GOOD ARTICLE ON THE DEATH PENALTY here. Diligently sorts theological from prudential claims, and gets into the gritty facts in order to give us some information about those prudential claims. A few scattered thoughts:

Harrington writes, “Prudentially, the evidence is far from convincing that American prisons are up to the task of protecting the safety of persons.” He doesn’t go on to say (though I have no reason to believe he disagrees with this) that if he is correct in his prudential judgment, Catholics should be working to change that situation. In other words, if, prudentially, the death penalty can and should be applied in contemporary America because our prisons suck so much, Catholics should be working to make the sucking stop, and then, once that task is accomplished, we should turn to working against the death penalty. We should not accept the death penalty as status quo even if we agree that today it is needed.

Christian opponents of the death penalty are often accused, by other Christians, of fetishizing life in a way that is more humanist than Christian. The accusation is that death penalty opponents believe (or have embraced a worldview that springs from the belief) that death is the end–that it is the worst thing that can ever happen–that there is no Hell, no Heaven, no judgment–and that therefore life must be preserved at all cost. I find this accusation unconvincing, largely because it can be so easily applied to most supporters of the death penalty. Most contemporary supporters of the death penalty support it only in cases of murder. Murder is different. Murder is distinct. Why? Because killing, although perhaps not the worst thing you can do to someone (and how are we to even begin judging whether it is worse to be killed or tortured, killed or raped, killed or pressured into denying your faith–how can that calculus ever be made?!), is different. It is the end of the life we know, even if it is also rebirth into a new life. Unless supporters of the death penalty are willing to call for its application in cases of (say) rape, child abuse, grand theft auto, or killing the king’s deer–then I don’t see how they can responsibly claim that the view that “death is different” is an anti-Christian view.

And if death penalty supporters are willing to extend the penalty so far–or even just to cover all murders–then you can kiss goodbye the standard pro-death penalty argument that the USA doesn’t execute the innocent. If that claim is true (and I really don’t know, though there are serious horror stories about the quality of the legal counsel given to men who were executed), it is true because there are so many barriers to execution in this country now, and because, relative to the number of murders, we don’t execute that many people. Ease the standards for execution and you will see innocent men sent to the chair.

And if you don’t extend the death penalty to all murders, if you keep it, as it is today, dependent on a number of shifting factors that deem some murders more deserving of death than others, how is that to be justified? What is there to say to the anguished mother who asks why her child’s death wasn’t important enough to warrant the supreme penalty? In practice, distinguishing between death-penalty and jail-time cases is messy, an ugly wrangling of lawyers, grief, and sympathy. If we kill murderers to send a message, are we actually clear on what message we’re sending?

Finally–too many arguments for the death penalty (not all, of course, but too many) are also arguments for torture. For example, the notion that the criminal must receive punishment that is somehow proportionate to his crime. Well, the death penalty is not always proportionate to the crime. How is lethal injection “enough” when compared to the rape and murder of 14 women? How is that “proportionate”? If we really wanted proportionate justice, we would kill painfully and slowly. (And I think some equivalent of this mindset is behind the view that prison rape isn’t a big deal because, after all, they’re just prisoners.) Proportionate justice, an eye for an eye, is neither attainable nor desirable. So put that argument aside and move on.

Anyway, Harrington makes a good distinction between what the Church can and does say, and what she can’t and doesn’t. Clear, readable, journalistic. Good stuff.