The Death Penalty

Much talk on the death penalty today, especially from Catholics, comes from a severely distorted concept of not only historical theology but also ethical and moral theology. Catholics are obligated to maintain that the death penalty is morally permissible as that has been the overwhelming traditional perspective throughout the years. Catholics are obligated to affirm the infallibility of the Church on issues pertaining to the faith and morals. It is from the Church alone in which the infallibility of the Pope is fortified. When the Pope sidesteps the Church, he elevates himself above the body of Christ and begins to speak blasphemies. If the Church found it proper and morally permissible for the State to carry out the death penalty for a variety of different reasons, then we cannot argue ever that the death penalty is morally inadmissible. Doing such would be to excommunicate the Church from ourselves and by excommunicating the Church from ourselves, we excommunicate God, and then we damn ourselves to Hell. That Catholics are obligated to defend the moral permissibility of the death penalty is overwhelming based on the evidence of the consensus of tradition.

But the critics of the death penalty continue. The critics, especially among the Church, point out that if one objects to abortion, they should object to all killings in general. But this argument severely misunderstands that there is a distinction between abortion and the death penalty applied to a convicted criminal, witch, or heretic. In the act of abortion, one is actively making a decision to murder a child which has not done anything. When the death penalty is meted out, it is meted out against someone who has broken or transgressed the law, whether the civil law or the divine law. To kill an infant in the womb is a morally different question than to put to death a convicted felon or a traitor to divine law for in one act, you are putting to death an innocent and in the other you are putting to death a guilty one.

The misunderstanding then is expanded to a falsified view on human dignity. Ryszard Legutko talks such of how this false view of human dignity has been enacted in democracy but it also applies to the death penalty. Dignity, "since antiquity has been used as a term of obligation. If one was presumed to have dignity, one was expected to behave in a proper way" (Demon in Democracy, 31). One had to earn dignity, it was not an innate characteristic of a man and it was something that could be lost. But the advocates against the death penalty warp this view around to insist that dignity is nothing more than mere entitlements (33). One is not entitled to live, in fact, like the thief on the cross, we all confess we have merited our own deaths. The death penalty reminds us of this tragedy. I wrote on an old blog of mine,

"in Boethius’s writing, we see that “whatever falls short of the Good ceases to be”, “since they turned to evil, they have…lost their human nature”, and “a man transformed by vices, you couldn’t…consider human” (Consolation of Philosophy, bk 4, pr 3). It may be true that we are in our inherent nature crafted in the image of God but when we turn ourselves to evil, we throw our humanness, we become depraved, and we cease to be human. It is not those carrying out the death penalty justly who are therefore the iconoclasts but those who have submitted themselves to vice who are the iconoclasts."

It is not an attack on either human dignity or on the image of God to uphold the death penalty, especially as numerous Christians have upheld it and the Church has historically authorized the State to mete it out in the appropriate contexts. Bp. Athanasius Schneider notes that "Our Lord Jesus Christ never denied that the secular power has the authority to apply capital punishment. ... Killing a person in self-defense, in defense of the family or homeland, and in a just war, is in principle nothing other than a kind of application of the death penalty in extreme and inevitable situations against an unjust aggressor. An absolute pacifism represents an illusion and a denial of reality, and a substantial denial of original sin with its consequences for individual and social life." (Christus Vincit, 187-188)

Another one that comes up frequently is that the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11 shows that the death penalty was actually nullified by Our Lord. But that ignores a specific context. The "charge against the woman was put in such a way as to accuse Him...and to make it appear that He was violating either the law of Moses or the law of the Romans" (Fulton J. Sheen, Life is Worth Living, 219). This had nothing to do with the death penalty being valid or not but was meant as a trap for Our Lord. A typical trap that he would refute simply by refusing to give a definitive "yes" or "no" answer. He does not say, "put her to death" nor does he say "put no one to death, I have abolished the death penalty" but rather, "let he who has no sin cast the first stone". His response therefore convicts them and avoids the trap they have set for him. Much as in the question as to who the Jews are to pay taxes to. With the overwhelming evidence of tradition and theological backing for the death penalty in Catholic social teaching, we ought to affirm the statements made against its moral inadmissibility are heretical and cannot be justifiably held by a Catholic. I do not hold that Fratelli Tutti was intended to be infallible and it should be noted that not every papal encyclical is held as infallible! Look at how many progressives that have infiltrated the Church want to twist and throw away papal encyclicals! If they are playing this game, all the more can we for the Catholic faith is not allegiance to the Pope but it is allegiance to the Church founded by Christ which happens to be led by the legitimate pope.