(b) (i) Describe Catholic teaching on capital punishment. Flashcards
• Catholic teaching has always allowed capital punishment in extreme cases for
the protection of society.
• However, it has always been discouraged and only ever seen as a last resort. • St Augustine says it is always better to try and reform a person than to execute
them.
• Pope John Paul II said that it is only justified when no other means of protecting
society from criminals exists. He does not think there are situations today where
that is the case.
Relevant reference to source is likely to include:
• Exodus 20:13
“You shall not kill/murder.”
• Genesis 9:6
“Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be
shed; for in his own image God made humankind.”
• Exodus 21:23-25
“If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,
hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”
• St Augustine, Letter 153 to Macedonius,3
“… we pity the person, but hate the offence or transgression. In fact, the more we
dislike the vice in question, the less do we want the offender to die without
correcting his vices. It comes easily and effortlessly to hate the bad because they
are bad. It is an uncommon mark of piety to love the same people because they
are human beings, so that at one and the same time you disapprove of their guilt
while approving of their nature. Indeed, you have more right to hate their guilt
precisely because it mars their nature, which you love. Therefore if you take
action against the crime in order to liberate the human being, you bind yourself to
him in a fellowship of humanity rather than injustice. Moreover, there is no space
to reform character except in this life. After that, each person will have whatever
he has won for himself here. That is why we are forced to intercede for the guilty,
out of love for the human race. For otherwise punishment will end this life for
them, and once it is ended, they will not be able to bring their punishment to an
end.”
• St Augustine, in Letter 134 to Apringius, 4
“Now if there were no other established method of restraining the hostility of the
desperate, then perhaps extreme necessity would demand the killing of such
people. Even then, as far as we are concerned, if nothing milder could be done,
we would prefer to have them set free than to have the sufferings of our brothers
avenged by shedding their blood.”
• Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae 56
“… The primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is ‘to redress the
disorder caused by the offence’. Public authority must redress the violation of
personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment
for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or her
freedom. In this way authority also fulfils the purpose of defending public order
and ensuring people’s safety, while at the same time offering the offender an
incentive and help to change his or her behaviour and be rehabilitated. It is clear
that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment
must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme
of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words,
when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a
result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such
cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent. In any event, the principle set
forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: “If bloodless
means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect
public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such
means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the
common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.”
