The Bishops

Thanks to Rick for the prod to clarify my view of the Bishops' statements "A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death."  I didn't mean to communicate "enthusiam" for the document; indeed, I am in complete agreement with some of Rick's criticisms/reservations, and these lead me to give the document a grade of B- on a generous day.  It was my disappointment with much of the rest of what the Bishops did recently in D.C. that led me to give thanks for their continuing, if in a clumsy and analytically-challenged way, their important work of opposing capital punishment in the United States.  The curious thing about the U.S. Bishops today is that, with respect to so many issues, they're so slow to be Bishops.  Take the recent meeting as a sufficient example.  The liturgy should be at the top of their list of things to do right, but instead the annual meeting showed yet more unwillingess to move decisively to bring better liturgical texts into use.  (One doesn't have to agree with me on the merits of the proposed translations to conclude that the "with all deliberate speed" approach to the liturty would leave our forebears rubbing their sacramental eyes).  Similarly, the Bishops have decided to meet with politicians in aid of their forthcoming guidelines regarding the scandal to the faithful that prevents a minister from communicating politicians pursuing certain public courses.  One would have thought that the Bishops would have come up with guidelines and then shared them with those whom they are intended for; instead, the Bishops are conculting non-expert laity on the matter of safeguarding the sacrament and the ecclesial communion.  The Bishops' particular forms of embrace of lay ministry are another example from last week.  They may be technically correct, as Cardinal Dulles seems to think; I couldn't presume to second-guess his Eminence.  But there is also reason to believe that they reflect a growing crisis in confidence in the role of the ordained in the ministerial life of the Church (in the United States).  One can agree with the Council's statements on the laity without welcoming the emergent theology of lay ministry.

It was in this (to me) depressing context that I welcomed the Bishops' fresh opposition to capital punishment.  That said, the analytical problems inherent in what made its way into the Catechism aren't going away.  If what Catechism advances is a prudential judgment about administering the death penalty today, neither the Roman Pontiff nor the U.S. Bishops have a privileged place in reaching this judgment; here they should defer to laity who are competent to judge what is necessary for the protection of the common good.  I agree with Rick that the Bishops are, here again, insufficiently forthcoming about the fact that retribution is a doctrine of punishmeht that the Church (still) approves.  The proper question, from this angle, is whether the penalty of death is disproportionte to a particular convict's culpability; even John Paul II never said that the death penalty is always and everywhere disproportionate.  The Bishops' (and the Compendium's) focus on the non-retributive grounds of punishment obscure the Church's teaching that fault is (a necessary condition) and proper basis of punishment.

I recently discovered Jacques Maritain's last (1970) comment on capital punishment:  "In my opinion it is only in the case of legitimate defense or of defensive war that the putting to death of a human being is not a sin of homicide, and capital punishment is in itself such a sin committed by society."  Is this because he knows that society never will find it necessary to defend itself by killing a culpable malefactor?  Or because death always and everywhere is disproportionate to human wrongdoing?  Maritain certainly believed that civil authorities have the responsibility to punish culpable wrongdoers as justice demands.

Anyway, two cheers for the Bishops on capital punishment.