The US Bishops have issued a statement calling for an end to the use of the death penalty, part of their larger campaign to end the death penalty.
I’m sympathetic to the thrust of the statement and to many of its claims. The statement makes its case firmly, yet invites dialogue and debate. It adverts to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, accurately reflecting the Church’s teaching on the matter. It makes compelling arguments against the death penalty on theological and pragmatic grounds, stopping short of claiming that Catholic theology absolutely forbids it.
Still, some of the statement’s language is problematic, reflecting, at the least, carelessness, and possibly, bad reasoning. I’d guess that the root of the problem is a willingness to take up the slogans of secular politics rather than to draw more rigorously on the sources of Christian theology. It reminds me of the USCCB’s old statements on the economy, when terms such as “social justice” were used without clear reference to the Church’s social teaching as opposed to the parlance of American politics.
Here’s one example from the death penalty statement:
It is time for our nation to abandon the illusion that we can protect life by taking life.
I mean no disrespect to the authors of the statement, but that sentence does not qualify as sound theological reflection on political matters. To accept its claim is to undermine any possible justification for self-defense, just warfare, etc. It is perfectly consistent with Christian moral theology to assert the contrary: Sometimes the protection of life requires the taking of life.
