Rule of Benedict Chapter 30: How Boys are to be Corrected With the coming of a new president of the Philippines that emphasizes on harsh discipline and extermination of criminality in our country, I believe Chapter 30 of the Rule of Benedict is appropriate reading to guide our country in the future that is to come. St. Benedict opened this chapter by saying that every age and degree of understanding should have its proper measure of discipline. I believe this to be the most important passage of the chapter. Although St. Benedict had children and teenagers in mind when he wrote this chapter, I believe that much of it can be applied to the punishment and discipline of criminals and those who we deem as criminals. St. Benedict used the words age and degree of understanding as a basis of standards that we can use to determine the measure of discipline that needs to be handed out. The same is still true now in our criminal justice system. Minors and those who are weak or feeble minded are given special consideration in courts whenever they commit a crime. Such considerations were given since no true justice can be achieved in punishing such persons. They either lacked the intent in the crime that they committed or they have no full understanding of their actions and as such our law fully or partly exempts them depending on the circumstances.
Continuing on this line of thought,
I believe that aside from using age and level of understanding as basis for the punishment, we should also look into the situation of the person who committed the crime. We are slowly entering into an era wherein, more and more people are more concerned in the punishment of criminals that we lose track of what is important. We tend to forget that our aim is not to punish but to discipline and correct the wrong action. Focusing too much in punishment tends to lead us back to the dark days of our Martial Law era wherein the phrase the end justified the mean has been repeated far too often to justify ruthless acts of that lacks any sense of justice. In the last line of the chapter, St. Benedict writes that they may be cured. Again this is an emphasis that the point of punishing the criminal is not for revenge but to cure the criminal. This is the reason why I am so vehemently against the implantation of the death penalty. Taking the life of a criminal as a punishment for a crime serves no purpose both for the victim and the society. It is a remnant of an old Abrahamic belief that should have no room in modern society let alone in our country. Despite the few words that St. Benedict has wrote in this chapter, I believe that reading this would help a lot of our countrymen in their actions. Hopefully after reading it, it could help