Forgiveness and Executions

[Geist]

Lets say a loved one is murdered, the killer gets death, which pleases their parents. Various Catholic organizations write to the governor of the state (which they do), and he, being moved, halts the execution.

What gives them the right to deny the family their happiness and vengeance? And yes, the killer getting pumped full of potassium chloride would make them feel better.

How come they would feel justified (and no doubt pat themselves on the back) for stopping the execution, when they are not in the place to forgive or not forgive since they aren’t the wronged party? isn’t this more a hostile act of arrogance then anything else?

 

[mexilad]

I would say it’s not about vengance. It is about justice.

 

[Speedypizza]

Read the story of Maria Goretti and then talk about execution of criminals. In particular pay attention to her killers reform and her forgiveness of him. If he had been put to death 10 years after he killed her, this amazing story would never have happened.

 

[PerfectTiming]

Read the story of Maria Goretti and then talk about execution of criminals. In particular pay attention to her killers reform and her forgiveness of him. If he had been put to death 10 years after he killed her, this amazing story would never have happened.

This is very true. The conversion of her killer is a truly remarkable story - he even attended her canonisation.

 

[chevalier]

What gives them the right to deny the family their happiness and vengeance? And yes, the killer getting pumped full of potassium chloride would make them feel better.

Exacting vengeance is actually a sin. Exacting justice is not, by the way. Rejoicing in the death of someone is morally problematic, all the more so if this is outright happiness that he died, not merely a sense of being e.g. finally freed from a local tyrant. It is possible that the governor’s decision is spiritually beneficial to the family of the victim.

How come they would feel justified (and no doubt pat themselves on the back) for stopping the execution, when they are not in the place to forgive or not forgive since they aren’t the wronged party? isn’t this more a hostile act of arrogance then anything else?

Law and justice and punishment are the competence of the state, which is the authority that governs the society, which is interested in any wrongdoing because all crimes are a social matter. They aren’t owned by the victims. The authorities can forgive their part to an extent (or reduce a punishment they find too severe or morally unacceptable).

 

[GEddie]

Punishment of crime is not to make victim families, or anybody feel better. It is to uphold the law, and thereby the general well-being (as all laws should have as a goal).

If the law can be satisfied while at the same time showing mercy, that is preferable.

ICXC NIKA

 

[roseo64]

i’m sorry for your loss–please remember:
“thou shalt not kill”
somewhere in the bible and i’m sorry i can’t remember the exact verse is—
God would rather see evil people live so that they have time to repent and save their souls.
hand your troubles, woes over to God. we can never know all the hows and whys of death especially when it comes unexpectantly or by someones hand. on our level it’s so very hard and saying to hand over your troubles is a lot easier said then done.
but God is waiting there to help you–all you have to do is begin trying to let Him.

 

[DexUK]

I take the view that it is not man’s place to decide whether another man lives or dies. That privilege belongs to God and to God alone.

For sure, lock away heinous criminals and throw away the key, for the sake of temporal justice and public safety, but if we decide to take the decision to extinguish their lives, are we not denying them the chance to realise what it is they have done wrong and why it was so wrong? Are we not running the risk of sending a killer to his or her death with an eternal mortal sin on their soul?

Surely we should do everything we can to get such a person to recognise their sin, feel genuine remorse for their actions (rather than being upset that they are about to lose their life and hadn’t got away with it) and seek forgiveness from God for it?

I could not, in good conscience, take the risk of approving the ending of a life before its natural time and thereby consigning a soul to eternal damnation. I am simply not that vindictive, no matter how appalling that person might have been before they had been incarcerated. People’s souls mean much too much to me for me to agree with the death penalty.

 

[fakename]

I think that a statesman, can rightly stop someone from being executed. However, he can’t forgive the offense; that’s a matter between the victims and the murderer. But since the victim(s) is dead, then the murderer should be executed and this would be just. But it would also be just if the statesman gave the murder extra time to repent. But even on that condition is it good to let the prisoner go? I don’t think so, since no one can rightly forgive him, so he must be executed as a matter of commutative “eye-for-eye” justice.

 

[DexUK]

One ought to remember that “eye for eye” justice is an old-testament concept. Christ actually turned this on its head and ordered that we should instead “turn the other cheek”.

Now in the case of murder, that doesn’t mean letting someone else get killed, but it does mean not seeking vengeance but instead working to achieve peace and at least attempt forgiveness in our hearts.

Forgiveness does not mean letting people get away with things: natural justice means protecting the populace from people who would do them harm. But it doesn’t mean that the death penalty is just - because a just result is to enable the criminal to seek forgiveness from God rather than go to their death without having done so.

As I’d hope everyone would agree, I’d rather everyone made it to Heaven. While it’s understandable that someone grieving a murdered relative might wish someone damned to Hell, I think for the rest of us, with the benefit of a more peaceful state of mind should really prefer the guilty to acknowledge their sin and experience temporal punishment through incarceration in this life to give them plenty of time to come to terms with God.

Of course that also means that the prison system needs to be set up right to allow that to happen better, but just killing unrepentant criminals is not a just answer.

 

[Joe_Hill]

Fortunately, the Church gives us clear guidance on this topic.

The holy father is campagining right now to have capital punishment abolished.

I feel I should support him in my small way.

Our “justice” in the UK, like the US, has devolved into renditions in secret, assasinations without trial, public executions on a global level, torture and desecration of the dead,

That is where we have come.

I pray that the Church can show us just how far we have sunk.

 

[Ender]

I take the view that it is not man’s place to decide whether another man lives or dies. That privilege belongs to God and to God alone.

This is not the Church’s view as she has consistently recognized a State’s right to use capital punishment.

if we decide to take the decision to extinguish their lives, are we not denying them the chance to realise what it is they have done wrong and why it was so wrong? Are we not running the risk of sending a killer to his or her death with an eternal mortal sin on their soul?

No. Again, this is not a position the Church has ever supported.

*Paradoxically, those who oppose capital punishment on these grounds are assuming the state has a sort of totalitarian capacity which it does not in fact possess, a power to frustrate the whole of one’s existence. Since a death imposed by one man on another can remove neither the latter’s moral goal nor his human worth, it is still more incapable of preventing the operation of God’s justice, which sits in judgment on all our adjudications. *(Romano Amerio, theological adviser at Vatican II)

I am simply not that vindictive, no matter how appalling that person might have been before they had been incarcerated.

Do not confuse justice with vindictiveness. A State has a moral obligation to impose a punishment commensurate with the severity of the crime, and at times that includes capital punishment.

Ender

 

[Nate13]

As I’d hope everyone would agree, I’d rather everyone made it to Heaven. While it’s understandable that someone grieving a murdered relative might wish someone damned to Hell, I think for the rest of us, with the benefit of a more peaceful state of mind should really prefer the guilty to acknowledge their sin and experience temporal punishment through incarceration in this life to give them plenty of time to come to terms with God.

Now maybe I missed something here but is there not a difference between wanting someone to receive a just punishment for murder and be killed, and wishing they went to hell? I think you took quite a leap there in presuming people for capital punishment wish that the person goes to hell… People who receive the death penalty are in jail for a long time as well, and have plenty of time to repent. Most death row inmates spend at least 10 years waiting before they are actually killed.

 

[Joe_Hill]

A State has a moral obligation to impose a punishment commensurate with the severity of the crime, and at times that includes capital punishment.

"This is the context in which to place the problem of the death penalty. On this matter there is a growing tendency, both in the Church and in civil society, to demand that it be applied in a very limited way or even that it be abolished completely. The problem must be viewed in the context of a system of penal justice ever more in line with human dignity and thus, in the end, with God’s plan for man and society. The primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is “to redress the disorder caused by the offence.”(46) Public authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or her freedom. In this way authority also fulfills the purpose of defending public order and ensuring people’s safety, while at the same time offering the offender an incentive and help to change his or her behaviour and be rehabilitated.(47)

It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not 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. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.

In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: ‘If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.’"

Papal encyclical of John Paul II

 

[fakename]

I don’t believe that the pope was speaking with magisterial truth here though.

So personally, I don’t see the evidence that life imprisonment is a commensurate punishment for murder. I think that we can have people repent and be executed; the two are not contradictory.

 

[Joe_Hill]

Well Papal Encyclicals, even when they are not ex cathedra, can nonetheless be sufficiently authoritative to end theological debate on a particular question.

At least according to Pope Pius XII

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclical#Papal_use_of_encyclicals

 

[fakename]

Well Papal Encyclicals, even when they are not ex cathedra, can nonetheless be sufficiently authoritative to end theological debate on a particular question.

At least according to Pope Pius XII

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclical#Papal_use_of_encyclicals

magisterial teaching is either non-infallible or infallible and the pope used neither in giving his ideas on the particular matter of outlawing the death penalty in the US.

Indeed, the popes seem to emphasize how prudential their ideas are in this matter as well as in matters of war (though I am more convinced by their war reasoning).

 

[Ender]

Well Papal Encyclicals, even when they are not ex cathedra, can nonetheless be sufficiently authoritative to end theological debate on a particular question.

Well this encyclical didn’t end the debate; it just stirred it up. As fakename pointed out, this teaching is prudential.

The Pope and the bishops, using their prudential judgment, have concluded that in contemporary society, at least in countries like our own, the death penalty ought not to be invoked, because, on balance, it does more harm than good. (Cardinal Dulles, 2001)

At least according to Pope Pius XII

Pius XII is a good source for comments on this topic:

“When it is a question of the execution of a man condemned to death it is then reserved to the public power to deprive the condemned of the benefit of life, in expiation of his fault, when already, by his fault, he has dispossessed himself of the right to live.”

Ender

 

[Joe_Hill]

Well this encyclical didn’t end the debate; it just stirred it up. As fakename pointed out, this teaching is prudential.

Encyclical teachings are prudential?

Well that is good to know.

 

[Buck_Crosswhite]

What’s wrong with justice?