The Right to Kill?

The Right to Kill? 

 

In recent weeks the debate within the Catholic tradition has once again surfaced.  Certain groups of Catholics who support the death penalty have made various arguments to support the practice, arguing against St. Pope John Paul II’s arguments against the death penalty that appear in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae – arguments which now exist in additional magisterial form in the revised Catechism of the Catholic Church.  Since appeals to the teaching authority of the Church have not been persuasive for this group, and the discussion seems at an impasse, perhaps another approach is necessary in examining the issue.

Catholic moral theology has long held that the only time a person or nation has a right to use lethal force is in self-defense.  However, the right of self-defense is itself limited and has the following four conditions:

1. The aggression against which you are defending yourself must be unjust.
2. The aggression must be actual, i.e. imminent or present or still lasting.  After the aggression has taken place, however, killing is no longer self-defense but revenge.
3. The defense must limit itself to means which are proportionate to the greatness of the danger.  Attacks against life would qualify under this condition.
4. The act of self-defense must be confined to that minimum of violence which is necessary and sufficient to obtain the justified purpose of defense.  If a person can defend oneself without recourse to violence, they are obligated to do so.  Killing in self-defense when it is not justified is itself a crime, both in the moral realm and civil realm.

(cf. Karl Peschke, Christian Ethics: Morality in the Light of Vatican II, vol. 2, p. 330-331)

It is generally regarded that the state can use lethal force only in the act of self-defense, and so the principles that apply to individual morality also persist for communities of peoples too. 

Given the conditions for self-defense noted above, it is clear that recourse to the death penalty fails on two accounts:

First, to take the life of a person after an aggression has taken place is not an act of self-defense, but rather an act of revenge.  It would be one thing if the person who took life were not able to be restrained in any other way, and the self-defense of the rest of the population required the execution of the offender.  However, that dynamic does not exist in the modern age.  We have adequate prison systems that can keep violent offenders from ever harming another person in the community.

This fact leads to the second reason why the death penalty fails in Catholic moral theology within the conditions noted above:  the death penalty does not use the minimum amount of violence necessary and sufficient to protect society.  In executing someone when lesser means are present and sufficient is itself a crime against human life. 

One might also raise the issue of whether in each instance the aggression is certain and real.  How many people have been imprisoned falsely for crimes they did not commit?  How many people have been executed for crimes they did not commit?  We might pause and consider this fact before having recourse to a punishment that, if applied unjustly, has no remedy.

Finally, Karl Peschke reminds us of one final point regarding self-defense:  “There is generally no obligation to defend one’s rights by means of killing an aggressor.  Christian love may refrain from taking the life of an unjust aggressor and choose to suffer injustice.  But one would be obliged to disable an aggressor in self-defense if one’s life were necessary for the support and protection of one’s family or of a community.”  (ibid. p. 332-333)