From Plato to Pope Francis: The Natural Law & Capital Punishment
For last month's Life Week, Georgetown Right to Life (GU RTL) hosted Father Steven Fields, S.J. for a discussion on the death penalty and the ethical and theological arguments against its continued usage.
Framing the Conversation: What is Natural Law?
Father Fields began the evening by breaking down the basics of natural law, a system of ethics whereby our human nature, equipped by reason, is capable of determining what is right and wrong. Its roots lie not in theology but rather in Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, and it has one foundational premise: evil may never be done such that good may result. Consequently, when it comes to the taking of human life, the Catholic Church considers it always wrong and evil by nature when both (1) the life is innocent and (2) the taking of the life is direct.
Nearly Two Millennia of Church Teaching on Capital Punishment
Church teaching on capital punishment has not been static, noted Father Fields. Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas both defended the state's right to capital punishment to protect the common good, which remained the prevailing church perspective until 1995 when Pope Saint John Paul II (JPII) released his "Gospel of Life" papal encyclical on the sanctity of human life.
A Seismic Shift Under Pope Saint John Paul II
In the encyclical, JPII remarked that circumstances had significantly changed concerning a state's ability to protect its populace against would-be evil-doers. Before the 18th century, most punishments for crimes were corporal and capital punishment was seen as necessary to protect the common good: without penitentiaries, no viable alternatives existed.
Given the substantial change in circumstances since then, JPII argues that capital punishment should be avoided unless it is the only way to defend society writ large against malefactors. And while JPII neither (a) denies states' right to employ capital punishment nor (b) characterizes capital punishment as an intrinsic evil, he does assert that a state's resort to capital punishment should be "very rare, if not practically nonexistent."
Pope Francis Takes Things One Step Further
In August of 2018, Pope Francis changed the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to say that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” No matter how serious the crime, the widespread development of effective detention systems render the recourse to capital punishment wholly unacceptable. These alternate and more humane detention systems both (1) "ensure the due protection of citizens" and (2) "do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption." As Father Fields observed, no one has ever used such strong words in critique of this issue. In changing the words of the Catechism-- an authoritative document-- Pope Francis was acting as the vicar of Christ and not simply voicing his own opinion, obligating Catholics to abide by the change.
Singapore, the U.S., & the Case Against the Death Penalty
One of the issues that surfaced in the Q&A session was that of Singapore and its extensive use of capital punishment for drug dealers and possessors, including low-level offenders, as part of its zero-tolerance policy. Singapore's government maintains that the consistent use of capital punishment protects the common good and has a deterrence effect on both drug usage and crime.
While this defense would presumably hold up in pre-penitentiary days, the case for using capital punishment to protect the common good can no longer be sustained. Further, Singapore's policy and rationale should not be used to justify capital punishment in the U.S. for a few salient reasons.
First, since 1973, 167 former death-row inmates in the U.S. have been fully exonerated and released. We don't know how many innocent people have wrongly been executed, but we do know of at least several prominent cases including those of Cameron Todd Willingham and Carlos DeLuna.
Second, the National Research Council found in 2012 that "research to date is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on homicide rates": in other words, the deterrence argument has yet to be substantiated.
There is a breadth of reasons for opposing the death penalty and these reasons (which I far from exhausted) are based not just in theology and ethics but also in empirical evidence, scientific studies, and more pragmatic considerations of cost-efficiency. While I am most personally persuaded by the former, I challenge others to consider the wide range of ways in which the continued usage of the death penalty is at odds with a consistent ethic of life.
Kerry Ashkenaze (Service Chair, SFS ‘21)
