They put an end to the assertions that the death penalty is intrinsically evil which means its morality is determined by the relevant moral circumstances and the end or intention. It could in fact be an immoral act if the circumstances and intentions are evil.
I was answering to your error that the death penalty is a
divine prescription. That it is not a punishment applied to serve human justice and the common good… but that it serves the supernatural purpose of divine retribution. You maintain that ‘retribution’ is the primary purpose of the death penalty even though the writings you quote on the subject don’t even claim this. Punishment for crime, like eating for nutrition, are principles of truth demanded by natural law and protected by divine law. However, imposing capital punishment, like taking pills, has a medicinal purpose within those human institutions. It’s a mistake to claim that the primary purpose of taking pills is ‘nutrition’ just as it is wrong to claim that the primary purpose of the death sentence is retribution.
Yet you continue to claim that it is, despite Aquinas statement that the punishments of this life are medicinal and Card. Dulles popular essay on capital punishment stressing that retribution as *one of *the for ends of punishment… has a symbolic place only since human beings are not God and have no supernatural powers to judge souls and effect divine redress. The States right to use capital punishment does not equate to say a Priests divine office in administering sacraments. I suggested that you were mistaking the States powers as having an intrinsic capacity to ‘loose and bind’ in this life… like the Church. It doesn’t.
So in a society where conditions and beliefs have an obvious bias and the death penalty is seeming to serve a bias rather than justice…it can actually serve justice to show mercy.
You don’t resolve the problem of bias with mercy but with justice. Mercy would merely cover over an unjust system. The real solution is to make the system just by eliminating the bias.
The idea of mercy merely ‘covering over’ rather than being intrinsically efficacious is promoted by other Christian branches but not Catholicism. Mercy renews and makes new relationships. That’s the whole brilliant meaning of mercy. We comprehend it’s true nature through parables like the Prodigal Son and the Unmerciful Servant. Human beings are called to emulate this in our lives, personal and public, with faith in the new relationships it creates. That doesn’t mean that punishment for sin can be let go of. Mercy would mean nothing at all if sin was not first recognised as sin.
Why do you imagine that this analogy only pertains to individual cases and not to general law?
You’re mixing concepts. Augustine did not object to capital punishment in general; he had a particular objection to its use in specific circumstances. The question is: which is the rule and which is the exception? Should a murderer not be executed unless there is an exceptional reason to do so, or should he be executed unless there is an exception reason not to do so? Augustine - and church tradition - has taken the second option.
The death penalty has always been addressed in the light of the fifth commandment. It hasn’t ever been a stand alone commandment. The first principle of the fifth commandment is to preserve and safeguard human life.
The fact that human beings have resorted to a death penalty apart from a relationship with God through the prophets and then through His Son, shows that natural law… through the medium of Creation and the natural elementals… permits a death sentence in relation to the human understanding of justice and the community good. Aquinas stated that divine law presupposes natural law so this shows that the extreme measure of death in administering human justice… exists prior to the divine commandments, as a
permission of natural law.
I have not addressed these prudential arguments against capital punishment, but, as they are prudential, there are no moral choices involved. If I think capital punishment is harmful I will oppose it; if I think it is helpful I will support it. In both cases since I am choosing what I think is best under the circumstances, both positions are equally moral because there is simply no moral choice to be made.
Except you don’t seem to really believe that. You are having a problem accepting the Church’s statement…
“the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.” That indicates that it is a medicinal human prescription rather than a divine prescription. You could say that “medicine does not exclude recourse to taking morphine if there is no other way of effectively treating pain” or you could say “morphine is a right of medical treatment in service of the dignity and wellbeing of the patient”. Both statements while seeming contradictory, are actually answering to different sorts of claims about the use of morphine,
with the very same answer. Morphine is a special prescription which can be a great evil unless applied with absolute regard for the first principle of medicine. Preserving life and health.
