In the early morning hours of December 2, 2005 Kenneth Lee Boyd, a 57-year-old Vietnam vet, was executed by lethal injection in North Carolina. He was the 1,000th person executed in the United States since capital punishment was re-instated by the Supreme Court in 1976.
Just after midnight on December 13, Tookie Williams, a convicted killer of four and a co-founder of the Crips gang, was executed in the California death chamber at San Quentin prison. On January 17, California executed its oldest death row inmate, 76-year-old Clarence Ray Allen.
These executions and all others that continue to happen in the United States should at the minimum tug at the conscience of the Catholic community. Pope John Paul II made it abundantly clear that the Catholic community could not and would not separate its teaching on the death penalty from its teaching on abortion. Our faith teaches clearly that human life comes from God and that we are stewards, not owners of human life, individually and as a community. The Catholic Church moreover teaches and preaches a consistent pro-life ethic with no "ifs, ands or buts" that protects human life from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death.
The Magisterium offered its clearest challenge to the morality of the death penalty in Pope John Paul II's powerful encyclical of 1995, "Evangelium Vitae" ("The Gospel of Life"). His teaching on the death penalty in paragraph 56 was welcomed by many Catholics, but puzzling and even unwelcome to many others:
"…the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not to go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society."
We should keep in mind that the Church's teaching is in fact echoed in the words of the United States Declaration of Independence where it is stated that all people "are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life…" An "inalienable" right by definition cannot be morally removed or abrogated by a government.
Catholic moralists are often confronted with members of the Church filled with good will but who take two very different approaches to this teaching. There are those who are quick to point out that the teaching of the Church is not an "absolute" condemnation of the death penalty and therefore it is not accurate for "liberal" Catholics to act as if the death penalty were "intrinsically evil."
On the other hand there are those with a conflicting point of view who accuse the Church of "loophole" theology in her teaching about the death penalty. These folks would feel more comfortable if there were simply an outright condemnation of the death penalty putting it on par with our anti-abortion stance.
On either side of this debate we find the same statement either embraced or demonized --- the death penalty is forbidden "except in cases of absolute necessity … when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society" (EV 56).
It might be helpful in looking at this debate to remember aspects of the Church's approach to fundamental moral theology:
1. There are actions that are in themselves intrinsically evil. In other words there are actions that are incompatible with being a human person created in the likeness of God. These actions can never be morally justified by someone's "good" intention or by particular circumstances. Such actions, for example abortion, are referred to as intrinsically evil or instrinsice malum.
2. However, the vast majority of actions, good or evil, are not "intrinsically" so but rather are determined as such by the "three font" principle. The three font principle reminds us that most choices have three moral elements or "fonts" that must be considered in any moral analysis: a) the action itself (is it intrinsically evil or good, or at least neutral?), b) the intention (am I intending what it authentically good?), and finally c) the circumstances (are they legitimate?) surrounding this action.
The bottom line is that the three font principle is perhaps the most frequently used (consciously or not) and most valuable of Catholic moral principles for everyday life. For an action to be "good" according to the three font principle, all three "fonts" must be good; I need a good intention, the act must be good or at least neutral in itself, and the circumstances must be good. If any one of the three "fonts" is evil, the act is evil.
In evaluating the death penalty, the teaching found in both "Evangelium Vitae" (56) and the "Catechism of the Catholic Church" (2267) relies heavily on the three font principal. The death penalty clearly is not taught as an "intrinsically evil" action forbidden in any all circumstances and for any and all reasons. It falls under the general heading of the "right to self-defense." As such, the Church forbids the use of the death penalty for either "punishment" or "retribution." In other words, it is immoral to use execution as a punishment or "to bring closure" to the victim's family.
The only intention and circumstance for which it might be legitimately used is "if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor." In other words, a prison system would have to be so porous, so poorly run that society could not be guaranteed that the criminal sentenced to life without parole could be effectively isolated or imprisoned for the rest of his or her natural life. It would be unfair to label this (or any other) application of the three font principle a "loophole."
At the same time, it is clear that this teaching intends to severely limit if not end the application of the death penalty. Thus it is reasonable to assume that the Church's teaching is clearly at odds with both the intent and practice of current death penalty legislation in most states. Perhaps we should give the final word to the Catechism:
"Today…as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm --- without definitively taking away from him (her) the possibility of redeeming himself (herself) --- the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity 'are very rare, if not practically non-existent'" (CCC 2267).
Vincentian Father Richard Benson is academic dean and professor of moral theology at St. John's Seminary, Camarillo. His column appears monthly in The Tidings. |