Comments to Remarks by Father Slipko on Capital Punishment

Father Slipko, a Thomist and personalist, favours moderate retentionism with respect to capital punishment. His main concern is permissibility or lawfulness of capital punishment, its fundamental compatibility with the objective moral order. Slipko highlights the plight of the victims of criminal offences. He proceeds by making three separate claims. First, the value of human life is absolute and must be compromised in no circumstances. Second, a human being is a social entity with a right to life and development, and as a social entity it has the right to seek protection from society when its life and development are endangered. Three, by engaging in unjustified aggression the offender forfeits the right to protection from society and diminishes the moral value of its own life. The author pinpoints inconsistencies in this view. First, as a personalist Slipko cannot postulate a diminished moral value of the life of the aggressor. Secondly, as a personalist he cannot say that the value of a person is directly dependent on the lawfulness of the acts committed by the person. Three, the relationship between the aggressor and the society that he is part of may not be determined unilaterally by the society, even if it is outraged by the offences committed.