Revenge is a personal intention of harm to another out of hatred because of some wrong inflicted. It is a sin as a direct contradiction of charity. Restitution is the act of justice by an authority (as received by God) to restore the moral order, to compensate for a wrong done. It is inherently a good act. There is, however a connection between the two: without retribution, revenge will burn disastrously; but with proper restitution, the anger and wound is partially healed and vengeange is calmed.
As if by magic, restitution has disappeared from the modern mind. Consider Catholic discourse on the death penalty: John Paul, Francis and the Catholic Catechism omit it. It is as if there were no such thing. It is the null curriculum. However, for over two millenia retribution has been a basis for the death penalty. Avery Dulles stated at the time of John Paul that if he the pope were to declare that the retributive justice could not be the basis for the death penalty then he would be renouncing a firm tradition of over 2000 years. They do not engage it and thus they deny it implicitly.
To be clear: I myself would not make a strong, clear argument for capital punishment based on reparation, but I would insist, on the basis of Catholic tradition, that it be considered. Tempermentally I am disinclined myself to revenge, but I do have a strong sense of retribution, that the right order be restored. Perhaps it is that I am an oldest son; or conscientious and thoughtful; or that I have for my entire life been a ground-level authority...teacher, supervisor, director...and responsible to maintain the public order.
Substantial concepts, related to retribution, that firmly stuctured Counter-reformation Catholicism have largely disappeared in the Vatican II Church: merit, purgatory, indulgences, temporal punishment due to sin. This gestalt of concepts which formed the Catholic response to the Reformation surely deserved to be recontextualized within a stronger theology of grace, faith and mercy. But not to be thrown out so that they are not intelligible.
Jesus instructed us on our final fate: the sheep receive eternal reward; the goats damnation. Retribution pure and simple!We see here that the concept includes reward as well as punishment. In this life, by analogy, those infused (from above) with authority exercise similar retributive justice in the ordinary arena of home, school, work, and society.
John Paul's weakness here in his strong dismissal of capital punishment was, to me, his single theological flaw.Perhaps this is related to the failure on his part and that of the broader Church to respond firmly to the sexual abuse? Francis of course has gone qualitatively beyond him into a real heresy. Even the work of Balthasar needs to be corrected for catechetical purposes although with less fervor than shown by Ralph Martin. Yet there is widespread indifference, except for certain eccentric conservatives. (That would be me!)
So, why has this simple, fundamental idea become unintelligible? Several reasons come to mind:
1. The prevalence of a soft, cheap concept of Mercy. That of John Paul was not soft or cheap as it was infused with justice, truth and holiness. But he did have a blind spot for retribution. Francis and his movement are a different story: he has absolutely (?) renounced capital punishment as well as criticized life imprisonment. He is living in an alternative reality.
2. Decline of the masculine psyche. Retribution is a concept of justice which is natural to the male, paternal, authoritative mind. It is alien to the feminine and the maternal. Our culture and especially our Church have both become entirely demasculinized and so the concept is strange.
3. Liberalism and individualism have become the very air we breathe, intellectually, so we do not think in terms of the corporate, the communal. So punishment now focuses on the protection (and deterrence) of the individual and rehabilitation of the individual. Instinctively, we do not think about a "public order" that must be restored. The libertarian,the therapeutic, the bourgeois have entirely triumphed in the last 50 years.
4. A pervasive philosophical nominalism, a superficiality, a lack of ontological density has left us with a failure to see the FORM. By this I mean to see the interior essence, the deeper inner meaning of a thing or an action. Catastrophically the Cultural Revolution vacated precious, sacred realities of their inner meaning: sex and gender, authority, tradition, fidelity and chastity, just warfare and the litany continues. And so, there is an incapacity to see the form of retribution as distinct from revenge, as rooted in authority and an objective moral order.
Strangely, I experience a distinctive sadness and loneliness on this precise issue. Partially it is that I am dissonate with my mentor, John Paul. Add to this the heavy-handed intrusion by Franis into the Catehism which has been widely accepted. And then just the frustration of seeing so clearly a reality that is invisible to others. I miss Avery Dulles!
No comments:
Post a Comment