Capital punishment runs afoul of the PDE in various ways,
As far as I can tell
all applicatons of double effect are morally ambigious and a little troubling. It is generally the sort of reasoning we apply when we want to do something, are sure we are morally in the right, but need to explain a conflict under Christianity.
Look at Augustine’s Just War concept, now firmly in Catholic tradition. Initially, Christians were a violently persecuted minority, and overhwhelmingly avowed pacifists, who refused to fight or serve in the military. They weren’t ‘pragmatists’, thinking of course we have to fight, of course we have use violence to obtain our rights… They simply followed the faith as literally as they understood it, and somehow not only survived the persecution, literally became the empire.
Suddenly, being the state, things like a military, which was primarily a police force, not a force of conquest by Augustine’s time, seemed pragmatically necessary, so Augustine reasoned a way for a ‘good’ act to cancel out a ‘bad’ act.
In all the Gospels, Jesus contradicted just one part of the Jewish Bible. He directly challenged “an eye for an eye”, and listed examples of resisting evil directly, but without violence, and in a way that spiritiually challenged the agressor. But protecting oneself with violence is deep within our nature, it permeates most human cultures, and if summer movies are any indication, the myth of “redemptive violence” is almost universally accepted without question. Given that, and the culture he lived it, it seems perfectly natural that St. Thomas Aquinas was able to ‘reason’ that the ‘bad’ effects of violent self defense are mitigated by the ‘good’ effects.
Some of the most interesting reading on this is the work of our current Pope. He is not as accessible in his writing as Pope John Paul II, he writes like a theologian, but it is well worth reading. When you understand the body of his work, it becomes no surprise that he postulated (as then Cardinal Ratzinger) that in the current age, meeting the criteria for a Just War is quite likely impossible. He also has directly questioned applications of “redemptive violence”.
With double effect, we could go on and on. Again, look at ectopic pregnancy. Accepting the concept that two deaths are better than one abortion is easier than, say, accepting serious medical risk for a non viable fetus.
Again, Benedicts insights are helpful. He acknowledges that we are often confronted with complex moral dilemnas, and being human, are uncertain of God’s will. The danger is when we apply concepts like double effect or proportionate reasons with a sense of moral certainty. If we act with certainty, then we are not showing proper humility to God, whose true will we cannot know.
but lets focus on this one for now. Isn’t the killing (i.e. the violation of the moral imperative to “not kill”) the means by which one obtains the moral imperative of fostering and protecting humanity at large?
Think of the time and circumstances. You have a violent person who is a danger to others. You are living in a society that is a bad harvest away from famine. You lack the resources (or think you do) to incarcerate and care for this person for the rest of their life. Also, imprisonment also carries a moral stigma (we often forget that in, say, Matt 25, prisoners are mentioned in the context of the true criteral for salvation multiple times, and if we look at the culture and the period, imprisonment had some cultural resistance).
Rather it is DE, or proportionate reasons, the thinking was that humanity at large must be protected. The state is not taking the life of the executed, the executed is forfeiting it, because he/she threatens the purpose of the law and leaves the state no choice…
The Church has pointed out, rightly I believe, that the state now does have a choice. So if the state chooses death, it directly devalues life. Since the punishment has become so rare among civilized nations, most the pragmatic arguments are moot, we are statistically less safe, not more, than countries that do not execute. Much like JPII’s predictions about Iraq, this is a case where measurable reality and reason have become, in time, wholly in line with the Church’s morality.
The desire to hurt someone in retaliation is wholly human, but it is not what we are called to do. I keep mentioning it is simple, we either accept the Church’s directions or apostolic or not. But it actually even more fundemental. We either accept that there is, in fact, an all powerful and just God, or we do not.
Peace
