The Black Madonna

A comment in response to a post at Catholics in the Public Square got me a little riled up, as someone tried to continue the confusion of Church doctrine on the death penalty with other life issues - while cruelly judging the intentions of another Catholic, to boot.

Too bad Jeb likes to execute people so much - compromises his culture of life, no?

Actually, no.

Some of us actually believe the death penalty supports the culture of life, by unambiguously proposing to execute those who hold life so cheap as to brutally take the life of an innocent. And thanks to Church teaching, there's nothing doctrinally incorrect with that opinion.

Canon law has always forbidden clerics to shed human blood and therefore capital punishment has always been the work of the officials of the State and not of the Church. Even in the case of heresy, of which so much is made by non-Catholic controversialists, the functions of ecclesiastics were restricted invariably to ascertaining the fact of heresy. The punishment, whether capital or other, was both prescribed and inflicted by civil government. The infliction of capital punishment is not contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church, and the power of the State to visit upon culprits the penalty of death derives much authority from revelation and from the writings of theologians. The advisabilty of exercising that power is, of course, an affair to be determined upon other and various considerations.

Even when the US Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement in opposition to the death penalty, they hedged. As Karl Keating put it:

Must Catholics adopt a particular view regarding the use (or non-use) of capital punishment? In short: no. They are free to endorse, as a political policy, the complete abolition of capital punishment, and they are free to endorse the use of capital punishment, even beyond the very narrow limits given in the prudential judgment in [the Catechism of the Catholic Church]. Contrary to what some people claim, there has been no revolution in Church teaching on the matter.

If the state were to prevent a woman from killing a baby in her womb, they would be preventing someone from committing a violent act against an innocent. People who support that woman's right to murder cannot make that claim, because no one has a right to murder.

On the contrary, people who support a murderer's right to life are protecting someone who is guilty from suffering punishment at the hands of the state, which IT has every right to do - provided all laws are followed, due process is respected, and careful adjudication is taken.

Someone who asks that the people of the state protect the life of the guilty like we protect the life of the innocent are asking the people to forgive. For forgiveness to be truly Christian, one must give it freely - it cannot be forced.

Ironically, these are exactly the circumstances when "I can't impose my beliefs on others" actually applies: you cannot compel a victim's family to forgive the murderer of their loved one. You cannot force the people of a state to forgive murderers and let them walk free.

We can pray that one day we'll all be Christian enough that it would happen without asking - or better yet, so Christian as to not have any murders to prosecute. Until then, I'll remain firmly on the fence on this one.