The Elephant in the Room

The elephant in the room, for a Christian-themed blog such as mine, is of course the execution of Saddam Hussein. The initial reaction that just about everybody in the region had to it was emotional. Riverbend in Iraq bitterly protested. Iran's official newspaper celebrated . Here at home, it was no different. On the Friday before New Year's the Sun posted an insistent and emotional demand that "meddlers" (western death penalty opponents) stop opposing Saddam's execution.

However, it isn't all heat. Surprisingly for so conservative a publication, the National Review posted a series of balanced reflections from important Catholic theologians weighing the pros and cons. Stephen Bainbridge carefully pleads the case that Saddam's hanging was a licit use of the death penalty under Catholic teaching.

Of course, I had several emotional reactions, over the course of the events.

• I felt empathy for the Iraqi victims of Saddam's Kurdish and Shiite purges - I can completely understand how carrying out Saddam's sentence would seem like necessary to both closure and justice, although I agree with Sr. Helen Prejean, when she says, "It is an illusory thing, like drinking salt water when you are thirsty, as though by watching another person die you could ever be healed."
• I was repulsed by the bloodthirsty coverage of the western media - for instance, on Google searches, without having any desire to see it, images of Saddam's execution came up in searches all the time. I'm sorry, but I don't want to gawk at executions any more than I am given to vulturing at fatal car wrecks.
• I wanted to forget all about it, if I could, to hide away from it all. Whether one agrees with capital punishment or not, it is still unarguably a form of violence: a scheduled form of violence, even. The more I know about an execution, the dirtier I feel... like I have to have a shower just thinking about it. There is no good way to kill a man, even a man who could be safely described by his victims as a monster, and the taint and stench of it is something I like to stay as far from as possible.

However, my reaction wasn't solely emotional. I carefully surveyed my own thoughts on the death penalty, to see if there was anything in this event that could refine my own position on capital punishment.

Christianity has always admitted the possibility of the death penalty, in no small part because the scriptures clearly allude to capital punishment. There can be no denying that the death penalty has been an extreme punishment frequently resorted to in human history. Not all uses of the death penalty have been unjust. But it is a punishment with a dark and emotional undercurrent, and in many instances, the application of it has been unjust - I think, for instance, of the brutal Robespierre in the French Revolution, who used execution as a kind of 'class cleansing.'

But what was a pastoral society in the Iron Age supposed to do when it was revealed that one amongst them is a murderer, one likely to offend again? There was no way to lock someone up for fifty years if you all live in the hills and fields. In such a circumstance, it can be argued that, as John Paul II said, we should only resort to the "extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society." For our ancestors, it likely was impossible to otherwise protect their people from a murderer. However, in modern societies, there are few such cases, truly. We have secure prisons, and we have the resources to incarcerate offenders in a permanent way, and in a way that promotes deterrence. As the Supreme Court of Canada noted in a 2001 ruling, "exposure of the respondents to death in prison by execution (does not advance) Canada's public interest in a way that the alternative -- death in prison by natural causes -- would not."

The death penalty does nothing to advance Christian morality, which in Matthew 25:39 has us visiting prisoners rather than engaging in forms of ritual shaming and violence, which is what I believe modern executions to be. Quite the contrary, I find that regrettably strong Christian support for the death penalty tends to hurt our interests in other pro-life causes, as others are quick to point us out as hypocrites, which they are right to do.

So my personal bottom line on capital punishment, put as simply as I can, is this: if we do not need to kill the offender to protect ourselves, then perhaps we really shouldn't.

What's your bottom line?

Credit goes out to Lane for bringing Riverbend's post to my attention.