CBCP: Death penalty and flawed legal system “a lethal mix”
THE Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines said capital punishment and flawed legal system are always “a lethal mix” even as it urged the faithful to uphold the sanctity of life and make a stand against death penalty.
In a pastoral statement on death penalty signed by CBCP president and Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas and read in Sunday masses on March 19, said even with the best of intentions, “capital punishment has never been proven effective as a deterrent to crime.”
“Obviously it is easier to eliminate criminals than to get rid of the root causes of criminality in society,” it said.
It added that capital punishment and a flawed legal system are always “a lethal mix”.
It said that since in any human society there is never a guarantee of a flawless legal system, “there is always the great likelihood that those without capital will get the punishment more quickly because it is they who cannot afford a good lawyer and a guarantee of due process.”
As a law, death penalty directly contradicts the principle of inalienability of the basic human right to life, which is enshrined in most constitutions of countries that signed the universal declaration of human rights, it said.
The CBCP said, “We are not deaf to the cries of the victims of heinous crimes. The victims and their victimizers are both our brothers and sisters.”
It added, “The victim and the oppressor are both children of God. To the guilty we offer a challenge to repent and repair the harm of their sins. To the grieving victims, we offer our love, our compassion, our hope.”
To the people who use the Bible to defend death penalty, the CBCP asked, “Need we point out how many other crimes against humanity have been justified, using the same Bible?”
The bishops enjoin them to interpret the Scriptures properly, to read them as a progressive revelation of God’s will to humankind, with its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ, God’s definitive Word to the world.
The CBCP said, “Jesus was never an advocate of any form of “legal killing”. He defended the adulterous woman against those who demanded her blood and challenged those who were without sin among them to be the first to cast a stone on her (John 8:7).”
No doubt, death penalty has been in existence in many countries all over the world. It is often justified by a principle of justice based on retribution–“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (Matthew 5:3), which Jesus challenged and replaced with the higher principle of non-retaliation of evil for evil, with justice founded on mercy (Luke 6:36), it said.
“We know from history how capital punishment has so often been used by repressive governments as a way of stifling dissent, or of eliminating those whom they regarded as threats to their hold on political power,” it added. (Tita Roces)
Share your Comments or Reactions
Powered by Facebook Comments
