Reader Zac Alstin writes:

Firstly, thank you again for your link to my article about Hiroshima a few weeks back. It generated some good comments, and some terrifying ones.

I’ve not yet been called a ‘pantywaist’, but did attain the coveted ‘armchair moraliser/moralist’ and ‘dunderhead’, along with the charitable suggestion that my theory is ‘counterfactual’, and should perhaps be altered to suit the facts.
After this brief exposure to the ‘real world’, I am quietly full of respect for your self-restraint.

My question is in regard to the death penalty.

I’ve been ambivalent about the DP, because I can see something appealing in the idea that we must uphold ‘Justice’.

However, at least from a Christian perspective, our interest should really be in emulating God’s mercy rather than getting all gung-ho about His justice, right?

But recently I’ve been thinking about Just War and self-defense, where it seems that the principle of double-effect allows us to use deadly levels of force without ever intending the death of the opponent (assuming our actions are proportional etc). This principle is ethically pretty awesome (that’s a technical term), because it shows that we can defend ‘the good’ in a realistic fashion (even to the point of warfare) without ever crossing the line into intending the death of another human (even the one about to shoot me).

This suggests to me that there should never be any point at which we intend the death of another human being, innocent or otherwise. But obviously, this would *completely* rule out the DP, where the intention is to kill the subject, as a means to an end (for the sake of justice, punishment, etc).

Because even in war, you can drop a bomb on the enemy, and still hope (in principle) that he survives.

But you can’t do this with the DP.

The problem is that the church’s teaching seems to suggest a situation where the DP might be required for the protection of the public. But wouldn’t this amount to killing the subject as a means to an end, rather than trying to defend against him (like a sniper shooting a hostage-taker), and still being able to hope for his survival?

Having asked this question, it might be possible to argue that we aren’t intending to *kill* the dangerous criminal, we’re merely cutting his head off as a proportional means of defending the community against the threat he poses….and it’s a foreseeable yet unintended effect of this defense that he also dies….

I guess if it really is the kind of situation where we can’t safely imprison the criminal, then it’s just an extension of community self-defense, even if he isn’t actively trying to kill anyone at that point?

Or that by committing a grievous crime, he declares himself an enemy of the community – like an enemy soldier with an intent to kill – and we must use proportional means to defend against him?

I’m just wary of reaching the conclusion that we *must* kill him as a means to an end, rather than him dieing as an unintended effect of a good action like self-defense. In the end, if it’s the former, it would be the *sole* example in which we could intend the death of another human being….

Your discernment is required!

First off, welcome to the ranks of ivory tower dimwits who don’t see that it’s okay to incinerate children in their beds when you have a really really good reason to do so. As a fellow unmanly man who doesn’t know how real evil is dealt with in the *real* world (meaning lots of episodes of 24 and Bruce Willis movies), I salute you!

Second, I have a small quibble with this: “However, at least from a Christian perspective, our interest should really be in emulating God’s mercy rather than getting all gung-ho about His justice, right?” Not quite. We are, in fact, called by the Church to seek justice. However, this is complicated by the fact that, on the lips of some, this is taken to mean “Seek Marxist nostrums” and on the lips of others it means “Seek to kill as many bad guys (with oh well, la di dah, a lot of collateral civilians) in nation-building experiments and as many death row inmates as humanly possible. It is also complicated by the fact that we fallen humans tend to pit God’s mercy and justice against one another whereas, in the simplicity of God, his justice is his mercy.

As to your question: Hoo boy is this above my pay grade. I’m just a fat English major with a keyboard and an interest in Catholic theology. But I ain’t no trained moral theologian. These sorts of questions make my head spin. I’ll give you a couple of crappy, ill-thought-out replies which, with five bucks, will get you a cup of Starbucks.

Basically, I stick with what seems to me the common sense of the Catechism. It’s odd for me to be arguing in favor of a (theoretical) application of the death penalty since my normal environment tends to confront me with lots of supporters and not a few kill crazies who really do seem to talk as though the most fervent wish any Christian should have–indeed the very hinge of their salvation–is passionate lust for the death of every prisoner on death row, preferably by crucifixion. It is not uncommon for them (including many Catholics) to handle the Bible just like fundamentalists, blow off the Magisterium, and blithely cite Genesis as their open season on crimes Americans still regard as worthy of death, while simply ignoring the equally biblical death sentences for adultery, homosexual acts, uppity teenagers and sundry other things mere accidents of culture no longer impel us to kill people for. I’ve never gotten a straight answer from such zealots on just how many people they really want to see put to death in their fundamentalist zeal for OT penalties. I don’t think I want to know.

All of which is to say, I don’t deal with many folk coming from your end of the spectrum as abolitionists. For myself, I am a practical abolitionist, not a theoretical one. That is, I don’t hold a theory that the death penalty is intrinsically immoral (which is what you appear to skate close to without quite embracing). I can imagine a scenario where it would be the necessary and morally acceptable (note how I avoid “right and good”) thing to do.

So, say, you’re in some desperate lawless land like Afghanistan and the local rapist and killer of boys has been caught in the act. Problem: he’s not Taliban. He’s one of our valiant allies–one of many, in fact, and they work together and help each other out in their little multicultural escapades. This is actually a very real world scenario since one of the dirty little secrets about our valiant Afghanistan allies is that American and NATO forces are “fighting and dying to defend tens of thousands of proud pedophiles, certainly more per capita than any other place on Earth” (Colorful Afghan saying, “Women are for children, boys are for pleasure.”) Let’s have a cheer for our great nation-building experiment! Fighting to make Afghanistan safe for pederasty!

Anyway, the guy’s got literal blood on his hands and you discovered him in the act of burying his latest victim (a five year old boy), and you have no facilities for imprisoning him because you are in some godforsaken wilderness along with your squad. If you send him to the local authorities (all tribal members in bed (literally) with his predilictions) you know with moral certainty they will help him “accidently” escape, and begin the John Wayne Gacy routine again with fresh boys. I don’t have a big problem with a quick frontier trial and a summary execution in such circumstances. The primitive conditions mean that there is simply no way to contain the ongoing threat. And, indeed, sending a message to his fellow pederasts about the summary judgment that awaits them while you are around could also be a very good deterrent.

But this sort of savage Stone Age scenario is pretty remote from the situation Evangelium Vitae has in mind. Before we start killing, the spirit of EV is death penalty minimalism. Fix the system before killing people. If murderers are walking, then see to it that they don’t by changing the system. If they aren’t getting life sentences, then give them life. If prisons are not secure then make them secure. Don’t just give up and say, “It’s just easier to kill people.” And don’t be a maximalist. Wherever possible, spare life. That seems to me to be the approach the Church takes, all while leaving open the (remote theoretical) possibility that a death sentence *could* be, well, not exactly *good* but at least not morally repugnant in some remote hypothetical situation (in contrast to the murder of innocent, which is never justifiable under any circumstance–even when Harry Truman says it is).

For my part, that’s as far as I take it–which is pretty much how far the Catechism takes it. Hope that helps.