Msgr. O’Kelly on the death penalty

http://www.adelaide.catholic.org.au/sites/SouthernCross/opinions?more=9496

Via Thursday’s CathNews I came across a piece on life matters from Most. Rev. Greg O’Kelly, Auxiliary Bishop of Adelaide. The piece was a straightforward exposition of the ‘seamless garment approach’, in which the death penalty is to be opposed along with abortion and euthanasia. Msgr. O’Kelly says that

We must also act to condemn capital punishment, including for the men known as the Bali Bombers. A life set aside from society in imprisonment is appropriate for their crime of mass murder. It is inconsistent for a Christian to oppose abortion and condone capital punishment.

But His Lordship fails to demonstrate the validity of any of these three three assertions. How can life imprisonment satisfy justice in the case of mass murder? And why is it inconsistent to oppose abortion and support the death penalty, when the former is the taking of an innocent life by someone who has no authority to do so, while the latter involves the taking of a guilty person’s life by someone who does have the authority to do so? The ‘seamless garment approach’ seems to me like nothing more than a collection of assertions, cobbled together in a futile attempt to appeal to the secularists; futile, since the secularists value neither human life nor consistency absolutely.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Andrew Avellino, 2008 A.D.