Some relevant points.
1. The official position on the Church--that is, the position of the magisterium--has long been that it is not "in principle" immoral for the state to impose the death penalty.
2. An important part of the justification for this position was that, in the words of the Angelic Doctor,
By sinning man departs from the
order of reason, and therefore falls away from human dignity, insofar as
man is naturally free and exists for his own sake, and falls somehow into the
slavery of the beasts, so that he may be disposed of according to what is
useful to others. . . . Therefore, although it be evil in
itself to kill a man who preserves his human dignity, nevertheless to
kill a man who is a sinner can be good, just as it can be good to kill a
beast. . . .
As E. Christian Brugger has explained:
"Though
the Catholic tradition has always affirmed the absolute immunity of innocent
human life from intentional attacks and destruction, moral culpability for
gravely wrong acts has traditionally been understood to forfeit that
status. The tradition is quite clear
that the lives of those who deliberately commit serious crimes are not
inviolable . . . . [Thomas] Aquinas says that
a grave sinner 'falls' from human dignity and may be treated as a beast, Pius
XII that a dangerous criminal, 'by his crime, . . . has
already disposed himself of his right to live.' In both cases, the life of the malefactor
through the malefactor’s own deliberate act(s) becomes violable."
3. So, the man-becomes-beast justification--the one-can-forfeit-one's-dignity justification--is no longer available as a (partial) buttress for the traditional teaching of the Church that it is not in principle immoral for the state to impose the death penalty.
4. Indeed, the position of John Paul II--and of such traditionailst stalwarts as Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, and John Finnis--is that it is in principle immoral for the state to impose the death penalty. Yes, the position of John Paul II is more radical that the official position of the Church. JP II taught that to execute a human being
is to fail to respect “the inalienable dignity of human life”; it is to treat
him as if he lacks inherent dignity.
Why did John Paul
II teach that it is always morally forbidden to kill
any human being, innocent
or not, intentionally? Brugger has explained that to kill someone
intentionally is necessarily to want to kill him (though it is not necessarily to want to be in
the situation in which one feels constrained to want to kill him), and to want
to kill a human being, no matter what “beneficial states of affairs [killing
him] promises, . . . is contrary to the charity we are
bound to have for all.” By contrast, to kill someone with foresight
but not intent is not necessarily to want to kill him; indeed, it may be that
one would rejoice if one’s action did not result in killing anyone, even if it
is virtually inevitable that one’s action will yield death.
So, according to
John Paul II, as interpreted by Brugger, one may never kill a human being
intentionally: “[T]he intentional destruction of a person’s life” is
necessarily a failure of love; it is necessarily “contrary to the charity we
are bound to have for all”; as such, it is necessarily a failure to respect
“the inalienable dignity of human life.” To respect the inalienable dignity of a human
being—to treat a human being as if he has inherent dignity, not as if he lacks it—is to treat him lovingly; to fail to treat him
lovingly—to act “contrary to the charity we are bound to have for all”—is to
fail to respect his inherent dignity. (“[W]hereas ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ represents the
Greek of the Septuagint (Leviticus 19:18) and of the New
Testament, the Hebrew from which the former is derived means rather ‘You shall
treat your neighbor lovingly, for he is like yourself.’”) Because to execute a human being is
necessarily to kill him intentionally, one may never execute a human
being. For government to execute a human
being is necessarily for it to treat him as if he lacks inherent dignity. According to this “unconditionalist”
principle, there are no
conditions in which it is morally permissible to execute a human being—or, more
generally, to kill a human being intentionally. The moral impermissibility of such action is unconditional: No matter
what conditions obtain—even if, for example, in a particular society capital punishment
has been shown to have a significant deterrent effect—to kill a human being
intentionally is beyond the moral pale.
5. So, make your choice: (1) The official position of the Church, which Brugger argues (and I agree) can no longer be justified. (2) John Paul II's radical position. (3) Some other position.
But what one should no longer do is proceed in blissful ignorance of the fact that the official position of the Church and the position of John Paul II are not the same.
If I had to choose between the two positions, I would choose JPII's position, which in my judgment has an integrity that the official position of the Church utterly lacks, now that the man-becomes-beast rationale has been excommunicated.
[For citations and fuller argument, which I provide in my recent essay on Capital Punishment and the Morality of Human Rights, click here.]
_______________
Michael P.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
In his column in today's New York Times, conservative pundit David Brooks has some interesting things to say. MOJ readers may be interested. To read the whole piece, click here. An excerpt follows:
May 26, 2005
A Natural Alliance
[W]e can have a culture war in this country, or we can have a war on
poverty, but we can't have both. That is to say, liberals and
conservatives can go on bashing each other for being godless hedonists
and primitive theocrats, or they can set those differences off to one
side and work together to help the needy.
The natural alliance for antipoverty measures at home and abroad is
between liberals and evangelical Christians. These are the only two
groups that are really hyped up about these problems and willing to
devote time and money to ameliorating them. If liberals and
evangelicals don't get together on antipoverty measures, then there
will be no majority for them and they won't get done.
Now, you might be thinking, fat chance. And I say to you: All around me I see
bonds being formed.
I recently went to a U2 concert in Philadelphia with a group of
evangelicals who have been working with Bono to fight AIDS and poverty
in Africa. A few years ago, U2 took a tour of the heartland, stopping
off at places like Wheaton College and the megachurch at Willow Creek
to urge evangelicals to get involved in Africa. They've responded with
alacrity, and now Bono, who is a serious if nonsectarian Christian, is
at the nexus of a vast alliance between socially conservative
evangelicals and socially liberal N.G.O.'s.
Today I'll be at a panel discussion on a proposed antipoverty bill
called the Aspire Act, which is co-sponsored in the Senate by social
conservatives like Rick Santorum and social liberals like Jon Corzine.
And when I look at the evangelical community, I see a community in
the midst of a transformation - branching out beyond the traditional
issues of abortion and gay marriage, and getting more involved in
programs to help the needy. I see Rick Warren, who through his new
Peace initiative is sending thousands of people to Rwanda and other
African nations to fight poverty and disease. I see Chuck Colson deeply
involved in Sudan. I see Richard Cizik of the National Association of
Evangelicals drawing up a service agenda that goes way beyond the
normal turf of Christian conservatives.
I see evangelicals who are more and more influenced by Catholic
social teaching, with its emphasis on good works. I see the historical
rift healing between those who emphasized personal and social morality.
Most of all, I see a new sort of evangelical leader emerging.
Millions of evangelicals are embarrassed by the people held up by
the news media as their spokesmen. Millions of evangelicals feel less
represented by the culture war-centered parachurch organizations, and
better represented by congregational pastors, who have a broader range
of interests and more passion for mobilizing volunteers to perform
service. Millions of evangelicals want leaders who live the faith by
serving the poor.
Serious differences over life issues are not going to go away. But
more liberals and evangelicals are realizing that you don't have to
convert people; sometimes you can just work with them. The world is
suddenly crowded with people like Rick Warren and Bono who are trying
to step out of the logic of the culture war so they can accomplish more
in the poverty war.
_______________
mp
Sightings 5/26/05
Petitioner or
Prophet?
-- David Domke and Kevin Coe
President Bush delivered his
first 2005 commencement address on May 21 at Calvin College, a small evangelical
Christian school in western Michigan. This address marked the latest
attempt by the Republican Party to use talk about God for political
gain.
In the past two months alone, GOP leaders have
suggested God is on their side in public discussions about the medical care of
Terri Schiavo, judicial-nominee votes in the U.S. Senate, and the treatment of
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay over charges of unethical conduct. This
follows an election in which the president regularly spoke of the need for
government to support "faith-based" initiatives, a religiously grounded "culture
of life," and traditional marriage.
For some time now there has been
heated debate about whether President Bush is different from other presidents in
his wielding of religious rhetoric. He is. What sets Bush apart is
both how much he talks about God and what he says when he does so.
In his
Inaugural and State of the Union addresses earlier this year, Bush referenced
God eleven times. This came on the heels of twenty-four invocations of God
in his first-term Inaugural and State of the Union addresses. No president
since Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 has mentioned God so often in these
high-state settings.
The president nearest Bush's average of 5.8
references per each of these addresses was Ronald Reagan, who averaged 5.3
references in his comparable speeches. No one else has come close.
Jimmy Carter, widely considered to be as pious as they come among U.S.
presidents, only mentioned God twice in four addresses. Other also-rans in
total God talk were wartime presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson at
1.8 and 1.5 references per address, respectively.
Bush also talks about
God differently than have most other modern presidents. Presidents since
Roosevelt have commonly spoken as petitioners to God, seeking blessing, favor,
and guidance. The current president has adopted a position approaching
that of a prophet, issuing declarations of divine desires for the nation and
world. Among modern presidents, only Reagan has spoken in a similar manner
-- and he did so far less frequently than has Bush. This change in
rhetoric from the White House is made all the more apparent by considering how
presidents have historically spoken about God and the values of freedom and
liberty, two ideas central to American identity.
For example, in 1941, Roosevelt, in a famous address
delineating four essential freedoms threatened by fascism, said: "This nation
has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free
men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God."
Similarly, John F. Kennedy, in 1962, during the height of the Cold War, said:
"[N]o nation has ever been so ready to seize the burden and the glory of
freedom. And in this high endeavor, may God watch over the United States
of America."
Contrast these statements, in which presidents requested
divine guidance, with Bush's claim in 2003 that "Americans are a free people,
who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every
nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is
God's gift to humanity." He has made similar statements a number of times,
across differing contexts of national addresses, presidential campaign debates,
and press conferences. These are not requests for divine favor; they are
declarations of divine wishes.
Such certainty about God's will is
troubling when found in a president and administration not known for kindly
brooking dissent. This makes it particularly noteworthy that Bush
encountered something in his visit to Calvin College that he has rarely faced as
president: vocal and public criticism from other Christians, many of them
evangelicals.
More than 800 faculty, alumni, students, and
friends of the college signed a letter published by the Grand Rapids Press,
decrying Bush administration policies. The letter included these words:
"By their deeds ye shall know them, says the Bible. Your deeds, Mr.
President -- neglecting the needy to coddle the rich, desecrating the
environment, and misleading the country into war -- do not exemplify the faith
we live by." Another letter expressing similar sentiments was signed by
one-third of Calvin's faculty, while dozens of graduating seniors wore stickers
on their caps and gowns that read, "God is not a Democrat or a
Republican."
Such courageous words prompt the hope that, in these
challenging times, politicians who are quick to speak about God might also learn
to listen.
David Domke is an Associate Professor in the Department
of Communication at the University of Washington, and is the author of God
Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the "War on Terror," and
the Echoing Press. Kevin Coe is a doctoral student in the Department
of Speech Communication at the University of Illinois.
----------
Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the
University of Chicago Divinity School.
Monday, May 23, 2005
[Those familiar with my work will not be surprised to learn that I believe that what the American Psychiatric Association did yesterday in my home town (Atlanta) was appropriate and indeed overdue. See Perry, Under God: Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy 55-97 (Cambridge, 2003); Perry, Religion in Politics: Constitutional and Moral Perspectives 85-96 (Oxford, 1997).
Note that the APA "is addressing same-sex civil marriage, not religious marriages."]
The New York Times
May 23, 2005
Psychiatric Group May Make a Stand for Gay Marriage
By the Associated Press
ATLANTA, May 22 (AP) - Representatives of the nation's top
psychiatric group approved a statement on Sunday urging legal
recognition of same-sex marriage.
If approved by the association's directors in July, the measure
would make the group, the American Psychiatric Association, the first
major medical organization to take such a stance.
The statement supports same-sex marriage "in the interest of maintaining and promoting mental health."
It follows a similar measure by the American Psychological
Association last year, three decades after that group removed
homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
The psychiatric association's statement, approved by voice vote on
the first day of its weeklong annual meeting in Atlanta, cites the
"positive influence of a stable, adult partnership on the health of all
family members."
The resolution recognizes "that gay men and lesbians are full human
beings who should be afforded the same human and civil rights," said
Dr. Margery Sved, a psychiatrist from Raleigh, N.C., who is a member of
the assembly's committee on gay and lesbian issues.
The statement says that the association is addressing same-sex
civil marriage, not religious marriages. It takes no position on any
religion's views on marriage.
Massachusetts is the only state that allows same-sex marriage.
Eighteen states have passed constitutional amendments outlawing
same-sex marriage.
_______________
mp
Sunday, May 22, 2005
[This piece, from yesterday's Boston Globe, surely gives Catholic social theorists food for thought. Mark? Steve?]
A Steeper Ladder for the Have-Nots
Derrick Z. Jackson
It is stunning to see the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times simultaneously
devote a series to the American class divide. The Journal reported last Friday,
"Despite the widespread belief that the US remains a more mobile society than Europe, economists
and sociologists say that in recent decades the typical child starting out in
poverty in continental Europe or in Canada has had a better chance at prosperity."
In an echo, the Times wrote vitually the same thing, adding that in America,
a child's economic background is a better predictor of school performance than
in Denmark the Netherlands or France. The
best that could be said was that class mobility in the United States is "not as low as in developing
countries like Brazil,
where escape from poverty is so difficult that the lower class is all but
frozen in place."
Oh joy. This is what we have come to? Comparisons to developing countries?
Another odd thing about the series is that the mainstays of the mainstream
press are making a big deal out of the divide after years in which many
economists warned that our policies were plunging us straight toward Brazil.
For years, groups like the Boston-based United for a Fair Economy and the
Institute for Policy Studies sent up smoke signals that should have been a
smoking gun.
In 1973, the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay was 43 to 1. By 1992, it was 145
to 1. By 1997, it was 326 to 1. By 2000, it hit a sky-high 531 to 1. The post
9/11 shakeouts and corporate scandals of recent years on the surface narrowed
the gap back to 301 to 1 in 2003. But a much worse parallel global gap is
emerging in the era of outsourcing. United for a Fair Economy published a
report last summer that found CEOs of the top US outsourcing companies made
1,300 times more than their computer programmers in India and 3,300 more than
Indian call-center employees.
Such groups say if the minimum wage kept up with the rise in CEO pay, it
would be $15.76 an hour instead of its current $5.15. Looking at it another
way, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, another often written-off
liberal think tank, published a report last month that in the last three years,
the share of US national income that goes toward corporate profits is at its
highest levels since World War II, while the share of national income that goes
to wages and salaries is at a record low.
This completes a perfect storm over the last quarter century of corporate
welfare for those with the most among us and vilification for those with the
least. Americans have been seduced by simplistic notions of rugged
individualism to vote more to punish people (welfare mothers, prison booms, and
affirmative action in the 1990s, and gay marriage in 2004) than for programs
and policies that might lead to healing the gaps (national healthcare and
revamped public schools).
It is obvious that Americans believed that none of the inequalities long
endured by the poor (because it's all their fault, right?) would seep into our
lives. We were wrong. With suburban schools slashing their budgets, healthcare
costs rising, retirement funds in doubt, and the next generation facing a drop
in their life span from obesity and diabetes, the nation is sliding into a
dangerous place.
A quarter century of a "mine, all mine" ethos continues to work
for CEOs and the upper class. The rest of America finds the ladder taller and steepening. Much of the nation is now one
catastrophic injury away from falling into poverty. It should be a national
emergency that stratification in the richest nation in the world has us fading
from the relative mobility of Europe and sinking toward
the discouragement in developing countries.
It is no wonder why politicians who protect the
wealthy scream "class warfare" every time someone talks about
inequity. It is a diversion to keep those who vote against their own interests
from realizing they are victims of friendly fire.
_______________
mp
There is a very interesting story about United States Senator Rick Santorum--it's the cover story--in today's New York Times Magazine. Sen. Santorum, as many MOJ readers know, is a pro-life Republican senator--two-term senator--from Pennsylvania. In November 2006, Pennsylvania voters will have to choose between Santorum and the pro-life Democratic senatorial candidate, Robert Casey Jr., the son of the late, pro-life Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Robert Casey Sr. To read the article, titled The Believer, click here.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
[I assume that neither John Noonan nor Peter Steinfels need any introduction to MOJ readers.]
The New York Times
May 22, 2005
'A Church That Can and Cannot Change': Dogma
By PETER STEINFELS
FOUR decades ago, Roman Catholics were hit over the head by revisions
of church teaching and practice authorized by the world's bishops at
the Second Vatican Council. If the language of the Mass, prohibition of
meat on Friday and, most striking, the church's unrelenting contrast
between its truths and the errors of every other religion could be
altered, what couldn't be? Doctrine on contraception? Divorce and
remarriage? Capital punishment? Same-sex relationships? Ordination of
women?
If religions are alive, as Catholicism surely is, they change. But
while some changes may reflect a justifiable, even necessary,
adaptation to new knowledge or circumstances, others may be a trimming
of religious truth. How do you tell the difference? It is a question
brought into sharp focus again with the death of Pope John Paul II and
the election of Benedict XVI.
Historically, Catholicism solved the problem of change simply by
denying it. Understandings of the Trinity, the priesthood, the papacy,
the Mass and the sacraments that emerged over a long time were
projected back into New Testament texts. Theologians joked that when a
pope or other official circuitously introduced a modification of church
teaching, he would begin, ''As the church has always taught. . . .''
Such denial, still widespread, means that examining change in official
teaching -- or what became known in the 19th century as ''development
of doctrine'' -- poses two challenges: first, to establish that
alterations -- some more than minor -- have unquestionably occurred;
and second, to show how they can be reconciled with the church's claim
to preach the same essential message Jesus and his disciples did 2,000
years ago, presumably deriving criteria that can help distinguish
legitimate evolution in the future from deviations or betrayals.
Among American Catholics, John T. Noonan Jr. is specially situated for
this pursuit. He is a distinguished law professor; a judge on the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; and the author of
many books on jurisprudence, legal history and ethics, and church law.
In the 1960's, when a papal commission re-examined Catholic teaching on
contraception, a magisterial 1965 study by Noonan, tracing the history
of the doctrine, was widely used to support change. In the 70's, in
equally learned arguments, he criticized the Supreme Court's ruling for
a right to abortion and campaigned for a constitutional amendment to
protect the unborn. On the appeals court since 1986, he is known for
granting stays of execution to death-row prisoners. So he is impossible
to place in the polarized geography of liberals and conservatives --
Catholic and non-Catholic.
. . .
[John Courtney] Murray declared 40 years ago that development of doctrine ''is the
underlying issue'' of Vatican II. It remains fundamental for
Catholicism, Islam and other faiths too. What Noonan brings to it in
this invaluable book is unblinking honesty about the record of the
church to which he is deeply devoted. That is a standard for anyone
wishing to pursue the conversation.
[To read the rest--and it's certainly worth reading (on slavery, etc.)--click here.]
_______________
Michael P.
