The discourse on the death penalty over the last several days has revealed some profound errors in the thinking of many which I wish to shortly address here. These errors are in some cases only tangentially related to the death penalty itself but they reveal a set of broader errors which have for some time infiltrated the Catholic heart and mind to such a degree that people fail to even recognize them anymore. 1. The error of liberal democracy Liberal democracies in general claim that their authority rests on the people who have voted for their governments. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” often comes with the complete forgetfulness of the very much established fact that EACH government was given the authority to govern by God Himself. Any given government would not exist nor be able to govern if it hadn’t literally been given to them by God. Regardless of how vile politicians are (and we know well what Chesterton had to say about both the death penalty and politicians in one short sentence), they do have an authority which was given to them by God. Therefore, when a justice system of a country executes a criminal, they do so not as individuals, not even as officials to whom people have allocated the power to govern, but they do so with the authority given to them by God. This authority does not depend on the character of those who occupy the positions of governing. It is therefore completely erroneous to oppose the death penalty in a way that treats the State as an individual who should not cast a first stone, or to claim that judges aren’t infallible or sinless, because none of that matters in the case where authority has been granted by God Himself. It bears repeating once again that democracies (or any other forms of government) do not derive their authority from the governed. They also do not derive it from themselves, their status, any previous governments, their power etc. Every government in existence that acts on this Earth does so with the authority given to them by God. They can, of course, abuse this authority and pursue evil things, but that is an entirely different matter. 2. The error of safety and/or rehabilitation The justice system is called thus because for millennia, its main aim and the reason for its existence has been to satisfy the demands of justice. This is very clear from the centuries of Catholic teaching on both the death penalty and justice in general. Those who oppose the death penalty often claim that the safety of prisons (regardless of how weak and dubious this very claim is) as well as the possibility of reformation/conversion somewhere down the line renders the death penalty unnecessary and cruel. The problem is that even if their assertions were true and measurable (which they aren’t), none of it has anything to do with justice. The popes, saints and theologians who have over the centuries spoken on why the death penalty is allowed (at times even necessary), concerned themselves primarily and often exclusively with the demands of justice. I do not know of any pope who defended the death penalty on account of prisons being too over-crowded. In other words, the popes of the past have defended the death penalty as a means of obtaining justice and not on account of the prison system being weak. If we are to contradict what the popes and saints for centuries defended, we are to at least engage their actual argument; and their argument is that the DP is the matter of justice. 3. Breaking the law of non-contradiction This is not merely a theological error. This is a deep ontological illness. It is impossible for anyone, including Catholics, including the Church herself, to hold two contradictory views on the same issue. Popes claiming the DP opposes human dignity and previous many popes claiming the DP satisfies the demands of justice cannot both be correct. This would break the law of non-contradiction and send reason itself straight to hell. Either one set of popes is wrong, both sets of popes are wrong, or we misunderstood something. That’s it. There is no possibility here that allows you to follow the opinion of both sets of popes and claim that the DP at one point was just but now violates human dignity (which basically makes it now unjust). It’s not a development because utter contradiction is not a development. A wolf could potentially be domesticated and mate with dogs such that a new, wolf-related species may develop down the line. But the wolf can’t do this with a sheep. Or with a flower. Contradictions are impossible to meet in the middle. Lastly, my concern here is actually not primarily with the DP itself. It’s with the justifications used for opposing the DP. These justifications are full of errors (some of which I mentioned here); they often distort the very nature of God Himself, the nature of the Catholic Church, the nature of justice and mercy, as well as the nature of the papacy. This is what worries me greatly, and not so much the idea that the DP is not used in practice.