The death penalty

We may safely presume that not every reader of this newspaper will be delighted at the call by French church leaders for Christians everywhere to oppose the death penalty.

Especially in South Africa, where rampant crime is often accompanied by pitiless brutality, the vox populi which sporadically includes even a judge backs the reintroduction of capital punishment.

Action movies arguably help to condition the popular clamour for capital punishment as the desirable denouement for a nasty villain invariably is a violent, often grotesque death. Even the Christian viewer is typically gratified, not horrified, by this.

Action movies, however, are fantasy. Real crime, alas, is not.

The impulse to seek the death of a callous criminal is not unreasonable. Anyone who has been touched by crimes such as murder or rape will know or empathise with the desire to see an offender receiving the ultimate punishment. Indeed, to many victims of violent crime, direct or indirect, the opponents of the death penalty may seem unreasonable.

Understandable though support for the death penalty may be, it does not accord with the teaching of the Church that all human life is sacred, and its termination an act against God.

It makes little difference whether that life has yet to be born, is in full bloom or wilting, or is of no value to society. It is a difficult notion to square, but even the life of the most debased murderer is sacred. The Church teaches that no human being has the authority to end the life of another human being even if that person has himself violated the sanctity of life.

Few teachings of the Church are as difficult to accept as this.

Church teaching did not always preclude capital punishment as a legitimate means of applying justice. Indeed, for many centuries, the Church itself was the perpetrator of the death penalty. In time, however, the Church developed a strong aversion towards this brand of justice, culminating in Pope John Paul II’s comprehensive condemnation of the death penalty: The deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of his life is always morally evil and can never be licit either as an end in itself or as a means to a good end (Evangelium vitae, 1995).

With this, Pope John Paul closed the door on the Church’s toleration of capital punishment. His statement, quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that the conditions under which a judicial killing may be permissible are very rare, if not practically non-existent rules out capital punishment under any normal circumstance.

The Catechism is careful not to bolt the door when it presents the caveat that an execution might be licit if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor. Yet, the Church could not conceive even one concrete example which might legitimise such an execution.

In the Church’s view, state-sanctioned killing may in unimaginable and extreme circumstances be preventative but it can never be punitive.

Capital punishment may not be used as a form of retribution. As the Catechism reminds us, Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount recalls the commandment, You shall not kill, and adds to it the proscription of anger, hatred, and vengeance.

Capital punishment is incompatible with the Catholic faith because it impedes God’s mercy on those who arguably need redemption most people who shed their humanity to commit acts of wickedness or depravity.

It is an unnerving thought that we are called to advocate the repentance of murderers and rapists so that they may find entry to heaven. And yet, this is the Church’s mission: the saving of souls through the mercy of God.