THE plight of Brisbane man Scott Rush, on death row in Bali (CL 26/10/08 and 2/11/08), is of great concern to many.
The Church has never proscribed capital punishment but in recent years She has advocated its use only as a last resort in circumstances where any lesser penalty will not ensure that human lives are protected from unjust aggression.
The late and great Pope John Paul II held that opinion very firmly, though many of his predecessors did not. Pope Benedict XVI shares his friend and predecessor’s abhorrence of brutality, but in the year before he became pope he made a clear, dispassionate statement on several vexed questions: “There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not, however, with regard to abortion and euthanasia”.
Our Lord did not save the woman taken in adultery from death by stoning to make a moral statement against the death penalty. He saved her because she was truly contrite and repentant of her sins. (In fact, he implicitly confirmed the legitimacy of capital punishment in Matthew 15:4 and Mark 7:10).
Without doubt, if the Bali bombers were similarly remorseful and resolute He would forgive them also. Sadly, they are not contrite and repentant and even boast about their heinous sins.
Given the support they enjoy from many like-minded extremists, they constitute an ongoing threat to the lives of other humans. The sorry, inescapable reality is that nothing short of their execution will ensure that they do not repeat their ghastly crimes.
Scott Rush, on the other hand, is not a calculating killer and his death sentence can never be morally justified. Vince Hodge (Opinion, CL 2/11/08) rightly called for a prodigious effort from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to persuade the Indonesian president to commute Rush’s death sentence.
Unfortunately, politicians usually need much prodding to make them act.
If every reader of The Catholic Leader took a little time out to send a plea to the Prime Minister urging him to move quickly and intensely for clemency for Rush, we just might see some activity and a ray of hope.
RICHARD CONGRAM
Carindale, Qld
