Punishing Christians

I was going through some things today (avoidance behavior), and came across a paper by Stanley Hauerwas, "Punishing Christians," which he had presented at Notre Dame a few years ago.  It is, among other things, a fascinating engagement with John Paul II, Oliver O'Donovan, and Cardinal Dulles on punishment theory and capital punishment.  The paper's conclusion, I thought, is particularly interesting:  "What Christians have to offer our non-Christian brothers and sisters is not a better theory [of punishment], but a practice of punishment that can be imitated. . . .  Christians . . . fail themselves and their non-Christian neighbors when they act as if punishment is a problem 'out there.'  What Christians must first give to the world is to be a community that can punish.  Only then will the world have an example of what it might mean to be a community that punishes in a manner appropriate for a people who believe that we have been freed by the cross of Christ from the terror of death."