Death penalty Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Death penalty - Essay Example Death Penalty is the gravest of all punishments and the Roman Catholic Church’s take on this punishment has evolved over time.This change in view of the Church will be discussed in this paper thoroughly.The paper will start off by giving a history of the death penalty and its supporters and opponents in the past,in terms of societal and religious groups. Then the Roman Catholic Church’s notion on the death penalty and its development is studied. Death penalty is a serious punishment for those who have committed serious crimes such as murder and have caused harm to the society by terrorist acts. People’s and nations’ perceptions of the death penalty or execution changed over time. This perception changed according to the requirements of the era. In today’s era, where crime is pervasive but also unstoppable, there is little need for death sentences, according to many people out of which some are staunch Christians also. But why do we link the religion to death penalty? They are both different branches of the same subject. We link religion to this punishment because all religions teach respect for human life and the right of humans to their lives. We will see in our discussion how the Church changes course from defending the right of oneself to the right of human life in general. We will see how the teachings of the Church changed from supporting the death penalty as a punishment to opposing it.... We can easily say that there will be many groups who will support this as punishment and other sensitive and tender ones will oppose it as it is the violation of human rights. The question is why would anyone support it and/or oppose it People who support it believe that this punishment should be given to people who have committed serious crimes in the past because of which people have lost lives, directly or indirectly. It supports the idea of the old adage; "a tooth for a tooth". If these criminals took lives, their lives must be taken in return too. On the other hand, the opponents believe that death penalty is as bad as what the criminals did. If they killed people, it doesn't make it acceptable for authorities to become as dire as them and take their lives in return. Now that the debate is clear, we can get into the history of the death penalty. It was in the Eighteenth Century B.C. when death penalty laws were first established. However, by the Eleventh Century A.D., it was decided that only people who murdered will be hanged and not other. Death penalty was traditional in Europe also, for many centuries. People were being executed till mid-1700 but by late 1700, the US abolitionist movement started. As a result, by early 1800's many of the states concentrated the number of their death crimes by building more state prisons. In Britain, around a hundred of the crimes that were punishable by execution were eliminated (Death Penalty Information Center, 2008). By early 1900, people were executed using the electrocution method but nine states of the US had abolished the law. By 1920, the abolition movement of USA started to lose support and became unpopular. Soon after this, newer ways of executing people were being discovered. Around this