The Brothers Karamazov

“Well, sir, I confess that you have now reassured me somewhat,” Miusov gri

“But if even now there were only ecclesiastical courts, even now the Church would not sentence criminals to hard labor or capital punishment. Crime and the whole way of looking at it would then undoubtedly have to change, little by little, of course, not all at once, not immediately, but still quite soon ... ,” Ivan Fyodorovich said calmly and without batting an eye.

“Are you serious?” Miusov looked at him intently.

“If everything became the Church, then the Church would excommunicate the criminal and the disobedient and not cut off their heads,” Ivan Fyodorovich continued. “Where, I ask you, would the excommunicated man go? He would then have to go away not only from men, as now, but also from Christ. For by his crime he would have rebelled not only against men but also against Christ’s Church. That is so now, too, of course, strictly speaking, but it is not avowed, and the criminal of today all too often bargains with his conscience: ‘I stole,’ he says, ‘but I have not gone against the Church, I am not an enemy of Christ.’ Time and again that is what the criminal of today says to himself. Well, but when the Church takes the place of the state, it will be very difficult for him to say that, unless he means to reject the Church all over the earth, to say: ‘All are mistaken, all are in error, all are a false Church, and I alone, a murderer and thief, am the true Christian Church.’ It is very difficult to say this to oneself; it requires formidable conditions, circumstances that do not often occur. Now, on the other hand, take the Church’s own view of crime: should it not change from the present, almost pagan view, and from the mechanical cutting off of the infected member, as is done now for the preservation of society, and transform, fully now and not falsely, into the idea of the regeneration of man anew, of his restoration and salvation ... ?”

“But what are you talking about? Again I cease to understand,” Miusov interrupted. “Some kind of dream again. Something shapeless, and impossible to understand as well. Excommunication? What excommunication? I suspect you’re simply amusing yourself, Ivan Fyodorovich.”

“But, you know, in reality it is so even now,” the elder suddenly spoke and everyone turned to him at once. “If it were not for Christ’s Church, indeed there would be no restraint on the criminal in his evildoing, and no punishment for it later, real punishment, that is, not a mechanical one such as has just been mentioned, which only chafes the heart in most cases, but a real punishment, the only real, the only frightening and appeasing punishment, which lies in the acknowledgement of one’s own conscience.”

“How is that, may I ask?” Miusov inquired with the liveliest curiosity.

“Here is how it is,” the elder began. “All this exile to hard labor, and formerly with floggings, does not reform anyone, and above all does not even frighten almost any criminal, and the number of crimes not only does not diminish but increases all the more. Surely you will admit that. And it turns out that society, thus, is not protected at all, for although the harmful member is mechanically cut off and sent far away out of sight, another criminal appears at once to take his place, perhaps even two others. If anything protects society even in our time, and even reforms the criminal himself and transforms him into a different person, again it is Christ’s law alone, which manifests itself in the acknowledgement of one’s own conscience. Only if he acknowledges his guilt as a son of Christ’s society—that is, of the Church—will he acknowledge his guilt before society itself—that is, before the Church. Thus, the modern criminal is capable of acknowledging his guilt before the Church alone, and not before the state. If it were so that judgment belonged to society as the Church, then it would know whom to bring back from excommunication and reunite with itself. But now the Church, having no active jurisdiction but merely the possibility of moral condemnation alone, withholds from actively punishing the criminal of its own accord. It does not excommunicate him, but simply does not leave him without paternal guidance. Moreover, it even tries to preserve full Christian communion with the criminal, admitting him to church services, to the holy gifts,[48] giving him alms, and treating him more as a captive than as a wrongdoer. And what would become of the criminal, oh, Lord, if Christian society, too—that is, the Church—rejected him in the same way that civil law rejects him and cuts him off? What would become of him if the Church, too, punished him with excommunication each time immediately after the law of the state has punished him? Surely there could be no greater despair, at least for a Russian criminal, for Russian criminals still have faith. Though who knows: perhaps a terrible thing would happen then—the loss of faith, perhaps, would occur in the desperate heart of the criminal, and what then? But the Church, like a mother, tender and loving, withholds from active punishment, for even without her punishment, the wrongdoer is already too painfully punished by the state court, and at least someone should pity him. And it withholds above all because the judgment of the Church is the only judgment that contains the truth, and for that reason it ca