Why is it that we support clubs of people who think they can impose some unjust law upon the whole planet? How in the world is a collection of subsidized scolders, winers, and diners supposed to impose a worldwide moratorium on anything? Why does the Pope think they can?
Pope Francis delivered a letter this week to the International Commission against the Death Penalty
With these letters, I wish to have my greeting reach all the members of the International Commission against the Death Penalty, to the group of countries that support it, and to those who collaborate with the organism over which you preside. I wish, in addition, to express my personal gratitude, and also that of men of good will, for your commitment to a world free of the death penalty and for your contribution to the establishment of a universal moratorium of executions worldwide, with a view to abolition of capital punishment.
Plato was clear, “When there is crime in society, there is no justice,” and if you look around you’ll find plenty of crime. You’ll also find plenty of people teaching that actual justice is unjust or useless.
L.A. Archbishop Jose Gomez rolled out the tired pseudo-Catholic appeal against the death penalty once again this week, arguing that we’re so ‘advanced’ now it’s unnecessary, as if the point of an execution was to keep the convict from hurting anyone else. If we’re so advanced, why is there so much murder, and why don’t we understand that the point is to keep ‘others’ from killing, not the one already in jail?
The justice of an execution is secondary to the value in it. Is it just to execute a murderer? Yes. But the value in that justice is its effect on society. When criminals are executed swiftly and accurately, other crimes are deterred and the innocent are protected. It’s not a new formula. It’s been tried, proven for ages.
Gomez also argued that we are incapable of identifying the guilty parties in the first place so mistakes abound. Again, if we’re so advanced, why can’t we even capture and convict criminals? Might as well throw in the towel I suppose. It’s all pro-life you know, unless you’re an innocent victim. In that case it’s your business to die cruelly while killers go free or get life in prison in deference to their own ‘dignity’ and in light of other advances.
Everything is pro-life now if you are a Catholic bishop. In the ‘seamless garment’ world illegal immigration, food stamps, unemployment benefits, government healthcare, and foreign aid are all the same thing as protecting unborn children from murder. It’s because of ‘human dignity’ and poverty causes crime, you know. (Also, hate speech causes suicides.)
After listing some of the research he has performed, Pope Francis writes:
States can kill by action when they apply the death penalty, when they take their peoples to war or when they carry out extra-judicial or summary executions. They can also kill by omission, when they do not guarantee to their peoples access to the essential means for life. “Just as the Commandment ‘do not kill’ puts a clear limit to ensure the value of human life, today we have to say ‘no to an economy of exclusion and inequality’” (Evangelii gaudium, 53).
It’s eerie and frightening to think that a man who would conflate murder with ‘access’ to essential means for life – meaning free food, shelter, clothing, and healthcare; is the world’s leading moral guide. If redistributive programs are all pro-life, they must also be murderous to thwart! What is murder, what is justice, and who is guilty? Enemies of the state are guilty I suppose.
Life, especially human life, belongs to God alone. Not even the murderer loses his personal dignity and God himself makes himself its guarantor. As Saint Ambrose teaches, God did not want to punish Cain for the murder, as He wants the repentance of the sinner, not his death (Cf. Evangelium vitae, 9).
Are we now expected to believe that since God was merciful to Cain, He was never just? What about the rest of the Bible? Is he saying that St. Ambrose also crusaded against the death penalty in the name of the Faith, or is this just co-opting a great saint on behalf of his 23rd P.C. cause? Were they like this back then?
On some occasions it is necessary to repel proportionally an aggression underway to avoid an aggressor causing harm, and the necessity to neutralize him might entail his elimination: it is the case of legitimate defense (Cf. Evangelium vitae, 55). However, the assumptions of legitimate personal defense are not applicable to the social milieu, without risk of distortion. Because when the death penalty is applied, persons are killed not for present aggressions, but for harm caused in the past. Moreover, it is applied to persons whose capacity to harm is not present but has already been neutralized, and who find themselves deprived of their freedom.
John Paul II, cited here, confuses the death penalty with stopping a killer in his tracks before he can do harm. If his argument applies, then it completely undercuts the nature of a just society or punishment; both which result after the fact. A little hermeneutic of continuity needs to be delivered to contemporary papal expressions.
Today the death penalty is inadmissible, no matter how serious the crime of the condemned. It is an offense against the inviolability of life and the dignity of the human person that contradicts God’s plan for man and society and His merciful justice, and it impedes fulfilling the just end of the punishments. It does no do justice to the victims, but foments vengeance.
This is blather, is it not? There’s that new MercyJustice I keep reading about, and it’s insidious. How much wrong will the Pope advocate in the name of God? Justice is not vengeance. God is not unjust. He is only ‘also’ merciful. The Pope’s blatant scolding against the death penalty demeans and cheapens every innocent life.
When an entire society from Pope down to serial killer becomes unjust and murderous, it’s left only to God to apply justice.
