Catholic teaching on the death penalty in fuller context

It's not a simple binary

Part of the reason I started this substack was to post some of the Twitter threads and long Facebook or blog comments that I write, with the idea of preserving them for future use, and not to simply let them disappear into the vast recesses of the internet. I haven’t kept up with that as well as I should, admittedly.

I recently wrote this comment in response to a discussion in our Smart Catholic group on the death penalty, development of doctrine, and intrinsic evil. I’ve been developing my thoughts on this, and here’s a rough attempt to articulate them.

The Catholic Church's view of capital punishment is not simply that "the death penalty is good" or even "the death penalty is an acceptable way to punish people." 

The death penalty (when the Church accepted it as licit) was never treated as an absolute necessity or explicit command. It was more of a legitimate prudential option (among others) for the punishment of criminals. As a prudential matter, it was never treated as a free-for-all, where any criminal could be executed for any reason. There were standards: a fair trial, certainty of guilt, gravity of the crime, the common good, justice and mercy, protection of society, human dignity, and so on.

The Church's threshold (much like the factors involved in deciding to wage war) had to be met before the death penalty was considered morally acceptable, and even then it wasn't required (Portugal effectively banned it in the 1880s when it was a Catholic monarchy, and the pope didn't complain).

We can look at the way the Church's emphasis has shifted on virtually all of the factors listed. New moral and ethical questions have been explored deeply by the Church, such as the rights and treatment of prisoners. New forensic techniques such as DNA testing have demonstrated that in many cases, someone who is not guilty is executed. People in the same state receive different sentences for identical crimes, either due to discrimination or simply because one can afford a better lawyer. And most of all, our understanding and emphasis on the dignity and inviolability of all human life has increased. This is reflected in Evangelium Vitae, especially.

When we look at the death penalty in the context of Catholic social teaching -- principles that are at the core of our faith but have unfolded dramatically in the past century or two -- the death penalty just doesn't fit as a good option.

Maybe it works in a perfect system, in theory, under laboratory conditions. In that sense you can say it's not "intrinsically evil."

But that does not reflect the historical reality of its use. By declaring it "inadmissible", the pope is applying a more comprehensive moral analysis based on the accumulated wisdom of the Church and in greater harmony with the Gospel.