“Not a Sin” =/= “Good”

One of the tragedies of mindless rejection of the Catholic moral tradition is that extremely useful distinctions get thrown out the window by rash people shouting, “I don’t see the need for this!” only to discover through painful experience later on that there was a need after all.

So, for instance, there is a distinction between “not a sin” and “good”.

Killing is not always a sin. But not being sinful does not make killing a good. Killing is always an evil, even when it is not sinful, because the destruction of a human being–every last one of whom was intended for beatitude and the loss of whom (particularly to damnation)–is an unfathomable cosmic tragedy that the Son of God died in the attempt to prevent. And yes, that even goes in the inevitably-raised case of Adolf Hitler.

So, shooting a serial killer to death to keep him from stabbing an innocent is most certainly not a sin. But it is not good either. Saving the victim is good. But the death of any human being is never good. It remains an evil but (when the homicide is justifiable) it is not a sin.

Forget that (or worse, rashly reject it), and you start asking “Who would it be good to kill?” which is the first step on the road (a very short road for some pathological personalities) to murder.

The way the world always frames the question is “When do I get to kill?” as though killing somebody is a reward for earning enough righteousness brownie points.

The way the Church always frames the question is “After doing everything I can to avoid amputating a limb of my soul, when might I nonetheless have to enter into the evil of killing a human being, made in the image and likeness of God, for whom Christ himself shed his blood?”

This is the blunder death penalty zealots make. The Church’s position on the death penalty is extremely simple: Don’t kill people if you don’t have to. It is particularly prudent not to kill people you don’t have to kill when doing so means that you will most certainly also be killing several perfectly innocent human sacrifices in order to kill people who, while guilty, do not need to be killed.