Protecting Life By Taking It Away (Jeff Jacoby Raps Catholic Church's Defense Of Murderers Alert)

Last month, by a vote of 237-4, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a pastoral statement calling for an end to the death penalty. The 20-page document -- "A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death" -- makes a number of claims. Among them: that the execution of murderers "violates respect for human life and dignity," that it fuels a "cycle of violence [that] diminishes us all," and that "we have other ways to punish criminals and protect society." The bishops acknowledge in passing that Catholic teaching has never banned the death penalty outright or declared it "intrinsically evil." Nevertheless, they insist, since the modern state "has other non-lethal means to protect its citizens, the state should not use the death penalty."

They aren't breaking new theological ground. Pope John Paul II made a similar argument about the death penalty in his 1995 encyclical "Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life)." But the new document is shockingly blunt in brushing aside the suffering of the victims, or the viciousness of the murder, as irrelevant to the question of capital punishment. "No matter how heinous the crime," it says, "if society can protect itself without ending a human life, it should do so."

Executing killers, in other words, has nothing to do with justice. No act of murder, however calculated or cruel or catastrophic, requires as a matter of sheer decency that the murderer make atonement by forfeiting his life. In the world according to bishops, the death penalty never balances the scales of moral judgment. Timothy McVeigh shouldn't have been executed. Ted Bundy shouldn't have been executed. Not even Osama bin Laden, with the blood of thousands on his hands, would deserve to be executed if we had him in our power.

This is what it means, the bishops claim, "to reject a culture of death, and to build a culture of life." Their pastoral statement closes with a quotation from Deuteronomy 30: "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live." Choose life, that is, by keeping murderers alive.

But is that really what Deuteronomy teaches? Does God frown on the death penalty even when it comes to the worst killers in our midst?

I am neither Catholic nor a theologian, and I wouldn't presume to teach religion to a bishop. On the other hand, the new statement's authors write that their purpose is to "encourage engagement and dialogue" on a subject about which "people of goodwill disagree." In that spirit of dialogue and goodwill, then, some reflections:

The point of view the bishops express is sharply at odds with the Judeo-Christian tradition in which American law is rooted. It is no coincidence that the United States is the only advanced Western nation in which (some) murderers are still put to death. The United States was founded by religious believers; its culture to this day remains deeply influenced by faith and the Bible. And on this point, biblical tradition is unambiguous: For premeditated murder, death is an appropriate punishment.

No passage in the Bible -- Old *or* New Testament -- disapproves of the death penalty, which is why the bishops do not cite one. The Sixth Commandment (in Catholic reckoning, the Fifth) is clearly no bar to capital punishment. The penalty for those who violate "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13) is made explicit just a few lines later: "Whoever strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to death" (Exodus 21:12). The text goes on to specify that this applies only to deliberate murder, not unintentional killing. Accidents are not capital crimes. But for a willful killer, there can be no sanctuary: "Take him even from My altar and put him death" (Exodus 21:14).

Similar declarations appear in all five books of Moses, nowhere more dramatically or universally than in Genesis. Speaking to Noah after the Flood, God enjoins him -- and through him, all of human society -- to affirm the sanctity of human life by making murderers pay the ultimate price for their crime. "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has man been made" (Genesis 9:6). *By man shall his blood be shed.* Scripture could hardly be more explicit, yet the bishops make no mention of Genesis 9:6. They deride the idea that we can "teach that killing is wrong by killing those who kill."

Of course American law is not governed by biblical quotations. But our legal system *is* deeply influenced by Judeo-Christian morality -- the same moral framework to which the bishops' statement appeals. And Judeo-Christian teaching has always been clear: When murderers keep their lives, human blood is cheapened. That is why reverence for life and capital punishment belong to the same ethical tradition. Civilized communities have not only the right but the responsibility to execute murderers. It may be a difficult responsibility to carry out. It may involve an assertion of moral authority that modern thinkers condemn.

But easy or not, popular or not, the duty is ours to perform. The protection of human life is a grave obligation -- never more so than when it involves taking a life away.

Here's a copy of an e-mail message I wrote to Jeff Jacoby:

Dear Jeff,

You're one of my favorite people to read because I appreciate your integrity, civility, intelligence. (Give yourself a pat on the back, mumbling --- as I do, when I'm complimented --- "True, true..." ) ;^D

Brother, let me share a few roving thoughts here on the death penalty and related issues.

I read somewhere that 500 people a year were murdered by murderers who had already been convicted of previous murders. I think that was in California alone. (Don't quote me on this, because I can't remember the exact figure.) That certainly impressed me with the importance of removing murderers from society permanently.

I have always been in favor of a life-sentence-without-possibility-of-parole for murderers, seeing it as an effective way to protect society. My only exception would be if the offender re-offends while in prison. In other words, if the convicted criminal assaults another prisoner or a guard while in prison, he (or she) is demonstrating that even imprisonment, in this case, is not sufficient to protect society. In such cases I think execution (swift and certain) would be justified.

I don't know why the Catholic Bishops didn't try to build a Biblical case against the death penalty. The could have at least cited Genesis (in re: Cain) where the murder was completely unprovoked, against an innocent, God-pleasing man, and a brother at that, and yet the murderer's life was not only spared, but protected by God.

In another murder-most-foul, God spared King David's life though his deeds were despicable, because he was repentant.

The Bishops ought also to have cited and commented upon the pro-death-penalty Scriptures which were deployed so effectively in your column. Brushing them off lightly, or ignoring them altogether, certainly seems like pastoral incompetence to me.

Anyhow, our positions may be fairly close, yours and mine, even though we still disagree at some points. The Catholic Church has never taught (and will never teach) that the death penalty is intrinsically wrong; and since you have challenged me to wrestle with this question, I thank you for it.

Now, on to the question of torture:

I have made a list of conservative, pro-life writers who have come out unequivocally against torture. It includes: Eve Tushnet, Roberto Rivera, Victor Davis Hanson, and Mark Shea. And Nat Hentoff, who's not exactly conservative but he is blessedly pro-life. And oh yes: Jeff Jacoby!!

What am I doing with this list? I don't know. Certainly not organizing a committee (although perhaps that wouldn't be a bad idea.) I copied out the list, and now I gaze at it every day. I read the names. Then I read them again. Somehow it makes me feel better about being a human being living on Planet Earth, knowing that there are people out there whose souls revolt against torture, and who will speak out and not back down.

Did I thank you before? OK, I thank you again.

God bless you.

(signed)

"Jacoby is no doubt a Protestant obsessed with bashing anything that comes from the Catholic Church. I get really tired of the constant attacks on my church."

I do too. There is a general theme of anti-Catholicism among certain conservative Protestants that manifests itself in arguments that the Church is "liberal" on some issue or another, and that it is, thus, the enemy.
Yes, we have our share of crazy Jesuits and a questionable USCCB, but this hardly makes the Church a tool of the Left. Put to this test, Protestantism fares even worse as the home of John Shelby Spong, Vicky Gene Robinson, the anti-war United Methodist leadership, and the socialism-advocating, Israel-attacking Presbyterian Church-USA. The point being that we shouldn't take so silly and superficial an approach when evaluating other strands of Christianity. If people would read the Catholic catechism and papal encyclicals on social and economic policy, they would become acquainted with a beautiful, cohesive system of genuine conservatism that has little in common with mainstream media blurbs citing the USCCB.

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