www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Dead wrong: Catholics must no longer support capital punishment

You might say so. I couldn't possibly comment.

It is true that you do not offer utilitarian arguments (which is refreshing since most of them are disproved by almost all statistical data on crime). My point is more substantial however; I argue that far from encouraging a respect for human life, capital punishes trivialises and makes into an everyday occurrence the taking of life. I would suggest that this contributes to higher murder rates in countries that execute compared to those that do not, because death becomes normalised and does not shock to the same degree that it does somewhere like Australia.

Whether you like it or not, having capital punishment is generally predictive of higher rates of violent and capital crimes. Canada vs the US is one comparison of countries with similar demographics and social settings (and gun laws, which is another issue we probably disagree on) but very different crime rates and very different attitudes to punishment.

Actually, you're wrong about the deterrent effect of capital punishment, too. The problem is, your odds of being executed for murder in the United States are infinitesimal, so any potential deterrent effect is negated by the sloth of the judicial system.


I disagree. In fact, refusal to execute murderers turns murder into just another crime.



Or it could have to do with the myriad differences between countries. Frankly, any comparison of countries with vest pocket populations like Canada, Australia, Sweden or whatever and the United States is bound to be misleading. Your whole population hardly accounts for one U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Area. Our populations are also more heterogenous, and our social mores different from yours.


If you think Canada is at all like the United States (other than occupying a large portion of North America), you need to study both countries more closely.


Obviously, since the rate of violent crime in the UK is much higher than in my home state of Virginia, for all that it's almost impossible to own firearms in the UK, and Virginia is armed to the teeth. We also execute almost as many people as Texas, yet have a much lower murder rate than states which don't employ capital punishment. Explain.

That aside, why not repudiate the traditional Judeo-Christian perspective all together, and simply have murderers pay weregild to the survivors of their victims? I mean, if murder is not different from any other crime. Which is precisely what you are saying.

Not necessarily. Alternately, the natural extension is that we should severely limit the ability of the state to do anything but those things which are strictly necessary.

Gun laws in Canada and the United States could actually hardly be more different.

That is a fairly disrespectful, completely inaccurate and totally baseless interpretation of what I have written here. I never said any such thing at all, and I challenge you to produce any quotation of me suggesting that I did. And I certainly did not repudiate "the Judaeo Christian" position, but rather I noted that both recent Church documents and Trent assert that the purpose of capital punishment is the protection of society where other means are not available. If you would like to suggest that three catechisms of the Catholic Church repudiate the Judaeo Chrsitian position, I shall be interested in listening respectfully to that position.

I think you do me the disservice of assuming that I am some partisan secular liberal intent on tearing down church teaching and read into my words things I have not said regarding a highly partisan issue. This is a mere assumption of your part, and is disproved by my use of Church documents to support my positions. My position springs from Christian doctrine rather than from those opposed to it.

As to your aside in a previous post about the scant lack of attention paid to the document you linked to, I would make the point that it is not an official Church document and thus falls into the category of theologumena, which though interesting, is of little importance in a discussion of whether the Church has in fact changed an official position in recent times. I argue that it has not and that its statement in Trent that "the end of the commandment is the protection of society" is quite in keeping with recent statements by Popes that given that reliable non-lethal means now exist to serve this end, they should be preferred.

Recent Church documents are simply wrong.

That's fine with me if you want to play it that way, but I would appreciate not being accused of repudiating Judaeo Christian positions because of a reliance on Church documents to inform my own opinions.

I would also still appreciate you acknowledging that I never claimed that murder was just like any other crime (I assume you have not been able to find any evidence that I did, since I never said it). I think that such an opinion would be grossly offensive and wrong, as I am sure all right thinking people would, and I don't appreciate the suggestion that I espoused it.

In this case, that's what it means.

And you don't have to make the overt claim that murder is just like any other crime. If you treat it like any other crime, then you tacitly acknowledge that it is like any other crime, because you refuse to distinguish it from any other crime.

In other words, if the punishment for murder is no different in kind (but only degree) from the penalty for burglary, embezzlement, shoplifting, assault, tax evasion or bank fraud, then you are saying that the crime of murder is the same as all the rest.

That's what made the Law of the Old Testament so different from the other legal codes of its time: the latter tended to punish crimes against property and crimes against persons in the same way (if anything, the penalties for crimes against property were harsher in degree). The Old Testament, in contrast, treated murder as something unique, an offense not merely against a person, but against both the community and God Himself. It was such an enormity that only death of the perpetrator could redress the balance. So murder was a crime set out and apart from other crimes, by a punishment different in kind, and not just degree, from other crimes. That was a first, a unique revelation by God to his Chosen People, and one which we carry as part of our patrimony from them.

This is not true, many other crimes having nothing to do with violence demanded capital punishment in the Old Testament (adultery, etc). I am sure you are aware of that, which is why I am puzzled that you would say that the punishment for murder in the Old Testament (death) is set apart in kind and degree from other crimes. It isn't, it includes many other types of crime.

Today, life without parole is a much more exclusive punishment than capital punishment was back then. It would seem that according to your criteria, this would actually serve to cheapen the severity of murder in the OT.

Except that life without parole is seldom life without parole. As I said, the typical murderer in the United States does twelve years. And, already, our enlightened European neighbors are decrying this penalty as barbaric and contrary to the ways of "civilized" countries. Murder, it turns out, is just one more crime among many.

The same is true according to the Old Testament patrimony that you were just appealing to - the death penalty was quite commonly applicable to an assortment of crimes, one of which was murder.

You do have a valid concern of the leniency in murder sentences, but it is not an argument *for* the morality of the death penalty, it is a criticism *against* the penal system.

It also should be noted that you say "murderers" serve 12 years. Just to clarify, do you mean first-degree murderers that have been sentenced to life without parole, or does this include the range of "murder" all the way down to involuntary manslaughter?

That criticism, however, is unrelated to either your claim about the exclusive nature of the death penalty in the Old Testament or any type of morality for using it today.

Ah, but even there, the Hebrews made distinctions not found in other cultures of that time. Adultery, for instance, was punished by death not because it was fraud (i.e., depriving the husband of his rightful property) but because it was a violation of a divine commandment. The Hebrews were also fairly strict about the use of witnesses in criminal cases, eschewed the use of torture, and did not employ mutilation as a punishment--all of which go back to the commandment about bearing false witness, and also the idea that man is made in God's likeness. As compared to other cultures, the Hebrews had very few crimes punishable by death, and those, by their light, were extraordinary.

Even first degree murderers manage to avoid life without parole, but the number of first degree murder cases pursued by prosecutors is relatively low. Most prosecutors use the charge as a threat to get suspects to plead guilty to 2nd Degree murder, or even Manslaughter in the First Degree, neither of which carry life sentences. Prosecutors thus avoid costly and time-consuming trials and clear their dockets more quickly. So, the majority of premeditated murderers never even stand trial for premeditated murder.

In Europe, of course, "life without parole" does not exist, and we Americans are considered barbarians not only because we put murderers to death, but because we also lock them up and throw away the key. They do neither, nor does Australia, for that matter. So for them, murder truly is just another crime. And since the Pope and most of his advisors likewise think that life without parole is an excessive punishment, I expect it will only be a matter of time before Catholic teaching is again "refined" to reflect the delicate sensibilities of the effete European elites from which its leadership is still drawn. I wonder what American Catholics will say then, when the USCCB begins teaching that the most violent and heinous criminals in society should be let loose among us, as though they were no different from your run of the mill pick-pocket, junkie or embezzler; listening to talk in some Catholic circles, one gets the impression that it's worse to be an investment banker than a murderer in any case, so perhaps there is some consistency in their thinking after all.

The council of Trent and later documents note that the end of the death penalty (and all other sentences) is not the punishment of the offender but the protection of society, so you're on shaky ground arguing that the Church ever suggested the point of criminal sanctions was to be punitive.

The protection of society involves its psychological as well as its physical health. I also never placed much importance on the Council of Trent, but that's another story. And I am not making the point that the purpose of the death penalty is punitive per se, but rather the restoration of society, a reaffirmation of the unique sanctity of human life. I continually wonder at the inability of some people to understand the paradox. Jesus wouldn't.