You Gotta Kill Them.
How Else Are They Going To Learn?

The random, mindless violence of our age makes life a cheap commodity. People are killed for their sneakers, for being clerks in convenience stores, for turning down the wrong gang-infested street, for being in bed during a drive-by shooting. With increasing frequency the killers and the victims are teenagers, even pre-teens, who, in wielding weapons whose names they cannot spell, have access to more firepower than is available to the police.

Causes of the devaluation of human life are many. When students are told that there are no fixed moral principles and that humans are merely clever animals it should come as no surprise that they take their moral cues from the barnyard or jungle. If there is no life beyond this one, amassing things by any means that works is all-important. The unborn who represent a threat to the standard of living and the elderly who are not economically productive are targets for loss of life. Alcoholic and drug-abusing parents are poor moral teachers since they are without morals themselves, so there is little hope that their children will learn the evil of violence. The biblical discipline on sex is repudiated and sex is presented to teenagers as a natural right. So children, unprepared for parenting, have children who are financially and often morally handicapped. Class and ethnic hatreds replace brotherly love and so ethnic cleansing and genocide are not seen as the monstrosities they are but as patriotic deeds.

The cheapening of human life is directly attributable to moral decline. We do not know how to restore morality to a society that does not want it. That is a difficult chore in a moral climate where, for example, those approving of killing the preborn are called moderates. We do not know how to make ours a more moral society, but we do know how to execute criminals and we are beginning to do this with a chest-thumping vengeance. New York and other states have restored the death penalty. Texas now invites relatives of victims to view the executions of victimizers. Can the thrill of public executions be far behind?

The state certainly has the right to inflict capital punishment. The Chosen People had the authority expressly stated in the scriptures (Exodus 22:18ff; Genesis 9:6; Numbers 35:16-22, 31-34). Paul recognized it as a right of the Roman government (Romans 13:4).

Granting that the state has a right to inflict capital punishment is not the same as saying that it is wise or moral public policy or that it achieves its goal of deterrence. Texas executes more than most other states with no detectable decline in murder attributable to that fact. It is doubtful that the amoral gangland punks are much deterred by the number of state executions. It is true that executed criminals commit no further crimes, but the same result could be achieved by life imprisonment. Executions may give families of victims some sort of satisfaction, but whatever it is, it is hard to reconcile with the words, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord" (Romans 12:19).

It is legitimate for individuals to defend their lives even if that requires killing an aggressor. If wounding or disabling an attacker is sufficient to remove the threat to one’s own life it is not permissible to go beyond that. (CCC #2264; 2321) The state is bound by the same conditions in taking life. Executions of offenders should be done only when society cannot otherwise be defended, something that in our day is very rare. (Gospel of Life, #57) Executions of criminals that do not meet these conditions are immoral. It is not permissible for the state to respond to immorality with immoral behavior of its own.

Every human life is an image and likeness of God however badly sullied by evil conduct. Even the lives of murderers bear a spark of the divine. States should not add to the cheapening of human life. States have in practically every instance the capacity to remove the threat to society by a murderer short of killing him, such as permanent incarceration. If states are to conduct themselves morally they are then obliged to preserve the lives of offenders who surely deserve to die.