Tracks Capital Punishment
Capital
Punishment
The issue of Capital Punishment is one
of justice or mercy, of the sacredness of all life regardless of circumstances
or an eye for eye mentality. Because of the nature of the heinous crime
committed by the perpetrator this issue becomes a hot bottom stirring up all
kinds of emotions: from anger to hate, from revenge and the desire for
retaliation to resentment and non-forgiveness.
Regardless of one’s personal feelings, this tract will attempt to
present the Church’s teaching as objectively as possible.
I would like to begin with some
statistical facts. In the United States alone, between 1976 till 2012, 1338
persons were executed for crimes they committed. A reason given for the need
for capital punishment is that it deters heinous crime. However, this is not
the belief of experts. According to a survey of the former and 2009 presidents
of the country’s top academic criminological societies, 88% of these experts rejected
the notion that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. (Radelet &
Lacock, 2009)
A report by the National Research
Council, titled Deterrence and the Death Penalty, stated that studies claiming
that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on murder rates are
“fundamentally flawed” and should not be used when making policy decisions.
(2012)
A 2009 poll commissioned by DPIC found
police chiefs ranked the death penalty last among ways to reduce violent crime.
The police chiefs also considered the death penalty the least efficient use of
taxpayers’ money.
A 2010 poll by Lake Research Partners
found that a clear majority of voters (61%) would choose a punishment other
than the death penalty for murder.
Now let’s look at the Church’s teaching
on this issue:
The first principle is that all life
is sacred: from the life of the unborn to the life of the elderly. Life is
sacred because God is the origin and the destiny of all life. Human beings are
the cooperators, recipients and stewards of life. This sacredness reflects the
God-given dignity that each human person has from being created in the image
and likeness of God. The dignity of both the one who causes the crime and the
victim of the crime must be respected and upheld.
In his encyclical Gospel of Life “Evangelium Vitae”,
Pope John Paul stated this very clearly. He said that “the dignity of human
life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great
evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively
denying criminals the chance to reform” (Gospel of Life, 27).
The second principle is that this
sacredness of life is morally and physically violated when one intentionally—not
in self-defense—take the life of an innocent person. It is an offense against the law of nature
and the moral law of God as found in the Fifth Commandment. As an intrinsic
evil, it is an offense against God and of society. Every act has consequences. The consequence for this intrinsic evil
demands some form of punishment to bring about both retribution and
rehabilitation.
Cain is an example of this principle
in the Old Testament. Cain shed the blood of his brother, Abel, because of
jealousy. How did God respond? He
confronted Cain and brought the deed done in darkness into the light. Cain’s
punishment was not death but banishment and the life of a nomad. God’s justice
was laced with mercy for Cain’s rehabilitation not destruction.
The third principle is that the New
Covenant established by Jesus through his death and resurrection fulfills the
Old Covenant. In the Old Testament there
are at least twenty plus crimes that warrant the death penalty: including
murder, idolatry, blasphemy, adultery, rape, apostasy, incest and kidnapping. At the same time, as shown above with Cain,
not all these crimes incurred the death of the offender. When David committed adultery with Bathsheba,
who then conceived a child, and David had Uriah, her husband killed so that he
could cover up his evil deeds, God confronted David through the prophet,
Nathan. God did not require the life of
David for his double sin.
The same is true in the New
Testament. The Pharisees brought a woman
caught in adultery to Jesus to see what he would say. According to the Law she
should have been stoned to death. Instead,
Jesus extended his mercy and pardon to her and told her to turn away from this
sin. Paul separated the Christian in the
Corinthian community through excommunication for the sin of incest. His purpose
was to reconcile and to rehabilitate
the individual, not to take his life.
The fourth principle is that the
Church teaches that though the State has the right to carry out capital
punishment, it should find other means to bring justice and restoration of
right order. Here is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church states in paragraph
2267: The traditional teaching of the
Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and
responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the
only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against
the aggressor.
If, instead, bloodless means are
sufficient to defend against the
aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should
limit itself to such means, because they
better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in
conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, given the means at the
State’s disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one
who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming
himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender “today …
are very rare, if not practically non-existent.” (CCC 2267)
What this says is that though the
State has the right in the order of justice to execute, it should not exercise
that right because in the order of mercy there are other means that can be
taken to bring justice and rehabilitation than the death penalty, such as life
without parole. The reason given is it is better for the common good of society
and it is in harmony with the God-given dignity of each human person,
regardless of actions done.
Again, Pope John Paul II in his
encyclical The Gospel of Life was very explicit about the teaching of the
Church on Capital Punishment. He wrote:
This is the context in which to place
the problem of the death penalty. On this matter there is a growing tendency,
both in the Church and in civil society, to demand that it be applied in a very
limited way or even that it be abolished completely. The problem must be viewed
in the context of a system of penal justice ever more in line with human
dignity and thus, in the end, with God's plan for man and society. The primary
purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is "to redress the disorder
caused by the offence." (46) Public authority must redress the violation of
personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment
for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or
her freedom. In this way authority also fulfills the purpose of defending
public order and ensuring people's safety, while at the same time offering the
offender an incentive and help to change his or her behavior and be
rehabilitated. (47)
Further he stated that the execution
of the offender of a serious crime is only appropriate "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 improvement in the
organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically
nonexistent." (56)
The Church’s teaching is consistent
with the culture of life from natural birth to natural death. The United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) for more than thirty years has called
for the cessation of capital punishment. "Ending the death penalty would be one important step away from a culture
of death and toward building a culture of life.” (A Culture of Life and the Penalty of
Death United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2005)
In
our consideration of capital punishment, we must never lose sight of the
victims of the accused and their families. There is no way to fully understand
the depth of their hurt and lost. At the same time we know that revenge and
retaliation have never brought the innocent victim back nor alleviate the
suffering of those left behind. There is no justification for the crime. What
is needed is the compassionate love and support of others and the healing that
only comes through forgiveness. Jesus gave us the example when from the cross
he cried to the Father: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they
are doing.” Through his example Jesus
was showing that we do not condone the crime or the intent of the perpetrators,
but we free ourselves from the bondage of anger, hate and revenge through the
decision of forgiveness.
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