Catholic Confusion on Capital Punishment: Retribution (Part 2 of 3)

Retribution is the most essential and defining of the purposes of punishment, capital or otherwise; the other three (protection, deterrence, rehabilitation) are extrinsic consequences. It is the most oblique, mysterious and spiritual. And it is not addressed by anti-execution crusaders, not even by John Paul II himself. Retribution is actually a synonym for punishment, stripped of its usefulness for discipline, protection and deterrence.

Retribution means to pay back in the sense of reward or punish according to justice. It presupposes a moral order such that good deeds are rewarded and bad are punished. It directs that each is given what is due, no more and no less. It deals strictly and purely with justice without contamination by passion and emotion (revenge) or inspiration by mercy (restitution). Retribution is close to and usually involved with the related realities of revenge (retaliation) and restitution (and reconciliation.) Revenge means to avenge or inflict injury in return for a prior harm and implies fierce passions of resentment and rage. On the other extreme, restitution means to restore to a previous state as in reparation and amends. Retribution is the clean, austere reality of paying what is due in a correct balance and so is distinct from revenge and restitution.

Catholic belief holds that each of us faces final and absolute retribution, positive or negative, at the particular and the general judgment. Purgatory, heaven and hell are granted according to what we deserve. God’s merciful salvation by grace through faith does not exclude, but includes our own freedom, participation, merit or culpability. Within time and history, human retribution is always inadequate and partial; but it is also unavoidable. Authority and law are responsible for implementing a just order of punishment within every human realm. A person or a specific community of faith might well entrust retribution for wrongs endured into the hands of God All Mighty, but legitimate authority cannot avoid the responsibility of implementing justice, including punishment, as fairly as it is capable.

If you slash my tires, I may slash your tires or do even worse in passionate revenge. On the other hand, you might sincerely apologize, ask for forgiveness, and pay for my new tires as well as compensate for the annoyance and distress entailed; that would be an act of restitution. Even after that reparation, however, there would be a question of retribution: is there a moral need for further punishment in the way of a fine, warning, probation, suspension, public censure, or detention? Evaluations of the appropriate degree of severity will vary, but the moral consciousness requires that a debt be paid. One might decide that the monetary compensation and apology suffice as retribution; but the essential issue is that, aside from restitution, a just retribution is required by justice. If, for example, the violator is rich and able to provide financial restitution effortlessly, then a further censure or punishment would be required; on the other hand, a poor culprit who has to work and sacrifice to make the payment might be more than adequately punished.

Capital punishment is usually considered as a response to the most heinous crimes such as the deliberate, premeditated torture, rape, sexual abuse or murder of the innocent, especially the young and defenseless. The pure, austere justice question centers on retribution, aside from pragmatic and extrinsic concerns about consequences like protection, deterrence and rehabilitation. The cold, clear issue is: in justice, what is due to the one who deliberately destroyed an innocent life? This is a deep, difficult, mysterious question. This question is basically avoided by our anti-execution crusaders.

Consider the case of Saddam Hussein. What did he deserve? Disregard extrinsic considerations: his death as possible martyrdom and provocation; his continued existence as destabilizing; his unfortunate childhood; understandable Shiite and Kurd rage; adequacy of Iraqi prisons; deterrence; possibility of rehabilitation; fairness of his trial; and the indignity of his actual execution. What did he deserve? He was responsible for the violent death of hundreds of thousands. Does he deserve to live out his days in the humane, comfortable conditions of a typical U.S. penitentiary? Many would say he deserves to suffer some form of extended torture, but that would surely barbarize us as a society. Rather, an intuitive clarity emerges that a clean, dignified, instantaneous execution is a just desert.

Our religious tradition has consistently answered that human life is so sacred that intentional murder must be punished by state execution. This penalty is applied by the state as a transcendent authority, representing the judgment of God. The punishment descends, so to speak, from on high and is executed by Godly authority to assert justice and to reinforce the sacredness of human life as inviolate.

This logic is rejected by the crusade for several reasons:
1. Confusion of retribution with revenge. The former is a clear, judicial, moral reality; the later is a passion to harm the violator; the former intends to resolve and dissolve the violence; the later is a mimetic imitation and extension of the violence; the former is the act of a transcendent agent of justice and peace, the later is an additional violation of justice and peace. Unfortunately, such state action is often misinterpreted as collectivized violence rather than as a moral, transcendent and authoritative act of righteousness.
2. Elevation of love, compassion and mercy over justice and truth. In our tradition, mercy and justice, love and truth are bipolar moral absolutes which inform each other, balance each other, correct each other, but cannot dominate or erase each other. Theological fashion is in denial of justice, retribution and the toughness or harshness of genuine love. There is discernable here a kind of clericalism in the campaign, favored by liberal sisters, clergy and lay elites (professors, church bureaucrats, social workers) who live and work in safe, nurturing, religious environments as they try to impose genteel, even effete standards of compassion-over-justice and mercy-over-punishment on the broader society.
3. Rejection of authority. The action of the state in execution is viewed as comparable to the violence of individuals and even as encouraging it. This flight from authority is the most important root cause of the absolutist rejection of capital punishment (and will be discussed in the 3rd part of this essay.)

A pervasive, powerful theme of popular culture, especially the movies, is that of vigilante justice, especially the powerful, righteous warrior who emerges to punish the wicked in a social climate where a weakened social justice system is powerless before violence and chaos. Examples include Batman and all the superheros as well as the litany of movies involving Arnold, Sylvester, Clint, and company. This theme might be disparaged by cultural elites as pandering to vulgar populist passions of rage and violence; but the phenomena does entail a concern for justice, retribution, and a restoration of order. If the social justice system is vulnerable to abuse of the poor and powerless, it can also become feeble and impotent. The vigilante heroes are angry and righteous, unsoftened by mercy; they are the polar image of the compassionate crusaders for elimination of executions. The religious and academic circles that so strongly advocate against executions are themselves sometimes blind to the moral demand for restitution as they live in protected and privileged environments and are nourished on values of compassion, kindness and even “niceness” that enable them to avoid the moral demand for clear, clean punishment of evil doers. Low-brow, populist culture here gives us a moral insight that has been lost to the zealots of the new prohibition.