Pope Francis has replaced that paragraph: 2267 "Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good. Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption. Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”,[1] and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide."
Is this a change in teaching"? A "development of doctrine?" No and No! The Pope cannot just change, by fiat, the moral law: what was good for millennia cannot become evil in July 2018! Nor is it an authentic development of doctrine: it is not organicaly, coherently, logically and inherently flowing from Truth as already revealed. This change is best understood as the insertion, into the Catechism, of a temporary, prudential judgment. The language is key: "increasing awareness"..."new understanding"..."more effective systems of detention have been developed." In other words, changes in attitude and organizational effectiveness...in the judgment of the Pontiff...make executions unnecessary. This means further changes in attitude or institutions may again change this practical judgment: an outbreak of kidnappings, or of terror and child-molestation, or a breakdown in penal systems could reverse the judgment. The operative word is "inadmissible"... a weak, indecisive word, hardly adequate for the expression of the moral good and evil. The Pope is not teaching a moral truth,an absolute...as in "thou shall not commit adultery"...that pertains always and everywhere; he is not defining an inherent evil like torture or targeting of civilians...but making a situational calculation: right now we don't need the death penalty.
I agree that in the USA in 2018, for a host of contingent, practical reasons, we can do away with executions. But this kind of judgment doesn't belong in the Catechism. It is not an eternal truth that pertains in all circumstances. I can imagine that in Afghanistan or in Mexico, intelligent, good Catholics might consider the death penalty a necessity. If I were commander of paratroopers who were raping, torturing and killing innocent women and children I would have no moral reservation about executing them, legally and with due process, to protect innocent life; nor would I hesitate to approve the death penalty for the ISIS warriors who viciously abused women and children.
Punishment traditionally has four purposes: protection, deterrence, retribution, and rehabilitation. Contemporary discussion strangely ignores the last three. But let us consider each of them.
Regarding protection, it is widely assumed that the strength of contemporary prisons ensure the prisoner cannot do more damage. This is patently false. Consider: the horrific power waged by gangs within prisons; the escape of drug lords from prisons in Mexico; the weakness of penal systems in much of the world; the murder of priest-pedophile Geohgan in a prison near Boston. Just last week the news reported two murders within prisons, one of a guard, by convicted murderers.
As a deterrent, capital punishment is useless, in the USA, because it is so rarely used. Studies show that it not the gravity so much as the certainty of punishment that deters. American juries are disinclined to use execution so it is worthless as a deterrent. This is not to say, however that it would not be helpful, even necessary, in another environment.
The third purpose, retribution, is widely confused with revenge. They are completely different, almost opposites. Revenge is a form of resentment or hatred in which a person passionately, emotionally violates the other in reaction to a received violation. It is violence responding to violence. Retribution, by contrast, is a sober exercise of restoration or reparation that corrects the wrong and reestablishes justice and order. For example, the moment after death, at the particular judgment when we encounter Christ in all his mercy, justice, and suffering in relation to our own sins, we will (I believe) beg for purgatory, we will insist upon doing our restitution or retribution before receiving the glory and joy of heaven. It is arguable that a Timothy McVeigh or another terrorist who deliberately kills thousands, a serial murderer or rapist, a molester of children... that such a person has a debt to pay that must be more than life in prison, but certainly less than torture which is a real violation of the person's dignity. We might differ on this question, some favoring mercy and others a stricter justice. But it is clearly a worthy discussion, not to be dismissed by a paragraph inserted into the catechism.
Rehabilitation means more than restoration to a positive role in society; ultimately, we hope for the salvation of the soul of the criminal. Avery Dulles, surely the premier American Catholic theologian of the past century, pointed out that the certainty of one's imminent execution could provoke a conversion. This again, like retribution, is an area of mystery and uncertainty but a conversation worth having rather than foreclosing by a simplistic ultimatum.
The Pope has closed down all conversation about these dimensions with an appeal to "human dignity." It is not clear to me (nor to generations of saints, popes, doctors, thinkers, councils) that human dignity, properly understood, rules out the death penalty. The prevalent, fashionable view of human dignity advocated by our papacy/episcopacy draws from a secular perspective that denies or downplays the two deepest human realities: Evil in its profundity and power; and the holy, the transcendent, the supernatural as the source of all human authority.
The longstanding teaching of the Church is that some cases of evil are so grave that the death penalty is required. But secularism and Pope Francis have a more sentimental view: that natural death is a final, rather than a relative evil and that execution by the state is an absolute violation of human dignity. Today's popes and bishops are possibly the least qualified to deal firmly and justly with real Evil: with psychopaths, serial killers, sexual predators, power-hungry dictators, borderline personalities and criminals. This is because by nature and background they are mostly: privileged, innocent, protected, wholesome, generous and merciful. Who would you rather confront Hitler: Dorothy Day, Pius XII, or Winston Churchill? We need the non-saint, the last of the three to protect civilization! By a perverse irony, just now when it is clear that our hierarchy has been catastrophically incapable of protecting our young and weak from its own predators, our pontiff condescends to dictate to the secular state how to protect our innocent. Robert Royal is right: the pope might take a moratorium, abstain from pontificating, and lead a penitential movement for all in authority who have violated or covered up.
Perhaps more important is the divine origin (as St. Paul says) of all human authority. The father/mother, policeman, lifeguard, and judge all derive their power from God. It is a sacred trust. It is not just a utilitarian function of protection against aggression. The aversion to execution assumes a leveled, democratic, disenchanted view of authority as force of a human will against another. In a sacred cosmos, the necessary, just, paternal, authorized use of lethal force is a hallowed, honorable task. Contrast the swat member with the sniper: they are opposites as the later is violating innocents, the former is protecting them. The material act is the same, pulling a trigger; the purpose, the form, the final end of one is an absolute contradiction of the other. Similarly with the death penalty, where needed. The trajectory of Pope Francis' emotionalism and theological confusion is towards a vague pacifism (he does not approve of life in prison either) that draws from a secular sentimentality rather than a hard-edged, classic grasp of sin and evil, of the supernatural and the diabolic.
Aware that we will be confronting violence until the coming of Christ... that it could become worse...and skeptical of the efficacy of penal technology...we need to honor and even consecrate those entrusted with the holy use of lethal force. I propose a quasi-sacramental anointing of all who are legitimately authorized to take aggressive human life: police, soldiers, executioners, prosecutors and so forth. We would implore the Holy Spirit to descend with gifts of restrain, prudence, courage, justice and mercy. This could include a penitential, purifying rite for those forced to use such force as their spirit, inevitably, should be repulsed by their dreadful but necessary duty. The executioner or officer will need a healing himself as he, in his flesh, participates in a tragedy, however necessary and just.
Additionally, this change to the Catechism is a kind of cultural imperialism: insisting upon a viewpoint that has come to dominate the secular West. Has he consulted with African bishops? What Council approved this? What happened to collegiality? What happened to decentralization of power? How about Yasidee and Christian women in Iraq who have been kidnapped, tortured, raped, shamed and killed? How about victims of drug violence in Mexico and Columbia where the prisons are weak? How about the poor and weak in Yemen, Sudan and Rwanda? What about humility before Tradition? Or respect for diversity?
The fervent papal crusade to abolish the death penalty is futile. Executions are now eliminated across Europe and in all Catholic-majority countries. Most occur in China, Pakistan, Iran and other Muslim countries: Does Pope Francis think the communists and Muslims care what he thinks? They have become rare in the US: we haven't had one in NJ in over 50 years. Over 50% of American Catholics favor use of it in some circumstances. These, probably many Trump supporters, despised by liberal elites as ignorant, fearful, and bigoted, may actually be more deeply in touch with moral realities such as vulnerability to Evil, need for restitution, and mortal sin as worse than physical death. Pope Francis, heralded as the populist pope, is not only indifferent to these concrete, valid concerns but moralistic and judgmental against them.
This correction also displays the subtle clericalism, the arrogance so common on the left: the assumption that we lay people need specific directions from our clergy about practical policies regarding walls, immigration, death penalty and the environment. Clergy are trained in theology not social policy; the Church's infallibility applies to faith and morals, not to partisan political decisions. The propensity of the liberal cleric is to correct us laity and dictate our politics. The implication is that the clergy as an elite have superior insight while the laity are ignorant and incapable without explicit directives on policy. As noted above, however, the clergy themselves are severely challenged in regard to the secular, brutal confrontation with raw Evil.
Our papacy and the emergent Francis episcopacy are in a serious crisis. In their weakened state, prone to ideologies of the left, they offer a feeble, emasculated Magisterium as they advocate a cheap mercy, depleted of virile qualities of truth, holiness, justice, accountability. We need to look elsewhere, at least for now, for spiritual guidance: to the bishops of Africa (Cardinal Sarah) where the Church is flourishing and orthodox; to the lay leaders raised up by the Holy Spirit (Kiko, Ralph Martin and the lay movements; D.L. Schindler and his Communio comrades; Reno and the First Things crowd; Scott Hahn and the new-Oxford influx of converts; Gil Baile, Neal Lozano, Robert Royal, Phil Gleason, Ross Douthat, Raymond Arroyo, and even Wild Bill Donohue!); and of course to the precious, profound legacy of Popes John Paul and Benedict.
I remain loyal to the traditional Church teaching on the death penalty, even as I oppose it's use in current circumstances. In this I follow luminaries like Cardian Dulles and Archbishop (Why is he not a Cardinal?) Chaput! I understand the Catechism correction in light of tradition as a pragmatic suggestion. Respectfully, with a serene, confident conscience, I reject the apparent elevation of this judgment into an absolute. I would encourage Catholic judges, prosecutors, legislators, governors, soldiers and others responsibility for protection, order and justice to exercise their God-given, lay intelligence, expertise, conscience, charism and responsibility in the light of the tradition and accept this correction to the Catechism for what it is: a tentative, prudential suggestion, masquerading as a moral absolute.
