Capital Punishment and the Order of Reason
A Thomistic Defence of the Death Penalty
The Church has always upheld, in continuity with Sacred Scripture and the wisdom of the GrecoโRoman tradition, that capital punishment is just when the sword is wielded by legitimate authority and ordered towards the protection of the common good.
Echoing this perennial teaching, St Thomas maintains that public authority, as minister of the divine order of justice, may licitly take life when a malefactor's deeds gravely rupture the order of justice and endanger the community.
He teaches that the one who threatens the harmony of the polity has, by his own deliberate act, fallen away from the order of reason, and thus may be removed as a surgeon removes a gangrenous limb for the health of the whole body, lest he become a corrupter of the many.
He affirms that such punishment is medicinal, both restoring the violated order of justice and preventing the spread of further wrongdoing, since penalties exist to preserve the good of the whole.
He insists that the possibility of the malefactor's repentance does not override the community's right to safety and security, and the duty to defend itself through proportionate and authoritative punishment, for the judge acts not from private vengeance but from public reason.
However, because modern societies are antiโChristian, disordered, and often lack a rightly constituted and morally legitimate public authority, the Church warns that such regimes cannot be trusted with the power to take life.
ALT WIKICOMMONS