The death of ‘death penalty’

Pope Francis updated recently a section in the official Catechism of the Catholic Church on its ethical statement on death penalty. For many, it dotted a period to the Church´s unequivocal position on the highly debatable moral issue.

Asserting that criminals retain their right to life and “a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state,” the Catechism stated that “more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.”

But what is this “possibility of redemption.”

Most probably, the document is referring to the redemptive value of punitive incarceration where the guilty can reform and reincorporate himself to the mainstream of society after serving his sentence, which of course, has always been the archaic argument forwarded against capital punishment.

However, if St. Thomas Aquinas, a doctor of the Church and a theological peritus, a spiritual beacon of the 13th century Christian Europe were to be queried on this, redemption would be the eschatological state of the guilty, namely, an immediate preparation for the criminal’s final encounter with the ultimate Judge in heaven, who of course, is merciful and compassionate.

I had two great opportunities at meeting and hearing the sacramental confessions of two celebrated death row inmates.

Way back is Ms. Flor Contemplacion who was charged with the murder of a co-worker and a Singaporean child, her co-worker´s ward. I was then ministering to a parish in Singapore when the late Sister Mary Laetitia Bool, RGS invited me over to the Changi Women´s Prison to visit Ms. Contemplacion. We had 30 minutes of deeply spiritual exchange.

When I stepped out of the prison quarters, I felt a wind of satisfaction that somebody would soon be in God´s hands. She was executed by hanging on 17 March 1995 despite the protestations here and abroad.

Mr. Leo Echagaray was executed through lethal injection for raping his stepdaughter on 5 February 1999. It was the first in 23 years since the death penalty was reinstated during the Ramos presidency in 1994 after its abolition in 1986.

Before his execution, Fr. Sonny Ramirez and myself alternately visited Mr. Leo Echagaray in his death row cell in Muntinlupa for spiritual guidance.

Despite being emboldened by his denial and the support of the Church and the anti-death penalty advocates, Mr. Echagaray slowly surrendered to his fate and his faith. After a series of confessions and counseling sessions, we made it sure that God would welcome a repentant and spiritually disposed soul who was making good use of a “scheduled” passage from this world.

Surely, a soul was saved. His spiritual preparation was beyond reasonable doubt.

We are witnesses to “unprepared” or untimely deaths of a lot of people through accidents, terrorist attacks, war, crimes or sudden illnesses such as cardiac arrest. And we wonder if their dispositions to a peaceful passing on to the next life are guaranteed by their earthly lives.

Among us Christians, death is an event where the grace of God is invoked to assure a redemptive transition from this life to the next. Some spiritually inclined are even looking at death row denizens with envy for being afforded the time to prepare for the ultimate moment of life´s transition, its destiny or end.

Looking at death penalty and the reality of death from the horizontal plain of sociological integrity, psychology of deterrence, criminal retribution, social revenge, morality of penology and social reprieve and redemption is perfectly in place.

However, death and dying still belong indubitably to the vertical or spiritual realm of the human earthly existence, that which relates to the creator, the origin of our lives and also its final destination.

Being in the death row may never be an enviable situation, but those awaiting their turn in the gallows may be more privileged in experiencing death in perhaps a more meaningful sense.