Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
Romans 13:1-4 (KJV)
In order to articulate the Catholic view of the death penalty, we must first establish the general Catholic view of civil authority. I have discussed this elsewhere in some detail (see, for example,
here,
here, and
here), so I will provide here only a brief outline.
The Nature of Civil Authority
The passage at the top of this page from Romans 13 states clearly and succinctly the Catholic view of civil authority. The Catechism of the Catholic Church fleshes this out a bit theologically and philosophically:
1897 "Human society can be neither well-ordered nor prosperous unless it has some people invested with legitimate authority to preserve its institutions and to devote themselves as far as is necessary to work and care for the good of all."15
By "authority" one means the quality by virtue of which persons or institutions make laws and give orders to men and expect obedience from them.
1898 Every human community needs an authority to govern it.16 The foundation of such authority lies in human nature. It is necessary for the unity of the state. Its role is to ensure as far as possible the common good of the society.
1899 The authority required by the moral order derives from God: "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment."17
1900 The duty of obedience requires all to give due honor to authority and to treat those who are charged to exercise it with respect, and, insofar as it is deserved, with gratitude and good-will. . . .
1902 Authority does not derive its moral legitimacy from itself. It must not behave in a despotic manner, but must act for the common good as a "moral force based on freedom and a sense of responsibility":21
A human law has the character of law to the extent that it accords with right reason, and thus derives from the eternal law. Insofar as it falls short of right reason it is said to be an unjust law, and thus has not so much the nature of law as of a kind of violence.22
1903 Authority is exercised legitimately only when it seeks the common good of the group concerned and if it employs morally licit means to attain it. If rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral order, such arrangements would not be binding in conscience. In such a case, "authority breaks down completely and results in shameful abuse."23 (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1897-1903)
Here is how I would briefly summarize the basic Catholic position on civil authority: God has created human beings and the universe in such a way that human nature naturally calls for certain forms of organization among human individuals with certain authority structures that go along with them - such as organizations of family and civil society (the state). Since God is the author of the human nature that gives rise to these institutions, these institutions are ordained by God and therefore have his authority behind them. Thus, in St. Paul's language (Romans 13:1-7), the "powers that be" are ordained of God and are thus ministers of God whom we are commanded by God's moral law to obey. Since these institutions are "ministers of God," they do not have unlimited authority. They only have authority when they are legitimately fulfilling their essential functions in a manner consistent with the objective moral law of God. Essential human governments, then, are a sort of limited microcosm of God's government of the cosmos. Just as God seeks to promote the good and condemn the evil in his government of the world, so human governments ought to rule according to God's moral law, promoting what is good and hindering or opposing that which is evil.
Civil authority, like all human institutions, is to recognize and submit to God and do him honor:
For it cannot be doubted but that, by the will of God, men are united in civil society; whether its component parts be considered; or its form, which implies authority; or the object of its existence; or the abundance of the vast services which it renders to man. God it is who has made man for society, and has placed him in the company of others like himself, so that what was wanting to his nature, and beyond his attainment if left to his own resources, he might obtain by association with others. Wherefore, civil society must acknowledge God as its Founder and Parent, and must obey and reverence His power and authority. (Pope Leo XIII, Libertas, 1888)
Authority should always be exercised as a service, respecting fundamental human rights, a just hierarchy of values, laws, distributive justice, and the principle of subsidiarity. All those who exercise authority should seek the interests of the community before their own interest and allow their decisions to be inspired by the truth about God, about man and about the world. (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Question 463)
So the function of the state is to be a minister of God for the praise and promotion of good and the hindering and opposing of evil, as these are defined by God's moral law, within the bounds of civil society. The state is, to the best of its ability, to protect the civil sphere from evil and for good. However, as the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares reminds us, human institutions must sometimes, to some extent, tolerate some evils in order to avoid greater evils or to secure more important goods:
33. Yet, with the discernment of a true mother, the Church weighs the great burden of human weakness, and well knows the course down which the minds and actions of men are in this our age being borne. For this reason, while not conceding any right to anything save what is true and honest, she does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding some greater evil, or of obtaining or preserving some greater good. God Himself in His providence, though infinitely good and powerful, permits evil to exist in the world, partly that greater good may not be impeded, and partly that greater evil may not ensue. In the government of States it is not forbidden to imitate the Ruler of the world; and, as the authority of man is powerless to prevent every evil, it has (as St. Augustine says) to overlook and leave unpunished many things which are punished, and rightly, by Divine Providence.(10) But if, in such circumstances, for the sake of the common good (and this is the only legitimate reason), human law may or even should tolerate evil, it may not and should not approve or desire evil for its own sake; for evil of itself, being a privation of good, is opposed to the common welfare which every legislator is bound to desire and defend to the best of his ability. In this, human law must endeavor to imitate God, who, as St. Thomas teaches, in allowing evil to exist in the world, "neither wills evil to be done, nor wills it not to be done, but wills only to permit it to be done; and this is good."(11) This saying of the Angelic Doctor contains briefly the whole doctrine of the permission of evil.
34. But, to judge aright, we must acknowledge that, the more a State is driven to tolerate evil, the further is it from perfection; and that the tolerance of evil which is dictated by political prudence should be strictly confined to the limits which its justifying cause, the public welfare, requires. Wherefore, if such tolerance would be injurious to the public welfare, and entail greater evils on the State, it would not be lawful; for in such case the motive of good is wanting. (Libertas, #33-34)
Foundation of the Death Penalty in Catholic Teaching
The Church has always recognized the right and duty of civil authority to use force to protect the common good, even, if necessary, to the point of death.
In the Old Testament, there are numerous approved examples of civil authority applying the death penalty. God's law given to Moses itself specifies the death penalty as the proper punishment for several crimes. Genesis 9:6 has sometimes been taken as a general prescription of the death penalty: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man."
In the New Testament, the same right and duty continues to be recognized. We've already noted the classic text of Romans 13:1-7, in which the civil authority is described as having from God the power of "the sword" - a clear indicator of the right and duty of the state to use force when necessary to protect the good and punish evil, even to the point of death. We see this echoed in some other passages as well, such as Acts 25:10-11 and Luke 23:39-41:
Then said Paul, I stand at Caesar's judgment seat, where I ought to be judged: to the Jews have I done no wrong, as thou very well knowest. For if I be an offender, or have committed any thing worthy of death, I refuse not to die: but if there be none of these things whereof these accuse me, no man may deliver me unto them. I appeal unto Caesar. (Acts 25:10-11)
And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. (Luke 23:39-41)
Throughout the centuries, the Magisterium of the Church has commented on this principle from time to time. The
Catechism of the Council of Trent, often called the
Roman Catechism, published in 1566 at the command of Pope Pius V, made these comments:
Again, this prohibition [that is, the prohibition of the Fifth Commandment not to kill] does not apply to the civil magistrate, to whom is intrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which he punishes the guilty and protects the innocent. The use of the civil sword, when wielded by the hand of justice, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the commandment is the preservation and security of human life, and to the attainment of this end the punishments inflicted by the civil magistrate, who is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend, giving security to life by repressing outrage and violence. Hence these words of David : "In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land ; that I might cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the Lord." 2 In like manner, the soldier is guiltless who, actuated not by motives of ambition or cruelty, but by a pure desire of serving the interests of his country, takes away the life of an enemy in a just war. 3 There are on record instances of carnage executed by the special command of God himself: the sons of Levi, who had put to death so many thousands in one day, were guilty of no sin : when the slaughter had ceased, they were addressed by Moses in these words: "you have consecrated your hands this day to the Lord." (The Catechism of the Council of Trent, tr. Rev. J. Donovan [Baltimore: Lucas Brothers, 1829], 280)
Pope Innocent I, back in 405, in a letter to the Bishop of Toulouse, had made a similar point:
It must be remembered that power was granted by God [to the magistrates], and to avenge crime by the sword was permitted. He who carries out this vengeance is God’s minister (Rm 13:1-4). Why should we condemn a practice that all hold to be permitted by God? We uphold, therefore, what has been observed until now, in order not to alter the discipline and so that we may not appear to act contrary to God’s authority. (Innocent 1, Epist. 6, C. 3. 8, ad Exsuperium, Episcopum Tolosanum,
20 February 405, PL 20,495, found at https://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/n013rp_DeathPenalty_Popes.htm on 8/22/18)
Pope Innocent III, in 1208, in a series of statements required of the Waldensian heretics to profess before being received back into Catholic communion, included this statement:
Concerning secular power we declare that without mortal sin it is possible to exercise a judgment of blood as long as one proceeds to bring punishment not in hatred but in judgment, not incautiously but advisedly. (Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, tr. Roy J. Deferrari [Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2001], a translation of "the thirtieth edition of Enchiridion Symbolorum by Henry Denzinger, revised by Karl Rahner, S.J., published in 1954, by Herder & Co., Freiburg", p. 168)
The first edition of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1992, had this to say about the death penalty:
2266 Preserving the common good of society requires rendering the aggressor unable to inflict harm. For this reason the traditional teaching of the Church has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty. For analogous reasons those holding authority have the right to repel by armed force aggressors against the community in their charge.
The primary effect of punishment is to redress the disorder caused by the offense. When his punishment is voluntarily accepted by the offender, it takes on the value of expiation. Moreover, punishment has the effect of preserving public order and the safety of persons. Finally punishment has a medicinal value; as far as possible it should contribute to the correction of the offender. 67
2267 If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. (Catechism of the Catholic Church [New York: Doubleday, 1995], 604-605.)
What About Today?
As in many areas of social and political justice, so with the death penalty as well there are always a number of moral principles that must be properly balanced in order to determine the just and best application in the given circumstances of any particular time and place.
Of course, this is reflected in God's own government of the universe. In the Bible, for example, there are many instances in which God strikes someone with death in response to his sin. But in other cases, a person may do the same crime or even worse and not get struck down by God.
In terms of God-derived human authority over life and death, we see the same principle. In the Law of Moses, God commanded death for the promoter of false gods among the people of Israel. But the Church, through its history, has not necessarily advocated the same penalty for false religion, recognizing that the laws given to Moses were not intended, in all their judicial details, to apply to all places and times. Even within the Bible, God will sometimes spare those who in other circumstances would have incurred the death penalty. We can think of the example of David, who committed murder in the killing of Uriah but was spared the death penalty by God (and by civil authority). God laid down the principle (perhaps including both descriptive and prescriptive elements) in Genesis 9:6 that "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man." And yet in Genesis 4:15, we find God putting a mark on Cain to prevent anyone from killing him, even though he had just murdered his brother. The determination of what is the right judicial response to a particular crime is seldom a straightforward matter, involving the application of a single, simple principle. It is typically an exercise in prudence which takes a number of moral principles and weighs them with wisdom, deciding which application is right and best given the specific circumstances involved.
The Church has always recognized as well that the coming of the gospel with Jesus Christ brought a new era of mercy to the world. Justice is not done away with. The sword of the civil magistrate is not done away with. And yet Christian civilization is to have a greater emphasis on mercy, and this must play out in all areas of life, including the area of civil justice. The balancing of mercy with justice has always been a part of the mix in terms of finding the proper balance in the application of moral principles to practical life in society, but the preaching of the gospel in its fullness with the coming of Christ has added yet another crucial element into that mix that must be taken into consideration.
Especially during the latter half of the twentieth century, feeling in the broader world as well as among the people of God began to look more skeptically at the death penalty, wondering if its application in modern countries in modern days can be justified. This growing skepticism came to Magisterial expression in Pope John Paul II's famous encyclical,
Evangelium Vitae, published in 1995. Pope John Paul II discussed the subject of the death penalty in a few key sections in the encyclical:
9. But God cannot leave the crime [of Cain's murder of Abel] unpunished: from the ground on which it has been spilt, the blood of the one murdered demands that God should render justice (cf. Gen 37:26; Is 26:21; Ez 24:7-8). From this text the Church has taken the name of the "sins which cry to God for justice", and, first among them, she has included wilful murder. 12 For the Jewish people, as for many peoples of antiquity, blood is the source of life. Indeed "the blood is the life" (Dt 12:23), and life, especially human life, belongs only to God: for this reason whoever attacks human life, in some way attacks God himself.
Cain is cursed by God and also by the earth, which will deny him its fruit (cf. Gen 4:11-12). He is punished: he will live in the wilderness and the desert. Murderous violence profoundly changes man's environment. From being the "garden of Eden" (Gen 2:15), a place of plenty, of harmonious interpersonal relationships and of friendship with God, the earth becomes "the land of Nod" (Gen 4:16), a place of scarcity, loneliness and separation from God. Cain will be "a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth" (Gen 4:14): uncertainty and restlessness will follow him forever.
And yet God, who is always merciful even when he punishes, "put a mark on Cain, lest any who came upon him should kill him" (Gen 4:15). He thus gave him a distinctive sign, not to condemn him to the hatred of others, but to protect and defend him from those wishing to kill him, even out of a desire to avenge Abel's death. Not even a murderer loses his personal dignity, and God himself pledges to guarantee this. And it is pre- cisely here that the paradoxical mystery of the merciful justice of God is shown forth. As Saint Ambrose writes: "Once the crime is admitted at the very inception of this sinful act of parricide, then the divine law of God's mercy should be immediately extended. If punishment is forthwith inflicted on the accused, then men in the exercise of justice would in no way observe patience and moderation, but would straightaway condemn the defendant to punishment. ... God drove Cain out of his presence and sent him into exile far away from his native land, so that he passed from a life of human kindness to one which was more akin to the rude existence of a wild beast. God, who preferred the correction rather than the death of a sinner, did not desire that a homicide be punished by the exaction of another act of homicide".13 (Evangelium Vitae, #9
Among the signs of hope we should also count the spread, at many levels of public opinion, of a new sensitivity ever more opposed to war as an instrument for the resolution of conflicts between peoples, and increasingly oriented to finding effective but "non-violent" means to counter the armed aggressor. In the same perspective there is evidence of a growing public opposition to the death penalty, even when such a penalty is seen as a kind of "legitimate defence" on the part of society. Modern society in fact has the means of effectively suppressing crime by rendering criminals harmless without definitively denying them the chance to reform. (#27)
The commandment regarding the inviolability of human life reverberates at the heart of the "ten words" in the covenant of Sinai (cf. Ex 34:28). In the first place that commandment prohibits murder: "You shall not kill" (Ex 20:13); "do not slay the innocent and righteous" (Ex 23:7). But, as is brought out in Israel's later legislation, it also prohibits all personal injury inflicted on another (cf. Ex 21:12-27). Of course we must recognize that in the Old Testament this sense of the value of life, though already quite marked, does not yet reach the refinement found in the Sermon on the Mount. This is apparent in some aspects of the current penal legislation, which provided for severe forms of corporal punishment and even the death penalty. But the overall message, which the New Testament will bring to perfection, is a forceful appeal for respect for the inviolability of physical life and the integrity of the person. It culminates in the positive commandment which obliges us to be responsible for our neighbour as for ourselves: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself" (Lev 19:18). (#40)
As time passed, the Church's Tradition has always consistently taught the absolute and unchanging value of the commandment "You shall not kill". It is a known fact that in the first centuries, murder was put among the three most serious sins-along with apostasy and adultery-and required a particularly heavy and lengthy public penance before the repentant murderer could be granted forgiveness and readmission to the ecclesial community.
55. This should not cause surprise: to kill a human being, in whom the image of God is present, is a particularly serious sin. Only God is the master of life! Yet from the beginning, faced with the many and often tragic cases which occur in the life of individuals and society, Christian reflection has sought a fuller and deeper understanding of what God's commandment prohibits and prescribes. 43 There are in fact situations in which values proposed by God's Law seem to involve a genuine paradox. This happens for example in the case of legitimate defence, in which the right to protect one's own life and the duty not to harm someone else's life are difficult to reconcile in practice. Certainly, the intrinsic value of life and the duty to love oneself no less than others are the basis of a true right to self-defence. The demanding commandment of love of neighbour, set forth in the Old Testament and confirmed by Jesus, itself presupposes love of oneself as the basis of comparison: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself " (Mk 12:31). Consequently, no one can renounce the right to self-defence out of lack of love for life or for self. This can only be done in virtue of a heroic love which deepens and transfigures the love of self into a radical self-offering, according to the spirit of the Gospel Beatitudes (cf. Mt 5:38-40). The sublime example of this self-offering is the Lord Jesus himself.
Moreover, "legitimate defence can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another's life, the common good of the family or of the State".44 Unfortunately it happens that the need to render the aggressor incapable of causing harm sometimes involves taking his life. In this case, the fatal outcome is attributable to the aggressor whose action brought it about, even though he may not be morally responsible because of a lack of the use of reason. 45
56. This is the context in which to place the problem of the death penalty. On this matter there is a growing tendency, both in the Church and in civil society, to demand that it be applied in a very limited way or even that it be abolished completely. The problem must be viewed in the context of a system of penal justice ever more in line with human dignity and thus, in the end, with God's plan for man and society. The primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is "to redress the disorder caused by the offence".46 Public authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or her freedom. In this way authority also fulfils the purpose of defending public order and ensuring people's safety, while at the same time offering the offender an incentive and help to change his or her behaviour and be rehabilitated. 47
It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.
In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: "If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person".48 (#54-56)
In 1997, the official text of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church was revised to reflect the concerns expressed in
Evangelium Vitae:
2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.
2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people's rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people's safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.67
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 to 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 nonexistent."68 (Catechism of the Catholic Church, sections #2265-2267, found at http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a5.htm as of 12:05 PM on 8/22/18)
Pope John Paul II's reservations concerning the modern application of the death penalty have been echoed by his two successors, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. The culmination of these reservations has come only this month, as Pope Francis has now revised the text of the
Catechism once again to reflect the position that, in these days, the death penalty is "inadmissable":
2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.
Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.
Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”,[1] and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, section #2267, revised version)
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has issued
a letter to bishops accompanying the publication of the revised text of the
Catechism which provides further context and interpretation for it. Here are sections #2, #7, #8, and #10 of this letter:
2. It is in the same light that one should understand the attitude towards the death penalty that is expressed ever more widely in the teaching of pastors and in the sensibility of the people of God. If, in fact, the political and social situation of the past made the death penalty an acceptable means for the protection of the common good, today the increasing understanding that the dignity of a person is not lost even after committing the most serious crimes, the deepened understanding of the significance of penal sanctions applied by the State, and the development of more efficacious detention systems that guarantee the due protection of citizens have given rise to a new awareness that recognizes the inadmissibility of the death penalty and, therefore, calling for its abolition. . . .
7. The new revision of number 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, approved by Pope Francis, situates itself in continuity with the preceding Magisterium while bringing forth a coherent development of Catholic doctrine.[12] The new text, following the footsteps of the teaching of John Paul II in Evangelium vitæ, affirms that ending the life of a criminal as punishment for a crime is inadmissible because it attacks the dignity of the person, a dignity that is not lost even after having committed the most serious crimes. This conclusion is reached taking into account the new understanding of penal sanctions applied by the modern State, which should be oriented above all to the rehabilitation and social reintegration of the criminal. Finally, given that modern society possesses more efficient detention systems, the death penalty becomes unnecessary as protection for the life of innocent people. Certainly, it remains the duty of public authorities to defend the life of citizens, as has always been taught by the Magisterium and is confirmed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church in numbers 2265 and 2266.
8. All of this shows that the new formulation of number 2267 of the Catechism expresses an authentic development of doctrine that is not in contradiction with the prior teachings of the Magisterium. These teachings, in fact, can be explained in the light of the primary responsibility of the public authority to protect the common good in a social context in which the penal sanctions were understood differently, and had developed in an environment in which it was more difficult to guarantee that the criminal could not repeat his crime. . . .
10. The new formulation of number 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church desires to give energy to a movement towards a decisive commitment to favor a mentality that recognizes the dignity of every human life and, in respectful dialogue with civil authorities, to encourage the creation of conditions that allow for the elimination of the death penalty where it is still in effect.
So the Catholic Church has come to the conclusion that, while the state has the power of the sword as a minister of God, and this power extends, in principle, even to the death penalty when this is necessary to protect the common good, yet in modern times the death penalty is not necessary to protect the common good, and so it is not morally permissible in these times to resort to it. To continue to retain the death penalty in modern times would be to endorse unnecessary, and so unjustified, acts of killing. All societies have a duty to abolish it or to work for reforms that will allow its abolition.
Why Not Today?
The text of the revised portion of the Catechism and the CDF's letter suggest three fundamental reasons why the death penalty is, in today's world, inadmissible. In the CDF's words, these three reasons are "the increasing understanding that the dignity of a person is not lost even after committing the most serious crimes, the deepened understanding of the significance of penal sanctions applied by the State, and the development of more efficacious detention systems that guarantee the due protection of citizens." Not a lot of commentary is offered explaining exactly what is involved in these three reasons, but, upon reflection, we can arrive at what I think are some helpful considerations.
The last reason is the most obvious. In the past, it was harder to restrain criminals from repeating their crimes. Now that we have better systems in place (or can potentially install better systems) to do this, the death penalty is no longer necessary to preserve the safety of society from repeat attacks from convicted criminals. Of course, no system is perfect and absolutely risk-free, but the Church has judged that modern societies have reached a level of ability in this area that is sufficient to make the death penalty unwarrantable.
Secondly, the Church also speaks of an increased awareness regarding the dignity of the life of the individual person. In earlier times, when penal sanctions have been developed and applied, there has been a tendency to pay less attention to the rights, concerns, and dignity of criminals than today we would typically consider proper. There has been less attention focused on understanding all the negative effects penal sanctions might have on the condemned. This seems obvious to me upon reflection. Almost all of us would tend to condemn the conditions forced upon criminals in earlier times. Many horrible forms of execution have been devised and implemented in the past, often with the apparent goal of combining a kind of torture with the execution. Modern societies, on the other hand, consider most of these earlier forms of execution cruel and inhumane, and they work to develop forms of execution more in keeping with compassion for those to be executed. Earlier societies have also maintained prison conditions and legal processes which we would tend today to regard as overly harsh and unjust. In general, I think it is safe to say that earlier societies have tended to have less concern for "outcasts" - criminals, those with mental disorders, the physically deformed, and one could no doubt think of many other classes - than we tend to today, and I think most of us would view modern developments in this area as improvements. We are pleased that society treats these sorts of people much better than they tended to be treated in the past. Why has modern society (particularly in the West) developed in this way? This is a big question which I won't attempt to answer here, but I might suggest that one reason is probably that the influence of Christian values in the West over the past two millennia has tended to bring with it a gradual growth in thoughtfulness and compassion - though, we humans being what we are, this growth has often been far slower than it should have been.
And this growth has occurred not only in the broader society, but in the Church as well. Just as individual Christians grow over time to become more consistent and aware in relation to all the demands of the gospel, so this same sort of growth occurs in the Church as a society. When I think back on my earlier Christian life, I recognize several areas where my thinking and behavior was more "brutish" (if that is not too harsh a word) in some ways than I would be able to tolerate today. By God's grace, I have grown in compassion, in thoughtfulness, in my awareness of how my actions affect others, etc. And hopefully, by God's grace, I will continue to grow in these areas all of my life. Similarly, when we look back at earlier periods of Church history, we sometimes see members and even leaders in the Church behaving in ways that we find unacceptable today. It is not that the gospel itself has grown. It's always been there in all its fullness. But our awareness of what the gospel means in all the myriad areas of practical life has grown. This is a legitimate form of "doctrinal development" as well as "practical development." The Church has always had the full gospel, but she has also always been full of sinners who are in process of growth, and she has always recognized that her practical living out of the gospel reflects both of those realities. God preserves the Church from error as she professes the faith, but he doesn't provide her with instant full clarity with regard to the full implications of that faith at any given time in her progressive life, whether we are talking about theoretical doctrine or practical living.
What Pope Francis and the CDF seem to be saying is that we have witnessed this very process of growth in the practical awareness of the Church in recent years with regard to the death penalty. As the people of God have come to reflect more and better on the implications of the death penalty for criminals in modern times, they have come to see more and more that the death penalty, in these days, does not reflect an adequate application of the gospel with regard to how we should treat these people. Our greater respect for the dignity of criminals has led us to see better the inappropriateness of assigning them to the death penalty in the circumstances of modern times.
Thirdly, the new documents speak of a "deepened understanding of the significance of penal sanctions applied by the State." What does this mean?
The CDF document, while not going into much detail on this, does supply some wording that may help us to get at what is being said here. The document says that "This conclusion [that is, the conclusion that the death penalty, applied today, attacks the dignity of the person] is reached taking into account the new understanding of penal sanctions applied by the modern State, which should be oriented above all to the rehabilitation and social reintegration of the criminal." The document also states that earlier Magisterial teaching on the death penalty, which had a more positive emphasis, "can be explained in the light of the primary responsibility of the public authority to protect the common good in a social context in which the penal sanctions were understood differently . . ."
Note that the CDF document talks about the death penalty as "applied by the modern State" (emphasis mine) and indicates that penal sanctions have been "understood differently" in the past. So how, exactly, have penal sanctions been understood differently in the past, and what is peculiar about the application of the death penalty in the "modern" state?
Well, one thing the CDF may have in mind here is the sort of thing we've already talked about. In the past, there was generally less thought given to the effects of the death penalty on the criminal considered from the point of view of compassion for the criminal.
The CDF document also mentions specifically that, in the modern state, penal sanctions "should be oriented above all to the rehabilitation and social reintegration of the criminal." Perhaps as our sense of compassion for the criminal has grown, the sense also has grown that the "rehabilitation and social reintegration" of the criminal is, at least for us today, a more important value to emphasize than whatever might be gained by bringing about the criminal's death. Again, there are a number of moral values at interplay with each other in the death penalty as in all complex areas of social justice, and political prudence often largely amounts to figuring out how to give adequate weight to the various moral principles relative to each other in one's application of justice. There may be "retributory" value in the death penalty - that is, the death penalty may have value as an enactment of "retribution" against the evils of particular crimes (I'll visit this more below). And yet, in our day, it may be better to emphasize other goals in our legal and penal processes. The goal of mercy towards criminals and working towards their rehabilitation may have greater weight today for various reasons, understood by the wisdom given by the Spirit to Mother Church. Perhaps this is what the gospel calls us to in the particular circumstances of our times.
This change in our understanding of penal sanctions in modern times may also reflect more specific ideological changes that have taken place in modern societies over the past few hundred years. To make this concrete, let's compare the society of Christendom in Europe in the Middle Ages to modern American society in the United States. One of the most important differences is that Medieval Europe was an explicitly Christian and Catholic society, whereas the United States today is a pluralistic society that is not really Christian in any deep sense (though there are plenty of lingering Christian values) but is more explicitly Agnostic (as I would term it). This has huge implications for the meaning of penal sanctions.
At the beginning of this article, we outlined a Catholic view of civil authority. In the modern US, this theoretical framework would not be admissible, as it is "religious" and indeed specifically Christian and Catholic. In our more Agnostic society, civil authority is thought to have a completely different foundation. Instead of civil authority coming from God, and being subservient both to reason (understood in the context of Christian theism) and revelation, modern US society sees civil authority as rooted in the will of the people. No one has any intrinsic authority over me, and no one has any intrinsic authority over you. The only way, then, so the thinking goes, that we can legitimately be subject to a set of laws in society is if we can formulate and promulgate those laws on the basis of the authority of our own "consent". (I've outlined an Agnostic development of these ideas
here.)
In Catholic thought, penal sanctions, in addition to protecting the "secular" rights of citizens, helping to rehabilitate criminals, etc., also have a "retributory" function. The civil magistrate is an "avenger" to execute "wrath" on those who do evil (to use St. Paul's language in Romans 13). There is an objective moral order derived from God and his moral law, and the duty of the civil authority is to use legislative and penal means to regulate society in accordance with that objective moral order. Thus, when a crime is punished, this not just a pragmatic attempt to protect people from being harmed; it is an application of God's objective justice to the human civil realm. In such an ideological context, the death penalty can be seen as a reflection of God's just wrath against a serious crime that distorts the proper order of society. Human beings do not belong to each other. I do not own you, and you do not own me. We all have an individual autonomy that must be respected. But God is the master of us all. When civil authority punishes a crime, this is not the imposition of some people's desires on other people; it is the imposition of God's authority on human beings created by God and subject to him. When the death penalty is administered, this is not a reflection of an absolute ownership of some people's lives by other people; it is a testimony to the ownership of God over all human lives.
But none of this makes any sense in an Agnostic ideological context. In modern US society, the imposition of penal sanctions cannot be seen as an imposition of God's objective moral authority, for the US has no official view regarding the nature of God. Rather, penal sanctions are an imposition of the will of the whole people on some of the people. They are justified (supposedly) not by the authority of God but by the "consent of all the governed." In such a context as this, what does the death penalty mean? How could it not tend to communicate the idea that individual human lives are subject to the general will of the people, as if the civil society owns these lives? The death penalty, in this context, will have a tendency to communicate the idea of an absolute slavery, where "the people" have an absolute, life-and-death ownership over the lives of criminals.
I would argue that an Agnostic worldview has a difficult time accounting for civil authority in general, but this is not the time to launch into this argument in its fullness. The Church certainly affirms the legitimacy of modern governments, even when they are not Christian, just as St. Paul affirmed the legitimacy of the Roman government in Romans 13. Such affirmation does not necessarily imply that a particular society has an adequate ideological foundation for its own use of political authority. Rather, it implies that even when states cannot adequately account for their own authority under their own adopted principles, they still have authority because God - however unrecognized - has given it to them. Even non-Christians generally recognize - even when they cannot account for - the value of human life (at least to some degree - but see below), and thus the value of protecting human life within society. Therefore the Church applauds modern states when they make laws to defend human life. She encourages them to do so and condemns them when they don't. Even if they cannot fully ideologically justify what they are doing, they are still doing right when they make just laws.
All of this might apply to the death penalty as well, if the death penalty is necessary in order to preserve life in society. But, as the Church has now said, in modern times the death penalty is not necessary to preserve life. We can adequately protect the sorts of values modern society is still able to protect without recourse to the death penalty. So what could possibly be the justification for continuing to have the death penalty today? In the absence of its necessity in order to protect life, it can have no legitimate meaning. It cannot continue to be applied as an expression of God's just moral order, for the modern secular state does not affirm this in any clear way. So all that is left is for the death penalty to be the expression of less worthy values and motives. It will tend to reflect what Pope Francis has called the "throwaway culture" so prominent in modern times. It will tend to reflect the idea that human lives belong to us to dispose of as we see fit (even when the safety of our own lives is not at stake). It will tend to communicate the idea that criminals' lives are not deserving of our protection, but are rather at our disposal, which implies a kind of absolute slavery of some people by others. In these ways, the application of the death penalty in modern societies, without any necessity arising from the need to protect the lives of citizens, becomes an unjustified attack on the fundamental dignity of criminals. In this way, the change that has occurred in our modern understanding of the meaning of penal sanctions has a hugely significant effect on the practical justifiability of the death penalty within this new context.
And all of this is augmented by the fact that our Agnostic society today has difficulty in many areas with valuing life. Pope John Paul II has famously described our culture as a "culture of death," a culture that celebrates a supposed "right" to abortion and euthanasia, a culture that has promoted a self-centered pursuit and use of resources to the point of depleting and damaging the environment, etc. Agnostic Naturalism cannot account for any objective value in life, and so it has difficulty providing a basis for standing up for what is right when the "value of life in general" comes into conflict with "what I want to make my own personal life more enjoyable." In the context of a culture like this, standing up for the dignity of life may require an emphasis in criminal justice away from "doing away with" criminals and more towards ways of punishment that better highlight the value of every human life.
In conclusion, the CDF document does not affirm that the death penalty has always been inadmissible.
If, in fact, the political and social situation of the past made the death penalty an acceptable means for the protection of the common good, today the increasing understanding that the dignity of a person is not lost even after committing the most serious crimes, the deepened understanding of the significance of penal sanctions applied by the State, and the development of more efficacious detention systems that guarantee the due protection of citizens have given rise to a new awareness that recognizes the inadmissibility of the death penalty and, therefore, calling for its abolition.
Perhaps the death penalty has been applied in inappropriate ways in the past as well as in the present. (This is certainly the case, at least sometimes.) Perhaps the application of the death penalty in the past has been partially rooted in a lack of adequate moral awareness regarding the dignity of the criminal, and a less than adequate realization of all that the gospel requires of us. But it may also be the case, given a different social and political context, that the death penalty has at times been the right and best thing to do. What the Church wants to say is that, whatever may have been the case at other times and places in the past, today, in modern societies, the death penalty is inadmissible, and we must therefore work for its abolition. The theoretical duty and right of the state, in certain circumstances, to protect the common good in such a way as to end the lives of some individuals is just as valid as ever, but, in our day, circumstances do not justify the application of this power in the death penalty.
Published on the feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary
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