Capital Punishment Essay - Opposition To the Death Penalty

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Opposition To the Death Penalty During the spring semester I read Evangelium Vitae: The Gospel of Life. Paragraphs 27 and 56 of this encyclical prompted a discussion of the death penalty with other students. Their first reaction was that the Pope was against it and that he was saying that the penalty has no justification. There was general resistance to the suggestion that while the Pope's attitude toward the death penalty is, to put it mildly, unfavorable, he did not flat out say that it was immoral, wrong, without justification. Quite apart from exegesis of the encyclical, a majority of student-friends were against the death penalty. Period. Were they in favor of life imprisonment? Absolutely. Don't put killers and the like to death, just lock them up and throw away the key. Isn't that what the Pope was saying in paragraph 56? The tide of public opinion against capital punishment rises, he writes, both in the Church and in civil society, and there is a growing demand to limit its use even to the point of total abolition. Nowadays we are able to protect society from the offender without taking his life. Lock him up and he will have lots of time to repent and redeem himself. Our discussion accordingly turned to the question of life imprisonment. While this admittedly looks attractive when compared to the death penalty, considered in itself it is a terrible thing. However antiseptic and humane his quarters might be, the thought of a human being locked up for life gives pause. Surely only the most grievous offenses could warrant such severe punishment. Are there really any offenses that severe? In Italy, later in the spring, I became aware of a campaign against life imprisonment. What I detected, rightly or wrongly, was an animus against punishment as such. When I gingerly introduced the subject of Hell, those who had spontaneously rejected capital punishment and then had some second thoughts about life imprisonment when looked at in itself and not as an alternative to the death penalty seemed inclined toward a creative interpretation of eternal punishment. And of course there have been eminent theologians who have wondered aloud about the doctrine of Hell. Even Jacques Maritain, late in his life had written equivocally on the subject.

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