Vengeance Is Not Justice

By DONALD DeMARCO

Rioters are savvy enough to call for justice, not vengeance. They know that justice is a great value, whereas vengeance is essentially barbaric. They understand only too well that they would gain no support whatsoever if they were clamoring for vengeance.
Unfortunately, their rhetoric does not represent what they are really calling for. They recognize that justice is a worthy ideal, but are in no mood to work for it. Placards reading “Abolish the police,” “Defund the police,” “One bad cop, all bad cops,” for example, do not serve the cause of justice. Vengeance is easy and immediate; justice is difficult and requires time.
The difference between justice and vengeance relates to the difference between anarchy and civilization. History shows us that the road from “frontier justice” or “vigilante justice” is long and hard. It requires an extended period of education and the cultivation of virtues such as temperance, diligence, patience, fair-mindedness, and moral courage. In a word, the establishment of the halls of justice requires an institution. Vengeance requires nothing more than the thoughtless release of anger.
Vengeance is a species of anger, the second of the Seven Deadly Sins. It represents a form of retaliation that is excessive and therefore contrary to justice which requires a careful balance between a perceived wrong and its appropriate redress. Justice is one of the cardinal virtues.
Plato referred to it as the health of the soul. For Augustine, justice means giving every man his due. For Aquinas, it is a sustained or constant willingness to extend to each person what he or she deserves (ST, IIa, IIae, 58.1). For Abraham Lincoln, “Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature — opposition to it is love of justice.”
The essential problem with anger is that it operates out of control. Justice tempers anger so that it is able to operate with control. Control is needed to ensure that justice can function as a virtue. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke well when he stated that “man must evolve for all conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
George Washington warned that revenge, a form of vengeance, can easily make matters significantly worse: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”
History is rife with horrific examples of vengeance. During the World War II, Erich Priebke was a German midlevel SS commander in the SS police force of Nazi Germany. On March 24, 1944, he commanded the unit that killed 335 Italian civilians in retaliation for a partisan attack that killed 33 German soldiers. At that time, Germany had a “ten to one” policy, meaning that ten Italian civilians should be killed for every German killed.
In a very strange twist of justice, although Priebke was convicted of war crimes in 1996 for the massacre, the trial focused on the five deaths that went beyond the 330 in accordance with the “ten to one” rule. Therefore, his actions could not be justified on the basis of “obedience to official orders.” In the German mind, 330 deaths might be justified, but five more was overkill.
Vengeance, however, is overkill from the beginning. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, Priebke fled to Argentina where he lived for nearly 50 years before he died in 2013 at the age of 100.
Christians are advised to seek justice and avoid vengeance. “Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay’” (Romans 12:19). It is written in Deut. 32:35: “Vengeance is mine, and recompense; their foot shall slip in due time; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things to come hasten upon them.”
We can extract from these words that God will vindicate the righteous and punish the wicked. He, and He alone, judges with perfect justice and perfect mercy. At the same time, we are asked to forgive, not avenge, an action that is obscured by vengeful emotions.
It is easy to give in to anger. But anger blocks justice. Vengeance is a spontaneous outburst. It seeks immediate satisfaction. In the face of a grievous wrong, the desire for vengeance rises quickly to the surface. This is something that we can all understand. But justice is needed so that things do not degenerate into savagery, as in the case of the 335 Italian civilians who were murdered. Justice demands that we rise about the emotion of the moment and put all the relevant factors into perspective. Justice is the civilized way of doing things because it is comprehensive.
Moreover, justice bears upon the future. It establishes a precedent for others to study. It welcomes fair-minded people who dedicate their lives to its continuation. Vengeance is personal; justice is supra-personal. Vengeance is for now; justice is for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
There will continue to be instances of injustice even at the hands of those who have sworn to uphold it. Being prone to error, however, is common to all professions. But the proper response is to reform the institution, not dismantle it. Reform brings about hope; dismantling leads to chaos. And chaos cannot be the ground from which a new and better civilization can arise.
Much more education in morality is needed to convince people at large that institutionalized justice exists for the benefit of everyone. Vengeance benefits no one.

• + + (Dr. Donald DeMarco is a professor emeritus of St. Jerome’s University, and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary. He is a regular columnist for the St. Austin Review. His latest three books are How to Navigate Through Life and Apostles of the Culture of Life [posted on amazon.com], and the soon to be published, A Moral Compass for a World in Confusion.)