Capital Punishment and Catholicism :: Argumentative Persuasive Essays

Capital Punishment and Catholicism   2 sources cited   Among the major(ip) nations of the Western world, the United affirms is singular in still having the death penalty. later on a five-year moratorium, from 1972 to 1977, capital punishment was reinstated in the United States courts. Objections to the practice consume come from many quarters, including the American Catholic bishops, who have rather systematically opposed the death penalty. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1980 promulgated a predominantly negative statement on capital punishment, sanctioned by a majority vote of those present though not by the required two-thirds majority of the entire conference (1). Pope outhouse Paul II has at various times expressed his aspiration to the practice, as have other Catholic leaders in Europe.   roughly Catholics, going beyond the bishops and the Pope, maintain that the death penalty, like abortion and euthanasia, is a violation of the est imable to life and an unauthorized usurpation by adult male beings of Gods sole lordship over life and death. Did not the Declaration of Independence, they ask, describe the right to life as unalienable?   While sociological and legal questions needfully impinge upon any such reflection, I am here addressing the overpower as a theologian. At this level the question has to be answered earlier in terms of revelation, as it comes to us through Scripture and tradition, taken with the guidance of the ecclesiastical magisterium.   In the New Testament the right of the State to put criminals to death seems to be taken for granted. Jesus himself refrains from using violence. He rebukes his disciples for wishing to call down fire from heaven to punish the Samaritans for their privation of hospitality (Luke 955). Later he admonishes Peter to put his vane in the scabbard rather than resist arrest (Matthew 2652). At no point, however, does Jesus deny that the State has self-confidence to exact capital punishment. In his debates with the Pharisees, Jesus cites with approval the apparently harsh commandment, He who speaks evil of produce or mother, let him surely die (Matthew 154 trademark 710, referring to Exodus 2l17 cf. Leviticus 209). When Pilate calls attention to his authority to crucify him, Jesus points out that Pilates power comes to him from above-that is to say, from God (John 1911).