Choose Life

Many MOJ contributors have identified and have begun to discuss some important aspects of contemporary issues including abortion and capital punishment. I shall begin this posting with a passage from the Book of Deuteronomy (30:15, 19):

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity… I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendents may live.

Let me begin with a few thoughts about capital punishment and another command made by God that we must not kill. Today I discuss abortion and capital punishment seasoned with a few references to euthanasia. But there remains the question of the use of lethal force in self-defense that I will put aside, for the time being.

History has certainly presented the human race with enough monstrous tyrants who have earned the harshest punishment for the torturous deaths that they have meted out to others. But does this mean that the Christian, the Catholic, when justice is to be administered to the perpetrator, must implement the eye-for-an-eye sort of punishment? I do not believe so. Several MOJ contributors have indicated that civil society and the Church, in both of which we claim membership, are moving away from the use of capital punishment for the most outrageous crimes. I have also been following another argument outside of MOJ made by advocates opposed to lethal injection execution that the chemical cocktail administered during this form of capital punishment constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment.” The recent experience of a condemned man informing the death chamber authorities that “it’s not working” reinforces their concerns. I find merit in their argument, but I wonder why advocates for euthanasia have not caught on to this problem since their chemical cocktails are geared to a “noble” purpose in their estimation—the use of a cruel and unusual means of accelerating death that is voluntarily chosen. But, I digress.

In considering the question about the permissibility of capital punishment, there remains a series of issues that must be addressed with the application of right reason as developed in the context of Catholic moral teaching. Defining these issues clearly aids in understanding the objectives that any punishment, including the death penalty, can serve in advancing the proper interests of victims and their families, the guilty who have committed serious crimes, and society as a whole. This inquiry enables us to consider suitably the important matters related to just punishment involving: the self-defense or protection of society; retribution or vengeance; the deterrent quality of the punishment; and the goals of compensation, restoration, rehabilitation, and reconciliation. When all is said, it should appear that there are other means of protecting ourselves and our society from the perpetrators of heinous acts without accelerating their death. Since God gave each person the gift of life, it is for God to call that person to respond to and account for the sins of commission or omission during one’s lifetime, and society should exercise caution, prudence, and wisdom so God’s plan of salvation for everyone can be fulfilled. To interfere with this salvific plan is not a proper human activity. Even if the condemned were to give consent, no one must interfere as directly as capital punishment would interfere with God’s justice and God’s reward or denial of His plan. Even the justly convicted must be given, notwithstanding other punishment including life imprisonment, the opportunity for redemption, and to reduce by artificial means the time in which the convicted person’s redemption might take place is to place a human judgment before God’s. As teachers of the law and as Christians, we have a variety of duties in regard to God’s plan.

And this brings me to the question of abortion. Taking the life of the innocent is even more reprehensible than taking the life of the scoundrel. It is intriguing to reflect on the position held by some that taking the life of those guilty of the most heinous criminal activity is a moral outrage but taking the life of the innocent person (I use the term intentionally) is not. And how does the Christian, the Catholic respond to this? Well, we have not far to go to acknowledge that taking the blameless life is also wrong. But we are confronted with an irony in the law, an irony that our society and we, as it members, must take responsibility. That irony is presented by the irreconcilable conflict of the “legal reasoning” of Roper v. Simmons on the one hand (which precludes the taking of the life of a thug who happens to be a minor) and that of Roe v. Wade and Stenberg v. Carhart (which permit the taking of the life of the guiltless on a massive scale) on the other.

And what are we to do as Catholic legal theorists about these situations? If it is impossible to do away with them immediately, we must not surrender hope that these actions which offend our moral senses need be permanent fixtures in our legal landscape. We have a duty to demonstrate the inextricable link between the moral natural law and the law which society should and can conceive. But our activities cannot stop here. The question has been correctly posed: what does prudence (and for that matter, the other virtues including justice, courage, and wisdom, etc.) require of us in this task? While the underlying precepts of the moral and civil law are different, the two necessarily must overlap. The civil law must guarantee the fundamental rights given to us by God through an ordered society; the state is not the author of these rights; God is their source. If each of us (be we citizen, legislator, or judge) cannot immediately change that which threatens the most fundamental right upon which all others are based—the inviolable right to life—we are still called to minimize the threat to this right. In those cases where it is impossible, for the time being, to expunge the offensive law, it is imperative to begin the process of limiting the harm that is achieved by it so that its consequences will decline. As the Church teaches, this does not represent improper cooperation with an evil, but it is the duty of the faithful individual to limit the effect of the law in its evil aspects. [Evangelium Vitae; 2002 Doctrinal Note of the CDF on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life] And, like Thomas More, we can also pray for a miracle in the meantime.

Also in the meantime, we need to take stock of the consequences that these existing laws have or can have on other members of society—particularly those whose consciences may be imperiled if they are required to comply with an evil law. John Paul II reminded us that we are participants in democracy, but he counseled that a democracy that loses its moral compass and corresponding values easily converts into an “open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.” Thus, there remains the Christian and Catholic duty to see that such persons who object to evil in the law remain protected so that they are not forced into complicity with those laws which are evil and cannot yet be changed. John Paul also exhorted us: “To refuse to take part in committing an injustice is not only a moral duty; it is also a basic human right.” And, as Rick notes, “we are permitted by the Court to have such conversations about capital punishment.” However, can the same be said about abortion? About euthanasia? About other moral issues that lie in wait on the horizon? In the interim, our classroom teaching, our research and writing, and our debate in this MOJ forum might serve as a humble but essential beginning of the affirmative task God has given us: to choose life.      RJA sj