ABSTRACT: The Jesuit De Rosa explains the passage in the "New Catechism" that admits the death penalty in extremely serious cases. He expresses the hope that in the future the Church will also choose to officially refuse the death penalty.
(FAMIGLIA CRISTIANA, 9 February 1994)
The New Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) considers the death penalty as lawful, albeit "in extremely serious cases". This has stirred outcry and deception. What can be said to all the believers and non-believers who expected the Church to downright condemn capital punishment? We asked the question to Father Giuseppe De Rosa, a Jesuit who writes for La Civiltà Cattolica.
"In actual fact the outcry and deception are not entirely unjustified", answers Father De Rosa. "But they can be strongly subdued if we make an effort to understand what the CCC wanted to say. First of all, we should praise the authors' efforts to reduce the scope of the lawfulness of the death penalty as much as possible. It is stated in a parenthetic clause, and in any case is limited to only a small number of cases".
- The point is, however, that it is admitted.
"Let's try to understand. The direct statement concerns the "grounded acknowledgment" of the right and duty of the legitimate public authority to inflict penalties according to the gravity of the crime. That is what the CCC basically said. Then it adds: "without excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty". Therefore, a proper analysis of the text reveals the authors' intentions of limiting the practical scope of the statement as much as possible. All the more so since it is stated in the following paragraph that "if non-cruel means are sufficient to defend the human lives from the attacker and to safeguard public order and people's safety, the authority will use these means only". "Obviously in almost all cases to defend the aforementioned values it is not necessary to resort to the death penalty, which is generally inflicted after a criminal is no longer capable of doing harm. Thus the death penalty, while not excluded in theory "in extremely serious cases", is practically not admitted".
- But can the states that maintain it say that the Church admits it in certain cases?
"I wouldn't say so. Rather, precisely according to the teachings of the Church, the states are asked to carefully assess whether the aim they want to reach with the death penalty cannot be reached with other non-brutal means. At any rate, the CCC's fundamental intention is to obtain an evolution on this subject, so that capital punishment may soon be abolished altogether".
- Is this enough to reassure all those who believe in the sacredness of life?
"I'd like to tell the Catholics who would have preferred the CCC to take a more prophetic stance that on the one hand they should try to understand the reasons why the death penalty has not been ruled out; on the other hand, they should maintain their prophetic stance in the hope that it will soon become the official positions of the Church as well. Because it is not a truth based on faith, an evolution is both possible and desirable".
- In an exemplary article of 1981, Civiltà Cattolica took a clear-cut stance against the death penalty. Have you changed your mind after the publication of the new Catechism?
"The position taken by Civiltà Cattolica in 1981 is not in question. It goes in the same direction as the CCC. On the other hand, the problem of the lawfulness of the death penalty is a point on which the discussion among Catholics is open".
- Are your personally against the death penalty?
"I am always against it, for the reasons expressed in the article on Civiltà Cattolica in 1981. They are: 1) society has the duty to protect its members against the criminals, but only using means that, apart from being effective, are also humane; b) the death penalty has no power of deterrence, as it is generally believed; c) by inflicting it on a person who has killed, justice is not obtained, nor is the violated order re-established; the life of the person is not restored, whereas the murderer is deprived of his own; d) the belief that the death penalty challenges ones of the most important achievements of modern society and of the Church; human dignity is never lost, not even with the most serious crimes; e) a better understanding of the commandment of compassion and pardon. Human and Christian reasons make the death penalty unacceptable to me. Nonetheless I think other Christians could have reasons to think otherwise. It is an issue that is being discussed by the Catholics".
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105 countries are on the black list
According to the figures provided by Amnesty International, only 50 countries exclude the death penalty completely. Sixteen countries (among them Italy) maintain it extraordinary cases, for instance for crimes committed in wartime. In eighteen countries the death penalty is in effect, but sentences have not been carried out in the last 10 years. As many as 105 countries instead practice it.
Some of the most deplorable situations in 1993: in Algeria, 370 capital sentences have been issued, and 26 have been carried out; in Egypt there have been 55 sentences and 43 executions; in China there have been 1249 ascertained executions; in the United States in 1993 there has been a record number of executions: as many as 38 have been carried out, since the death penalty was re-introduced in 35 of the 50 states of America; 2700 convicts are waiting to be executed.
In Italy the Chamber scrapped the death penalty from the military Penal Code on 18 July 1993, but the text could not be approved by the Senate because of the early dissolution of Parliament.
Everything is postponed until the next legislature, unless the Prime Minister, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, submits a decree to Parliament before the elections, which is unlikely to occur.
