Capital Punishment and Catholicism :: Argumentative Persuasive Essays

Capital Punishment and Catholicism   2 sources cited   Among the major nations of the horse opera world, the United States is singular in still having the end penalty. After a five-year moratorium, from 1972 to 1977, capital punishment was reinstated in the United States courts. Objections to the practice have come from many another(prenominal) quarters, including the American Catholic bishops, who have rather consistently opposed the death penalty. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1980 published a predominantly shun statement on capital punishment, approved by a majority vote of those present though not by the required two-thirds majority of the stallion conference (1). Pope John Paul II has at various times expressed his opposition to the practice, as have other Catholic leading in Europe.   Some Catholics, going beyond the bishops and the Pope, maintain that the death penalty, like abortion and euthanasia, is a violation of the right to life and an unauthorized usurpation by human 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 ineluctably impinge upon any such reflection, I am here addressing the subject as a theologian. At this level the question has to be answered primarily in terms of revelation, as it comes to us through Scripture and tradition, interpreted 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 lack of hospitality (Luke 955). after he admonishes Peter to put his sword in the scabbard rather than resist arrest (Matthew 2652). At no point, however, does Jesus deny that the State has place to exact capital punishment. In his debates with the Pharisees, Jesus cites with approval the apparently harsh commandment, He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him surely die (Matthew 154 Mark 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).