Philippine bishops' head issues strong 'no' on restoring death penalty
-
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte reviews honor guards upon his arrival at the Villamor air base in Manila. (CNS/Romeo Ranoco, Reuters)
The head of the Philippine bishops' conference set "ethical
guidelines" against proposals to reinstate the death penalty as the
country's war on drugs continues, with body counts increasing daily.
In a statement released Sept. 14, Archbishop Socrates Villegas of
Lingayen-Dagupan, conference president, urged Catholic lawmakers not to
support "any attempt to restore the death penalty" and called on
Catholic lawyers to "study the issue and to oppose" it by filing legal
cases against it. He also appealed to Catholic judges to "heed the
teaching of the church and to appreciate every possible attenuating or
mitigating circumstance" so the death penalty would not be imposed.
Less than a week after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was sworn
into office, a staunch political ally and the new speaker of the
Philippine House, Pantaleon Alvarez of Davao del Norte, filed a proposal
to reinstate the death penalty. It was the first bill filed in the new
congressional term.
Duterte ran, and won by a large margin, on a platform of ridding the
country of criminals by having them killed and encouraging the public to
kill them. He has repeatedly called for the death penalty to be
reinstated and, in early September, again urged congress to pass the
bill.
Since Duterte took office on June 30, more than 3,400 people accused
of drug dealing or addiction have died at the hands of law enforcement
and private citizens. In response to critics who have said the death
penalty does not deter criminal activity, the president has taken the
position that the death penalty is a means to make criminals pay for
heinous crimes, not to keep them from committing them again.
Explore Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the family with our free Amoris Laetitia study guide.
In recent months, the church in the Philippines has held firm in its
rejection of the death penalty. Villegas emphasized its stance with the
ethical guidelines.
"While it is true 'retribution' has been central to many theories of
penalty, it is at best a nebulous concept that is hardly distinguishable
from a stylized and sanitized form of vengeance," he said.
Citing a passage in the book of Genesis, Villegas said, "In every
human person is that incomparably precious breath of life from God
himself. ... It is this divine gift of life, sublime and unsurpassable,
that the death penalty takes away."
The archbishop also pointed out changing views on the death penalty
in the last century, with more and more people, including St. Pope John
Paul II, opposing it and questioning the need for it altogether. He said
this was especially true with the evolution of more humane forms of
punishment.
"You cannot, without contradiction, insist that the person is secure
from cruel punishment," he said, "and at the same time open the
possibility of inflicting upon him or her the most cruel punishment
possible: the calculated, planned and deliberate deprivation of life."
Villegas called Pope Francis' declaration in the exhortation Amoris Laetitia that the church "firmly rejects the death penalty" the "definitive teaching of the Catholic Church for the third millennium."
"It is time then to rid ourselves of the obsolescent notion that a
person who commits a heinous wrong 'forfeits his right to life,'" the
archbishop said. "No one can forfeit the right to life, because life is
at the free disposal of none, not even the state." - National Catholic Reporter, 16/9/2016
No comments:
Post a Comment