The possible restoration of the death penalty by Congress is the next casus belli that’s likely to come up between the President, on one hand, and the increasingly emboldened Catholic bishops, on the other.
Last Sunday’s pastoral letter by the CBCP to the faithful, read from all pulpits, was really all about extrajudicial killings which the princes of the Church roundly condemn. But one sentence in it caught my eye:
“Not even the government has a right to kill life because it is only God’s steward and not the owner of life.”
This statement goes well beyond the issue of EJKs, which primarily turns on questions about due process. The bishops seem to be saying here that even a formal sentence of death, despite having been duly adjudicated and processed by the state, is still unacceptable.
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Now I must confess that I used to be a hardliner against the death penalty. It seemed pretty straightforward from the Fifth Commandment in the Bible: “Thou shalt not kill.” (Exodus 20:13)
But how then to account for St. Augustine in the 4th century saying in The City of God: “It is in no way contrary to the commandment…for the representatives of public authority to put criminals to death, according to the law…”
Or, nearly a thousand years later, St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica: “If a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and healthful that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good…”
Or, much closer to our time, in the Catechism of Pope St. Pius X, 1908: “It is lawful to kill when fighting in a just war, when carrying out by order of the Supreme Authority a sentence of death in punishment of a crime.”
It turns out that the 5th Commandment comes with what lawyers might call its own IRR (implementing rules and regulations) in Exodus 23:7: “The innocent and the just you shall not put to death, nor shall you acquit the guilty.” The blanket proscription is thus further qualified and specified.
In the end it all gets tied together, in a more merciful way, in the modern (1994) Catholic Catechism: “2267. Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”
In short, instead of outright opposition to the death penalty on theological grounds, the CBCP might have chosen instead to focus on the infirmities of law enforcement and due process in our country today that cast into doubt our ability to “fully determine the guilty party”. In light of recent headlines, such a position would have been firmer as well as more popular.
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What is now arising out of this rarefied discussion is a much more secular—and therefore more gossip-worthy—dispute that may be brewing between House Speaker “Bebot” Alvarez and his primus inter pares deputy speaker Gloria Arroyo.
The former president has made no bones about her aversion to the death penalty. She had it repealed on her watch in 2006, and she continues to be an active leader of the International Commission against the Death Penalty (ICDP) based in Spain.
Thus, she has already sought, and obtained, from the President (who supports the death penalty) his consent for her to vote her conscience. And she will reciprocate this favor from him by simply abstaining from the vote, rather than publicly opposing the bill that seeks to restore the penalty.
But the Speaker will have none of that. He has said that if Arroyo will not support the bill—let alone assist him in rounding up support for it among House member—she will have to resign the deputy speakership.
It will be interesting to see how this face-off turns out. Alvarez is certainly entitled to demand discipline within his bloc. The PDP-Laban bloc is actually big enough to be called a super-majority, but its cohesion may be a bit tenuous, having been formed, not from shared principles or history, but from the rubble of previous party affiliations that were cast aside in the usual post-election rush to join the winning president’s party.
Like it or not, though, this is the raw material that the President will have to work with in order to build the grand coalition that he needs to push through his proposed constitutional reforms, led by a shift to semi-presidential and federal government. Ensuring that the congressmen toe the line over the critical next 1-2 years is job number one for the Speaker.
On the other hand, Mrs. Arroyo commands a substantial following of her own. Can Alvarez win them over, perhaps together with Arroyo, in the best case? Or, by forcing this showdown over what may be a relatively minor issue in the larger scheme of things, does he risk alienating a large chunk of the membership that he may nonetheless believe he can still outvote?
As they like to say out in the boonies: Abangan!
Readers can write me at gbolivar1952@yahoo.com.
