Conference 44 - The Killing of Another

Conferences on the Virtues

By Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd

Number 44

The Killing of Another…

We turn now to Question 3 of the Chapter on Injustices Involving the Internal Goods of Life and of the Body, namely

The Killing of Another…

As in the case of suicide, here too we distinguish between direct and Indirect killing. The same definitions apply here as did there. Direct killing includes the notion of both directly intending the death of another together with the placing of an act or omission that is the immediate and proximate cause of death. In the Indirect killing, as you recall, the death of another IS NOT directly intended, and the act or omission does not directly cause the death of another; rather, death is foreseen as a probable, even very likely, result of the act or omission.

Not all direct taking of another’s life is an injustice (or crime). But when it is, we call it homicide (murder). And there are circumstances that aggravate the heinousness of the crime. One in particular is the relationship of the person killed to the murderer. The Latin has special names for the murder of a father, a spouse, a brother or sister, a child, a king or ruler, etc. Interestingly, my author also mentions “murder for the sake of seizing the property of the one murdered”, which was the subject of the first reading in yesterday’s Eucharistic liturgy (Monday of the 11^th week of Year II), in which Jezebel orchestrated the murder of Naboth so that King Ahab could seize Naboth’s vineyard. In any event, Catholic Moral Doctrine thereon can be summarized in the form of four Theses.

Thesis I. - In virtue of Natural Law, given the fact of an established civil society, it is lawful and morally permissible for the Supreme Civil Authority to impose capital punishment upon evildoers convicted of very grievous crimes, whenever the public good requires it.

This thesis is founded upon the very concept of Justice, which requires that whoever wrongfully does injury to another or to civil society is obliged to make “reparation” for it, namely, to “repair” the damage done. No Catholic Christian can deny this principle, since it is an integral part of our Christian faith, for we profess that the infinite injury done to God’s Goodness and Majesty by the Sin of Adam and Eve, parents of the entire human race, could only be “repaired” by the redemptive suffering and death of Jesus, Who is both God and Man. Only a member of the human race could satisfy on behalf of all Mankind, and only a Divine Person could offer reparation of infinite value to equalize and cancel the infinite debt.

The important thing to notice about the Theses just stated is that only the supreme civil authority in a society can lawfully impose capital punishment. As we pointed out in one of the previous conferences on suicide, the death of a member of Society harms the entire Society. But the Society exercises authority only through its lawfully constituted Superiors, in whom alone are invested Society’s “right” and “duty” to apply whatever sanctions are necessary in order to enforce the laws, protect the common good and deter criminal activity.

In earlier times, hardly anyone questioned the authority of Society to exact capital punishment. Almost everyone accepted the proposition that the civil authority could not carry out its obligation to protect and vindicate the common good unless it possessed that right. In those days almost everyone found the following kind of “reasoning” patently true and convincing.

(a) Granted that “society” possesses the authority to punish, which one cannot deny, its purpose is to see that adequate and sufficient reparation is made for the violence and harm done to the moral order. And crimes are to be punished with proportionate penalties. But some crimes are so grave that they can be expiated only by capital punishment, by removing the evildoer entirely from human society.

(b) Right reason dictates that the part that is harmful to the whole be cut away. As St. Thomas teaches, “Every part is ordained to the entirety as the imperfect is to the perfect, and every part exists for the sake of the entirety. In view of this, the welfare of the entire human body requires the amputation of a member that is gangrenous or otherwise corruptive of the other members, as something laudable and health giving. Each individual person is to be compared to the entire community as the part is to the whole, and so, if anyone is a [very grave] danger to the community, and corruptive of society because of some serious crime, it is laudable and health giving to impose capital punishment so that the common good may be preserved.

Of course, what makes reasoning like the above easier to accept is the fact that in Sacred Scripture, Divine Revelation, we also find the teaching that the highest authority in society does have the right to impose the death sentence in appropriate instances:

“Whoever strikes a man a mortal blow must be put to death” (Exodus 20:12); and “Whoever takes the life of any human being shall be put to death” (Leviticus 24:17). And even earlier in the history of the human race:

“If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has man been made.” (Genesis 9:6)

And from the New Testament:

…for it [Civil Authority] is a servant of God for your good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword without purpose; it is the servant of God to inflict wrath on the evildoer”. (Romans 13:4)

Of course, this power is not to be used lightly, but extreme care must be used on the part of the highest civil authority and its agents to be absolutely sure that capital punishment is clearly necessary and appropriate in individual cases:

The crime for which it is invoked must be extremely grave and heinous, and it must be morally certain whom the guilty party is, that is, after a fair and thorough trial of the one accused.

Likewise, it must be clear that the good of the community requires it. Namely, the seriousness of the crime is not enough. “Society” must have suffered grievous harm as a result.

Lacking either of these, it cannot be imposed.

To my way of thinking, there is a very good reason why capital punishment SHOULD NOT EVER be imposed. The reason has nothing to do with Justice strictly speaking, but with Charity. As long as a human being lives, there is the possibility that he/she will repent of grievous sins, turn to Our Lord for forgiveness, and achieve eternal salvation. Were the sentence of death to be carried out, that could easily rob the guilty party of the opportunity to repent. When the salvation of a human soul is at stake, no expense to provide a natural span of life during which repentance may occur can be deemed too great (i.e., by life imprisonment). In that earlier society that I spoke of, the thinking of St. Thomas found easy acceptance:

“The very fact that evildoers might repent if they are allowed to live does not prohibit their being put to death; the danger that they constitute if left alive is greater and more certain than the expectation of their repentance. For they have, even at the moment of death the opportunity and the capacity to turn to God for forgiveness. But if they are so obstinate in evil that they cannot even repent at the moment of death, it is sufficiently probably that they will never ever turn from evil.” And my author adds: “Amendment of life is the secondary purpose of punishment. The primary purpose is the vindication of the common good.

Thesis II - Direct killing of an innocent person is the most grievous of sins: against God, Society, and the innocent victim.

The same reasons apply here as they did when we spoke of direct suicide.

The killing of an innocent person is a grievous violation of God’s absolute rights over human life and the human body.

As we stated there, nowadays the reason why people find it difficult to see that the loss of every human life is a loss to society is because charity has grown so cold in the hearts of so many of our contemporaries.

Again, it does grievous harm to the innocent victim in that it deprives him/her of physical life, the greatest temporal good and the foundation of all other temporal goods. In particular, physical life here on earth is the condition for earning a share in God’s Life for all eternity.

The above Thesis, which is suggested to human reason by the natural Law, is corroborated by Divine Positive Law:

“Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20, 13); and more explicitly: “The innocent and the just you shall not put to death” (Exodus 23:7).

Nowadays, the question of Euthanasia (“mercy killing” of the terminally ill, the chronically ill, the useless elderly, the useless retarded, those afflicted with excruciating pain and suffering) has reared its ugly head, along with the question of “Doctor-assisted Suicide.”

The reasons given in the last conference to show that no sufficient reason exists to justify suicide are applicable to individuals in the categories just mentioned. But it takes a strong Christian faith to see that sufferings here on earth of any kind can and should be transformed into spiritual riches. When offered in union with the sufferings of Jesus, they share in the redemptive, salvific value of the sufferings of Our Lord. They help to obtain graces of repentance and conversion for grave sinners, and are a powerful means of saving souls in serious danger of falling into Hell.

Though it is certainly laudable to offer one’s sufferings to reduce one’s own Purgatory in the next life, the Charity with which one offers his/her sufferings here on earth for the spiritual welfare of others, is a far more purifying and effective Purgatory in this world than Purgatory beyond the grave.

Thesis III - Indirect killing of an innocent person is unlawful (it s sin), except when there is good and proportionately serious reason to justify it.

Once again the principle of the Two-fold effect applies, as it did when we spoke of Indirect Suicide.

(a) The act or omission in question, which results in two effects, one good and one evil, must be good in itself, i.e., NOT intrinsically evil.

(b) The good effect (usually the saving of a life or something comparable) and the evil effect (the death of an innocent human being) must both proceed as a direct result of the action or omission.

(d) The good effect must be of a value great enough to at least balance the loss of a human life, i.e., the proportionately grave reason for allowing the death of another.

Some of the situations given as examples of morally permissible indirect killing come from the context of war or medical practice. For example, it is considered licit to bomb an enemy’s munitions plant for the good result of destroying his capacity to wage an unjust war, even though it is certain that noncombatant citizens will die in the process, provided of course, that the bombing is an efficacious means of shortening the war.

And it is morally permissible to administer a lifesaving drug to a pregnant woman, even though it is foreseen that the drug will cause the death of the fetus. In this situation the life of the mother is saved by the drug, not by the death of the fetus.

Of course not all situations that arise in real life are not as “cut and dried” as these two examples. If and when they do arise, the advice of good living moral counselors must be sought, and prayer and fasting must be resorted to, all with the intention of discerning God’s will in the matter.

Thesis IV - The Indirect Killing of an Unjust Aggressor is Morally Permissible for the sake of saving One’s Life or to Prevent the Loss of a Comparable Good, Provided Due Care is Exercised in the Application of This Principle.

The author of my textbook makes these comments.

1. Morally permissible means that one is not obliged to use this extreme method of defending oneself. One may, at times, out of motives of virtue, permit his/her own death, unless one’s obligations to one’s family and the common good take precedence, or unless one is not positive he/she is in the state of grace.

2. The aggressor must be in the very act of attacking, or at least at the very moment of beginning a death-dealing attack.

3. The attack must be “unjust”. (What a “just” attack might be is not spelled out. The only “just” attack I can think of is the carrying out of a death sentence, lawfully pronounced after a fair and just trial). Ordinarily any unwarranted attack or an attack for the purpose of committing a crime of robbery is clearly an “unjust” attack.

4. Indirect killing. At times it is hard to see how the effect of saving one’s life does not flow directly from the killing of the unjust aggressor. Usually safety is assured only after the unjust aggressor (whom one knows is trying to kill) is dead. Then in this situation it becomes a case of choosing the lesser of two evils: my own death or the death of the unjust aggressor. Naturally, the God-given instinct of self-preservation, and considerations of charity, obligations to family and dependants indicate that the lesser evil is to terminate the life of the unjust aggressor.

5. For the purpose of preserving one’s own life or a comparable good. At times the comparable good is the life of another, sometimes the preservation of bodily integrity and/or psychological integrity. Of course, on the spur of the moment and in the excitement of warding off a seemingly deadly attack, one hardly has time to come to a careful, reasoned conclusion as to whether the “other good” that is being defended really is comparable in value to human life, even the life of the unjust aggressor.

6. Provided due care is used in the application of this principle:

That is to say, no more is to be done than is necessary to ward off an unjust attack. It is wrong to kill the aggressor when wounding him would suffice. Likewise it is wrong to wound when crying out would suffice. When it is possible to run away without incurring shame, then one should run away. Interestingly, my textbook states that it is not always possible for a soldier or a nobleman to run away without incurring shame. Only if the attacker is drunk or insane may they run away without being dishonorable. And it goes on to say that a cleric or an ordinary citizen may always run away without incurring shame.

The question is asked, what is the nature of the good things that permit one, without sin, to defend them even to the point of shedding the attacker’s blood?

Although some moralists have alleged that it is permissible to shed blood in the defense of goods of fortune (material goods), my author, with whom I agree, declares that that certainly is not true. No amount of material resources ever equals the value of a human life. Also to be considered is that the attacker is in grave danger of losing his soul if he is killed while attempting to commit robbery. Besides, Our Lord said, in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew, 5, 6 & 7), that we should give our tunic as well if another demands that we give him our coat.

Other moralists allege that a person may take the life of someone attempting to rape her [or him]. This too, is not correct, since the important thing is preserving the integrity of the soul, and that can be done by not consenting to the rape.

Still others say that one may take a life in order to defend his or her honor, but this too is false. One is more likely to lose his or her good name by so doing.

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