Many are probably shaking their heads and saying I'm not really pro-life because I believe capital punishment is sometimes justified. But I believe the state has the obligation to protect her people and prevent more innocent victims from those who clearly cannot be safely assimilated into society and are an on-going danger to other inmates and prison workers. Don't they have rights? Aren't their lives worth protecting?
The Arguments pro and con
Questions:
The death penalty is not a tool of revenge, but a tool of protection. And consider that facing your impending death is likely to focus your mind as it did the thief on the cross who admitted he and his fellow thief deserved to die, but repented and turned to Jesus for mercy.
And regardless of what the pope or anyone else says the Church recognizes the right and duty of the state to impose punishment for crimes, including the death penalty. I hate the idea of killing anyone, but I also hate the fact that killers are released to rack up more innocent victims. People claim capital punishment doesn't deter. Well, it certainly deters the executed. I'm praying for murderers today that they repent and one day enjoy eternal life with God. May they come to repentance and experience mercy.
Questions:
How do you protect prisoners from the violence of other prisoners if they are already experiencing the maximum discipline of the law (life in prison)?
How do you protect guards and prison administrators from violent sociopaths if they have nothing to lose by attempting escape and killing anyone who gets in the way?
What does research show about the deterrent effect of capital punishment? (Read the arguments article above.)My brother worked with a man who was murdered by a convicted murderer released back into the community. If the murderer had suffered the death penalty for his first murder, my brother's friend would likely be alive today or have died of natural causes. The murderer went on to kill someone else as well.
The death penalty is not a tool of revenge, but a tool of protection. And consider that facing your impending death is likely to focus your mind as it did the thief on the cross who admitted he and his fellow thief deserved to die, but repented and turned to Jesus for mercy.
And regardless of what the pope or anyone else says the Church recognizes the right and duty of the state to impose punishment for crimes, including the death penalty. I hate the idea of killing anyone, but I also hate the fact that killers are released to rack up more innocent victims. People claim capital punishment doesn't deter. Well, it certainly deters the executed. I'm praying for murderers today that they repent and one day enjoy eternal life with God. May they come to repentance and experience mercy.
Once upon a time I believed that the legitimacy of capital punishment could be debated as a matter of prudential judgment. I no longer believe that. I suspect that those who advocate for its outright abolishing, because they contradict Church tradition, actually advocate heresy. They sin by trying to deny a tool that civil government needs to protect the civil order, a task enjoined on it by God Himself. The wisdom of practical application can be debated and decided on a case-by-case basis, but the absolute eschewing of capital punishment is, I believe, its own sin. If I may, http://restore-dc-catholicism.blogspot.com/search?q=death+penalty
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of punishment is to convey justice. Secondary purposes are the deterrence of crime, etc. But the primary purpose is justice. When a murderer intentionally with premeditation takes the life of an innocent person, forfeiting his own life is just. We can take some further issues into account and extend mercy is some cases, but insofar as the punishment is just, not conveying the punishment is unjust.
ReplyDeleteI personally lost a friend to a murderer who was in jail on a life sentence for a murder he committed. He killed a prison guard escaping, killed two business men in a motel room where he decided to hide, torturing them to death, then he hitched a ride, was picked up by my friend. He pulled a gun, force my friend to dive to a secluded place, had him get out of the car and kneel down and then he executed him. Had he received the just capital punishment he deserved four more innocent people would not have died. That incident in my own life permanently changed my view of capital punishment.
From Facebook:
ReplyDeleteHave you heard of Claude Newman. People may be interested in this prison story.
Kathy
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=10889
What punishment is suitable for rapists of all kinds? What punishment is suitable for rapists who become fathers of children whom they never meet? What punishment will God have in store for them? What punishment awaits men who have multiple wives only to disown them when it suits? What punishment awaits abortionists who deprive a pre-born baby of not only temporal life but eternal life also?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCapital punishment must have added safeguards against convicting and executing the wrong person. In Culpeper County, Virginia some years ago, a Mr. Washington was almost killed after 20 years when authorities when, I believe, the real murderer admitted it was he who did it. My sons and many friends knew Earl, I think his first name was, and all agreed he was not the "type" to murder. Never mind, an overzealous prosecutor got a conviction. Others have been saved in our Commonwealth and across our Republic "at the last minute" so to speak. How often have innocence projects not succeeded? How many of the innocent have been "murdered" by the state? Until better ways of ensuring that only the guilty are executed and even though the very principle of justice demands some die for their crimes, and even though safety is compromised by bad judgment from authorities in going easy on killers, as our nation is ruled by the Culture of Death that allows abortion and euthanasia this government cannot be trusted to kill anyone!
ReplyDeleteYou raise some serious issues, turkeyridge. No one should ever be executed without a preponderance of evidence proving they're guilty and a threat to society. A person who commits an unpremeditated crime of passion should not be treated the same as a serial killer, for example.
ReplyDeleteI worry particularly about crimes like rape and armed robbery, though. Why should a rapist or robber not kill his victim to eliminate the witness to his crime? There is plenty of research indicating that capital punishment does serve as a deterrent. It's one thing to get a jail term, quite another to get a death sentence.
Those who usurp the Rights of God as the Creator and Author of Life forfeit their own limited right to life. The government that reneges on defending God's Rights, from which all human rights derive, is illegitimate. The government has an obligation to be
ReplyDeleteGod's Lieutenant and to defend and to avenge His Rights. No one can be truly pro-life who blasphemes and ignores first and foremost God's Rights. The criminal assailant, the user of contraception, and a Laicist government all blaspheme and usurp the Rights of God. Blasphemy cannot be justified and has no rights. Institutionalized blasphemy culminates in a mortal sin confessional society, culture and State. God abandons such blasphemers to the logical conclusion of their canonized mortal sins: Communism.