Believe it or not, I am all for the separation of church and state. Nonetheless, I complete agree with the Pope on this one, especially after reading Bryan Stevenson’s book- Just Mercy. Stevenson is a lawyer who moved to Alabama to handle the trails of, mostly black, men who were facing the death penalty. While that sounds like a normal thing to do, as a lawyer, the catch with all of his cases is that most of the prisoners he encountered had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death. I will not give away the ending.<\/p>\n
Returning to the Pope, he is asking rulers all over the world to abide by the “Holy Year of Mercy” and place a one year moratorium on the death penalty. The death penalty in itself is inhumane, no matter if it is an electric chair, firing squad, or a needle.\u00a0Personally, I feel that the death penalty\u00a0is a human rights\u00a0offense. I think like the rules for the death penalty, universally, but especially in America, need to be tightened. Like the people in Stevenson’s book, one can be executed without proof that a crime was committed. That’s cruel.<\/p>\n
The Pope’s end goal is to end capital punishment. Lamentably, this thinking may align too closely with the liberalism school of thought because I really do not think that every state would give up their power to execute people as they please. Also, I have to take cultural relativism into account because deviant behavior (rape, murder, etc.) are not weighted the same way in every single culture.<\/p>\n
Maybe this is cruel of me, but isn’t it better to let people wallow in the memory of their actions, rather than just kill them? Yes, some killers\/convicts feel no remorse, but I would argue that many do. Apparently, prison is not a fun place, but that’s a story for another post.<\/p>\n
Source: http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2016\/02\/21\/world\/pope-death-penalty-moratorium\/index.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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