THE Dioceses of Bacolod and San Carlos have lent their voices against the plan to reimpose the death penalty. Bishop Patricio Buzon led the “Prayer Rally for Life” the other day around the public plaza going to the San Sebastian Cathedral.
This is in response to the House justice committee approval last week for plenary deliberation a bill for the restoration of the death penalty for more than 20 heinous offenses, including drug offenses, rape with homicide, kidnapping for ransom, and arson with death.
House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said he’s confident the death penalty will be approved by the Lower House by Christmas. Supposedly, “judicial killings” are better than “extrajudicial killings (EJK),” insisted the House Justice Committee.
Well, would heinous crimes include those convicted of EJKs? The National Bureau of Investigation recommended criminal charges against 24 members of the team involved in the raid on the jail cell of the late Albuera mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr., the team’s informant, and police Superintendent Marvin Marcos.
Yet President Duterte himself said “I will not allow that [guy Marcos] to go to prison. Maski na sabihin ng NBI...” but insisted he will not interfere with the work of the NBI and the DOJ.
So it seems that if passed, it will be like the last time the country had the law allowing the death penalty. Those who paid the ultimate price are those who are in the lowest rungs of society: the poor.
The Catholic Church has again been picking up the cudgels for the unloveable. During World War II, Pope Pius XII played an instrumental role in saving from 700,000 to 860,000 unloved Jews from certain death at Nazi hands.
As Albert Einstein remarked in 1940 that “only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth.”
As the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines pointed out in 1992, retribution need not entail the imposition of the death penalty even in cases of murder. From the Christian point of view, Christ’s words about the forgiveness of injuries and above all his own example on the Cross call not for vindictive punishment, but rather for more humane and humanizing punitive responses to evil doing.
Or as notorious British executioner Albert Peirrepoint said in his memoirs he eventually opposed the death penalty.
“It is said to be a deterrent. I cannot agree. There have been murders since the beginning of time, and we shall go on looking for deterrents until the end of time. If death were a deterrent, I might be expected to know. It is I who have faced them last, young men and girls, workingmen, grandmothers. … All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder.”
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(bqsanc@yahoo.com)