Vengeance

The Virtue of Vengeance.—Just as gratitude returns good for evil, so does vengeance (vindicatio) return evil for evil, that is, the evil of punishment for the evil of sin. Vengeance is defined as “a moral virtue that inclines a private person to use lawful means for the punishment of wrongdoing, with a view to the satisfaction of public or private justice.”

(a) Vengeance is a virtue of private persons; that is, it belongs to those who are not charged officially with the punishment of offenses. The duty of public persons, such as judges, is a much stricter one and pertains to the virtue of vindictive justice, which is a form of commutative justice; whereas vengeance is only a virtue annexed to justice (see above, 2141 sqq.). Vindictive justice attends to the equality between fault and punishment, vengeance to the protection of the person who has been injured.

(b) Vengeance is concerned with the punishment of wrongdoing, or the infliction of some painful retribution upon one who has already committed an injury. Thus, this virtue is not strictly identical with lawful self-defense, which is directed against an evil that is not past but present, though self-defense may be rated as a secondary act of the virtue of vengeance.

(c) Vengeance uses only lawful means; that is, it seeks redress or reparation from the authorities who have the right to give it and follows due process of law. This virtue differs, then, from private revenge, vendetta, lynch law, exercise of the “unwritten law,” etc., which are acts of sinful violence, though sometimes subjectively excusable on account of ignorance. The virtue of vengeance is also exercised by those who desire that justice may be done against malefactors, or who visit upon them with moderation such punishments as are not forbidden to private persons (e.g., denial of friendship). Parents also exercise this virtue whenever they properly correct and chastise their children.

(d) Vengeance has for its ends public and private justice, that is, the vindication of the right order of society or the compensation or satisfaction of an injured person. If some other good motive causes one to desire requital of evil deeds, the act will pertain to another virtue: thus, if one aims at the amendment of the evil-doer, one’s act pertains to charity; if one desires by the deterrent of punishment to secure the peace and prosperity of the commonwealth, the act is one of legal justice; if one seeks the honor of God, the act is one of religion, etc. If an evil motive prompts the desire of punishment, the wish is not virtuous at all, but sinful. Thus, he who labors to have a criminal captured, sentenced and executed, and whose intention is not the vindication of justice but the gratification of jealousy, hatred, cruelty or other like passion, sins grievously and perhaps makes himself worse than the criminal. To return evil for evil in this way is to be overcome by evil (Rom., xii. 17-21).

The Morality of Vengeance.—(a) Vengeance is lawful, since it pertains to justice, and Our Lord declares that it is found in the just and is approved by God (Luke, xviii. 7). It is, moreover, a special virtue, for it regulates the special natural inclination which moves man to attack what is harmful and injurious and has its own distinctive ends (see 2381). It is closely related to fortitude and zeal, which prepare the way for it; zeal, being a fervent love of God and man, inspires indignation against injustice, while fortitude removes the fear that might keep one back from attack on injustice. Accidentally, however, on account of greater evils, vengeance is sometimes unlawful, as when it would involve the innocent with the guilty, or fall more heavily upon the less guilty (Matt., xiii. 29, 30).

(b) Vengeance is obligatory when an injury to oneself is also an injury to a public or other necessary good (e.g., to the rights of God or of the Church). Hence it was that Elias and Eliseus punished those who maltreated them (IV Kings, i. 9 sqq., ii. 23, 24), that inspired writers pray God to punish the wicked (Psalms xviii, xxxiv, lxviii, cviii, lxxviii, cxxxvi; Jeremias, xi. 20, xvii, 18, xviii. 21, xx. 12), and Pope Sylvester excommunicated those who sent him into exile. If an injury to oneself is merely personal, one should be willing to forego punishment of the guilty person, and should actually do so when this course is expedient, as Our Lord teaches in Matthew, vi. 14, 15 (see 1198 sqq.). When no necessity requires one to vindicate a personal wrong, the more perfect course is to pardon the wrong for the sake of God; for in avenging injuries to self there is always the danger of such evils as selfish motive, arrogance, hatred, scandal, and the loss of such goods as peace of mind, conversion of the other party, edification, and greater claim on God’s forgiveness of self. Hence, vengeance is called “a little virtue,” since it is so often the less perfect way.

Excess and Defect.—Punitive justice is a moral virtue and hence should be characterized by moderation as to all its circumstances. It should avoid the extremes of excess and defect.

(a) The sin of excess here is cruelty, which in the quality or the quantity of the punishment offends human rights or surpasses the measure of the crime or the custom of the law. Thus, it is immoral to associate young prisoners with hardened criminals, to deprive an offender of religious opportunities; it is inhuman to treat a human being as if he were a brute or less than a brute (e.g., by confinement in a loathsome dungeon, by overwork with starvation, by torture); it is unfair to use severe punishments unknown to law or custom, or whose rigor far surpasses the degree of offense. There is excess even in medicinal or reformatory penalties, if a higher good is sacrificed for a lower (e.g., the spiritual for the temporal, a major for a minor good quality), for then the remedy is worse than the disease.

(b) The sin of defect in punishments is laxity, which rewards crime, or allows it to go unpunished, or imposes penalties which are agreeable to offenders, or not a deterrent, or not at all equal to the offense. Scripture condemns this lenity when it declares that the parent who spares the rod spoils the child (Prov., xiii. 24). In weighing the gravity of a delinquency account should be taken of the fault itself, of the injury done and the scandal given. In the fault consideration must be had of the objective element (i.e., the nature and importance of the law violated), of the subjective element (i.e., the age, instruction, education, sex, and state of mind of the offender), of the circumstances (e.g., the time, the place, the persons involved, and the frequency). See Canon 2218.

Circumstances of Punitive Justice.—(a) Punishments that May Be Used.—Punishment is virtuous only in so far as it restrains from evil those who cannot be restrained by love of virtue, but only by fear of penalty. Hence, penalties should consist in the deprivation of goods that are more prized than the satisfactions obtained through delinquencies. Both divine and human laws, therefore, have established as punishments the loss of a bodily good (e.g., by death, flogging, imprisonment) or of an external good (e.g., by exile, fine, infamy), the chief inducements to crime being found in bodily or external things. The extreme penalty of death should be reserved for extreme cases, and the other penalties should be suited to the crime, so as to remove the incentive or means (e.g., dishonesty should be punished by loss of goods, calumny by infamy, lust by pain, etc.).

(b) Persons Who May Be Punished.—Punishment again is virtuous only because it pertains to justice and rights the inequality caused by sin. Accordingly, no one should be punished unless he has sinned or voluntarily transgressed. It is unlawful to punish the innocent for the guilty, or to punish an innocent person in order to keep him from future sins. It should be noted, however, that God inflicts temporal evils on the just for the sake of spiritual goods (e.g., that they may not become attached to this world, may have opportunities of merit, and may give good example); that one person may be punished for the sin of another when he associates himself with or approves of that sin, as when careless parents have bad children or careless subjects bad rulers (Job, xxxiv. 30; Exod, xx. 5); that for a sufficient reason an innocent person may be deprived of a good for which he is unfitted (e.g., ordination when one is irregular by defect) or to which he has no personal or absolute claim (e.g., the family property when it is lost to the children because the father is fined).