On the Death Penalty

WE SHALL treat as concisely as possible the subject of the virtue justice as it is applied in the communities of mankind.

All laws carry with them a necessary penalty of justice. One who openly espouses a belief in capital punishment must first understand the nature of justice which govern the relationship between law and the penalty of the law and not confuse justice with punishment and punishment for law.

Justice is never vengeful as vengeful men are never just men. To find sufficiency in matters pertaining to justice, one must first understand both it's excess and it's lack. For the justice of men is not the infinite justice of God to which human justice infinitely aspires for. To exceed justice in all human societies is the disintegration of law but failure to adhere to justice is the disintegration of peace. Lawlessness serve no nation, recognizing nothing but violent force. Lack of peace serve no nation, miring the peoples in poverty and despair.

Justice exists to preserve the law and sustain the will that drive the juridical institutions of the nations of mankind to refine and adapt the necessary laws that ensure both the discipline and the well being of the life of the citizenry, both the right promulgation and the diligent enforcement of the law protects the peace and the common good of the civil community where the citizenry live out their hopes. Any body of law as a whole can not be disengaged from justice because justice is the virtue that bind the will of heaven upon the earth; the order of heaven to the order of the earth.

And as all virtue serves the life of the people, any law by itself or as a codified body can not be rightfully considered to be either wise or just if it does not first abide by the first principles laid down by God not only in the hearts of all mankind but also in His actions throughout human history.

A penalty against justice is a penalty of virtue, a necessary debt of good will that must be satisfied in order to restore the original ideal.

Truth restores trust. Peace restores hope. Mercy restores life.

Death is warranted to preserve the peace and defend the common good in communities where mercy is found to either be lacking in the people who are rightfully offended by a transgression against the life and peace of their community. Death is common as capital punishment implemented by the community to those who are found to be guilty of malicious betrayal of either the life of the community as in treason or the malicious betrayal of the life of an individual as in murder.

This was a universal feature in the ways of those nations of old, in those primitive human societies from whom we owe our descent, in those times where much of the harshness of the inhabited earth yet ran wild across the lands and the refining nature of law and it's juridical systems and institutions was yet an absent thought among the abodes and the communities of men.

One who is a believer in justice knows that the measure of all virtue, especially social virtues as peace, valor and justice is summed up in lives lived to fruition.

Although suffering is a pain that is intrinsic to every mode of virtuous restoration as a means towards an end, the real object of the penalty of justice is not suffering, for the sword of the virtue justice is a sword against crime and a bane to all criminal action but her scales always tend towards life and therefore she includes in her judgments the rehabilitation of the life of criminals who despite their guilt and stigma irrevocably remain human beings and therefore, always possess in themselves the inalienable right to human dignity as human beings the same with all human beings that was, is and ever will walk this earth on God's own behest as the one common Creator of all common creation.

However, it must remain in the eyes of the courts of our nations that the life of the community holds an unmistakable precedence over the life of any single individual for as the eyes of justice is a respecter of no person, the purpose of justice serve the whole of the nation with the wisdom that combine the will of the nation-state against the evils that constantly assault the life of her peoples.

In this day and age, most especially in societies I would like to call Abrahamic, the prevalence of greater mores and nobler means to effect the restoration of the original ideal require the rethinking of the law in terms of the real deterrent value of capital punishment.

Corporal punishment is often times a more effective means to achieve the same end that the penalty of justice require. This should be reinstated in my own nation and the death penalty removed. Value reformation in terms that emphasize time served in community service coupled with civic education is also a valid means to an end.

All things considered, where any matter pertaining to human life is concerned, it is a basic rule in the Way of virtue to understand that there are only two instances where hope become absent in the life of men; in eternity where hope is realized in God, and in hell where hope is irrevocably denied by the souls of the damned in spite of God. In between heaven and hell, in the abode of our human family, hope is as perennial as the grass. The reprobate angels, envy our human hope and burn more intensely in their undying hatred of all human beings because of this fact, Satan himself utterly detests the validity of our claim to hope, never having any claim to it himself, and will do anything and everything to sever this connection we have with each other that raises our hearts in faith to God, a reality of life that transcends our differences. Hope is a requisite virtue that with faith opens into the love of God that animates and directs the actions of all the other virtues. Thus, my honorable companion, to judge without hope is contempt of life. And the measure by which we judge is the measure by which we shall likewise be judged by the Justice of God in eternity.

Military justice however, being of a different momentum than the civil justice of the civilian sphere, must retain the death penalty for treason with proven malice effected against the unit whole of the profession of arms. In the unenviable places where the noble military of our nations operate, the discipline and the morale of the elements of each unit that makes up the one cohesive military whole, takes precedence over the life and peace of individuals, it takes a will of sacrifice to honorably serve in the noble military and this every soldier knows, for the valor of each of their will of sacrifice, the nobility of their readiness to die, is the common currency of the universal respect that all fighting persons recognize in each other regardless of sides and despite the times and the places they are called by God to serve in defense of the peace of their particular nations and the lives and the hopes of family and friends and all that they all equally hold dear.

Any serious breach in military discipline that is not held to exact account by the justice of the advocate general risks not only the vital sharpness of the military whole but more importantly it risks the very reason that soldiers exist; the nation to whom he or she is commissioned to serve and defend.

The reach of justice both military as well as civil is a matter of the conductivity that affects the promulgation of the law and is therefore reliant on natural human reason present in the Eternal law written into every human heart, it is also a matter of the universal validity of the laws meant to serve the purpose of justice and is therefore a matter of first principles, lastly and most importantly, it is a matter of human accord, these are the resultant agreements dictated by mutual principles that are forged in the fires of adversity in the Name of Truth, signed between nations and bound by witness and sacred honor by the one family of the nations of mankind.

The justice that serves is the one that keeps safe, amidst the changing times, the ideal to which all mankind universally aspires for, life and the fruition of every life's honest pursuit. Even in death, man aspires to live, justice recognizes this and makes it her wisdom.
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Prosper the Peace. Prosper the People.

Sancta Sanctis!

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.