I heard on the BBC about the decision by the state of Utah in the United States to introduce executions by means of a firing squad. This decision follows the several botched attempts to use lethal injections to ‘legally’ kill people.

The United States is the only Western democracy that still uses this brutal and primitive method of punishment.  It takes a spot behind China, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia for the most executions in the world last year, sitting ahead of Yemen and the Sudan. Perhaps Ambassador Gina Abercrombie, who gives the impression that she wants to teach us Maltese natives about civil rights would be well advised to use her talents on the people of her country.

I was in favour of capital punishment. The ‘argument’ which made me change my position was Kieslowski’s superb film ‘Decalogue 5.’ [You can look it up on You Tube and watch it with English sub-titles.] In that film, the great Polish and European film director showed both murder and capital punishment for what they are, that is, barbaric acts.

My take on the subject was then informed and refined by the development of the teaching of the Church on the death sentence.

Church teaching traditionally permitted capital punishment but there were important development with the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church published in 1992 during the pontificate of St John Paul II.

The French edition moved the goalposts when it stated that:

“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. [Catechism#2267]

Then the saintly Pope included in the definitive Latin edition a sentence from his encyclical Evangelium Vitae [The Gospel of Life] which to all intents and purposes rendered capital punishment morally not acceptable.

In this encyclical, Pope John Paul II said:

“It is clear that…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.”  [para. 65].

It is interesting that Pope Francis has just returned to this subject by means of a letter to the International Commission against the Death Penalty. His condemnation of capital punishment was categorical.

Francis’s position is that the principle of legitimate personal defence does not provide an adequate justification to execute someone. “When the death penalty is applied, it is not for a current act of aggression, but rather for an act committed in the past.”

“Nowadays the death penalty is inadmissible, no matter how serious the crime committed,” Francis declared. Capital punishment “does not render justice to the victims but rather fosters vengeance”, he added.

“For the rule of law, the death penalty represents a failure, as it obliges the state to kill in the name of justice,” Francis told the anti-death penalty advocates.

The Pope also waded into the debate in the United States about which method should be used to carry out executions. “There is discussion in some quarters about the method of killing, as if it were possible to find ways of ‘getting it right’,” the pope said.

“But there is no humane way of killing another person,” Francis concluded.

His words are crystal clear.

What is your position?

 

 

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