Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 39
Seventh Sunday After Pentecost.
Capital Punishment.
"The wages of sin is death; every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be cut down and shall be cast into the fire." — Rom. vi. 23; Matt. vii. 19.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex.: I. Bill in legislature : II. Story of movement. III. Their arguments.
I. False kindness : 1. Humanitarianism. 2. Three classes of poor. 3. Scripture proofs.
II. Reasons : 1. Authority, self-preservation. 2. Imitation, deterrent. 3. Just revenge natural.
III. Expedient: 1. Cruelty necessary. 2. Crime ever with us. 3. Italy.
Per. : Money might be spent on poor, ignorant, ungodly.
SERMON.
Brethren, there is at present before the Massachusetts Legislature a bill for the abolition of capital punishment. The bill counts among its supporters many distinguished gentlemen, lay and clerical, and many noted women, formally organized into a society called the Anti-Capital Punishment League. A half-century of repeated defeats have attended their cause, but with admirable courage and perseverance they still prosecute the struggle, in the hope, no doubt, that a victory in the old Bay State will go far towards propagating their doctrines throughout the nation and the world. The grounds of their opposition to the death penalty are many and various, some adducing scriptural arguments, and others alleging reasons of right or expediency. For us Catholics the subject is an open question, so that a brief inquiry into the merits of the case may not be uninteresting.
Brethren, ours is preeminently the age of humanitarianism. As Christianity grows older, man seems to realize more and more the nobility of his species, the value of human life, and his duty to preserve it at any cost. Hence these mighty efforts in behalf of the poor and the afflicted. But some are so irreverent as to hint that philanthropy is being overdone; that it is superseding Christianity and all forms of Theism; or at least that it is inverting the order of the two great commandments on which depend the whole law and the prophets. Its methods, too, say they, are not sufficiently discriminating. God's poor, as is fitting, have first claim to its benevolence, but not infrequently the most atrocious criminals — the devil's poor — are treated with mawkish sentimentality, while what may be called the poor devils — the morally mediocre, such as the outcast mother with her nameless babe at her breast, or the luckless itinerant — seek in vain the food and shelter which, were they criminals, they could easily command. However this may be, it is surely no exaggeration to say that the attempt to wrest the Scriptures into conflict with the law of capital punishment is an effort of kindness as vain as it is misplaced. God said to Cain (Gen. iv. 10): "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth to Me from the earth," and who can doubt that the purpose of that cry was not leniency, but vengeance on the guilty fratricide? True, God for obvious reasons did not then and there inflict such punishment, but when man, having increased and multiplied, had been organized into a working theocracy, the law of a life for a life was clearly defined and strictly enforced.
In Genesis ix. 6 we read, " Whosoever sheds man's blood, his blood shall be shed," and in the following books we find the evolutions of this law and civil society keeping equal pace in recounting and specifying the numerous crimes worthy of death. Though the spirit of God grieves over the necessity of such drastic measures, still (Eccl. xv. 18) " before man is life and death, good and evil, and that which he shall choose shall be given to him," and hence holy Job (Job xix. 29) admonishes us to " flee from the face of the sword, for the sword is the revenger of iniquities." The consequences also of undue leniency are set forth where the prophet of God announces to Achab (III. Kings xx. 42) : " Because thou hast spared King Benadad, a man worthy of death, thy life shall be for his life," and tardy justice is reproved (Eccl. viii. 11): "Because sentence not being speedily pronounced against the evil, the children of men commit evil without fear." It may be objected that the old law of " an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth " was explicitly abrogated by the Saviour, and such indeed is the case as between man and man, but not as regards civil government and the punishment of capital crimes. Christ rebuked Peter's murderous assault on Malchus, " because," He said (Matt. xxvi. 52), " all that take the sword shall perish with the sword." The power of the sword is here denied to the individual, but expressly conceded to the State. St. Paul counsels obedience to civil authority as to God's ordinance for (Rom. xiii. 4) " he [the king] beareth not the sword in vain, but is God's avenging minister to execute wrath upon the evil," and St. John (Apoc. xiii. 10) reiterates the law that " he that shall kill by the sword, shall be killed by the sword." Such testimony, though brief, is clear and convincing, for the Scriptures are as little likely to contradict themselves as they are to countenance a " relic of barbarity."
Brethren, another objection to capital punishment aims at the right of the State to inflict it. The powers of government, it is argued, are derived from or through the people, and so cannot exceed those the people themselves enjoy. Certainly the exercise by a private individual of retributive justice to the extent of taking human life is never lawful, and it is doubtful if the presence of even seventy millions of Americans would legalize a lynching. Few will deny the soldier's right to kill his country's enemies, or the citizen's to slay his assailant, provided each observe a moderation consistent with a blameless self-defence, but apart from such like exceptions the right to punish with death does not reside with the people. Does this, then, prove that no such right exists? By no means. What it does prove is the falsity of our theory regarding the origin of civil authority, and the truth of St. Paul's teaching (Rom. xiii. 1) that " there is no power but from God, and those that are, are ordained of God." Disgusted with Old World absolutism and the doctrine of the divine right of kings, the New World evolved the idea of a sovereign people and a government vested with popular arbitrary power. Hence come the axioms that all men are born free and equal, and that government exists by consent of the governed — principles questionable enough in the light of experience, and productive, for conquerors and expansionists, of much embarrassment and seeming inconsistency. The ship of State in shunning Scylla goes smash upon Charybdis. The middle course is safest, viz., that the people have a right indeed to choose the administration, but that the duly elected are thereupon clothed with power directly from on high. The State's right, therefore, to inflict capital punishment, neither comes from the people, nor can it be abrogated by them, though its exercise may by common consent be suspended. So inherent, so necessary to civil authority is this power, that not even the State itself can renounce it. The inalienable right of self-defence belongs to the State as well as to the individual, and obedience to law and order is the very life of the State. Now, love and fear are the motives of obedience, but of the two fear is the stronger. It is the duty of the government, therefore, to fit the punishment to the crime — to preserve evenly balanced the scales in the hands of justice — and so violently is that balance disturbed by certain species of murder, that equilibrium can be restored only by weighing a life against a life. For, whether the object of punishment be to reclaim the criminal, deter the vicious, or satisfy the outraged majesty of the law, its proportion to the crime must be clearly evident. Excess and defect are equally fatal to its efficacy. But experience proves that of a certain class of malefactors, the only good prisoner is a dead prisoner. You may punish them ever so severely in the hope that they will obey " not only for wrath's but for conscience' sake," but eventually you will find the basic motive of their abhorrence of crime and respect for law is the active lictor by the side of the ruler. To merely kill a wayward limb that threatens the symmetry of some splendid tree, or to apply soothing lotions to a cancerous growth, would be little creditable to gardener or physician, and vastly more reprehensible and disastrous would it be for the government to visit capital crimes with merely civil death, or withhold the knife from a dangerous ulcer on the body politic. Nor must we lose sight here of the law of imitation, and the necessity the State is under of dealing at times with epidemics of crime. That a little leaven corrupteth the whole mass, is especially true of the leaven of iniquity. Avarice, lust, desire of revenge, etc., are as so many ever-ready and deadly mines beneath the surface of society, and a single explosion usually precipitates a general upheaval. To an individual highly charged with such passions, the satisfying of them is of all good things the best. Not even penal servitude for life can altogether embitter the sweetness of revenge, for the youthful desperado receives his sentence with a scornful smile, and coolly marches off to prison with a laugh and a swagger. But even in his most desperate calculations the criminal always counts on preserving his own life as a condition sine qua rum to the enjoyment of his revenge. Death to him is an unmitigated misfortune, and the thought of the lonely death-watch, the ghostly scaffold, and the black cap, is a powerful factor in staying his hand. Death, then, is the one grand deterrent which the State may and must employ, both to preserve and restore social order and to counteract the fatal fascination by which crime sometimes tends to run riot in the community. Death, too, has been recognized since the world began as the only just retribution for certain atrocious crimes. Foul murder is committed, and, by a certain natural instinct, men immediately demand that the murderer pay the penalty. Examples of this are to be seen in the necessity in olden times for the cities of refuge, in the later right of sanctuary, in the Italian vendetta and the modern lynching. Now, who will dare assert that man's natural impulse to wreak just vengeance is essentially evil? Nothing in Nature is essentially evil. The methods suggested by passion or an exasperating paralysis of justice may be unlawful, but the impulse that gave rise to the movement is natural and as such is good. The necessity of the right to inflict capital punishment, therefore, is founded on Nature itself, and the exercise thereof by the State, far from being a usurpation of God's exclusive prerogative, is entirely in accord with the designs of the Author of man and of society.
Brethren, though a right may exist, yet its exercise may be inexpedient. This, we are told, is the case regarding the death penalty. Such revolting cruelty, they say, is foreign to the spirit of these days of higher civilization, and against it is the sentiment of the majority. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, punishment is cruel only when it is wanton, excessive, and that death is the only adequate penalty for certain crimes has already been proven. Besides, the advocates of life imprisonment claim it is severer punishment than death, so that the argument from cruelty might be turned against themselves. No doubt criminals to a man would vote for abolition, which of itself is a cogent reason for preserving the law as it stands. Anyhow, it might be well to place the blame of such cruelties where it belongs — not on the State, which regards them as lamentable necessities, but on the criminals themselves who evoke them.
Indeed it is hard to see how this movement can plume itself on being a product of superior culture, when its very existence depends upon the fact that certain types of the modern Christian are more shocked at the sight of sensible pain than by moral evil. The desire for the abolition of capital punishment is in line with the desire for the abolition of hell and many other disagreeable things. One kind lady went so far as to quote the dying Saviour's words: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." The force of the argument is not quite clear, for as it proves nothing or proves too much, the result in either case is identical. An ancient commentator on the Gospels makes the quaint remark, that Caiphas's counsel, to the effect that " it was expedient from time to time that one man should die for the people," was a principle as old as humanity, and that though false in its application, it was and is, all things considered, fundamentally true. Never, in faot, was death as a deterrent more necessary than now, in view of the leniency of justice and the humanity of the modern penitentiary; and in general the higher the civilization the greater the need of capital punishment.
The degeneracy of criminals is a constant quantity in all ages, and it were unreasonable that the punishment due to their crimes should be measured by any other rule or at all affected by the changing standards of society. The criminal, says the Psalmist (Psalms xlviii. 15), "hath matched himself with senseless beasts and become like unto them." He forfeits the dignity of manhood and must be dealt with as a dangerous monster, for, says Aristotle, " worse is an evil man than a beast, and vastly more noxious." Nor must we be frightened at the bare possibility of the innocent being sometimes executed, for the same reason will militate against imprisonment for life and all forms of punishment. There is no comparison between the chances of life prisoners escaping or being pardoned, and the chances of the innocent being put to death, and the power that is charged with the safety of the community must act accordingly.
Ah! that fair land of Italy, the garden of the gods, where the death penalty is unknown! Who that has seen them has not grieved over those eyesores on the face of Nature, her penal settlements? If the decree of disarmament were to be enforced to-morrow militarism would there have to stay if for nothing else than to guard those colonies. Possibly, too, the humanity of Italy has worked evil for America, for many are let go or escape, and working their way across the Atlantic prove to us the truth of the principle that a man's first deed of blood is rarely his last. Facts might here be gathered to offset the opposition figures, but we refrain, for it is curious but true that if you are a good arithmetician you can prove almost anything from statistics. Some one has said that of the three kind of lies, positive, comparative, and superlative, the superlative lies are statistics.
Brethren, you and I well know, and God knows, that innocent subjects are not wanting on whom we may exercise our benevolent desire to save human lives. What a blessing the tons of provisions that enter the barred gate in the great high wall would prove to the worthy poor! The money spent on many a modern Uriah Heep, would be better employed in training some orphan arab in the ways of good citizenship. Above all we might agitate, if agitate we must, the question of religious education and its necessity in the preservation of law and order. It is another and a better way to the threefold result at which we all are aiming, viz., Glory to God, good will on earth amongst men, and peace.