31 Responses to “St. Joseph Cafasso, pray for us”

1. 1 Doctor Asinorum Jun 29th, 2008 at 9:38 pm

   You have never even begun to understand Bottum’s argument as your over the top flailing around amply demonstrates. Then again you’ve always had a lot of trouble with Aristotlean basis of Catholic moral theology as a whole. I’m sorry, but in ethics you have amply demonstrated that you simply don’t understand what you’re talking about.

2. 2 Iosephus Jun 29th, 2008 at 11:05 pm

   Thank you for that insight.

   I’m curious to know whether you’re defending Bottum or the Supreme Court’s decision or both or neither.

3. 3 John L Jun 30th, 2008 at 12:05 am

   There’s nothing to understand about Bottum’s argument, as it lack a coherent basis. I’m puzzled by the reference to Aristotelian thought, as both it and St. Thomas are clear on the justice of the death penalty.

4. 4 Iosephus Jun 30th, 2008 at 8:14 am

   No less puzzled than the rest of us, John L, for the Doctor’s kind words have nothing to do with Aristotle and everything to do with his bottomless passion for authors who have graced the pages of First Things - not to speak of one who has edited that blessed journal of note! Someone who would end the death penalty might be a Catholic in some uninteresting sense, but he is no conservative or traditionalist.

5. 5 Clara Jun 30th, 2008 at 1:09 pm

   All right, boys, break it up. Why do I have this creeping feeling of déjà vu? The Doctor may be a bit harsh when riled, but you know perfectly well, Iosephe, that you started this with your very deliberate, nastily worded (but basically unreasoned) assault on an article that you know the Doctor happens to like. Nobody here holds First Things to be sacrosanct, but it is rather curious to me how you seem to lose even ordinary powers of reading comprehension whenever you turn to an article by Joseph Bottum. Though you threw out a number of possible arguments (or suggestions of arguments) against the death penalty in your rather haphazard post, none of them was really even in the ball park Bottum’s; the reference was entirely gratuitous.

   Also, you make yourselves look foolish by asking what this has to do with Aristotle. For a Catholic, every ethical question has to do with Aristotle, or more precisely with the broadly Aristotelian approach that provides the foundation for all Catholic moral philosophy. That is what the Doctor is accusing you of failing to understand.

   Although Bottum includes a quote from John Paul II containing some reference to “greater decency” in modern law, this concept plays no important role in his own argument. He agrees, as everyone here would probably agree, that some criminals deserve to die – the murderer certainly, but he might include certain others as well, such as the vicious child rapist. That’s not the issue, however. The question is: does anyone have the authority to execute him? He claims that the state (specifically the modern state) oversteps its authority when it claims that right for itself.

   Bottum contends that the state has two legitimate purposes in its justice system: first, the protection of its own integrity and autonomy, and second, the maintaining of “common” justice,or “justice for the people.” The former allows it to punish traitors. The latter allows it to set such punishments as are necessary to protect ordinary people’s safety and private property and things of that nature. Bottum doesn’t rule out the possibility that either of these ends might at times require the use of capital punishment. For example, if we had a vicious killer who was also a genius escape artist, able to break out of every available prison, the second of government’s legitimate goals might justify his execution.

   But there is a third kind of argument for capital punishment, which you touch on in your final paragraph. This is high justice, justice before God, justice as “balancing the cosmic scales.” This is the kind of justice that wants to ensure that good people come to good ends and bad people to bad ends. We rightly have a strong desire to see this kind of justice done, and it isn’t necessarily impossible that certain human governments might integrate elements of high justice into their human judgments… but it is necessary that it always be done “in God’s name.” Balancing the cosmic scales is an act reserved to God. He may at times appoint human agents to carry out his will on earth, but it is necessary that this be explicitly understood as God’s justice and that the agents in question understand themselves to be charged with acting as God’s agents in this regard. Otherwise, attempts to achieve high justice will degenerate into a kind of blood lust – revenge-seeking of the sort that legal systems were originally designed to check.

   In the case of the modern democratic state, it is virtually one of its foundational premises that it is not God’s agent on earth, not based on distinctively Christian teachings, not acting explicitly in His name. Plenty of the people involved, from the judges to the lawyers to the actual executioners, may not even believe in God. That being the case, it really isn’t possible for the modern democratic state to appropriately administer high justice. Its efforts to do so will almost certainly degenerate into a pagan justice, repaying blood with blood for the sake of revenge. And that is something that we, as Christians, cannot condone.

   So, that is Bottum’s essential insight. The desire for something like high justice is very natural, but as Christians we understand that this cosmic-scale balancing is reserved to God. When we allow it to be usurped by man, we open ourselves up to many horrific possibilities – men are prone to great evils when they take it upon themselves to give everyone their “just deserts.” A Christian prince, understanding himself to have a sacred duty to fulfill God’s will, could enforce the death penalty for the satisfaction of high justice. The modern democratic state simply lacks the authority to carry out this kind of act.

6. 6 Ambrosius Jun 30th, 2008 at 1:21 pm

   If I may ask without starting an armed conflict: if you need a real Christian prince for this sort of justice, then I’m at a loss for why St. Paul says, in the midst of a very much pagan and unjust in any Christian sense of the world Roman Empire, that “A ruler … [does] not wield the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”

   I’d otherwise be sympathetic to Bottum’s argument, but St. Paul’s acceptance of Roman justice acting as God’s server, to me, entirely implies an acceptance of American justice being able to do the same.

7. 7 Clara Jun 30th, 2008 at 1:35 pm

   Bottum mentions that passage, actually. And yes, you’re right, this seems to indicate that not only Christian princes can administer high justice; they just seemed to me like the best example of someone who would pretty definitely be in a position to do it.

   But the Roman authorities don’t seem equivalent to the modern democratic state. That is, they were still in a pre-modern mindset wherein they could understand their justice as coming from God, or at least “the gods” — at any rate it could be from some higher power, and Bottum contends that they did understand justice that way. The modern democratic state, by contrast, explicitly rejects that idea that they are beholden to any higher master in the operation of their legal system. Thus they lose the authority to administer the highest kind of justice.

8. 8 Ambrosius Jun 30th, 2008 at 1:49 pm

   Well, yeah but … didn’t at least some of the Romans think, you know, the emperor was himself a god?

   So, it was ok when people had bad systems of government that they reasoned were derived from divine authority but which were, in fact, in human terms, derived from personal ambition; though, of course, in reality it was power from God — as Christ pointed out to Pilate — “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.” ? But today, since we have erected a system that distributes that power to a consensus derived from the citizenry, it’s no longer power “given from above”?

   I’m no political theorist, as you know, but I thought the point was that the only reason Christians obey ANY state is because we know the ordering of human societies needs a state with certain authorities, since we must reject the social contract, etc. Then the question is just how we chose who administers the powers of the state; but I don’t see how that changes the fundamental powers of the state.

   I guess it strikes me as very post-modern to read Gov. Bob having Tim the Criminal executed as some will to power on the part of Bob expressing the blood lust of the people; what I see is the state’s current ministers — chosen now by the people over whom they have authority rather than other means — executing the powers proper to their station, not any personal powers. Hence soldiers saluting the office, not the man, etc.

   So, my own contention would be that, whatever confusion the State of Connecticut has about why the State of Connecticut has sovereign authority, it IS after all the “state”, and hence does in fact have that authority, and that authority does in fact come from God, since only He can give it. Just as the fact that the Romans were wrong to thing Caesar a god didn’t matter to whether it was proper for Christians to assent to Caesar executing capital criminals, so the fact that modernists set up modern democracy doesn’t invalidate the role of the state.

   That’s all so amateurishly presented that I’m sure I could be torn apart. But go lightly! ;)

9. 9 Clara Jun 30th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

   I’d say that’s an interesting line of development, and I myself have speculated as to whether there are other settings in which we see the modern state as legitimately taking on roles that are by their nature “divine.” Of course all authority ultimately comes from God, so it seems agents can in some sense legitimately wield God’s authority without knowing it.

   But there does still seem to be an important distinction between the Roman state, wherein people knew that high justice was “divine” but misunderstood the nature of the divine, and the modern state, wherein political and legal theorists wouldn’t understand God as having anything to do with the justice they administer. Both are in error, but they fall into very different kinds of error, and Bottum thinks it important that it should be instilled into politicians and commoners alike that “God and his agents may balance the cosmic scales, but it is not for man to do so.”

   I guess the idea would be something like this. Gov. Bob presumably does see himself as executing the powers “proper to his station” when he executes Tim; it’s not just a matter of him personally finding satisfaction in Tim’s death, nor hopefully (though this is more possible) of him solidifying his own political career through giving the people something they demand. He sees it as a legitimate power of the state. But why does he think it a legitimate power of the state? Not, presumably, because God has charged him with seeing that justice is done to all. (And if he did see himself in that light, he would probably think himself entitled to do a lot of other things that our political system does not permit governors to do.) He might see himself as merely carrying out the will of the people — in which case it does seem to be a gratification of the desire for revenge. Or he might offer some explanation about the “fairness” of a life paying for a life. But if it’s the latter, he seems to be veering towards a quasi-Kantian way of thinking about it, wherein human reason is capable of judging what high justice demands. And once again, the penalty would be understood to be a product of human judgment, fulfilling human ends.

   It is difficult, thinking about what kinds of powers can legitimately be granted to a democratic state. It throws us into a hornet’s nest of questions about secularism and modernism and restriction of government power… however, I think Bottum has at least put his finger on a real and serious concern. When a modern democratic state begins acting in certain respects like a confessional state, what’s going on? Sometimes we might see it as a positive sign that the state is getting intimations of its rightful role in the world, but I think Bottum makes a persuasive argument that, in this case, properly administered justice is being replaced by something much more sinister, which Christians should not approve.

10. 10 Ambrosius Jun 30th, 2008 at 3:01 pm

    I would find all this more convincing if the administration of capital punishment were a new development, or if I thought the disposition or understanding of the agents of government mattered. But neither is the case. We don’t have to worry about the hornet’s nest that you mention. On the one hand we talk about what it will mean if the state were to start *shudder* KILLING people! But on the other hand the state has never really stopped killing people in the history of government. Democracies have (Socrates!). Dictatorships. Monarchies. Communists. Socialists. Republics (Rome and the US). Meanwhile, people have had all manner and speaking of bad arguments and confused understandings of what government is for.

    I am just not convinced that the things people *articulate* as the reason for capital punishment is really relevant. That will always sound notes that are common to the philosophical milieu in which they live, which of course today means that they’ll sound quasi-Kantian. But whatever our thinking about it, the state remains the state, and we humans, humans; and so, as far as I can tell, the argument for the morality of the death penalty goes through. By which I mean, the democratic state acting as a confessional state with regard to, say, enforcing dogma (like political correctness) concerns me. But the modern democratic state doing something that states have always done, and which virtually everyone agrees they’re there to do — like punishing criminals in ways that include killing them — doesn’t bother or concern me.

    Again, I just think that the Bottumian line of reasoning has it all backwards: he’s trying to reason upward, to see what it implies for the state to kill people, and comes up with the conclusion that that implies a completion of cosmic justice. But that’s just not how things are, at least so far as I can tell: it’s much more the opposite, that people recognize the state by noticing that it’s the body or entity that possesses authorities like punishing criminals. And I think it’s telling that the God-like state was never dreamed of through much of history, even while bailiffs and inquisitions and tribunals and navies and armies and tribal chiefs were killing people left and right; but when the state started doing other things — like giving them health care, insurance, or intrusive regulation — then people started seeing the state as a be-all and end-all.

    The Bottum argument is, again, interesting. But it’s just going against the flood of too much contrary evidence.

11. 11 Ambrosius Jun 30th, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    one small addendum:

    I don’t mean to imply that, say, the Commies were right to execute a bunch of dissidents or anything like that. What I meant with my list of various governments is that, as far as I can tell, all of them were within their rights qua “state” to kill people who were actually guilty of crimes that genuinely deserved capital punishment. That is, when they killed dissidents, I don’t say, “how dare those filthy commies kill! They are scarcely agents of divine justice!” Instead, I say, “those filthy commies! Classing dissidents — priest, bishops, journalists, soldiers — with actual criminals, and killing them in the same way that they kill rapists and murderers! That’s unjust!”

    I’m happy to have a child rapist killed by the Burmese junta or by the State of Louisiana or by Napoleon Bonaparte; or even in the Vatican City-State, if they liked.

12. 12 Clara Jun 30th, 2008 at 5:09 pm

    Well, a couple of things. Surely we don’t want to say (I couldn’t quite tell whether you were really proposing this or not) that a legitimate government is merely anybody who enforces the laws. That’s certainly not a traditional way of understanding the matter. Something more is needed to legitimize this particular authority as opposed to that one, whether that be the approbation of God or the people or some combination. When people who aren’t entitled to rule come in and start enforcing laws, we call them tyrants or usurpers, and history and literature have made much of the injustice of this way of seizing power. I think there’s widespread historical agreement that political power does derive from something other than the ability to enforce laws. It doesn’t seem unreasonable, therefore, that the answer to the question: “where does X’s authority come from?” should be of relevance in answering the question, “What is X entitled to do?”

    Now, as to your claim that capital punishment has been practiced by the majority of human societies. This may be true, but I think the modern democratic state really is relevantly different in two ways. In the first place, I think most human societies have understood themselves to be channeling or enacting on earth the will of some supernatural power. Obviously they haven’t all been Christian, but the idea of a political theory that deliberately excludes appeal to the supernatural is a modern one. That being the case, it shouldn’t be so surprising to find that the powers of the modern state are somewhat more restricted than the powers of most historical governments. This relates, as you rightly note, to the regulation of things like speech and religious worship (which were much more restricted, and I would say legitimately so, by most other human societies) but it also relates to the administration of high justice, that being something that requires the very sort of authority that the modern state has disavowed.

    The other special thing about modern states is more practical: it is actually feasible for us to imprison people for life, in a way that it wasn’t for many or most other societies. Indeed, contrary to what Iosephus implied, it is normally cheaper to incarcerate people for life than to pay for the numerous appeals and other legal procedures that are involved in executing someone. Some states, historically, have executed people not for reasons of high justice so much as for reasons of practical necessity — if you didn’t have the wherewithal to contain the child rapist for life, you’d better execute him lest more children be harmed. Given modern innovations in prison building, that argument isn’t so persuasive anymore.

13. 13 Ambrosius Jun 30th, 2008 at 7:15 pm

    The questions about what constitutes a legitimate government and the prudential question of prison costs are irrelevant to the argument at hand.

    The point about modern governments, though, being less far-reaching in their scope than ones in elder days is perhaps relevant but is certainly overstated. The confessional state might rightly regulate doctrine; but the basic functions of the state do not require that sort of thing. In all other matters, governments in times of old were much, much, much less present to the lives of their citizens than governments today. However, the basic facts of what constitutes a state remain: and among those is the right of punishing criminals, which — I say again — always includes the right to punish with death. Whether that is the prudent thing to do; or whether the government doing it is legitimate; are interesting questions, but not relevant to the morality of the situation.

    The State of Louisiana is a legitimate government of the kind that have always existed, with less scope in dictating “speech” than Protestant Geneva, say, but with much more role in the lives of its citizens even than Imperial Rome. Ergo, I would say, it is the sort of government that may execute capital punishment of the sort envisioned by St. Paul and the moralists who followed him.

14. 14 Ambrosius Jun 30th, 2008 at 7:19 pm

    Just to add one more line, I still don’t think that the political philosophy that animates a government is relevant here. If Julian the Apostate really thought he got his power from Zeus; or if Stalin thought he derived his power from the Marxist idea of the force of history; is not relevant to whether the states they lead were of the kind that could properly execute prisoners.

15. 15 Clara Jun 30th, 2008 at 8:12 pm

    I must say, Ambrosii, I find your position exceedingly puzzling. You say that it doesn’t matter whence the state gets its authority, nor why, nor what it understands itself to be accomplishing — the power to execute criminals simply goes with the fact of being a government, as though every government were given a License to Execute card from the time they come to power. That’s strange enough in itself, but even stranger, you don’t think it matters how a particular group of people come to have political power, or whether it’s legitimate or not. What it seems to boil down to is that anyone who’s made it his business to enforce laws, for whatever reason, is justified in condemning the guilty to death. But why in the world should we take that to be true? It doesn’t sound at all plausible to me.

    The only argument I’ve really seen from you for why states should have the right to execute, is that most societies historically have used capital punishment to one degree or another. I won’t deny that this gives a kind of presumptive edge to the idea that executions are part of a healthy society, but it’s only a presumptive one, for of course there are some things that have been done by most societies that are still immoral, and also some ways in which the modern world is genuinely different from most other historical societies, such that different ethical conclusions may be warranted. I’ve argued that such is the case here, and I think more is needed from your side in response than the observation that the practice of capital punishment is historically common.

    It also seems to me that you’ve fixated rather too much on classifying governments according to how “active” or “present” they are. It’s true, of course, that modern governments are much more “visible” or “present” than the governments of many or most historical societies, but it doesn’t follow that they have at least as many powers. Authority is not meted out on a simple greater-than or less-than scale. You need particular sorts of powers to do particular sorts of things, and you can’t necessarily measure it merely on the basis of how much influence or presence a particular authority has in a person’s life. The Doctor is much more “present” in my life than our parish priest, and in some respects that does certainly make him more influential, and an authority that I take the more seriously. On the other hand, it doesn’t give him the power to, say, absolve me of my sins, and there are some sorts of commands too that I would take more seriously coming from my confessor than I would coming from him. In short, I don’t see why the growth of governmental offices should necessarily entail the growth of governmental powers.

16. 16 Ambrosius Jul 1st, 2008 at 5:31 am

    You’ve clearly misunderstood my line of reasoning.

    Let’s start by remembering that you are on the naturally defensive side of this question: no one, so far as I can tell, before J. Bottom advanced this “democracies can’t execute cosmic justice” line of argument. I don’t see anywhere in St. Thomas or St. Paul, for instance, any proviso that Rulers cease to be able to execute criminals if those rulers are chosen in such and such ways. That’s a new distinction that Bottum invented out of the thin air, and you’re seeming to regard that as the default position, which it in no wise is.

    I left aside the question of governmental legitimacy not because I think it’s irrelevant in general, but because it’s irrelevant here, unless you’re ready to argue that our modern democratic government is illegitimate. If that’s your (and Bottom’s) central claim — which, I am beginning to suspect, it is — then I’m done arguing.

    As I take it, if you’ve got a legitimate government, it can execute. You’ve given no reason against it. I really cannot countenance any argument that goes with modern societies are fundamentally different vis a vis
    morality of executions, nor class a practice — execution — that was defended by St. Thomas as one of those moral evils that was common to man and persisted to modern times, but not made acceptable thereby.

    Please let’s return to Bottom’s novel — and, I still hold, failed — rationale for banning the death penalty completely and finally for modern democracies. Even JPII didn’t go so far when he effectively banned it — a modern, *prudential* decision that capital punishment, while licit, is almost always now unwise, I will listen to. It’s Bottum’s argument I just don’t buy.

17. 17 Ambrosius Jul 1st, 2008 at 7:32 am

    To summarize:

    The claim of Clara and Bottum, as it appears to me, is this: if and only if the government is founded upon an explicit (or strongly implicit) self-understanding of resting on divine authority, then it may do things like executing people that pertain to divine justice.

    My counter-claim is that the self-understanding of a government is not really relevant to the question. I see no argument that removes a particular government’s right to execute that does not, if pushed a bit farther, delegitimize the government altogether.

    Historically, the support for governments executing has been that the state acts in God’s place. I think that modern democratic governments, insofar as they are legitimate, also act in God’s place. This is why I let them confiscate my property through taxation, my liberty through conscription (if they wished), etc. This is also why I think they may execute rapists and murderers.

    The question for you and Bottum is, where did the government get some authority, if it does not come from God after all? And if the authority does come from God, then why is it relevant that the people and framers of the government did not make that derivation explicit?

18. 18 Clara Jul 1st, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    Okay. First things first. Bottum does not claim that capital punishment is always and absolutely wrong within a modern democracy. It is wrong only when it is an administration of “high” justice, a balancing of cosmic scales so to speak. Insofar as it’s used to protect the safety of the people, or the independence and autonomy of the nation, capital punishment may be justified — look back to my first post where I give the example of the genius escape artist as one who might legitimately be executed. Those sorts of reasons could also have justified many of the executions that have gone on in this country historically, for example when US Marshalls were trying to keep order on the frontier. Life imprisonment wouldn’t have been a very practical option for them, and they couldn’t just let criminals continue to hurt people, so execution was a necessary element of law enforcement. These days, though, it’s quite the exceptional case for which that argument holds. Incarceration can be quite safe, it’s actually normally cheaper than capital punishment (as odd as that may sound), and there’s been no persuasive evidence that capital punishment deters crime more than incarceration. Bottum doesn’t think the prudential case is irrelevant — he just thinks it’s weak.

    Okay, next thing. You say that I’m “naturally” on the defensive in this case and that you therefore don’t need to provide an argument for the morality of capital punishment. We don’t need to pass an “on the defensive” sign back and forth, but I have reasons for thinking that I can legitimately demand more from you, starting with the fact that I was the one who presented (or at least recapped) the argument that started us off here. If you wish to disagree, it seems the burden is on you to show the defect in that position — and the argument you’ve given thus far relies on a fancy, metaphysically complex entity (namely, the automatic governmental right to execute) whose existence I doubt. If you just want to dig your heels in and insist that there is such a right, there may not be much more for us to say. It would be more helpful, though, if you could offer some sort of evidence for this right — either an argument, or a reference to somebody else’s. If St. Thomas, or some other Doctor of the Church, did indeed argue for the right of government to execute criminals, then by all means we should examine that text. I don’t know of one, however. It’s clear that St. Thomas (among others) did more or less assume that governments would be executing people, and in particular I know the passage in which he argues the necessity of executing obstinate heretics. But it’s obvious that St. Thomas took as assumed a very different sort of government. I don’t think our government would be entitled to go around trying to execute heretics.

    In short, if you want to attack my position, you need to point out defects that my (Bottum’s) argument is not able to accommodate. Merely observing the historical prevalence of capital punishment doesn’t seem to qualify, especially since the argument accounts for and even makes use of that fact.

    I brought up governmental legitimacy, not in order to argue that our government is straightforwardly illegitimate, but rather because I think it’s important to examine the source of its legitimacy if we’re to determine what the government is permitted to do. Of course on some level all authority comes from God, just as on some level all babies come from God, all natural disasters come from God, all blessings come from God, etc. But as in these other cases, it can still be fruitful to examine the more proximate source. In the case of the modern democratic state, its legitimacy basically comes from the approbation of the people… and nothing more. It is self-consciously a manifestation of man’s will and man’s justice, not God’s. Thus the modern state is entitled to do those things that men can rightfully do for the sake of keeping order among themselves, but not those things that are specifically the prerogative of God Himself.

19. 19 Ambrosius Jul 1st, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    Ok, I don’t want to spend any more time on this. I’m completely happy for the government never to carry out whatever this airy notion of High Justice that Bottum has defined - in some sense, invented. I just don’t think that’s relevant to real life even remotely. And I still think that the State of Louisiana could kill that child rapist.

    I trust the inchoate sense among the populace that capital punishment is acceptable and needful more than a manufactured concern that blood-debt will grow prominent and overwhelm us or whatever it is, exactly, that Bottum is worried about.

    If you want to keep discussing the matter for the benefit of our readers, you may respond and wrangle with the following passage, dredged in moments from our old friend Google:
    St. Augustine

    The same divine authority that forbids the killing of a human being establishes certain exceptions, as when God authorizes killing by a general law or when He gives an explicit commission to an individual for a limited time. The agent who executes the killing does not commit homicide; he is an instrument as is the sword with which he cuts. Therefore, it is in no way contrary to the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill’ to wage war at God’s bidding, or for the representatives of public authority to put criminals to death, according to the law, that is, the will of the most just reason.

    (The City of God, Book 1, chapter 21)

20. 20 Clara Jul 1st, 2008 at 6:36 pm

    Well, the St. Augustine quote seems pretty straightforward. He is explaining why it isn’t murder for the state to execute criminals under conditions in which that is justified. He doesn’t get into details about what the conditions would be. This does clearly seem to establish that capital punishment can potentially be justified, but of course everyone in the conversation has agreed to that.

    As far as the notion of “high” justice, you can dismiss it as “airy” if you want to, but it seems very simple and intuitive to me. Are you killing a man because, if you didn’t, he would be a danger to society? Or are you killing him because his wicked deeds make him deserving of death? If it’s for the second reason, that’s what Bottum calls “high” justice, and that’s what he thinks should be reserved to God, or those who are acting as God’s agents. I contend that the state of Louisiana doesn’t qualify to perform that function, and furthermore, that it isn’t needful. Executing that child rapist will bring no practical benefits that could not be attained just as well through incarceration.

    You can call Bottum’s concern about blood-lust and revenge “manufactured” if you want to, but I think history shows that it’s a primal urge as foundational as sexual desire, and one of the primary reasons why legal systems were formed in the first place. A people who have rejected Christian premises in the founding of their state, could easily descend back into the same.

    It isn’t evil to desire that justice, in a higher sense than our courts can accomplish, should be done. We yearn for that constantly, in fact, when we see parents neglecting their children, pastors (bishops!) neglecting their flock, dictators who exploit their people for personal gain and on and on and on. There’s such a thing as righteous anger, but we must not let it control us to the point where we give an unmerited authority to anyone who is willing to mete out punishment. God will avenge all these sins in whatever way is most fitting, when He deems the time is right.

21. 21 Ambrosius Jul 2nd, 2008 at 7:45 am

    You could have read my comments more charitably, and could have striven rather harder not to distort them. I obviously am not rejecting justice, but think that there is a manufactured distinction between the plain justice that we all feel is done when a murderer is killed, ever since Genesis 9:6 codified that as part of God’s law for men on earth, and the “Cosmic balancing of scales” that is inaccessible to modern democracies supposedly because their actors and originators don’t realize that the power of the state is derived from God. The question of needfulness that you’ve tried to inject again and again here really need not enter. The question is whether modern democracies pass the test of being identifiable with the state as understood from Biblical times or not, with all the rights and duties in behalf of God’s law that pertain thereto.

22. 22 Clara Jul 2nd, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    I never accused you of being anti-justice. And I think I do understand how you view the question, but I just think you’re wrong. You’re somewhat incredulous, I think, that something that seems so intuitive, so obviously “fair”, and that’s been done by lots of societies throughout history, should be ruled out for ours. And it irritates you that I should think it necessary to go through lots of questions of political theory and drawing distinctions between different sorts of justice, in order to decide a matter that seems to you to be so obvious. But such, I’m afraid, is the case. And, I might add, neither one of us should feel at liberty to assume our position without serious reflection. Most human societies may have tended, historically, towards your position, but the Holy See tends more towards mine. Both of us, therefore, have good reason to be careful and circumspect in working through this question.

    To begin with: the feeling of satisfaction we all get when we see the murderer punished, “plain” justice as you call it, is indeed as old as the hills. I’ve acknowledged that, remember? We do all have strong intuitions about what justice demands, and an intense wish to see evil people get their “just deserts” and this is what fuels a lot of the demand for the death penalty. But it turns out that we need to be rather careful about throwing around terms like “plain justice.” Justice is a tricky thing to work out… particularly for us Christians, who also believe in mercy. We can’t just trust our instincts, even strong instincts. It really is necessary to draw some distinctions between different sorts of justice, before deciding what the state can do.

    And once we do this consideration, I think Bottum’s distinction is far from manufactured or airy. In fact, it is completely intuitive, “plain as potatoes” as Chesterton would put it. The distinction is between punishing someone for the sake of keeping order, and punishing someone just because he deserves it. We don’t always draw this distinction because so often the two overlap, but in this case, as it turns out, they don’t.

    Think about it this way. When trying to define justice, one of the first and most obvious things that occurs to most people is to equate it with fairness, or some kind of balancing. There’s a reason why scales have long been a symbol for justice. But what is being balanced? Well sometimes it involves grievances between people. When adjudicating, say, a property dispute between two people, the claims of the two people are being balanced, and justice is whatever restores the equilibrium between the two of them. Sometimes, as for example in the case of treason, the state is in some sense an “injured” party, and it is the entity against whom the debt needs to be balanced. Then there is the “highest” party that can be offended, which is God. The need for justice before God, the need for the whole universe to be in balance, is, as I’ve said, something we feel very instinctively. Bottum calls it “high” justice because it is justice as it relates to God, and he talks about “cosmic scales” because in a sense it is really the whole cosmos that we feel needs to be brought back into balance. But don’t let the fancy, poetic terms throw you off. What we’re talking about is a very ordinary and familiar thing — the wish for the righteous man to be blessed and wicked man to suffer, according to their merits. It’s very plain, but it’s also a recognizably different thing from the kind of justice that makes Jones compensate Smith for running into his car, or that makes Kristen offer Jane an apology for hurting her feelings. One has to do with restoring order in a concrete way among people, and the other with restoring our feeling of rightness with the world as a whole.

    Capital punishment has historically served both ends, but in our present society, it’s fairly clear that the demand for it springs mainly from people’s yearning for this latter kind of justice. We can see this in part from the rhetoric used in advocating the death penalty, but even more obviously from process of elimination. In cases like this one in Louisiana, there is no compelling practical reason for using the death penalty. Scores of other people are being kept right now, safely behind bars, where they’re not doing any further harm to the populous. Why execute this particular guy? Well, it’s simply because his crime seems particularly heinous — because he seems to deserve it. It’s the quintessential demand for high justice.

    But meting out just deserts is not something we should leave in the hands of the state — at least, not the modern, democratic state. Here you are again frustrated by my insistence on drawing distinctions that you don’t want to bother about, but it’s necessary. In your way of thinking, an entity either is or is not a state… and if it is, it can claim a kind of standardized “rights package” which includes within it the right to carry out executions. Or, perhaps it can lose certain rights within the package, but only by committing some kind of offense?

    For argument’s sake, let’s look at things through that lens, because even though I have a blanket suspicion of any claims to “rights”, I do agree that a genuinely just and virtuous state would have the power to execute criminals. So, taking that as the ideal, what would a state need to do to lose the right to administer high justice? On the practical side, it needs some level of legitimacy, and such capabilities as are realistically necessary in order to enforce its laws consistently and with appropriate impartiality. An American state plausibly reaches that benchmark. But surely this isn’t all that’s necessary. As with any important job, you only want to entrust it to someone who evidences some understanding of what the job is and how they should go about it. You would want to see the state show some level of consistency and seriousness about undertaking such a weighty task. You’d want to see a good faith interest in understanding the human telos. You’d want to see a general orientation towards the good. You would want to see, in short, that they carry out executions as one measure towards establishing a just and virtuous society, and not merely to quell the tide of vengeful anger that inevitably rises whenever a particularly heinous crime is made public.

    Does our government evidence the appropriate understanding? Does it hold the appropriate commitments? I should say decidedly not. Over and over again, it reiterates that it is not in the business of determining human ends, particularly in the administration of justice. The state necessarily evidences some views on human ends when they take certain positive measures — the establishment of public education, say, or the creation of national parks and monuments intended to please and inspire its citizens. Even here, efforts are made to disavow any deeper philosophical motivations, for example by emphasizing that they are merely a public expression of the will of the people, dictated by the formal requirements of our government and not by any further-reaching understanding of the human good.

    But when it comes to the justice system, the lack of orientation towards the good is particularly obvious. Our government tries as far as possible to eradicate any sign of concern about final human ends, insisting that its function is to keep order and to adjudicate disputes, not to ensure that everybody gets what they deserve. The actions of the judicial branch are determined by procedure, and not by discernment on anyone’s part of how to fulfill the human good. Consider, for example, the procedures involved in a criminal trial. The lawyers in question are expected to argue their side of the case (regardless of whether or not they think they’re in the right.) The jury is supposed to decide whether or not a law was violated. The judge is an expert in determining what sort of punishment the legal system requires for what sort of crime. Nobody in the room is charged with making sure that the people involved “get what they deserve” (except insofar as they deserve for the question to be adjudicated through the proper procedures.) This all makes perfect sense, insofar as your aim is to maintain a certain level of order, without concerning yourself overly with achieving any loftier ideal of instilling virtue or achieving the human telos. It is the kind of justice administered by a government that shrinks back as much as possible from determining what is actually deserved, adopting as a fairly central tenet of its operation that it isn’t in a position to know.

    That’s not the entire rationale, of course, for the trial system. To some degree the question of justice is left to legislatures, but here too you see a definite preoccupation with order, not with desert. Consider, for example, what happens to a man who decides to abandon his family. The state will make him pay child support, and possibly alimony. That much is practically necessary to keep people from starving. But will the state impose further penalties, requisite to the sin of utterly neglecting his responsibilities? Nope, they’ll say that’s none of their business. It’s not their job to make the wicked pay, only to ensure that the wheels of society more or less keep on turning, without too much violence, disease or starvation. I could give other examples of a similar nature, but I’m guessing you can think of your own. Our country simply is not in the business of delivering just deserts.

    You suggested at an earlier time that I was trying to argue that the modern state has no legitimacy. That would be going too far, but certainly this is a suggestion that the modern state s deeply defective in a way that limits what it can justly do. It is not the state “as understood from Biblical times” because it is conceived and structured very differently from the states of Biblical times. Unlike the Roman state, which was essentially pre-Christian, it has self-consciously rejected the foundational commitments that would allow it to pursue high justice in a way that we Christians could approve. Granting it that power, that godlike power to decide who deserves to live and who to die, is like handing over an automatic weapon to someone who’s amply demonstrated, and even announced, that he doesn’t know how to use it.

    Execution is an interesting thing. The possibility usually arises in very emotionally charged circumstances, and, because it does send the accused to the next world (whatever that may hold for him), it is particularly inspiring to the imagination. I would say, therefore, that this is one power that we need to be especially careful about granting. If someone wanted to moonlight as the occasional provider of high justice, this would be the easiest place to start. Bringing the hammer down on someone who, as the expression goes, “needs killin’” can be an enormously popular measure — everyone feels a certain satisfaction about it. But that’s all the more reason for us as Christians to be wary. We are not in the business of indulging vengeful passions, knowing as we do that the real power for righting wrongs belongs only to God. We can sometimes countenance the possibility of legitimate punishment, which can even have a salvific effect as Iosephus originally observed. But we should try our best not to let the legitimate concern stand as an excuse for the other, less noble desire, particularly when this means affording to an unreliable entity a kind of legitimacy that it does not merit. The American state, which has disavowed any responsibility for administering high justice in almost every other case, can hardly be trusted to step into that role in this one place where emotions run the highest.

    As a final note… I’m sorry if the tone of my last post was a bit snippy. But you know, the one from you immediately preceding it was rather the same.

23. 23 Ambrosius Jul 2nd, 2008 at 2:40 pm

    I didn’t intend to be snippy previously. I am sorry that I wrote in that manner.

24. 24 JSP Jul 4th, 2008 at 5:10 pm

    If for all of recorded history the punishment for crime X was death, then why can’t the modern state, in all its lack of godly glory, continue with that punishment - solely using historical precedence as the justification?

    In your attempt to philosophize a justification for abolishing the death penalty you are committing four crimes:

    1) Not satisfying the crime with the right punishment — failing to follow the clear historical precedence held by many godly rulers. This is a crime in itself. The governor of the modern democracy will be held accountable before God for his lack of executing justice on criminals. You will be held accountable for persuading them philosophically and making them seem they can be good Catholic governors, legislatures, or judges without executing vicious criminals.

    2) Not allowing the criminal to make proper satisfaction for his crime in this life, and making his afterlife much worse for him. You will be held accountable for this injustice.

    3) Not allowing the criminal the luxury of knowing the certain date and time of his death — thereby giving him a greater opportunity to repent and come to peace with God. Criminals sentenced to life in prison are certainly more likely to die in a state of persistent mortal sin and probably through a quick violent death without the opportunity to repent. You will be held accountable for these souls.

    4) Increasing the chance and furthermore enticing the families of the victim to commit vigilantism and murder. You will share in this crime.

    All of these crimes will be on the souls of the liberals who have abolished the death penalty and the so-called Catholics who have given them philosophical cover.

25. 25 Doctor Asinorum Jul 4th, 2008 at 5:43 pm

    Ah yes, the “I’m too stupid to understand the argument so it must be better to do it the way it’s always been done” rejoiner. Thank goodness we have so-called rational creatures to make such perceptive comments.

26. 26 JSP Jul 4th, 2008 at 6:13 pm

    Thank goodness PhDs only have petty influence and power on the peripheries of society.

    The Asinorums make perfectly understandable Buckley’s line, “I’d rather be governed by the first thousand names of the Boston phone book than by the Harvard University faculty.”

27. 27 Ambrosius Jul 5th, 2008 at 9:06 am

    I’m just closing these comments, which have not advanced anything.

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