REJECTING THE DEATH PENALTY: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN THE TRADITION

Abstract

This essay has two broad purposes. The first is to argue that the 'legitimate defense' paradigm used to explicate the conditions for inflicting the death penalty in Evangelium vitae and the Catechism of the Catholic Church has not been adequately analyzed in theological literature. 1 When it is we see the new paradigm represents a significant shift away from the traditional paradigm used to ethically evaluate capital punishment, at least in the last 500 years. The principal theoretical implication of the shift for Catholic moral teaching is that the death penalty precisely as punishment is no longer being defended, but rather the death penalty as collective self defense. The second is to argue that although the discontinuities between the present teaching and the tradition are more significant than ordinarily admitted, nevertheless there are also distinct lines of continuity. I identify and begin to develop these lines. I argue that in light of these developments a principled rejection of the death penalty (which I demonstrate the CCC's teaching clearly anticipates) could maintain important elements of continuity with traditional Catholic teaching on the morality of capital punishment.