More on the Death Penalty

I wanted to add to Michael Perry's previous post by taking a more pragmatic look at the Church's emergent teaching on the death penalty in light of the political and social realities that exist in the United States. Assume, arguendo, that Church teaching does not forbid the use of the death penalty in certain limited circumstances. Is there any way to argue that the social and political conditions of the United States fit any possible understanding of these limed circumstances? Given that we have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, the United States seems quite capable of keeping dangerous people in prison. I cannot think of a circumstance in which life in prison without parole (or multiple life sentences) would not provide adequate protection to the public from a criminal in this country, no matter how heinous his or her crime. What, then, justifies the participation of American Catholics in the maintenance, promotion, and extention of a system of capital punishment?

I don't think this situation is as different from abortion as some would like to claim. The foundational principle in both issues is that intentional killing is wrong. There is no exception to this rule that applies to use of capital punishment in the United States, just as there is no exception to intentionally killing a child in utero. To say that abortion is never permissable but because capital punishment might be sometimes, somewhere, in theory it is okay to support candidates and political parities that champion the use of the death penalty strikes me as not seeing the forest for the trees. In this regard, is Justice Scalia really all that different from John Kerry? I don't think so.

Why does American culture see human beings as disposable? Why do we worship material comfort and personal perfection, and damn those who can't keep up or who are inconvenient, to marginalization, despair, and in some cases, death?

Vince