Aquinas taught that though the fifth commandment was exceptionless (indispensabile) it did not forbid all killing – only what was not “due”(debitum). Killing is due for an offence which is of a kind to deprive the offender of his dignity and from someone acting on behalf of a just order subverted by the offence in question. Thus, Abraham, representing the divine order, rightly tried to deal Isaac the death due to us all for Adam's sin, and a judge can rightly order death in accordance with just laws upholding the common good, to which the good of the individual is subordinate.
Christian Brugger objects to the idea that the good of a man is subordinate to that of the human community, as a limb is to that of the body. Brugger belongs to the ethical school founded by Germain Grisez, and thinks that all intentional killing of men is intrinsically evil. However, Grisez and Brugger are not pacifists: a general of their persuasion would say he was not trying to kill the opposing forces, just to stop them: the deaths were accidental.
By this stretching of Aquinas's ideas about self-defence and double effect, the Grisez school deal with a large part of the fact, frankly admitted by Brugger, that the Church has never taught that all intentional killing is wrong. There remains capital punishment: if Aquinas, and the tradition as borne out by what Brugger calls the “plain-face” reading of the new Catechism, are right, then the Grisez philosophy falls seriously to the ground. For he teaches that any direct attack on one of the fundamental human goods is intrinsically evil. Brugger argues for this in the last chapter: up to there, he mostly considers Catholic texts with a view to showing that it is not inconsistent with Catholic belief to hold this opinion about attacks on “the good of life”.
He argues that the Catechism, by teaching that it is more consonant with human dignity to have no unnecessary capital punishment, points to a teaching which would recognise the intrinsic evil of killing. Also, the topic of capital punishment is placed under the heading “legitimate defence”, suggesting to him that the right of the state to kill should be subsumed under the double-effect “legitimate defence” of his philosophy. (However, the 1997 editio typica of the Catechism to which he appeals insists that the responsibility of the punished be determined, which is not necessary in cases of “legitimate defence”.)
The Catechism follows Aquinas in trying to define voluntary homicide so as to render the fifth commandment an exceptionless rule: Brugger calls this “distancing itself from Catholic tradition”. Given that God ordered killing in the Old Testament; that all ages have united in seeing in St Paul (Rm 13: 1–7) an argument for the right of the state to kill; that the Fathers of the Church assumed this right; that Innocent III formally declared that the secular power could exercise it without mortal sin; that the Catechism of Pius V reiterated the doctrine; and that modern documents continue to assert it – all of which facts he admits – it is clear that Brugger at least wishes to distance himself from tradition. His chapter on development defends his desire to do this. He strictly applies Vatican II criteria for infallibility, as though these (or any) rules provided the only means by which a doctrine could be certainly identified as Catholic teaching. By showing a doctrine not to have met the criteria for infallibility, one does not necessarily put it in doubt, but Brugger says that if the teaching has been taught non-infallibly, the question in principle remains open. But if the present Pope, despite his clear opposition to capital punishment, still is obliged to endorse the state's traditional right, it is seen that this right is too much a part of Catholic tradition for it to be possible to jettison it.
In his final chapter, Brugger inverts the argument which sees suicide as self-murder, and argues that if, as Aquinas says, suicide is contrary to the charity we owe ourselves, killing other people must be contrary to the charity we owe them. He does not see the relevance of the premise that everything naturally resists what destroys it, so that to kill oneself is contrary to natural inclination. But an act is specified by its object, and the reflexive “oneself” is ineliminable from the specification “preserve oneself” or “kill oneself”. So there is in suicide a direct opposition to life as an end, and this is why it is contrary to natural law and hence to charity. It is the direct attack on life as an end, or basic good.
To say this is contrary to the fundamental Grisez position, that the basic goods should not be attacked in oneself or in another. But love of one's neighbour in this matter means wanting him not to kill himself – not because Jones would be killing Jones but because he would be killing himself. This is why it is more upsetting when Jones kills Jones than when Smith does.
Brugger's criticism of Aquinas on the relation of the individual to the community is interesting, but his discussion of the idea that sin takes away human dignity is spoilt by his failure to distinguish between the question of whether one deserves a punishment, and the question whether a human society can prudently and equitably impose it as a penalty. We are born deserving death for the sin of Adam; no human government could rightly impose this penalty. We mostly deserve death for mortal sin; an equitable and prudent system of laws would only impose it where necessary. Brugger calls this “arbitrary”.
He defends Grisez's doctrine about fundamental goods, and on intentional killing (and on when it is intentional) and calls for prison reform. He speaks of the “questionable hypothesis that God grants to some to do what is otherwise forbidden by the natural law”. He does not address the problem of whether, when God ordered killing, the killing ceased to be intrinsically evil, and how. If he is not a Marcionite, he has to be able to answer this question, as Aquinas did.
