Out of the shadows of Osama
By Chaplain Norbert J. Karava

It seems that different passions have their seasons of fashion. What were acceptable and respectable feelings and emotional responses to the same things and circumstances in one generation are unacceptable in another. One of the passions that seem to have enjoyed a renaissance is vengeance.

For those who remember the Age of Aquarius, vengeance was decidedly gauche and could scarcely be admitted to as a motive. Moving into the 90s this was to change.

I remember many televised interviews of family members and friends of murder victims who freely admitted to vengeance as being a key motive for their intense desire for the death of those who murdered their loved ones. “I want him to suffer like we’ve had to suffer.”

It was no longer necessary to camouflage this raw passion and, or desire any longer with the altruistic theme of protecting society and the arguments about capital punishment as a deterrent, which at best were tenuous and unconvincing.

The Lex Talionis was back – an eye for an eye, a life for a life – with a vengeance!

Whenever we individually or collectively are awash with any strong passion, it becomes all the more important to look for moral grounding. Vengeance is one of the many moral topics dealt with by Thomas Aquinas, who introduced Aristotelian ethics to the Christian and Western world.

In the Summa Theologica, the first question on vengeance he poses is: whether or not it is lawful?

Considering that he was a Christian writer, his answer comes as a surprise: vengeance, which is the punishment of offenses against justice, is “not in itself evil or unlawful.”

According to Aquinas, the moral quality of vengeance is dependent upon the intention of the avenger: vengeance is lawful if the intention of the avenger is directed at a good to be achieved by punishing a wrongdoer. If the intention is centered upon the evil done to the recipient, then the act is entirely unlawful.

Clue: For vengeance not to have a negative moral meaning, it must somehow be about justice, which is something distinct from the pain and, or loss incurred by both the victims and the perpetrators.

Vengeance is an act and, or a decision of the mind, not merely an emotionally based reaction.

The passion that is in the background of vengeance is anger, which desires the evil of punishment of the wrongdoer under the species of goodness, the goodness here being that of justice itself; the punishment of the wrongdoer serves the purposes of justice, no more, no less, than required by justice, if at all.

It may be that the wrongdoer against whom we have the passion of anger turns out not to be a wrongdoer at all. What then? The anger that is motivated by justice seems to be only too happy to go away, and almost immediately morphs into a sort of relieved joy that life is burdened with one less pain. In other words, anger admits of being governed by a moral good entertained by the mind.

On the other hand, hatred knows no such limit; it intends evil to its target, whether the evil be a just punishment or not. This is why, according to Aquinas, the angry are capable of pity – when the punishment exceeds due measure, whereas the hateful are never content with whatever degree of punishment.

The hateful will regret even the death of the hated because it places them beyond further punishment. That which is desired for the sake of itself is desired without measure, which is why, for example, for the avaricious, there is no such thing as “enough” money, and for the hateful, there is never enough punishment.

But here we find ourselves on treacherous waters:

Ever so subtly what might have begun as righteous anger, governed by reason in pursuit of the good of justice devolves into mere hatred in pursuit of an unquenchable thirst for the pleasure of pain inflicted.

Vengeance wills the evil of punishment for the good of justice and is thus divided, and by nature, hesitant. Hatred however, wills the evil of punishment for the good of pleasure, with justice being the mere rationale, and is troubled by no second-guessing.

And so, what do you think? As we emerged from under the shadow of Osama and watched the jubilation on our streets, was it really about justice?