Friday, August 03, 2018

Catholic pacifism

This is a sequel to my previous post:


1. Ross Douthat characterized the change in Catholic policy on the admission of divorced Catholics to communion as a elite crisis. I don't know whether the change regarding capital punishment will precipitate another crisis, but I'd say this is more of a rank-and-file issue. The doctrinal issues surrounding the readmission of divorced Catholics to communion are arcane and artificial. Only theological junkies care about that. By contrast, the reasoning behind the death penalty is much more accessible to the laity. 

2. Gen 9:5-6 only directly authorizes capital punishment for murder. Yet the Mosaic law contains many capital offenses. In some cases, those may have a different rationale, such as the cultic holiness of Israel. In other cases, they may be an extension of the same principle: actions which desecrate divine image-bearers. 

3. In relation to the new Catholic position, it isn't necessary to take a position on the degree of continuity or discontinuity between the Mosaic law and the new covenant. For the immediate question isn't whether any of those penalties remain mandatory, but whether they were ever morally permissible to begin with. If “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”, then the Mosaic death penalties were always unwarranted. 

Of course, many Catholic bishops, theologians, and academics are happy to grant that the Mosaic law was fallible and errant. Problem is, why should "the Church" be infallible if the Bible is fallible? Why should ecumenical councils or ex cathedra papal pronouncements be infallible if the Mosaic law is fallible and errant? 

4. If “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”, then that seems to rule out lethal force in self-defense as well as lethal force to protect other innocent lives, for taking human life, regardless of the situation, is an attack in the inviolability and dignity of the assailant. 

Christian ethicists typically think that humans have a prima facie right to life which they can forfeit by certain actions. An armed intruder breaking into a private home forfeits his prima facie immunity to suffer harm.

However, the new official position of the Catholic church treats the dignity of the assailant as equal to the dignity of the victim. That's absolute. Nothing the assailant does can lower his inviolate dignity.

5. This approach erases the distinction between guilt and innocence, which is the essence of justice. The very concept of just punishment requires a distinction between a wrongdoer and a victim who was wronged. Justice is supposed to treat like cases alike and unlike cases unalike. It subverts the essence of justice to treat innocents and assailants equally. 

14 comments:

  1. There is another factor in the death penalty not often considered: the "State" does not execute criminals. People acting on behalf of the State have the burden of executing these individuals, and this job often takes a psychological and spiritual toll.

    I'm sympathetic to wanting to see murderers punished for their crimes. The act of deliberately and coldly taking someone's life is so heinous that it seems to require a special degree of intervention on behalf of God to reform that person's soul. At the same time, there is a cost for those who are tasked with exacting justice.

    I take the same position on the death penalty as I do on war: that is, is it absolutely necessary?

    Life behind bars in a maximum security prison is not a pleasant existence. In most instances, this should be sufficient justice in this life.

    https://www.salon.com/2015/10/08/i_executed_62_people_im_sorry_an_executioner_turned_death_penalty_opponent_tells_all/

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    1. Unpleasant experience does not equal justice. I'd like you to make a case where it is.

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    2. >>> the "State" does not execute criminals. People acting on behalf of the State have the burden of executing these individuals, and this job often takes a psychological and spiritual toll.

      In the world brewing with artificial intelligence, such tasks can be automated. Now the question can become, those coding these programs, say, a programmer like me - am I guilty of making that program? I am only if it is morally obnoxious. Even if my program is misused, I am not morally culpable for it unless it is morally repugnant to even program that program. But if my program sees a proper use, and if capital punishment is a morally acceptable form of a justice - I dont see how I can be morally held accountable. Let's say, I psychologically still consider myself accountable, even though I should not - that would only hint at my oversensitivity or hint at other underlying psychological problems. It would say nothing about the rightness or wrongness of my decision to code such an automated state execution program.

      Not all human feelings are from God. Not all accusers are sent by God.

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    3. >>>I take the same position on the death penalty as I do on war: that is, is it absolutely necessary?

      It is, when it is. Scripture is abundantly clear. There is a time when the lamb is meek and gives his life, and there is a time when the lamb, the Lion of Judah slays the beast. Not all war is necessary, but to say (or imply) that all war is unnecessary is not only to stretch the scripture, but to stretch the common sense also, IMHO. Its simply impractical. It is essentially a byproduct of a mind brought up in peace and which has seen no evil - generally speaking.

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    4. "Unpleasant experience does not equal justice. I'd like you to make a case where it is"

      If you're an orthodox Christian, you believe that evil is not punishment by total annihilation but with conscious anguish in Hell. Perhaps "unpleasant" is too mild a term.

      I did not say that all war is unnecessary. It sometimes is very necessary, but it should not be the first option considered, nor should it ever be seen as something trivial.

      While Scripture may have made certain decrees about the use of the death penalty, I'm not a Reconstructionist. Would you say that the death penalty should be utilized for not just what we consider "capital offenses" but for other crimes considered punishable by death under the Old Covenant?

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    5. >>>Would you say that the death penalty should be utilized for not just what we consider "capital offenses" but for other crimes considered punishable by death under the Old Covenant?

      No. My application of the OT laws is conceptual - not identical. I personally find Lex Talionis an extremely fair form of state punishment. I especially find "life for life" very important to this discussion. One can for example make amend for say a robbery by repaying the person robbed in full (with or without a correctional punishment) - but a life taken is a life lost permanently. Some other application of the OT laws like the punishment for rape can be subject to debate, but capital punishment for murder is as fair as it gets.


      >>>If you're an orthodox Christian, you believe that evil is not punishment by total annihilation but with conscious anguish in Hell. Perhaps "unpleasant" is too mild a term.

      I am unclear what you mean here. I responded to your statement in which you specifically spoke about life imprisonment as an unpleasant ordeal. While that maybe so, but how does it make it a fair punishment is what I was getting at (for crimes deserving of death, like first degree murders).

      Now you are talking about hell and applying the term "unpleasant" to it - but your original application of that term was not to hell, but earthly state punishment.

      I also dont know what to make of it. Are you suggesting that because these people will
      be condemned to hell (assuming they dont repent and accept Christ) that that justifies not having them executed?


      >>>I did not say that all war is unnecessary. It sometimes is very necessary, but it should not be the first option considered, nor should it ever be seen as something trivial.

      Okay - I thought you were saying that war is no longer relevant, but glad to know you did not mean that. The thing about both war and capital punishment is that it is not trivially applied in a just and fair system.

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    6. "[H[ow does it make it a fair punishment is what I was getting at (for crimes deserving of death, like first degree murders)."

      What is fair, though?

      This is the terrible nature of evil: once done, it can never be undone. Things can be repaired to some extent, but they cannot be returned to their original, pristine condition. One can apologize and recant one's slander of someone, for example, but the tarnish of the accusation itself still remains, somehow.

      In the case of murder, there's no way to make things right. The dead cannot be returned back to their families. The most fair thing would be to force the perpetrator to feel something of the anguish both the victim and the family endured, but how do we do that? Kill one of the murderer's family members in retaliation (assuming they care)? Torture the accused for days on end? To me, that seems more "tit for tat" type of fair, but such actions would only debase and dehumanize us in the process.

      So that's the first thing.

      Other complicating factors include the instances where the murderer wants to die. We'd be doing him a favor, in some way, by not prolonging his stay in prison. In addition, there are some cases where the victim's family has pled for clemency. Taking the murderer's life would only compound their loss, in some ways.

      These are all just considerations. I'm not sure I'm advocating a 100% repeal of the death penalty in all instances. I'm simply saying I'm wary of its use.

      I'm not a pacifist. I own a 9mm that I keep in my nightstand in the (admittedly unlikely) event of a break-in by someone with intent to do more than just steal some extra cash. I do think citizens have every right to defend their own lives through deadly force when necessary. I don't think this is inconsistent with a general opposition to the use of the death penalty by the state.

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    7. Hm, just because "there's no way to make things right", it doesn't follow that therefore we shouldn't try to make things as right as we humanly can.

      If the murderer wants to die, then that would speed the murderer to divine justice, where there is true and full justice against the murderer. Capital punishment likewise gives the victim's loved ones as close to justice as they can receive in this world.

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    8. >>>What is fair, though?

      That's a moral judgment, and the answer would depend on what one's morality is founded upon. Mine is founded on the Bible, which means if I have a moral opinion - I'd try to scrutinise that opinion of mine on the scale of Biblical proof for or against it. I wasnt very keen on capital punishment until a few months ago I saw no provision in the Bible that denied state execution for at least some people (life for life cases, for example...)


      >>>These are all just considerations. I'm not sure I'm advocating a 100% repeal of the death penalty in all instances. I'm simply saying I'm wary of its use.

      Here is how it comes across to me as a Christian: "How unfortunate it was that God did not realise all these considerations right from the time of Noah (Gen 9:6) (before the Mosaic Law) nor afterward in the New Covenant when Paul actually warns of the state executioner coming to fulfill justice against evil doers(Rom 13:4). Even when Christ spoke of capital punishment in another scenario - he did not say that the practice of execution was itself no longer valid or bad or that he had revised it to something else. The point is that there is nothing in scripture that bans capital punishment, but to the contrary in several places scripture affirms it - before the Mosaic Law, in the Mosaic Law and after the Mosaic Law. Since I get from morality from scripture, capital punishment is not inherently immoral as far as I am concerned.

      IMO - Christians who think it is, or who think that God does not like or wish to execute those who themselves take a life - dont come to that conclusion from either the Bible nor from Church Fathers (not that the latter counts too much, but they still represent a portion of Church history) - they get it from the liberal culture them have acclimatised to, or some place else. I am open to be corrected if the same is not the case, but from scripture.

      P.S. I am not suggesting that all murderers are to be executed. I think first degree murders at least can be without violating the law of God - but many can be shown mercy too. The state can decide this. I am however against the blanket ban on capital punishment because it is alien to Judaeo-Christian morals and I would therefore have nothing to do with it. Not to mention it does not make any sense even on the secular level to me.

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    9. correction: Since I get my morality from scripture, capital punishment is not inherently immoral as far as I am concerned.

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    10. The death penalty is a life for life principle. That's the closest thing to justice we can achieve in this world. It doesn't turn back the clock, but there's a symmetry between crime and punishment in that case.

      "Other complicating factors include the instances where the murderer wants to die. We'd be doing him a favor, in some way, by not prolonging his stay in prison."

      Not if he goes straight to a hellish intermediate state upon death, followed by everlasting hell.

      "In addition, there are some cases where the victim's family has pled for clemency."

      Family doesn't have the right to deny justice to their dead relative.

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  2. "Of course, many Catholic bishops, theologians, and academics are happy to grant that the Mosaic law was fallible and errant."

    True, even though that seems directly at odds with the statements of Dei Verbum, according to which the books of Moses were "written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit" and "have God as their author," such that "everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit."

    Too bad the Holy Spirit didn't know back then what we know now!

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    1. Yeah, too bad that God was oblivious to the fact that life imprisonment was unpleasant, and therefore fulfilled the demands of justice.

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    2. Hey James McCloud,

      I've been really interested in your comments on this and other posts. What caused you to finally convert from Catholicism?

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