https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/death-penalty-change-francis-builds-john-paul-iis-teaching
MGB: The Catechism got it right. The question is not punishment or innocence for the death penalty (and for that matter, abortion), it is the danger posed by the an individual to others. At times, extreme measures are necessary. What Francis does not seem to reallize is that most convicts consider prison for life without parole to be a death sentence by slow torture, especially if spent in SuperMax.
While some murders, perhaps most, deserve reconsideration after a time, indeed after a time very soon after incarceration, others can never be rehabilitated because they are sociopaths or psychopaths. These are not mental illnesses, that is simply a way to say that the individuals are pathologically evil. They will kill their guards or their cellmates.
There is no question of their dignity, only their danger. If human dignity simply is a shorthand for divine sovereignty than Francis or Michael Sean is arguing from authority, a logical fallacy. The Cathecism was finally asking the right questions, however old habits die hard.
In olden days, it was up to the sovereign to protect life. Now we are all sovereign. It is our choice, not the Church's and if the Church is to advise our choice, it needs to go back to the standard of danger, including within the prison, and ask itself what is more cruel, euthanizing the sociopath or killing him by slow torture. Either way, the State will be the cause of his death.
This is also a very Eurocentric position. Europe and North America do have, in most cases, a superior penal system (some would say the American system is over used on the non-violent, but that is separate question). All nations don't have that luxury. Sometimes dangerous people, even children, cannot be cared for and deprogramed to be non-dangerous. I am thinking of Darfur and Boko Harram. To make innocents safe, dangerous people need to be killed, both in combat and upon capture. Anything else is an abrogation of sovereignty by whatever ruler exists.
Western political theory, more than western prison standards, can guide these decisions more accurately than Catholic Doctrine. Both Hobbes and Locke defined why the state exists and they were correct in doing so. Rousseau tried to give it a libertarian edge, which is fine if you are talking about gay marriage or drugs, but he was useless on both tax policy and executing the dangerous. Let us stick to what is useful. Life should not be a fetish if it puts others in danger. Piety is not a standard of governance nor should it be.
Just to be clear. I have a second cousin. His name is Timothy. He lives in the Bay Area, although the fact that girls have gone missing in Iowa means he may be visiting home. He is a suspected mass murderer but is smart enough to have never gotten caught. The character of Red John in the Mentalist was probably based on him rather than any police conspiracy. If what they suspect is true, he is probably a sociopath and not mentally diseased, so he cannot be treated. I suspect that given the choice, he would prefer death to being put in a cage for 20 years (his father lived a long time). I would let him be euthanized. In fact, I would push the drugs myself to help wipe out the family stain. For me, this is not a hypothetical but real family tragedy.
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