*"*The third justifying purpose for punishment is **retribution **or **the restoration of the **order of justice which has been violated by the action of the criminal." (USCCB)
Permit me to quote from your earlier post: “The position expressed in the catechism is a prudential opinion; it is not doctrine and we have no obligation to assent to it.”
Since you make such bold statements such as “I reject this claim” and “we have no obligation to assent to” the Catechism, etc., then why should I heed a lone statement by a national conference of bishops, which is WAY below the Catechism in terms of authority?
Do you see the logical dilemma in rejecting certain Church statements here and there but then tossing one in from a lower authority that seems to suit your views?
How can retribution - or “the restoration of the order of justice” - mean anything other than “to redress the disorder”?
See, this is where words get twisted. I agree that retribution is ONE form of redressing a disorder. However, I argued that it is not the ONLY form.
Numerous? There hasn’t been even one and certainly there is nothing in the Catechism to clarify the point.
Re-read posts 85, 90, 119, and 128. No authoritative document says that retribution is the primary, let alone the sole, purpose of punishment. You continue to connect some supposed dots between the phrase “redress” and “retribution,” ignoring any other possible interpretation than your own. Again, read those posts and consider how rehabilitation might also be a way to “redress.”
No. As I pointed out, physical rehabilitation has nothing to do with the restoration of the moral order which has been disturbed by sin.
But I did not claim that physical rehabilitation is a way to redress crime or sin. You are twisting the concept. I used physical rehabilitation as an example of a redress of a physical disorder. Now we can jump entirely over to the moral realm and consider how a moral rehabilitation might redress a moral disorder. Keep apples to apples and oranges to oranges, please…
Retribution is ordered to justice so your claim is that execution is not appropriate merely to obtain justice, which is actually the only objective that makes it appropriate.
- "We speak of merit and demerit, in relation to retribution, rendered according to justice." (Aquinas)
*- “…by means of punishment the equality of justice is restored.” *(Ibid)
Here we go again… retribution is certainly a PART of punishment. And we can also diverge into a discussion about justice compared to punishment, two words which you seem to falsely equate. But let me take your first statement in this quotation. If retribution is ordered to justice (I’ll concur with that), then why does retribution mean that the same act, to the same degree, be inflicted on the perpetrator? Is a lifetime sentence retribution for a life taken? Would amputation of a limb be adequate retribution? (I’m not saying these are or aren’t; I’m just probing a point of logic.) In other words, you seem to say that every crime MUST be met with punishment by civil authorities that is SOLELY for retribution, where retribution is satisfied only by turning the SAME incident back onto the offender. Please comment.
Ah, yes, you have put your finger on the problem with 2267. It in fact says nothing whatever about the primary objective of punishment. As you have acknowledged, protection - which is all that section addresses - is only a secondary objective. You assume that retributive justice cannot be the primary objective because that makes a hash of 2267. Nonetheless, punishment is the effect of justice and that is the primary objective.
This statement speaks volumes. Paragraph 2267 indeed speaks about what civil authorities are to do. And if retribution were the sole (or even primary) purpose of punishment, then civil authorities should be instructed to carry that out first, and then take other purposes into consideration. However, since your interpretation of 2267 cannot mesh with your interpretation of punishment, ergo, the Magisterium of our Church must be wrong.
