death penalty

[dairygirl4u2c]

...

[dairygirl4u2c]

Can someone please illustrate or make an argument showing how it's part of natural law? I could see self defense as part of natural law, but the civil trial for killing someone I can't see as natural. It might even make somewhat good sense to kill some to discourage some behaviour, but I don't see it as natural.

[Aloysius]

it's the principal of forfeiture that is considered a part of natural law. the basic sense that if you use your life to end another person's life, then your life has become an instrument of death and you have therefore forfeited the right to your own life.

basically, in the Christian tradition of interpretting natural law, homicide is akin to suicide, in that in killing someone else you have basically killed yourself. the state is not killing you, it is making what you did to yourself come true.

[scardella]

This is what I do know, even though it is not natural law, it cannot be in conflict w/ it:

JPII writes in one of his encyclicals that the death penalty has been used in ages past because containing a violent criminal was much harder, but that prisons, etc. have become effective enough that one can contain a criminal so that he is not a harm to society.

Additionally, I would think that not having the death penalty gives the criminal more chance to reform and repent. It may be argued as well that it is worse punishment to have him live with the knowledge than to die because of what he did. I would also think that it reduces the problems of a false conviction. You might end up with two people on the gallows, so to speak, for one person's crime.

[Aloysius]

well, the Traditional Teaching of the Church affirmed by the Catechism is based on the natural law, the basic principle of forfeiture as I explained above. so Catholics should hold that the fact that the state has just recourse to the death penalty is a part of natural law.

also, Fr. Mitch Pacqwa has worked with people on death row, and he says that when faced with death a criminal is far more likely to repent. The Catholic Church has always applied the principle of expiation here, that when a criminal recognizes his guilt and accepts his just punishment it is a special form of repentence and his sins are expiated by the execution.

[Didacus]

Doesn't 'an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth' fit in here somewhere? The punishment must fit the crime, and when someone commits murder, the punishment that logically fits the crime is that the murderer be put to death.

[Aloysius]

what fits more is "whosoever sheddeth a man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in His image God created man" which God says in Genesis. I suppose since that's God saying it that's more Divine Law, but it reflects natural law. Actually, a lot of things God says in Genesis are natural law, I mean He had just laid out the rules of nature in creating the universe.

[Carnanc]

does the principal of forfiture apply if one causes anothers death but does so unintentionally, say by an accident or a severe mental problem so they don't know what they are doing??

[Aloysius]

one must intentionally commit the act by which they forfeit the right to their life. if they do not intentionally commit that act, then they have not intentionally forfeited the right to their life. so no, forfeiture does not apply except in the case of one who purposefully kills another unjustly.