Catholicism, Capital Punishment, and Terrorism - A new inquiry

Capital Punishment is a question that has vexed me for quite a while. As a pro-life person I have often faced the criticism by liberals and conservatives alike when they ask me the dreaded, "What about Capital Punishment, where do you stand on that?" question.

It isn't easy to answer, and sometimes it isn't even a fair or valid question, depending on who is doing the asking. [For instance, if a pro-abortion person asks it, as an argument against my pro-life conviction it is a fallacy or invalid argument, depending on how they use it.] I have gone back and forth on the issue, and at some point shelved it in my mind. Once I got to Ave Maria Law, I decided to shelve it even further due to the fact that several issues of the Law Review were dedicated to it there, and most of the school had agreed to disagree on the matter, with one another at least.

Recently though, my mind has been calling it into question. The Ft. Hood terrorist attack, [it is important to call it what it is] has made me contemplate it once again. So I grabbed some articles from the Ave Maria Law Review and will be reading them over the next few days. I don't know a TON about this subject, and don't have a lot settled in my mind but I am willing to learn.

Some of the questions & areas that I will be looking into while trying to settle some of this stuff:

• Thomistic View of Capital Punishment
• Personalist View... does it exist? Is it different?
• Pope John Paul II's statement concerning CP...
• CP in todays world
• CP applied to terrorists - especially American born terrorists (i.e. Maj. Hassan)
• Where would CP be justified?
• CP when used in "Cop Killer" & "Authority Figure" statutes

I don't plan on doing this quickly, but over time I should try and draw some of this out, and hopefully I will make a few blog posts about it. A lot of this stuff is thick and since I don't have a library within about 1500 miles [literally] that has Catholic resources - so I will be doing everything online.

If anyone has any suggestions or comments on how to approach this let me know. Especially with good resources.

A few of the directions I won't be going in are:

• CP vs. Pro-Life, Pro-Abortion, etc...
• CP and the financial implications (at least in great length)
• CP outside of this country (again, at least in great length)

I think that Abortion and Capital Punishment are very different things. I may change my mind on this statement, and I may have to address this in my readings... but I don't plan to tackle it in any great length - at least off the bat.