1) Education - Obama doesn't support education vouchers. Education vouchers, more typically called school vouchers, allow parents to choose an appropriate school (public/private/independent/parochial/etc) to send their children to. With choice, schools have an incentive to improve their educational and innovative standards. Students who can't afford private schools under our current system would be given the option of attending one. Also, racial diversity would become standard; if you look at Wakefield Public Schools you will notice that a very small amount of METCO students are allowed to enroll. More and more minorities would be welcomed at a racially homogeneous school like WHS under a school choice system.
2) Health Care - Obama is a proponent of both universal health insurance AND universal health care. Universal health insurance is a human right and should be supported by all decent human beings. Universal health care is debatable to say the very least. The my
riad of arguments arguing for and against UHC give an instant headache to anyone willing to read them. I'd like to think our current system offers high quality care even if it is at a large expense. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requires hospitals and emergency personnel to administer treatment to all regardless of one's ability to pay. In a government controlled system, there isn't a lot of incentive to improve standards.
3) Unclear Foreign Policy - Obama stated on July 15 that he hopes to bring a responsible ending to the War in Iraq. An early opponent to the war, he originally wanted troops out as soon as possible but later refined his position to pulling them all out by the summer of 2010. He also said he is open to revisiting that target once he becomes President. He also expressed interest in shifting his fighting concern to the Taliban and Afghanistan. While that might appeal to many people, it is more reasonable to not physically harm anyone.
4) Abortion - Obama almost fully (100%) supports a woman's right to an abortion. Consider this:
5) Gay Marriage: Like abortion, Obama fully supports homosexual unions and marriage. Refer to this:There is a continuous holocaust occurring in America and we the people need to stop it. America was a unanimously pro-life nation for a very long time; in fact by 1875 every state in the US of A had laws that banned abortion. Margaret Sanger, a champion of eugenics who had connections with the Nazi Party, came along in 1916 and formed the Birth Control League. The BCL is now known as Planned Parenthood. More than fifty years later in 1973, Roe Vs. Wade legalized abortion on demand. Moreover, states couldn't prohibit abortion during the first three months.
Some of you pro-death advocates might be saying "those aren't babies that are being killed, but merely tissues." Let us step backward to fertilization and see if you guys are right. Upon fertilization, the sperm and egg have already formed up to 50 sets of DNA. This DNA is a determining factor in physical characteristics, personality, and intelligence. By Day 22, the baby's heart begins to beat and by this time his brain and nervous system should be near complete. By just the fifth week, the baby has taken shape. Need I go further? The little one develops so much in the early stages that there is no doubt that he/she is more than just a "tissue."
In 40 years, from 1965-2005 more than 500,000,000 babies were killed via surgical or chemical abortion. This is not even counting the 1,000,000 that were murdered before 1965. The methods of killing the unborn are outright gruesome, but need to be described to get the point across. Prisoners on death row who are presumably guilty don't even face the pains that the innocent unborn child does. Here are a few of the methods (Source: American Life League):Dilation and extraction (also known as D&X or partial-birth abortion): Used to kill babies well into the third trimester (as late as 32 weeks old), the abortionist reaches into the mother's womb, grabs the baby's feet with a forceps and pulls the baby out of the mother, except for the head. The abortionist then jams a pair of scissors into the back of the baby's head and spreads the scissors apart to make a hole in the baby's skull. The abortionist removes the scissors and sticks a suction tube into the skull to suck the baby's brain out. The forceps are then used to crush the baby's head and the abortionist pulls the baby's body out the rest of the way.Let us take, for example, a woman who has just aborted her baby. She got it over with and now expects to be relieved of the hardship of bringing up a child. But wait....are the hardships really over with? Emotional symptoms of abortion include Acute grief reaction, depression, and guilt. The chance of a woman being diagnosed with breast cancer increases 140% following an abortion. If the women decides to have a pregnancy in the future following an abortion, she is 600% more likely to suffer from Placenta previa, which is extreme and life threatening bleeding.
Prostaglandins: Used during the second and third trimester, prostaglandin abortions involve the injection of naturally produced hormones into the amniotic sac, causing violent premature labor. During these convulsions the baby is often crushed to death or is born too early to have any chance of surviving.
RU-486: RU-486 blocks the hormone that helps develop the lining of the uterus during pregnancy (progesterone). This lining is the source of nutrition and protection for the developing baby. The tiny boy or girl is starved to death and then a second drug, misoprostol, causes contractions so that the dead baby is expelled from the womb.
What about the "special cases"? These include, but are not limited to: rape and incest. As Judie Brown of the American Life League put it "Killing the child doesn't solve [the mother's] problem." "What if the mother's life is......." You can stop it right there. There is no such thing as a situation in which it is necessary to kill the baby to save mother. Ever.
A culture of death has plagued America and needs to be ended. People all often too often take for granted their own life. We all were born the same way that the unborn will be born. Thus I ask: is taking away innocent life ever justifiable? In every circumstance, the answer is no.
I hate to be the burster of bubbles, but research has suggested that Mendelian inheritance has not occurred in a family yet. Researchers who claim that you can be born gay also realize that environmental factors play a large role in determining homosexuality. Says researcher Dean Hamer of his findings: "We assumed the environment also played a role in sexual orientation, as it does in most, if not all behaviors..." (Hamer and Copeland)6) Death Penalty - Here is what Obama says: "While the evidence tells me that the death penalty does little to deter crime, I believe there are some crimes — mass murder, the rape and murder of a child — so heinous that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment." Rehabilitation and forgiveness are instrumental alternatives to shutting off somebody via death. Self-defense is the only reasonable justification of killing another.
Take a look at this major "twins study". Conducted by J.M Bailey and Richard Pillard, the study found that among a group of twins, 52% were found to be homosexual. In order for the genetic argument to work, 100% must be homosexual.
Also, look at transgender people. They are claiming that they were born transgender! If that isn't crazy, I really don't know what is! Transgenders and a whole bunch of other crazies (read: mentally disturbed) are pushing for rights. Pretty soon, interspecies-erotica will be legalized!
Gays today are being looked at as victims. The gay agenda is making people like me out as bad guys. Using the media and guilt, gay rights activists are portraying anti-gay rights activists as homophobic (clear example) and verbally militant.
7) Civil Liberties - The ACLU, such a ridiculous and incredulous source of disinformation, gave Obama a rating of 88% in this category. Actions speak louder than words; the man failed to support two bills that would close Gitmo.
8) Embryonic Stem Cell Research - Here is what Obama said a few years ago: "Democrats want this bill to pass. Conservative, pro-life Republicans want this bill to pass. By large margins, the American people want this bill to pass. It is only the White House standing in the way of progress - standing in the way of so many potential cures." I'm neither conservative nor Republican, but I am pro-life. I don't support embryonic stem cell research and neither should you. Adult stem cells, in most cases, are just as effective/more effective than their embryonic counterparts.
Eh, half the stuff here is just social issues that are really a very small focus of the presidency. Abortions? Gay marriage? Stem Cell research? If those are top issues, I can't really care about the election.
ReplyDeleteAs for the military position, he's still better than McCain, who instead of trying to ensure safety in Afghanistan through moderate means wants to continue involvement in Iraq indefinitely. Plus, McCain got his own surge timeline wrong while mocking Obama for not understanding Iraq (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hTCae0lqDg).
And honestly, even at the high school level, we shouldn't be turning education into a business. If we could just focus on a strong public school, then children could grow up educated and confident in their abilities instead of feeling badly if someone went to a more expensive school then them.
You know, I actually almost agree with you on UHC, though your reason against it is a poor one, no offense. You're basically saying, "if it ain't broke", when clearly there IS a problem with insurance. Something has to be done.
(And by the way, I know there are third-party candidates, but at this point in time, we have to face facts and realize they do not stand the slightest chance of garnering even a modest amount of votes).
Of course nobody outside the two major parties has a shot. They're just trying to make their ideologies known, a la Ron Paul. There's nothing wrong with voting for an ideology you agree with.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I agree with Matt, and with many Americans, that Obama's plan for Iraq, if a bit unclear, is better than McCain's. I ranted about that before and won't repeat myself. Same thing with abortion and gay marriage, we all know what I think about those issues. More kudos to Matt for pointing out Glen's focus on social issues during an election where many Americans' top concern is the economy. I can understand that social issues are the ones Glen, and many others, are more passionate about. Unless maybe you're Jim Cramer. Point is, when deciding whom to vote for, one should consider all the issues.
Glen, who did you get to help you write this? I see a lot of your statements attempt to espouse and defend a conservative 'Strict Father' ideology and, if you truly are a high school student and not an adult masquerading as such, you do so with all the verve and hubris of what we used to call 'the jock clique'.
ReplyDeleteMay I interject a real-world conundrum for one so wise as you to ponder and make pronouncement on? I’d like to hear your guidance on this.
My mother was given a drug to take to lessen the chance of miscarriage and promote healthy babies — that’s what the doctor told her. The drug is Diethylstilbestrol, or DES. In male fetuses, it feminizes the brains of one in five of us ‘DES sons’.
I finally came to terms with this, and realized my choice was transition or die. So, I’m now a male-to-female transsexual who’s had ‘the operation.’ I’ve changed all my legal paperwork and although I still have a male body with XY chromosomes, it has been retrofitted to approximate female anatomy, which is good because if I ever end up in an accident, there will be no ’surprise’ for the first responders.
I ‘pass’ very well, thank you. Only rarely do strangers figure out I was not born this way. Most people have to be told, by me, or, more often, by someone else who just has to ‘drop the bomb.’
So my question to you is — knowing what you know now about me, and assuming for the moment you get absolute power to label me and make determinations on where I can and can't go —
-Which restroom and changing facility do you feel I, a male-to-female transsexual, should use when in public spaces?
-Am I immoral?
-Am I a paedophile?
-Am I tearing down western society in support of a deviant agenda?
-Am I selfish?
I eagerly await your responses;
Hazumu Osaragi
"Glen, who did you get to help you write this? I see a lot of your statements attempt to espouse and defend a conservative 'Strict Father' ideology and, if you truly are a high school student and not an adult masquerading as such, you do so with all the verve and hubris of what we used to call 'the jock clique'."
ReplyDeleteI wrote it on my own. Frankly, none of my statements are inherently conservative or try to be. On many (not all) social issues, you could say I swing right. 'The jock clique', at my school anyway, is rather apathetic towards politics and don't really espouse anything.
"-Which restroom and changing facility do you feel I, a male-to-female transsexual, should use when in public spaces?"
Allow me to shed some light on your situation. It seems like if you kept your feminine brain, you would have been a homosexual male...is this right? I disagree with the re-alignment surgery of, in your case, male to female. What you did was against moral law: Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reason, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law" (Catechism, No. 2297). From what I understand a trans-woman (I believe this is the term) will never be able to germinate sperm. Even though you physically are female, God made you as male. You will never be able to validly enter matrimony; there is no openness to having kids. I suggest you find a spiritual counselor to help you understand your role in God's creation.
Since you don't have a penis anymore, you should use an apropos female bath room.
ReplyDelete-Am I immoral? - Your re-assignment was, but I don't know about your current situation.
-Am I a paedophile? I don't know...are you? Do you have a sexual preference towards children?
-Am I tearing down western society in support of a deviant agenda? You guys aren't the worst of western society's problems. Your agenda is deviant, no doubt, and you might be ostracized, but tearing down society? Hardly. I'm not condoning your actions here, but telling the truth.
-Am I selfish?
Eh, I hate Glen's general views on social issues. Yeah, they're conservative and I wholeheartedly disagree with them...for the most part. However to call Glen a Conservative is incorrect. He's a Libertarian, but even at that he shares many of my own "radical" views. Of course, these are not "radical," but merely seem radical in a propaganda system. Here are some views that as far as I know we both share, feel free to correct me, Glen: All of the Post-War presidents have been mass murderers, Drug Prohibition must end, the mass media is elite propaganda with the main purpose of instilling fear and control in the docile masses, violence and any harm towards anyone must be justified.. and this is rarely the case. We view most wars as horrific tragedies, and Glen for that matter has closely followed the illegal tortures at Guantanamo Bay. Ahh, there's plenty more. But, that's just some.
ReplyDeleteOh and I forgot these three are big too: 1)Major reduction of government intervention, and hopefully one day it's abolition. 2) The two party system is bullshit and really just a "one party system." 3)Corporations are disgraceful and commit evil in the name of Capitalism. Hazumu, Glen's right wing views are the result of his Catholic upbringing. He still is Catholic and unfortunately shares many of the Church's views on our social issues.
ReplyDeleteGood post, Chris, but to clarify: my right wing lean on social issues is a result of not only my Catholic upbringing but common sense as well. Specifically in terms of embryonic stem cell research and abortion -- I can't see how anyone can support either. Gay marriage is more religion based...I will say that.
ReplyDeleteHazumu...a little off topic, but how did you arrive at this site? As an administrator of the site I'm curious.
Glen, don't preach to Hazumu. Go ahead and be conservative, which is what you are, whether you'll admit it or not, on social issues. But you clearly have very little, if any, understanding of Hazumu's lifestyle. Believe whatever you want, but it's wrong to force those beliefs on those who choose to disagree.
ReplyDeleteThe Death Penalty: More Protection for Innocents
ReplyDeleteDudley Sharp, Justice Matters, contact info below
Often, the death penalty dialogue gravitates to the subject of innocents at risk of execution. Seldom is a more common problem reviewed. That is, how innocents are more at risk without the death penalty.
Living murderers, in prison, after release or escape or after our failures to incarcerate them, are much more likely to harm and murder, again, than are executed murderers.
Although this is, obviously a truism, it is surprising how often folks overlook the enhanced incapacitation benefits of the death penalty over incarceration.
No knowledgeable and honest party questions that the death penalty has the most extensive due process protections in US criminal law.
Therefore, actual innocents are more likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment and more likely to die in prison serving under that sentence, that it is that an actual innocent will be executed.
That is. logically, conclusive.
16 recent studies, inclusive of their defenses, find for death penalty deterrence.
A surprise? No.
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Some believe that all studies with contrary findings negate those 16 studies. They don't. Studies which don't find for deterrence don't say no one is deterred, but that they couldn't measure those deterred.
What prospect of a negative outcome doesn't deter some? There isn't one . . . although committed anti death penalty folk may say the death penalty is the only one.
However, the premier anti death penalty scholar accepts it as a given that the death penalty is a deterrent, but does not believe it to be a greater deterrent than a life sentence. Yet, the evidence is compelling and un refuted that death is feared more than life.
Some death penalty opponents argue against death penalty deterrence, stating that it's a harsher penalty to be locked up without any possibility of getting out.
Reality paints a very different picture.
What percentage of capital murderers seek a plea bargain to a death sentence? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of convicted capital??murderers argue for execution in the penalty phase of their capital trial? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of death row inmates waive their appeals and speed up the execution process? Nearly zero. They prefer long term imprisonment.
This is not, even remotely, in dispute.
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Furthermore, history tells us that lifers have many ways to get out: Pardon, commutation, escape, clerical error, change in the law, etc.
In choosing to end the death penalty, or in choosing not implement it, some have chosen to spare murderers at the cost of sacrificing more innocent lives.
Furthermore, possibly we have sentenced 20-25 actually innocent people to death since 1973, or 0.3% of those so sentenced. Those have all been released upon post conviction review. The anti death penalty claims, that the numbers are significantly higher,are a fraud, easily discoverable by fact checking.
6 inmates have been released from death row because of DNA evidence. An additional 9 were released from prison, because of DNA exclusion, who had previously been sentenced to death.
The innocents deception of death penalty opponents has been getting exposure for many years. Even the behemoth of anti death penalty newspapers, The New York Times, has recognized that deception.
To be sure, 30 or 40 categorically innocent people have been released from death row . . . (1) This when death penalty opponents were claiming the release of 119 "innocents" from death row. Death penalty opponents never required actual innocence in order for cases to be added to their "exonerated" or "innocents" list. They simply invented their own definitions for exonerated and innocent and deceptively shoe horned large numbers of inmates into those definitions - something easily discovered with fact checking.
There is no proof of an innocent executed in the US, at least since 1900.
If we accept that the best predictor of future performance is past performance, we can reasonable conclude that the DNA cases will be excluded prior to trial, and that for the next 8000 death sentences, that we will experience a 99.8% accuracy rate in actual guilt convictions. This improved accuracy rate does not include the many additional safeguards that have been added to the system, over and above DNA testing.
Of all the government programs in the world, that put innocents at risk, is there one with a safer record and with greater protections than the US death penalty?
Unlikely.
Full report -All Innocence Issues: The Death Penalty, upon request.
Full report - The Death Penalty as a Deterrent, upon request
(1) The Death of Innocents: A Reasonable Doubt,
New York Times Book Review, p 29, 1/23/05, Adam Liptak,
national legal correspondent for The NY Times
copyright 2007-2008, Dudley Sharp
Permission for distribution of this document, in whole or in part, is approved with proper attribution.
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com 713-622-5491,
Houston, Texas
Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS, VOA and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O'Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.
A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally.
Pro death penalty sites
homicidesurvivors(dot)com/categories/Dudley%20Sharp%20-%20Justice%20Matters.aspx
www(dot)dpinfo.com
www(dot)cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DPinformation.htm
www(dot)clarkprosecutor.org/html/links/dplinks.htm
www(dot)coastda.com/archives.html
www(dot)lexingtonprosecutor.com/death_penalty_debate.htm
www(dot)prodeathpenalty.com
www(dot)yesdeathpenalty.com/deathpenalty_com
yesdeathpenalty.googlepages.com/home2 (Sweden)
www(dot)wesleylowe.com/cp.html
THE DEATH PENALTY (1)
ReplyDeleteby Romano Amerio (†1997), a Vatican insider and scholar, a professor at the Academy of Lugano, consultant to the Preparatory Commission of Vatican II, and a peritus (expert theologian) at the Council.
Certain social institutions derive from the principles of the natural law and as such are perpetual in one form or another; for example the state, the family, a priesthood of some sort; and there are others that arise from a certain level of reflection on those principles and from historical circumstances, and which are abandoned when thought moves on to another level or when circumstances change; for example slavery.
Until recently, the death penalty was philosophically defended, and used in practice by all countries as the ultimate penalty society imposes on evildoers, with the threefold aim of righting the balance of justice, defending society against attack, and dissuading others from wrongdoing.
The legitimacy of capital punishment is usually grounded on two propositions. First: society has a right to defend itself; second: this defense involves using all necessary means. Capital punishment is included in the second proposition on condition that taking the life of one member of the body of society is genuinely necessary for the wellbeing of the whole.
The growing tendency to mitigate punishments of all sorts is in part the product of the Gospel spirit of clemency and mercy, which has always been at odds down the centuries with savage judicial customs. With a certain degree of confusion that we need not go into here, the Church has always drawn back from blood.
It should be remembered that canon law traditionally decreed the “irregularity,” that is the banning from holy orders, not only of executioners, but of judges who condemned people to death in the ordinary course of law, and even of advocates and witnesses in trials that led to someone being put to death.
The controversy does not turn on society’s right to defend itself; that is the undeniable premise of any penal code, but rather on the genuineness of the need to remove the offender altogether in order to effect that defense, which is the minor premise involved.
From St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas to Taperelli d’Azeglio, the traditional teaching is that the decision as to the necessity and legitimacy of capital punishment depends on historical circumstances, that is, on the urgency of the need to hold society together in the face of the disruptive behavior of individuals who attack the common good. From Beccaria onwards, proposals to abolish capital punishment have admitted the major premise, and allowed that the minor one depends on historical circumstances, since they allow the execution of offenders in some emergencies, such as war. During the last war, even Switzerland sentenced and shot seventeen people guilty of high treason.
188. Opposition to the death penalty.
Opposition to the death penalty stems from two diverse and incompatible sets of reasons, and can only be evaluated in the light of the moral assumptions on which it is based. Horror at a crime can coexist with sympathy for human weakness, and with a sense of the human freedom that renders a man capable of rising from any fall as long as his life lasts; hence opposition to the death penalty. But opposition can also stem from the notion that every person is inviolable inasmuch as he is a self-conscious subject living out his life in the world; as if temporal life were an end in itself that could not be suppressed without frustrating the purpose of human existence.
Although often thought of as religiously inspired, this second type of reason for rejecting capital punishment is in fact irreligious. It overlooks the fact that from a Christian point of view earthly life is not an end in itself, but a means to life’s moral goal, a goal that transcends the whole order of subordinate worldly goods. Therefore to take away a man’s life is by no means to take away the transcendent end for which he was born and which guarantees his true dignity. A man can propter vitam Vivendi perdere causas (for the sake of life, loose the causes of life) that is, he can make himself unworthy of life by taking temporal life as being itself the supreme good instead of a means to that good.
There is therefore a mistake implicit in the second sort of objection to capital punishment, inasmuch as it assumes that in putting someone to death, other men or the state are cutting a criminal off from his destined goal, or depriving him of his last human end or taking away the possibility of his fulfilling his role as a human being. Just the opposite in fact. The condemned man is deprived of his earthly existence, but not of his goal. Naturally, a society that denies there is any future life and supposes there is a fundamental right to happiness in this world, must reject the death penalty as an injustice depriving man of his capacity to be happy.
Paradoxically, those who oppose capital punishment on these grounds are assuming the state has a sort of totalitarian capacity which it does not in fact possess, a power to frustrate the whole of one’s existence. Since a death imposed by one man on another can remove neither the latter’s moral goal nor his human worth, it is still more incapable of preventing the operation of God’s justice, which sits in judgment on all our adjudications. The meaning of the motto engraved on the town executioner’s sword in Fribourg in Switzerland: Seigneur Dieu, tu es le juge (Lord God, Thou art the Judge), was not that human and divine justice were identical; it signified a recognition of that highest justice which sits in judgment on us all.
Another argument advanced is that capital punishment is useless as a deterrent; as witnessed by Caesar’s famous remark during the trial of the Cataline conspirators, to the effect that a death which put an end to the shame and misery of the criminals would be a lesser punishment than their remaining alive to bear them. This argument flies in the face of the juridical practice of pardoning people under sentence of death, as a favor, and is also refuted by the fact that even infamous criminals sometimes make pacts between themselves with death as the penalty for breaking the agreement. They thereby give a very apposite witness to the fact that capital punishment is an effective deterrent.
189. Doctrinal change in the Church.
An important change has occurred in the Church regarding the theology of punishment. We could cite the French bishops’ document that asserted in 1979 that the death penalty ought to be abolished in France as it was incompatible with the Gospel, the Canadian and American bishop’s statements on the matter, and the articles in the Ossevatore Romano calling for the abolition of the death penalty, as injurious to human dignity and contrary to the Gospel.
As to the biblical argument; even without accepting Baudelaire’s celebration of capital punishment as a supremely sacred and religious proceeding, once cannot cancel out the Old Testament’s decrees regarding the death penalty, by a mere stroke of the pen. Nor can canon law, still less the teaching of the New Testament, be can canceled out at a stroke. I am well aware that the famous passage in Romans (Rm 13:4) giving princes the ius gladii (the right use of the sword), and calling them the ministers of God to punish the wicked, has been emptied of meaning by the canons of the new hermeneutic, on the grounds that it is the product of a past set of historical circumstances.
Pius XII however explicitly rejected that view, in a speech to Catholic jurists on 5 February 1955, and said that the passage of St. Paul was of permanent and universal value, because it refers to the essential foundation of penal authority and to its inherent purpose. In the Gospel, Christ indirectly sanctions capital punishment when he says it would be better for a man to be condemned to death by drowning than to commit the sin of scandal (Mt 18:6). From the Book of Acts (Acts 5:1-11) it seems the primitive Christian community had no objection to the death penalty, as Ananias and Sapphira are struck down when they appear before St. Peter guilty of fraud and lying at the expense of the brethren. Biblical commentaries tell us that the early Christians’ enemies though this sentence was harsh at the time.
The change in teaching is obvious on two points. In the new theology of punishment, justice is not considered, and the whole matter is made to turn on the usefulness of the penalty and its aptitude for bringing the guilty person back into society, as the saying goes. On this point, as on others, the new fangled view coincides with the utilitarianism preached by the Jacobins. The individual is held to be essentially independent; the state defends itself against a miscreant, but cannot punish him for breaking a moral law, that is, for being morally guilty.
This guiltlessness of the guilty goes on to manifest itself in a reduced consideration for the victim and even in giving preference to the guilty over the innocent. In Sweden people who have been imprisoned are given preferential treatment in examinations for public employment, as compared with other, unconvicted, members of the public. Consideration for the victim is eclipsed by mercy for the wrongdoer. Mounting the steps to the guillotine, the borderer Buffet shouted his hope that he would “be the last man guillotined in France.” He should have shouted he hoped he would be the last murderer.
The penalty for the offense seems more objectionable than the crime, and the victim is forgotten. The restoration of a moral order that has been violated by wrongdoing is rejected as if it were an act of vendetta. In fact it is something that justice demands and which must be pursued even if the harm done cannot be reversed and if the rehabilitation of the guilty party is impossible. The modern view also attacks even the validity of divine justice, which punishes the damned without there being any hope or possibility of amendment. The very idea of the redemption of the guilty is reduced to a piece of social engineering. According to the Osservatore Romano (6 Sept 1978), redemption consists in the awareness of a return to being useful to one’s fellows” and not, as the Catholic system would have it, in the detestation of one’s fault and a redirecting of the will back into conformity with the absolutes of the moral law.
To go on to assert that a life should not be ended because that would remove the possibility of making expiation, is to ignore the great truth that capital punishment is itself expiatory. In a humanistic religion expiation would of course be primarily the converting of a man to other men. On that view, time is needed to effect a reformation, and the time available should not be shortened. In God’s religion, on the other hand, expiation is primarily a recognition of the divine majesty and lordship, which can be and should be recognized at every moment, in accordance with the principle of the concentration of one’s moral life.
Attacking capital punishment, the Osservatore Romano (22 Jan 1977) asserts that where the wrongdoer is concerned “the community must allow him the possibility of purifying himself, of expiating his guilt, or freeing himself from evil; and capital punishment does not allow for this.” In so saying, the paper denies the expiatory value of death; death which has the highest expiatory value possible among natural things, precisely because life is the highest good among the relative goods of this world; and it is by consenting to sacrifice that life, that the fullest expiation can be made.
And again, the expiation that the innocent Christ made for the sins of mankind was itself effected through his being condemned to death. Remember too the conversion of condemned men at the hands of St. Joseph Carfasso; remember some of the letters of people condemned to death in the Resistance. Thanks to the ministry of the priest, stepping in between the judge and the executioner, the death penalty has often brought about wonderful moral changes, such as those of Niccolo de Tuldo, comforted by St. Catherine of Sienna who left an account of what happened in a famous letter of hers; or Felice Robol, assisted on the scaffold by Antonio Rosmini; or Martin Merino who tried to kill the Queen of Spain in 1852; or Jacques Fesch guillotined in 1957, whose letters from prison are a moving testimony to the spiritual perfection of one of God’s elect.
The most irreligious aspect of this argument against capital punishment is that it denies its expiatory value which, from a religious point of view, is of the highest importance because it can include a final consent to give up the greatest of all worldly goods. This fits exactly with St. Thomas’s opinion that as well as canceling out any debt that the criminal owes to civil society, capital punishment can cancel all punishment due in the life to come.
His thought is Mors illata etiam pro criminibus aufert totam poenam pro criminibus debitam in alia vita, vel partem poenae secundum quantitatem culpae, patientiae et contritionis, non autem mors naturalis. (Summa, “Even death inflicted as a punishment for crimes takes away the whole punishment due for those crimes in the next life, or a least part of that punishment, according to the quantities of guilt, resignation and contrition; but a natural death does not.”).
The moral importance of wanting to make expiation also explains the indefatigable efforts of the Confraternity of St. John the Baptist Beheaded, the members of which used to accompany men to their deaths, all the while suggesting, begging and providing help to get them to repent and accept their deaths, so ensuring that they would die in the grace of God, as the saying went.
190. Inviolability of life. Essence of human dignity. Pius XII.
The leading argument in the new theology of punishment is however the one that asserts an inviolable and imprescriptible right to life, that is alleged allegedly infringed when the state imposes capital punishment. The article we have cited says: “To the modern conscience, which is open, and aware of human values and man’s centrality and primacy in the universe, and of his dignity and his inalienable and inviolable rights, the death penalty is repugnant as being an anti-human and barbarous measure”
Some facts might be helpful in replying to this article, which sums up in itself all the abolitionists’ arguments. The prominence the Osservatore Romano gives to the “modern conscience” is similar to the position accorded it by the French bishops’ document, which says le refus de la peine de mort correspond chez nos contemporains à un progrès accompli dans le respect de la vie humaine (“the rejection of the death penalty is an indication that our contemporaries have an increased respect for human life”).
A remark of that sort is born of the bad mental habit of going along with fashionable ideas and of letting the wish become father to the thought; a crude rebuttal of such unrealistic assertions is provided by the atrocious slaughter of innocents perpetrated in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, the widespread use of physical violence by despotic regimes as an ordinary means of government, the legitimation and imposition of abortion by changes to the law, and the increasing cruelty of delinquents and terrorists, who are only feebly resisted by governments. The axiological centrality of man in the universe will be discussed later.
In discussions on the death penalty, the difference between the rights of an innocent and a guilty man are generally ignored. The right to life is considered as if it were inherent in man’s mere existence when, in fact, it derives from his ordination to values that transcend temporal life, and this goal is built into his spirit inasmuch as it is an image of God.
Although the goal is absolute and the image indelible, man’s freedom means that by a fault he can descend from that dignity and turn aside from his goal. The philosophical justification for penal law is precisely an axiological diminution, or shrinking in worth, on the part of a person who violates the moral order and who, by his fault, arouses society to some coercive action designed to repair the disorder. Those who base the imposition of penalties merely on the damage done to society, deprive penal law of any ethical character and turn it into a set of precautions against those who harm society, irrespective of whether they are acting freely or compulsively, rationally or irrationally.
In the Catholic view, the penal system exists to ensure that the crime by which the delinquent sought some satisfaction or other in defiance of the moral law, is punished by some corresponding diminution of well-being, enjoyment or satisfaction. Without this moral retaliation, a punishment is merely a utilitarian reaction which indeed neglects the dignity of man and reduces justice to a purely materialistic level; such was the case in Greece when recourse was had to the Prytaneum, or city council, to pass sentence against rocks, trees or animals that had caused some damage.
Human dignity is something built into the natural structure of rational creatures but which is elicited and mace conscious by the activity of a good or bad will, and which increases or decreases within that order of being. No right thinking person would want to equate the human worth of the Jew in Auschwitz with that of his killer Eichmann, or St. Catherine of Alexandria with Thias the Alexandrian courtesan.
A person’s worth can only be reduced by actions within the moral realm; and therefore, contrary to popular opinion, it cannot be measured by some level of participation in the benefits of technological progress: by a quote of economic welfare, by a level of literacy, by a better health service, by an abundance of the pleasures that life provided or by the stamping out of diseases. Let there be no confusion between an increase in a person’s dignity or worth, which is a moral quality, and an increase in the possessions of those utilitarian benefits which unworthy men also enjoy.
The death penalty, and any other form of punishment, if they are not to descend to the level of pure defense and a sort of selective slaughter, always presuppose a moral diminution in the person punished: there is therefore no infringement of an inviolable or imprescriptible right involved. Society is not depriving the guilty person of his rights; rather, as Pius XII taught in his speech of 14 Sept 1952:
même quand I s’agit de l’exécution d’un condamné à mort, l’Etat ne dispose pas du droit de l’individu à la vie. Il est reserve alors au pouvoir public de priver le condamné du bien de la vie en expiation de sa faute après que par son crime il s’est déjà dépossedé de son droit à la vie (A.A.S., 1952, pp.779ff. “Even when it is a question of someone condemned to death, the state does not dispose of an individual’s right to life. It is then the task of public authority to deprive the condemned man of the good of life, in expiation of his fault, after he has already deprived himself of the right to life by his crime.”).
If one considers the parallel with one’s right to freedom, it becomes obvious that an innocent man’s right to life is indeed inviolable, whereas a guilty person has diminished his rights by the actions of his depraved will: the right to freedom is innate, inviolable and imprescriptible, but penal codes nonetheless recognize the legitimacy of depriving people of their liberty, even for life, as a punishment for crime, and all nations in fact adopt this practice. There is in fact no unconditional right to any of the goods of earthly life; the only truly inviolable right is the right to seek one’s ultimate goal, that is truth, virtue and eternal happiness, and the means necessary to acquire these. This right remains untouched even by the death penalty.
In conclusion, the death penalty, and indeed any kind of punishment, is illegitimate if one posits that the individual is independent of the moral law and ultimately of the civil law as well, thanks to the protection afforded by his own subjective moral code. Capital punishment comes to be regarded as barbarous in an irreligious society, that is shut within earthly horizons and which feels it has no right to deprive a man of the only good there is.
(1) Chapter XXVI, THE DEATH PENALTY, 187. The death penalty, from Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century, Angelus Press (March 1996)
Mr. Dudley --- refer to:
ReplyDelete(Catechism 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 POSSIBLY WAY of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
Glen,
ReplyDeleteThank you. I am aware of what the catechism says. The problem is that the catechism amendment and the writing it was derived from, Pope John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae, are both overwhelmed by nearly 2000 years of Catholic biblical, theological and tradition teaching.
As you know, PJPII writing was a prudential judgement and was in error in his defense of society position. Not only was it secular in nature, avoiding all of the biblical and theologocal principles, it was also illogical and unreasoned, because the Pope failed to note that the death penalty is a greater defender of sociciety than are lesser sentences. The Pope chose to spare murderers at the cost of sacrificing more innocents, when he should have speared more innocents and executed murderers, thus validating his defense of society - a secular position.
That is why I first posted "The Death Penalty: More Protection for Innocents"
Amerio's essay overwhelms both PJPII's writings, as well as the Catechism's amendments from them.
I suspect it will be the last time that a prudential judgement, an opinion, and a bad one at that, will be introcdiced into a catechism.
I sort of see the point you are making, but when Pope John Paul 2 spoke of society --- how is that secular? Catholics are members of society.
ReplyDelete------------
Should we not have any ounce of compassion for the murderers? The Christian Gospel is rooted in forgiveness. Your argument seems to be rooted in consequentialism -- you seem to want to focus all the attention on the victims instead of the murderers. But in the end, killing another human being is murder (as many dictionaries define it) and murder goes directly against the fifth amendment.
Glen,
ReplyDeleteBu secular, I mean his reasoning "defense of society" is secular, not biblical or theological. He is giving a utilitarian position, solely.
God goes to great pains to differentiate between murder, as in "thou shalt not murder" and other types of killiong, as in execution of the murderer, very different and well defined, biblically.
One can have compassion for a murderer and still see that execution may be just for that crime. As in:
Quaker biblical scholar Dr. Gervas A. Carey. A Professor of Bible and past President of George Fox College, wrote a landmark essay on the death penalty entitled "A Bible Study". Here is a synopsis of his analysis: " . . . the decree of Genesis 9:5-6 is equally enduring and cannot be separated from the other pledges and instructions of its immediate context, Genesis 8:20-9:17; . . . that is true unless specific Biblical authority can be cited for the deletion, of which there appears to be none. It seems strange that any opponents of capital punishment who professes to recognize the authority of the Bible either overlook or disregard the divine decree in this covenant with Noah; . . . capital punishment should be recognized . . . as the divinely instituted penalty for murder; The basis of this decree . . . is as enduring as God; . . . murder not only deprives a man of a portion of his earthly life . . . it is a further sin against him as a creature made in the image of God and against God Himself whose image the murderer does not respect." (p. 111-113) Carey agrees with Saints Augustine and Aquinas, that executions represent mercy to the wrongdoer: ". . . a secondary measure of the love of God may be said to appear. For capital punishment provides the murderer with incentive to repentance which the ordinary man does not have, that is a definite date on which he is to meet his God. It is as if God thus providentially granted him a special inducement to repentance out of consideration of the enormity of his crime . . . the law grants to the condemned an opportunity which he did not grant to his victim, the opportunity to prepare to meet his God. Even divine justice here may be said to be tempered with mercy." (p. 116). Essays on the Death Penalty, T. Robert Ingram, ed., St. Thomas Press, Houston, 1963, 1992.
Mr. Sharp
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting that insightful piece of text. I never thought of the idea of the sinner repenting with God before his execution date. You could look at that way, I suppose, but I believe that is contrary to the purpose of extending life on earth. I think that might even be an easy way out: you commit the worst of sins, die, then meet with God? Our journey in faith should be one that continues until our natural death.
Glen:
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing biblical regarding dying from a natural death. But there is a great deal about the death penalty.
Take a look.
Here is a relatively new essay from a Vatican insider and theological expert.
THE DEATH PENALTY (1)
by Romano Amerio (†1997), a Vatican insider and scholar, a professor at the Academy of Lugano, consultant to the Preparatory Commission of Vatican II, and a peritus (expert theologian) at the Council.
Certain social institutions derive from the principles of the natural law and as such are perpetual in one form or another; for example the state, the family, a priesthood of some sort; and there are others that arise from a certain level of reflection on those principles and from historical circumstances, and which are abandoned when thought moves on to another level or when circumstances change; for example slavery.
Until recently, the death penalty was philosophically defended, and used in practice by all countries as the ultimate penalty society imposes on evildoers, with the threefold aim of righting the balance of justice, defending society against attack, and dissuading others from wrongdoing.
The legitimacy of capital punishment is usually grounded on two propositions. First: society has a right to defend itself; second: this defense involves using all necessary means. Capital punishment is included in the second proposition on condition that taking the life of one member of the body of society is genuinely necessary for the wellbeing of the whole.
The growing tendency to mitigate punishments of all sorts is in part the product of the Gospel spirit of clemency and mercy, which has always been at odds down the centuries with savage judicial customs. With a certain degree of confusion that we need not go into here, the Church has always drawn back from blood.
It should be remembered that canon law traditionally decreed the “irregularity,” that is the banning from holy orders, not only of executioners, but of judges who condemned people to death in the ordinary course of law, and even of advocates and witnesses in trials that led to someone being put to death.
The controversy does not turn on society’s right to defend itself; that is the undeniable premise of any penal code, but rather on the genuineness of the need to remove the offender altogether in order to effect that defense, which is the minor premise involved.
From St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas to Taperelli d’Azeglio, the traditional teaching is that the decision as to the necessity and legitimacy of capital punishment depends on historical circumstances, that is, on the urgency of the need to hold society together in the face of the disruptive behavior of individuals who attack the common good. From Beccaria onwards, proposals to abolish capital punishment have admitted the major premise, and allowed that the minor one depends on historical circumstances, since they allow the execution of offenders in some emergencies, such as war. During the last war, even Switzerland sentenced and shot seventeen people guilty of high treason.
188. Opposition to the death penalty.
Opposition to the death penalty stems from two diverse and incompatible sets of reasons, and can only be evaluated in the light of the moral assumptions on which it is based. Horror at a crime can coexist with sympathy for human weakness, and with a sense of the human freedom that renders a man capable of rising from any fall as long as his life lasts; hence opposition to the death penalty. But opposition can also stem from the notion that every person is inviolable inasmuch as he is a self-conscious subject living out his life in the world; as if temporal life were an end in itself that could not be suppressed without frustrating the purpose of human existence.
Although often thought of as religiously inspired, this second type of reason for rejecting capital punishment is in fact irreligious. It overlooks the fact that from a Christian point of view earthly life is not an end in itself, but a means to life’s moral goal, a goal that transcends the whole order of subordinate worldly goods. Therefore to take away a man’s life is by no means to take away the transcendent end for which he was born and which guarantees his true dignity. A man can propter vitam Vivendi perdere causas (for the sake of life, loose the causes of life) that is, he can make himself unworthy of life by taking temporal life as being itself the supreme good instead of a means to that good.
There is therefore a mistake implicit in the second sort of objection to capital punishment, inasmuch as it assumes that in putting someone to death, other men or the state are cutting a criminal off from his destined goal, or depriving him of his last human end or taking away the possibility of his fulfilling his role as a human being. Just the opposite in fact. The condemned man is deprived of his earthly existence, but not of his goal. Naturally, a society that denies there is any future life and supposes there is a fundamental right to happiness in this world, must reject the death penalty as an injustice depriving man of his capacity to be happy.
Paradoxically, those who oppose capital punishment on these grounds are assuming the state has a sort of totalitarian capacity which it does not in fact possess, a power to frustrate the whole of one’s existence. Since a death imposed by one man on another can remove neither the latter’s moral goal nor his human worth, it is still more incapable of preventing the operation of God’s justice, which sits in judgment on all our adjudications. The meaning of the motto engraved on the town executioner’s sword in Fribourg in Switzerland: Seigneur Dieu, tu es le juge (Lord God, Thou art the Judge), was not that human and divine justice were identical; it signified a recognition of that highest justice which sits in judgment on us all.
Another argument advanced is that capital punishment is useless as a deterrent; as witnessed by Caesar’s famous remark during the trial of the Cataline conspirators, to the effect that a death which put an end to the shame and misery of the criminals would be a lesser punishment than their remaining alive to bear them. This argument flies in the face of the juridical practice of pardoning people under sentence of death, as a favor, and is also refuted by the fact that even infamous criminals sometimes make pacts between themselves with death as the penalty for breaking the agreement. They thereby give a very apposite witness to the fact that capital punishment is an effective deterrent.
189. Doctrinal change in the Church.
An important change has occurred in the Church regarding the theology of punishment. We could cite the French bishops’ document that asserted in 1979 that the death penalty ought to be abolished in France as it was incompatible with the Gospel, the Canadian and American bishop’s statements on the matter, and the articles in the Ossevatore Romano calling for the abolition of the death penalty, as injurious to human dignity and contrary to the Gospel.
As to the biblical argument; even without accepting Baudelaire’s celebration of capital punishment as a supremely sacred and religious proceeding, once cannot cancel out the Old Testament’s decrees regarding the death penalty, by a mere stroke of the pen. Nor can canon law, still less the teaching of the New Testament, be can canceled out at a stroke. I am well aware that the famous passage in Romans (Rm 13:4) giving princes the ius gladii (the right use of the sword), and calling them the ministers of God to punish the wicked, has been emptied of meaning by the canons of the new hermeneutic, on the grounds that it is the product of a past set of historical circumstances.
Pius XII however explicitly rejected that view, in a speech to Catholic jurists on 5 February 1955, and said that the passage of St. Paul was of permanent and universal value, because it refers to the essential foundation of penal authority and to its inherent purpose. In the Gospel, Christ indirectly sanctions capital punishment when he says it would be better for a man to be condemned to death by drowning than to commit the sin of scandal (Mt 18:6). From the Book of Acts (Acts 5:1-11) it seems the primitive Christian community had no objection to the death penalty, as Ananias and Sapphira are struck down when they appear before St. Peter guilty of fraud and lying at the expense of the brethren. Biblical commentaries tell us that the early Christians’ enemies though this sentence was harsh at the time.
The change in teaching is obvious on two points. In the new theology of punishment, justice is not considered, and the whole matter is made to turn on the usefulness of the penalty and its aptitude for bringing the guilty person back into society, as the saying goes. On this point, as on others, the new fangled view coincides with the utilitarianism preached by the Jacobins. The individual is held to be essentially independent; the state defends itself against a miscreant, but cannot punish him for breaking a moral law, that is, for being morally guilty.
This guiltlessness of the guilty goes on to manifest itself in a reduced consideration for the victim and even in giving preference to the guilty over the innocent. In Sweden people who have been imprisoned are given preferential treatment in examinations for public employment, as compared with other, unconvicted, members of the public. Consideration for the victim is eclipsed by mercy for the wrongdoer. Mounting the steps to the guillotine, the borderer Buffet shouted his hope that he would “be the last man guillotined in France.” He should have shouted he hoped he would be the last murderer.
The penalty for the offense seems more objectionable than the crime, and the victim is forgotten. The restoration of a moral order that has been violated by wrongdoing is rejected as if it were an act of vendetta. In fact it is something that justice demands and which must be pursued even if the harm done cannot be reversed and if the rehabilitation of the guilty party is impossible. The modern view also attacks even the validity of divine justice, which punishes the damned without there being any hope or possibility of amendment. The very idea of the redemption of the guilty is reduced to a piece of social engineering. According to the Osservatore Romano (6 Sept 1978), redemption consists in the awareness of a return to being useful to one’s fellows” and not, as the Catholic system would have it, in the detestation of one’s fault and a redirecting of the will back into conformity with the absolutes of the moral law.
To go on to assert that a life should not be ended because that would remove the possibility of making expiation, is to ignore the great truth that capital punishment is itself expiatory. In a humanistic religion expiation would of course be primarily the converting of a man to other men. On that view, time is needed to effect a reformation, and the time available should not be shortened. In God’s religion, on the other hand, expiation is primarily a recognition of the divine majesty and lordship, which can be and should be recognized at every moment, in accordance with the principle of the concentration of one’s moral life.
Attacking capital punishment, the Osservatore Romano (22 Jan 1977) asserts that where the wrongdoer is concerned “the community must allow him the possibility of purifying himself, of expiating his guilt, or freeing himself from evil; and capital punishment does not allow for this.” In so saying, the paper denies the expiatory value of death; death which has the highest expiatory value possible among natural things, precisely because life is the highest good among the relative goods of this world; and it is by consenting to sacrifice that life, that the fullest expiation can be made.
And again, the expiation that the innocent Christ made for the sins of mankind was itself effected through his being condemned to death. Remember too the conversion of condemned men at the hands of St. Joseph Carfasso; remember some of the letters of people condemned to death in the Resistance. Thanks to the ministry of the priest, stepping in between the judge and the executioner, the death penalty has often brought about wonderful moral changes, such as those of Niccolo de Tuldo, comforted by St. Catherine of Sienna who left an account of what happened in a famous letter of hers; or Felice Robol, assisted on the scaffold by Antonio Rosmini; or Martin Merino who tried to kill the Queen of Spain in 1852; or Jacques Fesch guillotined in 1957, whose letters from prison are a moving testimony to the spiritual perfection of one of God’s elect.
The most irreligious aspect of this argument against capital punishment is that it denies its expiatory value which, from a religious point of view, is of the highest importance because it can include a final consent to give up the greatest of all worldly goods. This fits exactly with St. Thomas’s opinion that as well as canceling out any debt that the criminal owes to civil society, capital punishment can cancel all punishment due in the life to come.
His thought is Mors illata etiam pro criminibus aufert totam poenam pro criminibus debitam in alia vita, vel partem poenae secundum quantitatem culpae, patientiae et contritionis, non autem mors naturalis. (Summa, “Even death inflicted as a punishment for crimes takes away the whole punishment due for those crimes in the next life, or a least part of that punishment, according to the quantities of guilt, resignation and contrition; but a natural death does not.”).
The moral importance of wanting to make expiation also explains the indefatigable efforts of the Confraternity of St. John the Baptist Beheaded, the members of which used to accompany men to their deaths, all the while suggesting, begging and providing help to get them to repent and accept their deaths, so ensuring that they would die in the grace of God, as the saying went.
190. Inviolability of life. Essence of human dignity. Pius XII.
The leading argument in the new theology of punishment is however the one that asserts an inviolable and imprescriptible right to life, that is alleged allegedly infringed when the state imposes capital punishment. The article we have cited says: “To the modern conscience, which is open, and aware of human values and man’s centrality and primacy in the universe, and of his dignity and his inalienable and inviolable rights, the death penalty is repugnant as being an anti-human and barbarous measure”
Some facts might be helpful in replying to this article, which sums up in itself all the abolitionists’ arguments. The prominence the Osservatore Romano gives to the “modern conscience” is similar to the position accorded it by the French bishops’ document, which says le refus de la peine de mort correspond chez nos contemporains à un progrès accompli dans le respect de la vie humaine (“the rejection of the death penalty is an indication that our contemporaries have an increased respect for human life”).
A remark of that sort is born of the bad mental habit of going along with fashionable ideas and of letting the wish become father to the thought; a crude rebuttal of such unrealistic assertions is provided by the atrocious slaughter of innocents perpetrated in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, the widespread use of physical violence by despotic regimes as an ordinary means of government, the legitimation and imposition of abortion by changes to the law, and the increasing cruelty of delinquents and terrorists, who are only feebly resisted by governments. The axiological centrality of man in the universe will be discussed later.
In discussions on the death penalty, the difference between the rights of an innocent and a guilty man are generally ignored. The right to life is considered as if it were inherent in man’s mere existence when, in fact, it derives from his ordination to values that transcend temporal life, and this goal is built into his spirit inasmuch as it is an image of God.
Although the goal is absolute and the image indelible, man’s freedom means that by a fault he can descend from that dignity and turn aside from his goal. The philosophical justification for penal law is precisely an axiological diminution, or shrinking in worth, on the part of a person who violates the moral order and who, by his fault, arouses society to some coercive action designed to repair the disorder. Those who base the imposition of penalties merely on the damage done to society, deprive penal law of any ethical character and turn it into a set of precautions against those who harm society, irrespective of whether they are acting freely or compulsively, rationally or irrationally.
In the Catholic view, the penal system exists to ensure that the crime by which the delinquent sought some satisfaction or other in defiance of the moral law, is punished by some corresponding diminution of well-being, enjoyment or satisfaction. Without this moral retaliation, a punishment is merely a utilitarian reaction which indeed neglects the dignity of man and reduces justice to a purely materialistic level; such was the case in Greece when recourse was had to the Prytaneum, or city council, to pass sentence against rocks, trees or animals that had caused some damage.
Human dignity is something built into the natural structure of rational creatures but which is elicited and mace conscious by the activity of a good or bad will, and which increases or decreases within that order of being. No right thinking person would want to equate the human worth of the Jew in Auschwitz with that of his killer Eichmann, or St. Catherine of Alexandria with Thias the Alexandrian courtesan.
A person’s worth can only be reduced by actions within the moral realm; and therefore, contrary to popular opinion, it cannot be measured by some level of participation in the benefits of technological progress: by a quote of economic welfare, by a level of literacy, by a better health service, by an abundance of the pleasures that life provided or by the stamping out of diseases. Let there be no confusion between an increase in a person’s dignity or worth, which is a moral quality, and an increase in the possessions of those utilitarian benefits which unworthy men also enjoy.
The death penalty, and any other form of punishment, if they are not to descend to the level of pure defense and a sort of selective slaughter, always presuppose a moral diminution in the person punished: there is therefore no infringement of an inviolable or imprescriptible right involved. Society is not depriving the guilty person of his rights; rather, as Pius XII taught in his speech of 14 Sept 1952:
même quand I s’agit de l’exécution d’un condamné à mort, l’Etat ne dispose pas du droit de l’individu à la vie. Il est reserve alors au pouvoir public de priver le condamné du bien de la vie en expiation de sa faute après que par son crime il s’est déjà dépossedé de son droit à la vie (A.A.S., 1952, pp.779ff. “Even when it is a question of someone condemned to death, the state does not dispose of an individual’s right to life. It is then the task of public authority to deprive the condemned man of the good of life, in expiation of his fault, after he has already deprived himself of the right to life by his crime.”).
If one considers the parallel with one’s right to freedom, it becomes obvious that an innocent man’s right to life is indeed inviolable, whereas a guilty person has diminished his rights by the actions of his depraved will: the right to freedom is innate, inviolable and imprescriptible, but penal codes nonetheless recognize the legitimacy of depriving people of their liberty, even for life, as a punishment for crime, and all nations in fact adopt this practice. There is in fact no unconditional right to any of the goods of earthly life; the only truly inviolable right is the right to seek one’s ultimate goal, that is truth, virtue and eternal happiness, and the means necessary to acquire these. This right remains untouched even by the death penalty.
In conclusion, the death penalty, and indeed any kind of punishment, is illegitimate if one posits that the individual is independent of the moral law and ultimately of the civil law as well, thanks to the protection afforded by his own subjective moral code. Capital punishment comes to be regarded as barbarous in an irreligious society, that is shut within earthly horizons and which feels it has no right to deprive a man of the only good there is.
(1) Chapter XXVI, THE DEATH PENALTY, 187. The death penalty, from Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century, Angelus Press (March 1996)
After reading that essay for the second time, I wouldn't mind the death penalty. Kidding.
ReplyDelete----
What if we just don't ever release the murderers from prison unless they deserve it?
Interesting list. I am really curious who will win the elections, however, as a "observer from the outside" I have feeling Obama will get it - sorry...As a health insurance dealer in Toronto term life I am especially concerned on the health care reform(?) - I believe both sides have to admit, there are problems in the USA health care. Obama seems to have more revolutionary attitude, however his plan seems to be standing on legs made of thin wood - standard "everybody will get it" plan with no answer to the question "and where to get the money?"
ReplyDeleteWish you good luck in the next years, no matter who wins...
Lorne
I, too, wouldn't doubt that many incompetent/easy to appease Americans will vote for Obama (surely enough for him to win).
ReplyDeleteJust as there problems in the U.S's health care system, there are holes in Canada's system as well. I can't say that with absolute certainty (only from what I hear); my Canadian friends always seem staunchly in favor of UHC.