MAILBAG: Capital punishment, WWJD?, and Seattle. As always, I’m in plain text and others are in bold.

Good points from KairosPerson: I’m not going to take on the whole issue of the death

penalty, largely because I am somewhat muddled about it. I think I’m in favor of it, because the basic moral compass inherent in us all points towards it, and we are supposed to listen to that compass. (We are also supposed to educate and service that compass,

which is why I remain uncertain.)

But I will take on one piece of your argument, that I have much more clarity on. You write: “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…I don’t see how they can responsibly claim that the view that “death is different” is an anti-Christian view.”

The calculus involved in discerning which among rape, torture and murder is “worst” is impossible to measure by human standards, and so irrelevant to the discussion. But murder *is* different, as a category, because it is the one crime that cannot be undone, nor

made up for, and, most importantly from a Christian point of view, it denies the victim the chance to forgive.

Of course, an extraordinary person in the final seconds of his life may forgive his killer, but most ordinary people need at least a little time to reflect on something before offering forgiveness. That we are called to forgive unconditionally and automatically, but often do not, makes it very much worse, as a moral matter. Though I don’t for a moment believe it to be true, it is possible within our theology (because there are so many mysteries in it) that the bank teller gunned down swearing at the thief would be damned on the spot for not forgiving the killer. The victim of rape or torture at least has the time and opportunity to consider forgiveness. (I believe–hope–that the merciful God can create a way in which the victim of a murder is really given a chance to forgive, but there is little comfort on this

sunject to be found in Scripture.)

This does not apply to those who are executed, at least in this country, because they are always given at least months, and often years, to prepare themselves, to repent, and to seek forgiveness. A killer may choose not to do so, but it *is* a choice, one his victim was denied.

And it cannot be undone. Of course, rape and torture cannot be “undone” in a literal sense, but there is a moral way in which the healing that sometimes comes about “undoes” the harm–think of the slave-trader-turned-abolitionist who penned “Amazing Grace.” The years of slavery he sold people into could not be given back to them, but he could and did spend his post-conversion life redeeming slaves, some those he had sold in the first place.

All of these facts can be used either for or against death as punishment (further reason for my muddledness). But murder, as a moral act, really *is* different from any other crime, and so limiting death to a punishment for murder alone is not, ipso facto, inherently humanist, nor does it make a fetish of life.

As I said, good points, though this description of why murder alone merits the death penalty would seem to judge murderers who confine and torture their victims less harshly than those who just shoot fast. We know that victims have forgiven their captors while imprisoned by, for example, serial killers. (At least one victim wrote a letter to her parents, hoping that it would be found after her death–which it was–in which she professed her faith in Christ and her forgiveness for her soon-to-be-murderer. This I got from either John Douglas’s Journey Into Darkness or Steven Michaud’s The Evil That Men Do–I forget which.) So I, like Kairos, am not sure “where this goes” in terms of the death penalty.

A reader, on WWJD?: I was thinking over the weekend about your WWJD entry, and had a couple of thoughts. (a) Isn’t asking “What does the Church teach?” a specifically Catholic rendering of the right question? [Yes. But I hope the quotation from First Things, which distinguished between “what Jesus did” and “what He wants us to do,” cashed the statement out in a way accessible to Protestants as well. –Ed.] (b) Even with respect to Catholics, but even more with respect to Protestants, can’t we understand the question to be a shorthand for: “What should I do after getting into communion with other congregants/the Church, under circumstances where actually getting into communion is as a practical matter impossible?” That is, “WWJD?” is an effort imaginatively to construct the answer to the right question under imperfect circumstances, i.e., under circumstances where one can’t actually ask the right question of the right people.

That last statement was later clarified as something similar to, “WWJD? is a starting point prior to acceptance of any

particular Christian tradition (to the extent that such a “prior” moment exists) and therefore an aid in approaching various divergent

traditions?,” but actually less sophisticated — I imagined someone located in a tradition but (say) away from home and not knowing where to find folks in that tradition, confronting a problem that needed immediate attention and using WWJD? as a way of getting his/her mind to focus on the right questions.

That absolutely makes sense to me.

And finally, Unqualified Offerings dug my Seattle/Pittsburgh post, and took it in an interesting direction that I agree with, but two Seattle natives thought I was overpraising their hometown. One wrote, “I’m glad you had a nice time here. It is, of course, completely different if you live here and are the least little bit conservative, of course. It is vibrant and lively only if you agree with the prevailing leftist orthodoxy.”

Another added: First: Catholic culture. One must never reduce the faith to culture, but one must also never forget that one of the points of faith is to inform and transform the culture. Catholic culture is something like an essential accident to Catholic faith. A Catholic culture supports and encourages the faith because it supports and encourages holiness, which leads to virtuous action and strong witness. Unfortunately, it seems that a cohesive, vibrant culture is possible chiefly while under persecution.

Which leads me to my second point.

Second: The Church in Seattle. It is unlikely that one will find a more dismal religious situation anywhere in the country (which, to my eyes, explains why Seattle’s suicide rate and abortion rate are so high — though beautiful and exciting on the outside, Seattle is a city of despair). My aunt, after working for the Church in various capacities for the last thirty years, remarked to me that Catholicism in Seattle is something like Catholicism in Japan. The people seem to have no capacity to actually get it. They don’t know what to do with it. The woman you met at the wedding was probably from one of the wrenchingly rare parishes that are on fire. Most of the Catholics in Seattle would look at a parish on fire for Christ like most people look at Trekkies. Everything that is bad about AmChurch

that you’ve seen in D.C. is ten times worse in Seattle.

Hmmm… well, as people always say when the facts on the ground prove less than maximally helpful, my larger point still stands…! Actually, it’s hard to imagine that Seattle is “the worst in the country”–and I know zero about Catholicism in Japan, so no comment there–but more importantly, I really don’t believe that a vibrant Catholic culture is only possible under persecution. (And I doubt Harmon means that as strongly as it sounds.) My main purpose in the Seattle post was to point out the ways in which a culturally-Catholic city can actually be a place with less faith than habit, less love than repetition; and the effect that that ingrown culture can have on Catholics seeking something more vivid. Our culture, and its “creative class,” may over-value things that are in motion and that have the appearance of liveliness. But if our parishes don’t have that appearance of liveliness, the creative-class types are right to think something’s wrong. The answer is not to reject the parish but to infuse it with the Gospel… obviously.


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