A Catholic's Perspective On Capital Punishment

First posted on: http://www.christianityboard.com/topic/18887-a-catholics-reflections-on-capital-punishment/



It's no mystery that the position of the Catholic Church is strongly unfavorable toward the practice of capital punishment as an end scenario in human criminal justice. My fellow Catholics have often jumped on me because I believe that the way capital punishment is practiced here in America, that is rarely and only for the most egregious offenses, is in line with the Church's teaching on the subject. In fact, the Catechism reads as follows:



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 with 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 non-existent."



Where I take strong issue with some Catholics is this attitude that capital punishment is an intolerable evil. I will argue back quite compellingly that capital punishment is never wrong when a murderer is put to death because it's the carrying out of justice. So when a killer is executed, nothing wrong has occurred. Capital punishment was originally God's idea and it predates even the law of Moses and goes back all the way to the days of Noah when God said if any man sheds blood, his blood shall be shed. It's the very first commandment God gave to men by which to judge wrong doing. It's the very backbone of human criminal justice. By this notion, anyone who acts mercilessly in taking the life of another human being cannot cry foul when precise reciprocity is visited upon him.



But the Catholic Church offers a better way. When mercy is an option, we ought to incline ourselves toward mercy, that a killer may have time to realize the wrong they have committed. Watching an episode of NCIS, I saw a female prisoner who had committed a murder decades ago. She said she killed somebody who had done her no wrong and that she longed for the day of her death so she can tell that person how truly sorry she was. I believe many people are afforded the chance to come to this realization when life in prison is given preference over death. It isn't that people deserve that chance, but rather that we as a society can give them that chance. We live in an age when we have the unprecedented ability to incarcerate people for life in a way that's not cruel and yet achieves the objective of protecting society. So it isn't that the death penalty is wrong, it's that mercy is the better way. I wish more Catholics understood this.