Politics and life issues

Sometimes committed Democrats who are pro-life and who feel the sting inflicted by the strong pro-abortion stance of their party like to try to tu quoque Catholic Republicans by pointing out that many Republican leaders approve of capital punishment, as if this were contrary to Catholic teaching.  It is actually gratifying to pro-life Republicans that this is the most anti-life thing that their political opponents can think of to charge them with.  There is no moral equivalency whatsoever between capital punishment, which is concerned with the duty of punishing the guilty and protecting society, and abortion, which is concerned with deliberately slaying the innocent.  Even though I would like to see the death penalty inflicted as infrequently as possible, I am occasionally obliged to defend the practice (at least in theory) when someone (from ignorance, as often as not) claims that Catholic teaching forbids capital punishment or restricts it by impossible-to-attain standards.

First read this entire page of the Catechism.  The whole thing, even the parts you don't like.  Compare and contrast.  I myself would prefer that we employed capital punishment most infrequently.  However, capital punishment of the guilty is not intrinsically sinful, even venially.  If it was, the Catholic Church would not permit it under any circumstances.  Instead, the catechism would say that you could never do it and that it was never justified.  Like it does for abortion, which involves the intentional slaying of the innocent.  The Catechism acknowledges that goverments have a duty of justice which involves inflicting punishment commensurate with the offense.  However, because we are Christians, we ought to favor merciful and medicinal punishments when it is within our power to do so.  The last line of the section is from Evangelium Vitae, where the Holy Father basically issues us a challenge.  He says, "you say your society is so advanced - so show me: find a way to treat even your gravest offenders with justice and mercy."

Historically speaking, this is a very rigorous challenge because nonlethal punishment of capital crimes typically involves imprisonment, and until very recently prison technology was not sufficiently advanced to make long-term imprisonment of dangerous criminals feasible except in exceptional circumstances (or so I learned from the History Channel).

So the question is not whether capital punishment is forbidden by Catholic teaching (it is not).  The question is to what extent it is prudent for a particular society to resort to it.  The following are open questions: Whether an average of 30-40 executions per year in a society with 16,000+ murders annually counts as "very rare;"  whether the threat of capital punishment  deters capital crime; whether life sentences generally not being life-long makes the death penalty more necessary in certain cases; whether the promise of impending death can move the guilty to salutary repentence; whether the use of extremely advanced modern detection and forensic science plus the extensive appeals process in America tries sufficiently to avoid punishing the innocent.  People can in good faith hold different opinions on these questions without even contradicting the Holy Father's words in Evangelium Vitae.  They may even legitimately have a different opinion than the Holy Father (though they run the risk of having an inferior and less perfect one).  You may hash out these contentious issues in the comments boxes if you wish, and I will not interfere.  However, what "legitimate diversity" means is that no one holding one of the permissible opinions may pretend that his is the only possible licit one.  If you don't believe me, believe the Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith when he says, "There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia."

As a somewhat related issue, some people acknowledge the heinous nature of abortion but maintain that addressing imperfections in the system of capital punishment is an equally or more urgent need in our society.  I could agree with them if there were only 30-40 abortions per year and 1.2 million executions (especially if many of the executed were likely to be innocent).  However, it is just the opposite, with Certain Public Authorities I Could Name not stopping with merely tolerating abortion but actively promoting it and attempting to convince people that it is good and necessary to society.

So perhaps in my letter to the head of the RNC, I will take a reader's suggestion and urge him to encourage Republicans to be less eager to inflict the death penalty.  But the main focus of the letter will be to commend him for the pro-life platform of the Republican Party and urge him not to take the support of pro-life voters for granted but to work harder on behalf of us who would like to see the scourge of abortion confronted decisively.

The Democrats are in a fix right now, not because they are an intrinsically evil party, or because their positions are all inferior to Republicans', or because they are trying on purpose to hurt people, but because their leaders have latched onto a really bad idea that is harmful to society and individuals whether you know that it is a sin or not.  That needs to be fixed, so that their good contributions to political life are not vitiated by active promotion of the most massive social injustice of our time.  I don't (necessarily) want Democrats to become more Republican or Republicans to become more Democrat; I want both of them to become more good.