KILLING. - In the merely physical order it is the act that deprives the body of life. Homicide is the name given to one who, by a human and voluntary act, causes the death of another (v. OMICIDIO), suicide if he causes death to himself (v. SUICIDIO).
I. KILLING AND VOLUNTARINESS
The voluntariness of the act will be direct when death is of itself (not per accidens) the effect of the lethal act; so that, when such an act is performed, death is always brought about, unless another cause prevents its execution. It is instead indirect when the act does not by its nature lead to violent death, but the effect follows for another reason or from other causes concurring with such an act to cause death in effect.
The act that has a lethal effect can be positive or negative; by a positive act a vital action is rendered impossible for the organism, for example, by closing the throat, respiration is prevented; by a negative act the elements necessary for life are not supplied; omission occurs when some vital operation is wholly or in part formed by a human act, which is subject to the free will.
II. PRECEPT OF NATURAL LAW: "NE OCCIDAS". DIRECT KILLING. - Perhaps no moral norm is more universally admitted than this: thou shalt not kill. It is the summary norm given as the 5th in the Decalogue ([v.] Ex. 20:13; Deut. 5:17). This norm agrees with the conscience innate in man, and God limited himself to recalling a rule already common, as is attested in the murder of Abel (Gen. 4:8-16). If there was on the part of the Church a considerable effort to purify morals, it was, in our subject matter, rather in the field of applications, not of the principle, which is universally admitted. The frequency of certain forms of homicide (for example, abortion) among some peoples and in some periods and the lack of reprobation that is at times noted, do not at all imply that these acts are considered morally good.
Respect for life is a principle of natural morality, to which Revelation has added nothing.
Man does not have ownership, but only the use, of life; he has before other human beings the right to live, and God alone can take back from him what he has given him; but, before God, he has the duty to live, to remain in the place assigned to him until the term established by God, to guard in the meantime the deposit entrusted to him. To God, therefore, belongs the choice of the term. Man must accept life as long as God leaves it to him. God then acts and manifests his will through the natural order of which he is the author. Now the equality of nature among all men finds here its strictest application. If men all have the rigorously equal right to tend toward their own end, this is manifested first of all in a strict equality before life. No one, therefore, can ever licitly kill an innocent person; nor sacrifice the life of another for his own. This from the very first instant of life, in the maternal womb, for which reason abortion is homicide (v.); and up to the last instant of life, for which reason so-called euthanasia is homicide (v.); also on the part of the State, because this too is constituted by men who preexist it with their natural rights (v. GENOCIDIO) and it will not be the burden on the community, even if it should exist, that causes the individual, physically impaired, to lose his natural right to life (v. EUGENETICA).
III. EXCEPTIONS. THE EXCEPTION OF THE DEATH PENALTY
The only case of the right to kill directly is that of legitimate defense against an unjust aggressor, based on the stated principle of equality and on the principle of charity, which has as its measure one's own good (v. DIFESA LEGITTIMA). This principle is fundamentally the one that justifies, in the international field, killing in war, and, on the national and social plane, tyrannicide, and the death penalty, with the reservations and oppositions that, even in the Catholic field, exist on these last two points. One of the first duties of the State is to protect the lives of citizens: to establish social security. This protection of life and of social security carries with it the right to take adequate measures against those who make themselves guilty of attempting to undermine social security, especially against the lives of other citizens.
Since the most remote times, among almost all peoples, the death penalty was in use, especially in armies and in wartime as an extreme penalty. Its application has found constant justification in ancient practical and theoretical thought in morality, sociology and law, with very scant reactions until around the middle of the 18th century, when the movement of ideas that valued the individual at the expense of the authority of the State imposed itself in the history of thought. A sign of the collective's instinctive horror at capital execution is the repulsion toward the material executor of the sentence and the judge himself. The profession of the former especially was always regarded as infamous and that of the latter as incompatible with the office of minister of worship, who is expected to be averse to any shedding of blood. In Christianity they incur irregularity (v.) ex defectu lenitatis. In the theoretical field, rare ideologies of an extremist tendency condemning every homicide, not excluding the application of the death penalty, manifested themselves already in antiquity (cf. Lactantius, Divinae instit., 1, VI, v. 20) and were later renewed among the Waldensians (v.), Anabaptists (v.), Quakers (v.), condemned for this too by the Church (Denz-U., n. 425). In the true Catholic tradition, theologians prior to the 18th century always held the application of the death penalty by society to be justifiable, from St. Augustine (Epist., 47, n. 5) to St. Thomas and the classical moralists. They find it natural that God can delegate to other men a part of his authority over their fellow men, deputing them as instruments of just punishment. What God has granted by extraordinary means to certain persons of the Old Testament (for example, to Judith: Iud. 7, 9 ff.), he has granted by ordinary and general means to society and to the constituted power, authorizing it to defend order from the wicked, punishing them in extreme cases even with the death penalty. Thus in the Mosaic code, the death penalty is expressly sanctioned (cf. Ex. 21, 12, 14-17, 23; 22, 3 etc.; Lev. 20, 10-18 etc.). Nor in the New Testament has God withdrawn this delegation given to the public powers, as is evident from certain texts that presuppose the death penalty (Mt. 26, 32; Rom. 13, 4). It is not, however, an unlimited power: St. Thomas holds it to be lawful to kill a malefactor if and insofar as such killing is ordered to the salvation of the whole community, just as it is lawful for the surgeon to cut away a member of a human organism insofar as it is necessary for the salvation of the whole organism (Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ˢᶜ, q. 64 a. 7). Others start from the concept of unjust aggression. If it is lawful for a private individual to repel violence with violence, even when this leads to the killing of the aggressor, one does not see why such a right should be denied to society when it finds itself unable to defend itself otherwise, and the other penalties are no longer efficient for the purposes of preventing delinquency. The right of the State to apply the death penalty is therefore very limited even in traditional Christian doctrine. There is no right to apply it, nor to all crimes, nor according to the moods of an opinion that deems that this or that misdeed can be expiated only by blood.
The strongest reason brought against the death penalty is that of the irreparability of the sentence in the case of a judicial error. But even this reason remains unusual only for one who does not see and does not acknowledge an absolute and supreme Justice, capable of repairing and compensating in a future life the possible errors of human justice.
On the practical plane the current of thought hostile to the death penalty was successful, and during the 19th century some countries abolished it: thus Romania (1864), Portugal (1866); the Netherlands (1870), Italy (1881). The latter reinstated it in 1926, only to abolish it again in 1945. Numerous States maintain the death penalty, for example, the United States, England, France, Spain,
Russia and the Vatican City State itself. In military codes, however, the death penalty has never been abolished.
In the application of the death penalty there were not a few examples of cruelty, both because of the extension of the cases in which it was applied and because of the methods of execution. Today it is carried out by hanging, by firing squad, by decapitation, by electric shock, according to the criteria by which the various States in which it is retained are inspired. The sentence cannot be executed until it has become irrevocable, and in the execution those measures must be observed that preserve the regard due to human dignity and above all to man's eternal destiny. The Church has constantly promoted most pious charitable institutions for the last assistance of the condemned.
IV. DEATH PENALTY AND POWER OF THE CHURCH
Controversies over the death penalty become even more acute when it comes to defining whether the Church, like the State, also has the right to inflict the death penalty. On the practical level the Church, as such, has never pronounced death sentences, nor has it applied this penalty. The historical traces that can be found here and there in canonical sources always refer to the civil law of the Papal State. In truth, death sentences, even if only for religious crimes, were always issued by civil tribunals, which remained such even if ecclesiastics took part in them; they were always pronounced on the basis of civil laws, even though their application was at times demanded by the Church by virtue of its mandate as avenger of justice. However, from non-use one cannot infer against the possession of a right. And precisely on the question of right, canonical doctrine in this case has been divided. There is lacking in Sacred Scripture, in the Fathers or in the supreme pontiffs a decisive proof in favor of either thesis.
V. INDIRECT KILLING
The direct killing of a man, outside the case of the death penalty and of legitimate defense, is, as has been said, gravely illicit. The same principle holds for the killing of oneself, or suicide.
Indirect killing of a man, and therefore also of oneself, is likewise illicit, but it can become licit when there is a proportionately grave cause for not omitting an act by which, indirectly, per occidens, another's (or one's own) death is caused. Once the concept of indirect killing has been defined, as was done above, there remains only the application to individual cases of the principle of double causality (v. IMPUTABILITY, II, 3) which, if easy in theory, in practice can at times give rise to uncertainties as to whether or not the other condition is verified. The casuistry on the matter, varied and abundant, involves problems of a different nature, such as the care of one's own body in relation to a more or less justified shortening of life, the determination of the prevailing right in case of conflict between the individual good and the social good, etc. It will suffice to recall a few general norms.
As regards one's own life, man cannot dispose of it; but he does not have the duty to desire to live: he may desire death, because he awaits a greater good in the future life. The Christian who longs for death in order to see God demonstrates a complete understanding of his own faith. When a man has reached the end of his life, when age renders him incapable of working, it is reasonable that he prefer to leave this world rather than languish in it. One may long for death: one may seek it indirectly by choosing an occupation that risks leading to death. The moral qualification of the act will depend on the motives that inspire it. In its history the Church has rejected the direct seeking of martyrdom, but there has always been admiration for the desire for martyrdom.
In what concerns the care of health, Catholic moralists teach that there is a duty to use ordinary diligence in the preservation of life. The man struck by a great sorrow, who stops eating from weariness and thus lets himself die of hunger, is guilty (v. SCIOFERO DELLA FAME); and the sick person must accept to be treated as is customary. But it is admitted that he has no obligation to make extraordinary efforts to save his life. And this rule applies both with regard to others and with regard to ourselves.
These same criteria can help to resolve many other cases where what is at stake is no longer our own life, but another's life, through an action of ours, good or indifferent, which we have either the right or the duty to perform. Many of these cases usually present themselves in matters of indirect abortion (v. ABORTION), in matters of acts of war (v. WAR), etc. It is not possible, on the other hand, to apply the principle of double effect in matters of embryotomy (v.), of racial superiority to be protected (v. GENOCIDE; RACISM), etc. For the problems of restitution connected with killing, v. RESTITUTION.
Bibliography25 works
Pietro Palazzini