W. 🐑🦁

Another part of the superb address by @Pontifex that calls for comment is a passing remark he makes about capital punishment. He expresses the hope that “efforts are made to abolish the death penalty, a measure that destroys all hope of forgiveness and renewal.” This is brief but significant. A few points: First, as my longtime readers know, I think it has been a mistake for recent popes to call for complete abolition of capital punishment. The first and most important problem here is that in the case of Pope Francis in particular, several of his statements on the topic were so extreme that they seemed to imply that the death penalty is per se or intrinsically evil. That would be heterodox, because it contradicts the consistent teaching of scripture and all previous popes. Neither John Paul II nor Benedict XVI taught such a thing or said anything that implied it. And neither does Pope Leo in this recent statement. He appeals instead to a certain prudential consideration – and a very important one that I’ll comment on in a moment – without making the mistake of implying that the death penalty is inherently wrong. Second, the reason I think that the call for complete abolition is a mistaken prudential judgment is that I think that keeping the death penalty on the books as an option in at least some cases remains essential to protecting the public. This has nothing whatsoever to do with a bloodthirsty desire to find some rationale for killing people (contrary to a crude calumny often flung at me). It has to do with a number of empirical considerations, such as the following. Though the social scientific arguments are a matter of controversy, there remains a strong case for holding that the death penalty has significant deterrence value. There are also contexts in which the most dangerous murderers remain a threat to others even when imprisoned. For example, they sometimes murder other prisoners or guards, or (in the case of mobsters) they order murders from behind prison walls. Since they are already in prison, there is no way to deter them from such actions without the potential threat of the death penalty. There are also cases in which prosecutors find the threat of capital punishment invaluable. For example, murderers who face the possibility of execution will sometimes cooperate (by revealing the identities of dangerous accomplices who remain at large, for example) in exchange for getting a lighter sentence. Abolishing capital punishment removes this essential tool for protecting the public. And so on. Unfortunately, churchmen these days never address such considerations. They have no response and just ignore them. Reflexive opposition to the death penalty has by repetition been so “baked in” to the standard rhetoric that they just repeat it rather thoughtlessly. I don’t expect this to change any time soon, but at least Pope Leo has so far not been as extreme and irresponsible in his rhetoric on this topic as his predecessor was. And this brings me to the next, and very important, point which is: Third, Pope Leo does not appeal in his address to rhetoric about human dignity. John Paul II did that, though always in a qualified way that made it clear that he was not saying that the death penalty was always or intrinsically contrary to human dignity. Francis did it in a rhetorically extreme and reckless way that did imply that it is inherently contrary to human dignity. Benedict’s approach, by contrast, was to appeal to another consideration, namely that refraining from executing the offender leaves open the possibility of his repentance. And that, rather than an appeal to human dignity, is the consideration Leo raises in his address. This is very important. The appeal to the possibility of repentance has always, in my view, been the only really serious argument against capital punishment. And it is the only one that has strong roots in the tradition. The fixation on capital punishment’s alleged conflict with human dignity is a modern innovation (and a theologically problematic one, as I have argued elsewhere). Now, even the appeal to the possibility of repentance is not, in my opinion, an absolutely compelling argument. For one thing, it is an argument that many in the tradition have considered but reject. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas considers it but rejects it as “frivolous,” on the grounds that someone who is at all likely to repent in the first place would be more likely to be moved to repentance by the fact that he will soon be executed, not less. Another consideration is that it is not just murderers, but also their potential victims, whose repentance we need to worry about. Suppose someone would have repented of his sins had he not been murdered. If the threat of the death penalty really would (for the reasons given above) have prevented his murderer from killing him, then abolishing the death penalty also closes the door to repentance for some people (namely the victims of murder). Hence, whether to keep the death penalty on the books remains, of its very nature, a matter of prudential judgment about which reasonable people can disagree. There is simply no good case for speaking peremptorily as if it should absolutely never be an option (much less for treating it as intrinsically evil). All the same, Pope Leo’s more sober and traditional style of opposition to it is a welcome development.

First, Matt, you don’t understand how an analogy works. Yes, countries are not families. But an analogy doesn’t require the two analogues to be identical. Rather, it merely requires that they are in certain respects similar. And that there is an important analogy here is a standard theme in Catholic and natural law political philosophy. For example, Aquinas says: “The ruler of a household is called father, not king, although he bears a certain resemblance to the king, for which reason kings are sometimes called the fathers of their peoples” (De Regno I, 2). But maybe you’ll dismiss that as silly too. Awful luck for St. Thomas, I guess. But second, the “family” part of the analogy is not in any case what was doing the main work. Rather, the more important bit had to do with what putting something “first” entails. And the point is that putting someone or something “first” simply does not entail making anyone else a “subordinate vassal” or the like. The family analogy isn’t necessary to see that. For example, if you put your best friend first, that doesn’t entail bullying other people (your dentist, your greengrocer, your next door neighbor, etc.). If you put your dog first, that doesn’t entail kicking other dogs around. And so on. Similarly, putting America first simply doesn’t entail turning other countries into “subordinate vassals.” If this rather obvious point still somehow eludes you, maybe it would help to consult a dictionary and look up “first.” Third, as to the colonialism of the Catholic empires, that’s a complicated topic, but whatever one thinks of it, winning the New World for Christ is a rather different thing from winning Venezuela for Exxon, or even for the sake of a Pax Americana. And even then it was too often carried out by cruel means (such as enslavement) that the popes and the greatest Scholastics of the time condemned as gravely evil. They were ignored, just as you and too many other Catholics are ignoring the Church’s teaching now. Anyway, since we’re on the topic of silly analogies, I think comparing Trump to Columbus takes the prize. Fourth and finally, your “against that now” remark insinuates that I’ve somehow changed my mind about something. I haven’t changed at all. You’re mistaking your own movement for mine, like the man on a departing train who thinks the railroad platform is speeding away from him. All I’ve been doing is upholding the traditional teaching of the Church, like you used to do.