Capital Punishment Essay - Opposition To the Death Penalty :: Argumentative Persuasive Essays

Opposition To the Death Penalty During the spring semester I submit Evangelium Vitae The Gospel of Life. Paragraphs 27 and 56 of this encyclical prompted a discussion of the dying penalty with other students. Their first reaction was that the Pope was against it and that he was verbal expression that the penalty has no nearification. There was general resistance to the suggestion that musical composition the Popes attitude toward the decease penalty is, to put it mildly, unfavorable, he did not straight off out say that it was immoral, wrong, without justification. Quite apart from exegesis of the encyclical, a majority of student-friends were against the death penalty. Period. Were they in favor of life imprisonment? Absolutely. Dont put killers and the like to death, just lock them up and throw away the key. Isnt that what the Pope was saying in paragraph 56? The tide of public opinion against capital penalty rises, he writes, both in the Church and in civil soci ety, and thither is a growing demand to limit its use even to the phase of total abolition. Nowadays we are able to protect society from the offender without taking his life. Lock him up and he will have slews of time to repent and redeem himself. Our discussion accordingly turned to the suspicion of life imprisonment. While this admittedly looks attractive when compared to the death penalty, considered in itself it is a terrible thing. However antiseptic and humane his quarters might be, the design of a human being locked up for life gives pause. Surely but the most grievous offenses could warrant such severe punishment. Are on that point really any offenses that severe? In Italy, later in the spring, I became aware of a campaign against life imprisonment. What I detected, rightly or wrongly, was an animus against punishment as such. When I gingerly introduced the subject of Hell, those who had impromptu rejected capital punishment and then had some second thoug hts somewhat life imprisonment when looked at in itself and not as an preference to the death penalty seemed inclined toward a creative interpretation of eonian punishment. And of course there have been eminent theologians who have wondered aloud around the doctrine of Hell. Even Jacques Maritain, late in his life had written ambiguously on the subject.