even out of a desire to avenge Abel’s death. Not even a murderer loses his personal dignity, and God himself pledges to guarantee this” (EV, #9).
I can’t take to its logical conclusion the authors’ statement, “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).” Obviously God’s people did sin again, and many times again, as the prophets bore witness.
What about those who are unjustly convicted? Concerning the suggestion to put the death penalty on hold while purging corrupt prosecutors and judges from the legal system, I personally am not optimistic that this purging can be done adequately. But let’s suppose it could. What about human error? What about the woefully flawed jury system? We are living in a dark age, in which truth is no longer revered and principles are no longer adhered to; too many jurors are living in darkness. But if this, too, were not true, there is the problem of incapable jurors. In his story, “My Thorn in the Flesh,” from Amazing Grace For Those Who Suffer by Jeff Cavins and Matthew Pinto, Carl Cleveland tells of a juror who “admitted he was not exactly sure what my crime was but felt I must have been guilty of something.”
“Which will it be?” MT and MK ask the bishops. “Cold-blooded murderers making expiation for their sins and satisfying justice or murderers running cell blocks and continuing to terrorize those within them?”
These are not the only choices. There is at least one more, cold-blooded murderers making expiation for their sins and satisfying justice with life-without-parole sentences while being prevented from running cell blocks and continuing to terrorize those within them. This would be a less draconian solution than the death penalty and an easier and swifter first step in cleaning up the judicial system.
Our Holy Father has written a letter, Evangelium Vitae, and it is addressed to us. In it he is not changing teaching or teaching anything new; he is applying to today’s circumstances teaching concerning faith and morals.
Martha Chambers
Mississippi Gulf Coast
Matthew Tsakanikas and Mary Kochan reply:
Mr. Likoudis and Mr. Kemna, we thank you for your kind comments and will take to heart the aside about being harsh on the clergy. We address ourselves now to Martha Chambers:
You have made your points in a very gracious and coherent manner, so we hope you will bear with our response with the same good will, as it may be that we will ultimately have to agree to disagree on this.
As you recognize, the Church is not the State and it remains the teaching of the Church that the State still has the right to decide what will best serve the common good in the area of criminal justice. The State can still rightfully invoke justice and the common good as its first intention for capital punishment with the deterrent effect as a secondary benefit and the Church can still witness (as she does in the Catechism) to the expiation value of the sentence when it is received in submission and contrition. The State is not obligated to consider as the sole criteria its ability to confine a first-degree murderer.
As you point out the “Holy Father is not infallible in his judgement about the improvements of the penal system” but you go on to assert that because of who he is our point that there has been no improvement such that society can always be assured of no further victimization by killers is “compellingly debatable”. (We note however, that you did not debate it.) An assertion of fact by the pope, not made infallibly, regarding an area in which he has no special competence, is no more or less debatable than the same or opposite point made by anyone else.
Still, that is a separate point from the main thrust of our article which was to point out the fallacious use of the word “immoral” in connection with the death penalty something that has become all too common. Calling the proper use of the death penalty “immoral” (when the crime is worthy of the punishment) is a deviation from the deposit of faith. We have never seen the pope write or say that the death penalty is “immoral,” thus it is troubling that so many ordinary Catholics, thinking they are supporting the pope's position, use this language. The death penalty is not “intrinsically evil” as are contraception and sterilization but we would venture to say that more Catholics erroneously consider the death penalty “intrinsically evil” than rightly view contraception and sterilization that way. There has been an obvious failure to pass along the truths of the faith.
Did Jesus justify the State’s right to execute? Yes, as has been the interpretation of the Fathers and Doctors. Second to Jesus and more important than the Doctors, Saint Paul was very clear; we note that you never questioned our reference to Romans 13:4. The case of Ananias and Saphira should also make a lot of Christian abolitionists uncomfortable.
We are aware of the pope's mention of Cain in the his encyclical. How this is to apply to our day is certainly murky. This was a time before God had given authority to men to rule over other men or to punish them for crimes. God later executed everyone in the Flood for filling the earth with violence a warning to us. The covenant with Noah (new father of the human race) and the Rainbow Promise never to flood the earth again was based on the condition that men would henceforth execute his wrath on evil doers (See Genesis 9: 5, 6).
We pointed out that God himself invoked the deterrent effect in telling his people to use the death penalty. You wrote, “Obviously God's people did sin again, and many times again, as the prophets bore witness.” However, your response fails to consider that some people were deterred from murder because of the punishment specific to it which was the subject under discussion (not generalized sin or infidelity). Though you probably didn’t intend the innuendo that God didn’t know what he is talking about, it was one of your weaker counter-points.
And this brings us to the most telling point. Missing from so much of the current discussion about this is the very simple acknowledgment that God is the Author of the death penalty. We have not greater understanding of what conditions may or may not move men to repentance than He does; we are not more righteous or compassionate than He is; we are not more comprehending of the conditions that make for a just and ordered society than He is; we are not more cognizant of the possibility of error or misjudgment than He is. The mandate comes from Him and that recognition must be the starting point of any discussion that lies along the continuum of traditional Catholic thought on this matter.
Blessings,
Matthew Tsakanikas and Mary Kochan
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And debate it we should if a number of bishops proceed to rest upon this assertion claims that have never before been made in the history of all Church thought about this matter: such as the claim that only the question of defense is applicable to the death penalty (casting aside centuries of understanding regarding justice and expiation that yet appear in the Catechism), the claim that the state has a mere “right” to execute murderers (casting aside centuries of understanding that this was a solemn duty carried out in obedience to God's command), and the claim that there can exist a “right” which one lacks the right to exercise. We debated the point by looking at history, since it is a claim of historical progress that has been made.
We are both American citizens very concerned with applying Catholic thought to matters affecting the common good in our country. Matthew Tsakanikas was raised in a police family, visited prisoners, and now lives in Texas where there have been multiple recent murderous jail breaks. Regarding the pope he says: “I am qualified to differ with him on my views of the penal system. Having named one of my children after him, I too hope the pope is recognized as a Saint and Doctor, but 'Doctor' will extend only to faith and morals not to a prudential judgement on the death penalty.” Though the pope is rightfully an authority on faith and morals, his expertise does not extend to prison conditions in America.
You suggest we are wrong for saying murderers are running cell blocks and we just need to confine them. What did you think our whole point about Geoghan being murdered by an already convicted murderer was about? It was about the inability of our current penal system to deal with murderers.
The alternative of life imprisonment was known and available when Clement of Alexandria said: “when one fails into any incurable evil when taken possession of, for example, by wrong or covetousness it will be for his good if he is put to death. For the law is beneficent, being able to make some righteous from unrighteous, if they will only give ear to it, and by releasing others from present evils…” Clement of Alexandria (d. 215 AD), The Stromata, or Miscellanies Book I, ch. Xxvii.
It was known and available as an alternative when Saint Ephraem of Syria argued that women who obtained abortions warranted the death penalty: “Because she made the child in her body into a miscarriage, so that it would be buried in the darkness of the earth, it also makes her into a miscarriage, so that she must wander in outer darkness. This is the penalty for adulterers and adulteresses who take their children’s life: they are punished with death” Ephraem(d. 373), De Timore Dei, x.
It was known and available as an alternative when Pope Saint Innocent I, in the year 405, wrote the following in response to a query from the Bishop of Toulouse concerning the death penalty: “[T]hose who have gone before us . . . remembered that this power was granted by God; and on account of the punishment of the guilty, the sword was permitted; and that the punisher in such a case is given as a function of God. How then were they to condemn a deed which they see to be granted by God as its author? Concerning these things, therefore, we uphold what has been observed until now, lest we be seen either to overturn teaching, or to act contrary to the authority of the Lord” Pope Innocent I, Epistola VI.
Surely you do not imagine that St. Thomas was unfamiliar with the alternative of life in prison when he wrote: “[W]e see that if the amputation of a member say one that is putrid or corrupting the other members is required for the health of the whole body, then it is laudably and salubriously cut off. Now an individual person is compared to the whole community as part to whole; and therefore if a man is a danger to the community and a corrupting element because of some sin, then he is lawfully and salubriously killed, that the common good be preserved (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 64, a. 2). Please note that the corrupting influence of evil was as much of a consideration as the danger to the community. Note also that he likens the application of the death penalty to something laudable (praiseworthy) and salubrious (enhancing and protecting health).
The two greatest Church doctors considered executing murderers an act of charity and mercy. “[I]nflicting capital punishment . . . protects those who are undergoing capital punishment from the harm they may suffer . . . through increased sinning which might continue if their life went on.” (Saint Augustine, On the Lord’s Sermon, 1.20.63-64). “[T]he death inflicted by the judge profits the sinner, if he be converted, unto the expiation of his crime; and, if he be not converted, it profits so as to put an end to the sin, because the sinner is thus deprived of the power to sin anymore” Summa Theologica, II-II, 25, 6 ad 2.
When Pope Saint Pius V promulgated the Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566) he carried forward the reasoning of Pope Innocent mentioned above: “Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence. Hence these words of David: In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land, that I might cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the Lord” Catechism of the Council of Trent For Parish Priests xxxiii-xxxvii (John A. McHugh & Charles J. Callan trans., Marian Publ’ns 1972). Please note that this pope viewed the death penalty as an antidote to, not an expression of, vengeance.
We might well ask in what manner the current thrust toward abolition represents a development of these thoughts. To many Catholics it seems instead like quite a novel departure, nevertheless Cardinal Dulles and other theologians have tried to make the case that real continuity of thought exists. We are unconvinced, though open-hearted and open-minded to their reasoning, as all Catholics should be.