CapitalPunishment is once again trending on social media thanks to several recent events:
– The botched execution of Tennessee murderess Christa Pike.
– The Pentagon’s confirmation that the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan, will be livestreamed.
I’ll weigh in on those two cases later, but first:
“The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” wrote Robert Prevost, the current occupant of the Chair of Tweeter.
Leo, as he is widely known, continued:
Effective systems of detention have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption. #NoDeathPenalty
These sentiments fly in the face, not only of long held Catholic teaching, but also basic Catholic common sense.
Consider if you will that the average length of time between receiving a sentence of death and execution in the United States has gone from just over 6 years in the 1980s to more than 23 years in the 2020s. And yet, Leo would have us believe that those on death row are completely deprived of the possibility of redemption?
To say that this is stupid would be an insult to stupidity itself.
Would Leo say the same of a cancer patient whose “left to live” prognosis is just a couple of years? Or how about a man who dies in a car accident? In allowing these things did God Himself somehow deprive those persons of the possibility of redemption?
As for matters doctrinal, the conciliar church’s spin on capital punishment – which took shape under Karol Wojtyla, aka John Paul the Great Ecumenist – reeks of a heresy so profound that it undermines even the most fundamental tenets of the Faith.
We’ll begin our examination with a brief overview of the Catholic Church’s long held teaching on the matter, beginning with the Roman Catechism:
The power of life and death is permitted to certain civil magistrates because theirs is the responsibility under law to punish the guilty and protect the innocent. Far from being guilty of breaking this commandment [Thy shall not kill], such an execution of justice is precisely an act of obedience to it. For the purpose of the law is to protect and foster human life. This purpose is fulfilled when the legitimate authority of the State is exercised by taking the guilty lives of those who have taken innocent lives.
In the Psalms we find a vindication of this right: “Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off all evildoers from the city of the Lord.” (Catechism of the Council of Trent, 1566, Part III, 5, n. 4)
The traditional teaching charges the State with both the duty of protecting the innocent and of punishing the guilty. Notice, however, that it does not charge the State with protecting the life of the guilty. The reason for that will become clear moving forward.
Moreover, one notes that the State is responsible not only for protecting innocent human life but also fostering it. This would include taking into consideration what best serves the spiritual life of individual men, and society as a whole, as well.
St. Thomas Aquinas, contrary to what Leo stated, taught that those facing execution retain, and are even urged by their circumstances to embrace, the opportunity to turn to God through repentance. What’s more, execution of the guilty party, should he turn to Christ, can serve as expiation. (Cf. Summa Theologiae, II–II, q. 25, a. 6, ad 2; Summa contra Gentiles, III, ch. 146, §10.)
On that note, readers have no doubt heard the old saying regarding no atheists in a fox hole. The same applies to capital punishment insofar as a man facing near imminent death, stripped of all pretenses, has precious little left to distract himself from the existence of God, the possibility of forgiveness, and pondering what may lie ahead. In other words, a death sentence can be a uniquely powerful inducement to repentance.
As such, capital punishment can hardly be dismissed as devoid of mercy, much less justice.
In Catholic thought, there simply is no basis for rejecting the death penalty out of hand, as the conciliar church does, treating it as little more than a sinful act of vengeance. The Holy Fathers have consistently taught otherwise. For example:
The secular power can without mortal sin carry out a sentence of death, provided it proceeds in imposing the penalty not from hatred but with judgment, not carelessly, but with due solicitude. (Pope Innocent III, DS 795/425)
Even in the case of the death penalty the State does not dispose of the individual’s right to life. Rather public authority limits itself to depriving the offender of the good of life in expiation for his guilt, after he, through his crime, deprived himself of his own right to life. (Pope Pius XII, Address given September 14, 1952)
The Wojtylan view represents a 180-degree departure from the traditional teaching. The impetus for this shift was and remains, of course, the Almighty Council, specifically, its hyper-inflated view of human dignity together with its virtual decoupling of the State’s authority from its divine Source, to say nothing of how it ignored entirely the civil authority’s obligation to recognize and to serve Christ the King.
First, let’s look at human dignity.
The Declaration of Religious Freedom of Vatican II teaches that man has a right, founded in “the very dignity of the human person,” to freely practice whatever religion happens to accord with his conscience. The Council even went so far as to say that this right is retained even by “those who do not live up to their obligation of seeking the truth.”
NB: The very suggestion that rights continue to exist apart from their corresponding duties should raise a red flag. In any case, it was Vatican II that set the out-of-control human dignity train in motion.
In 1980, under John Paul II, that train left the station when he declared:
With Jesus Christ, God has shown us in an unsurpassed way how he loves each human being and thereby bestows upon him infinite dignity.
To be clear, he was not merely referring to the Baptized. Remember: The Council insists (and JPII emphatically taught) that Jesus, by virtue of the Incarnation alone, has united Himself with every man, no exceptions. Even so, at least Wojtyla saw fit to insert Christ into the equation. This is the first instance I could find of the conciliar church professing the “infinite dignity” of man.
In the text of Evangelii Gaudium, Jorge Bergoglio cited the above from JPII, but he went a step further, stating:
To believe in a Father who loves all men and women with an infinite love, realizing that he thereby confers upon them an infinite dignity.
This suggests that man – even prior to the Incarnation, and apart from the Sacrifice of Christ – has always been the recipient of infinite dignity simply by believing in God’s love. That noted, at least he credits the Father as He who confers this dignity on man.
From there things only got worse. In the 2025 document Dignitas Infinita, the human dignity train came right off the tracks as the idea came full circle, back to its conciliar roots, as it stated in the declaration’s opening:
Every human person possesses an infinite dignity, inalienably grounded in his or her very being, which prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter.
Here, one notes that Our Lord isn’t even given an honorable mention, rather, it is asserted that the very foundation of mankind’s “infinite dignity” is based, not upon any external thing (like the love of God, the Incarnation, or the Sacrifice of the Cross), but rather is it alleged to be grounded in man himself simply by virtue of his existence.
The conciliar rejection of capital punishment is based largely on this, namely, on the false notion that while we lament the death of the murder victim who possessed infinite dignity, we must insist that the murderer still possesses the selfsame dignity, despite his sin. As such, taking the guilty party’s life will result in the same loss.
One might initially imagine, therefore, that the conciliar church’s stance on the death penalty, albeit faulty, is at least consistent in this regard, i.e. it has a certain internal logic.
I would argue, however, that the exact opposite is true. If indeed one is guilty of murdering a person with infinite dignity, how can just restitution be made apart from the guilty party rendering recompense of likewise infinite value, namely, his own life?
In order for this argument to make any sense at all, one must accept that expiation is possible in this life. The conciliar anti-death penalty crowd, however, doesn’t seem to believe it. Their sole focus in this debate is protecting natural life, that of both the guilty and the individual members of society.
That said, let’s be clear: Man’s dignity is neither infinite nor unchanging. The reality is that man’s dignity increases in step with his sanctity and his conformity to the will of God. His dignity is diminished, however, by sin; the further he moves away from the Source of human dignity, the less dignity he has. Aquinas even taught that habitual sin does violence to the will and the intellect, and it may even go so far as to degrade the unrepentant sinner nearly to the level of the beasts.
To accept the infinite dignity proposition, one must imagine that the human dignity possessed by Charles Manson is indistinguishable from that possessed by Charles Borromeo or the Blessed Virgin Mary! Clearly that’s not the case.
As for the novel idea that the death penalty is sinful, consider what conciliar conservative icon Archbishop Charles Chaput once stated. He argued that the death penalty is fruitless because it merely “answers violence with violence.” (cf Catholic Philly Newspaper, 2012)
Chaput went on to say that the death penalty “neither heals nor redresses any wounds, because only forgiveness can do that.”
You see, in the conciliar mind, killing is killing and there’s simply no room for just retribution.
At this, let’s consider how the conciliar movement to abolish capital punishment – beyond contradicting what the Church has always taught on the matter, i.e., heresy – invites doctrinal confusion if not grave error in other areas as well.
For instance, if indeed the death penalty does not heal or redress any wounds:
– What shall we say of the words spoken by the Creator to Adam, “But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death” (Genesis 2:17)? Was God being unjust by forewarning the sentence of death?
– What shall we say of the violent death of Our Blessed Lord on the Cross? Did it not redress the wound created by sin, closing the distance between God and man?
– Where does that idea leave the theology of Holy Mass wherein the propitiatory Sacrifice of the Cross is re-presented to the Father as atonement for sin on behalf of Christians both living and dead?
– What then of Baptism wherein one dies with Christ in order to rise with Him to new life?
This brings us to the Council’s virtual decoupling of the State’s authority from its divine Source, and its role in the death penalty debate.
The True Nature of Civil Authority
As previously suggested, the other reason conciliar churchmen believe that the State that takes the life of a murderer is essentially guilty of repeating his crime is because the Vatican II sect has all but explicitly rejected the immutable truth that the civil authorities in the various States derive their authority neither from constitutions nor the will of the people, but from Almighty God Himself (more properly, Christ the King), and it is to Him that they are beholden.
More to the point, lost along the way is the traditional Catholic understanding of the civil authority as a representative of God, and its duty to act as such. This being so, the State has every right to visit the death penalty upon the guilty, not simply as a means of protecting its citizens, but also as a means of applying retributive justice in the name of God, thus rendering a genuine and valuable service to the common good of society as a whole.
In other words, while the threat of capital punishment may serve to deter a would-be murderer, deterrence is not its only purpose. Rather, it also establishes right order in society by making God’s justice present and operative in the here-and-now. And let us not forget that it can also be considered an act of mercy toward the guilty insofar as it may serve as an inducement to repentance and, further, to serve as expiation.
Lastly, with respect to the two recent news items mentioned at the top of this post.
As it concerns the botched execution of Christa Pike, my take is simple: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
Not to be flippant, but if she is guilty and deserving of death, then get on with it. The fact that the initial attempt failed is unfortunate, but I can think of no good reason why the job wasn’t finished shorty after she was taken to the hospital, arguably the perfect venue for making sure that the execution was carried out swiftly and humanely.
As for the execution of Nidal Hasan, by all means, execute him, but let’s not pretend that doing so by firing squad while broadcasting it live (rather than before a small number of witnesses) is ordered toward rendering justice in the name of God. It’s not.
That said, whenever the civil authority carries out a death sentence, justly executing the guilty, it is never a truly private affair, rather, it concerns, and has an effect upon, the entire community. That cannot change, and yet something has.
Before the modern means of communication that we now enjoy came of age, it is reasonable to consider that execution in the public square was the most expedient way of making it known to the population that justice had prevailed. In other words, it served to reassure the community at large that the civil authority is committed to ordering the affairs of State justly.
As such, it can be said that executions in the public square, at that time, rendered a genuine service to the common good.
Today, with the daily news cycle evolving by the minute, that case is much more difficult to make.
Moreover, carrying out a just execution is one thing, doing so livestreamed by firing squad is another. The latter, it seems to me, serves no good purpose. In fact, there are only a handful of motives that I can imagine for planning such an event:
1. To boost Trump’s withering ego and wounded image. In short, this spectacle strikes me as nothing more than a theatrical and unconvincing tough guy act designed to make Trump – after so many months of being thoroughly emasculated by Bibi Netanyahu – feel, and perhaps even appear, more manly as he continues to bend over backward and forward in service to his Zionist taskmasters.
2. To toss a little red meat to the lowest IQ members of the Trump cult (if you’ll pardon the redundancy).
3. To deliberately incite even more division between the American people, yet another service to Trump’s Zionist taskmasters, the “adversaries of all men” who much prefer that we be so focused on fighting one another that we barely even have time to recognize their nefarious deeds.
With all of that said, I’m pleased to see the capital punishment debate catching fire once again as it calls attention to the legitimate division that exists between two distinct groups of people:
Those who see the world through the eyes of the Catholic Church in light of her holy doctrines, and those who prefer to worship at the altar of man.
