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What is Pope John Paul II Saying to Catholics?
by Mark S. Latkovic, S.T.D.
Ihave noticed recently that in debates in the United States over the so-called "ultimate sentence," opponents often refer to it as the "death penalty," as if to emphasize the fact that the state is putting someone to death. Supporters, however, often speak of "capital punishment," as if they wanted to emphasize the fact that punishment is the primary purpose of the state’s action. Whether we call it "capital punishment" or the "death penalty" (and I will use both terms interchangeably), the ultimate sentence has become a hot social and political topic.
I. The Context
A number of prominent factors explain this renewed national and ecclesial interest in capital punishment: Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), which in theory and in practice restricted the use of capital punishment and the ensuing debate in the Church over the teaching of this document; recent high-profile murder cases, which have increased calls on the part of politicians and prosecutors for applying the death penalty; the use of DNA evidence to exonerate convicted death row inmates or at least call into question their guilt; and the 2000 presidential election, which has spotlighted the use of the death penalty in Republican Gov. George W. Bush’s state of Texas, as well as in other states, especially in the 37 others which legally permit the death penalty.
As Catholics, how are we to make up our minds (if they are not made up already!) on this issue? Is there a particular Catholic position on the death penalty that requires our assent? If so, what is it? Or, are Catholics at liberty to either support or oppose, for just reasons, the death penalty?
Partisans on the issue as reported in the media often debate such controversial matters as whether capital punishment is administered fairly in terms of such things as race and economic background, whether innocent people have been (and will be) executed by mistake, whether it deters crime, and whether it is too costly to administer.
And moral philosophers, theologians, lawyers, and others often debate – in addition to the preceding questions—such weighty matters as whether capital punishment shows disrespect for the dignity of the human person, whether it constitutes cruel and in-human punishment, and whether it contradicts mercy and compassion.
Although these questions about the death pen-alty are obviously important, they are not the only ones that we as Catholics should be considering. For Catholics, two issues are central: the morality of the death penalty itself as a form of free human action and the Church’s teaching on it. The remainder of this article will explore these two issues, with primary attention given to understanding the tea-ching of The Gospel of Life.
II. Is Capital Punishment Moral? Two Views
First, let us look at the morality of the death penalty. Even among English speaking moral philo-sophers and moral theologians who are faithful to the Magisterium, two very different views are often found today. The first group of scholars, composed of such thinkers as the Dominican moral theologian Benedict Ashley, accepts capital punishment as an act that "immediately and in itself" brings about the basic good of justice, i.e., as an act that restores the balance of justice that was radically upset by the murderer’s deadly deed. Hence, it is seen as a good act (justice) done in order to achieve a good end (restoring the order or scales of justice, which is an integral aspect of any community’s common good) and not as a proportionalistic willingness "to do evil that good may come of it" (cf. Romans 3:8).
Some of the thinkers in this group also occa-sionally argue that we manifest a more profound sense of the dignity and sanctity of human life by our willingness to show our outrage at the taking of it. This outrage is best expressed by supporting, at least in principle, capital punishment. (They grant however that capital punishment is not always required by the legal system nor is it always necessarily compatible with respect for human persons, e.g., if it is done out of revenge).
However, the second group of scholars, associated with the "school" of moral theology of the laymen Germain Grisez, John Finnis, and Joseph Boyle, rejects the death penalty precisely as a bad act that is done in order to achieve a good end or ends. This is so, according to these authors, precisely because those who carry it out (must) directly destroy a basic human good of the person – his or her life. Thus, even if the ends are just – e.g., the protection of society, deterrence, retribution, etc. – one has in their view, nevertheless, chosen a bad means to realize those ends.
Moreover, for these scholars, it makes no real morally significant difference that the life condemned to death is not an innocent human life. What matters is the wrongful intention directly to deprive someone of a basic human good for the sake of some ulterior purpose. (Such things as rehabilitation, restitution to the victim’s family, authentic conversion, etc. are also wiped away with execution they sometimes add).
While one can find in the Church (as in society) other moral positions either for or against capital punishment, among orthodox Catholic theologians, at least, these two positions, along with their respective moral argumentation, are the most common that I have found.
With respect to my own view, although I am inclined to accept the "Grisez school" of moral thought, I have tended to agree with the pre-1998 way of applying their moral theory to the issue of capital punishment that was favored by John Finnis, who had once accepted capital punishment in principle (cf. note 5). Without exploring this point any further, I turn now to my primary aim: an exegesis of John Paul II’s The Gospel of Life on capital punishment.
III. What Does the Church Currently Teach?
What about the Church’s teaching on the subject? Is her guidance a little more definite than the con-flicting views of the academics, helpful though they may be to the Church? I believe that it is. Although there has been no small amount of debate and disagreement over the Pope’s teaching on capital punishment since the promulgation of The Gospel of Life, I will argue that, to a great extent, the Holy Father pro-vides the Church with clear moral instruction on the issue. At the same time, the encyclical also leaves room for further discussion of the issue in the Church and in society.
In the Holy Father’s The Gospel of Life, capital punishment is understood, as some commentators have correctly noted, more from the standpoint of a society’s legitimate right to defend itself (rather than "just retribution," as was common in the Tradition). Because society now has within its means more adequate ways of rendering violent criminals harm-less (e.g., better penal systems), Pope John Paul II strongly argues that "bloodless" means (e.g., possibly life in prison) should be adopted – as long as they are sufficient - because they are more in harmony with the "dignity of the human person" (cf. #56 where he is quoting the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2267; see also #27). Indeed, the Pope states that even the most heinous murderer (e.g., Cain) does not lose his or her "personal dignity" (cf. #9).
Still, some have pointed out that the Holy Father’s teaching on capital punishment seems to:
- ignore the primary purpose of punishment: just retribution (although the Holy Father does not deny this as #56 makes clear; he just does not say it is the case with capital punishment; cf. Catechism, #2266);
- rely on an empirical judgment that can be debated by both experts and reasonable people ("steady improvements in the. . . penal system," such that cases where one needs to execute the offender "are very rare if not practically nonexistent," #56);
- leave unaddressed the many problems associated with the criminal justice system (e.g., murderers serving life sentences who are paroled only to kill again); and
- skirt over the problem of the Tradition’s acceptance of the state’s right to exercise God’s divine justice (the so-called "power of the sword") by administering capital punishment. (However, some have reasonably argued that both the Tradition - except especially for St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas - and the New Testament are not as supportive of capital punishment as is often thought or at least they are more ambivalent about it [neither approving nor condemning it] or they simply tolerate it).
IV. An Interpretation of the Pope’s Teaching
My own assessment of the Holy Father’s mind is that he is clearly saying capital punishment should not be used today, unless possibly in the gravest of circumstances (e.g., perhaps during a time of war). However, it also true that he never states that the death penalty is an "intrinsically evil act" as are abortion and euthanasia. But what the Holy Father does say in the encyclical is that abortion and eu-thanasia, whose intrinsic malice has been infallibly defined by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, radically violate the specific moral norm that always forbids innocent human life from being intentionally killed, which he forcefully articulates in The Gospel of Life (cf. #57). Hence, while the commandment "You shall not kill" has an "absolute value when it refers to the innocent person" (#57, my emphasis), the same cannot be said of capital punishment.
Thus, in my interpretation, the Pope seems to be saying that societies ought to strenuously refrain from using the death penalty, but more on account of so-called prudential reasons. These prudential reasons cluster around the Holy Father’s well founded fear that in many Western secularized societies, where either God is not or is no longer seen as grounding the state’s right to carry out divine justice, capital punish-ment could be misunderstood as one more lethal means to further the attitude and agenda of the "culture of death." That is, it could be viewed as embodying the following erroneous idea: There is nothing wrong with resorting to capital punishment as a solution to the problem of crime (as in fact a two thirds majority of Americans believe according to recent polls, although these are the lowest numbers in 19 years), just as we rely on abortion and euthanasia as a solution for other serious social problems.
Moreover, as other scholars have argued (e.g., Steven Long), the Holy Father might fear the idea of a state that legally sanctions the unjust killing of its unborn citizens, administering the death penalty. Indeed, with recent prominent death row exonerations, the way the death penalty is practiced in the United States often gives the impression that the de-cision whether one is executed or not is an arbitrary one. This, obviously, is no way to inculcate respect for either the "rule of law" or the dignity of human life as created in the "image and likeness" of God.
So, although I do not think that there is an inhe-rent contradiction in being both pro-life on abortion and euthanasia and a supporter of capital punishment, the Holy Father is teaching us, in my judgment, that in normal circumstances, capital punishment should not be the form of punishment we choose to "redress the disorder caused by the offense" in the present context of the "culture of death." Lest our witness to the absolute inviolability of innocent human life be compromised in any way by doing so. As George Weigel has commented, "the Holy Father’s pressing of the question of capital punishment, such that the burden of proof would now seem to rest on those who would argue for its social necessity in terms of society’s self-defense, ought to be understood in terms of John Paul’s more comprehensive project of securing the moral-cultural foundations of the free society for the twenty-first century." Or, expressed another way, this "pressing of the question" is to be understood as part of his project of building a "new culture of human life" or a "civilization of love."
However, I hesitate slightly in affirming my own interpretation of the Holy Father’s thought, for two reasons. First, because of the fact that the Pope himself has on numerous occasions both written passionate letters on behalf of death row prisoners which request clemency for them and made statements which speak of capital punishment in the most negative terms. Whether these letters and statements (will) constitute one more piece of evidence great enough to see a pattern of "development of doctrine" (if a development is even possible as some think that it is) or simply give us greater insight into the Holy Father’s own mind on the question, remains another matter for another article. (We can at least say, however, that the Holy Father’s intervention in these cases does not constitute an official exercise of his authoritative teaching office).
Secondly, many scholars have argued that the Pope’s thought goes beyond the merely prudential, empirical, and historical and involves treating capital punishment in light of a Christocentric and Trinitarian vision of the person. Insofar as his thought does so, it lays the foundation, these scholars argue, for seeing that "the pope’s move to narrow tightly the grounds for employing the death penalty well reflects the demands of Christian anthropology."
Nevertheless, whether we will have someday an even further restriction or "moral abolishment" of the death penalty by the Church remains an open question. What is clear is that the Pope, without claiming that capital punishment can never be used, has now "narrowed" the purpose(s) for which capital punishment can be employed. And these come down to the defense of society or the protection of the common good – a purpose that the Pope, however, sees as extremely rare if not "practically nonexistent." Thus, in The Gospel of Life, the Holy Father seems to be moving the sensus fidelium towards the goal of abolishing capital punishment, if not in principle, at least in practice.
V. Conclusion
In this article I have tried to do two things. First, with regard to the morality of capital punishment, my analysis of the views of Catholic philosophers and theologians showed that the moral status of capital punishment is inconclusive – some defending it as morally sound, others rejecting it as so. Secondly, however, I have shown that the Church – despite the conflicting views of her scholars – has taken a clear and definite position on the issue. Pope John Paul II teaches that capital punishment, although not evil in itself, should not be used by states to achieve or restore justice (except maybe in extreme situations that he thinks are rare today).
In other words, the Pope’s teaching does not deny the right of states to use capital punishment, but, for serious prudential reasons, which I mentioned above, says the right should not be exercised. For, in the Pope’s judgment, "there are ways (other than the death penalty) of protecting society from criminals and other means of achieving justice." Hence, as the moral theologian William E. May has commented, to abide by the Church’s teaching, "you’d have to prove that capital punishment must be used to restore jus-tice" in order to justify recourse to it.
As we attempt to understand and appropriate more deeply the Holy Father’s teaching in The Gospel of Life – and not only its teaching on capital punishment - we need to remember that the surest guidance we have on this moral issue (or any moral issue) is the teaching of the Church’s magisterium. As the Second Vatican Council taught in Dignitatis Humanae (Dec-laration on Religious Liberty): "[I]n forming their conscience the faithful must pay careful attention to the sacred and certain teaching of the Church. For the Catholic Church is by the will of Christ the teacher of truth." Whatever our personal feelings are about capital punishment, we need to think and act with the "mind of the Church" on this matter, just as on every other matter of "faith and morals."
Dr. Latkovic is Associate Professor of Moral Theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit, Michigan.
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