The death penalty
Fr Michael McCabe
We regularly see and hear and read of a number of countries condemning prisoners and criminals to death. Recently, for example, the Boston bomber, and drug smugglers in Indonesia and China, were condemned to death.
Rightly, there is something in us that jars whenever we hear of someone condemned to death. Does it have to be like this? Is this the only way that justice can be served? Surely the condemned prisoner and criminal has some basic human rights?
How do we reconcile this sad fact of life with our Catholic faith and with the call to cultivate a consistent ethic of life? If we are made in the image and likeness of God, as we believe, then surely each and every life is sacred. From this fundamental fact comes the call to respect and nurture the life of every person, born or unborn, broken or gifted, frail or healthy, convicted or free.
In his 1995 letter, The Gospel of Life (Evangelium vitae), Pope John Paul II taught that the need to protect society by killing a convicted criminal is ‘very rare, if not practically non-existent.’ He went further in Saint Louis in 1999 when he said that the Church is committed to opposing the death penalty because it is ‘both cruel and unnecessary.’ Pope Francis recently called for the death penalty to be abolished – as well as life-long prison sentences, which he called a ‘hidden death sentence.’
While we do not have the death penalty in New Zealand we have an appalling record of incarceration. The strength of restorative justice is that it breaks the cycle of vengeance and, in its place, introduces the very real possibility of healing and reconciliation. Restorative justice is also a process that fundamentally affirms a consistent ethic of life.
Fr Michael McCabe, PhD, is parish priest of Our Lady of Kāpiti Parish and a former Director of the Nathaniel Centre.