Confused about right to self defense and death penalty

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As someone who has been incarcerated and someone who has family member that worked in corrections (he is now a police officer) I tend to agree. Usually inmates that have long to life sentences are normally well behaved because that is their home for a long time. They tend not to put up with the youngsters and the short timers acting like children. If you are well behaved your time is easier. If you don’t play by the rules and cause trouble, you end up doing hard time. Most long term inmates are actually well behaved. It is the short timers, or as they say doing a meatball (generally under 5 years), that cause issues. I think the thing that annoyed me the most was all the “Rap Stars”.
 
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Emeraldlady said:
Is it your position that the rest of the Christian countries of the world have deviated from Catholic teaching over the last century and more for abolishing the death penalty?
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The death penalty is not a positive command that all governments must follow, so sure, they had the choice to eliminate it if they felt they could do so without threatening society. The change is in the Church’s position of implicitly chastising countries that continue to use the death penalty.
 
bobperk said:
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Emeraldlady:
Is it your position that the rest of the Christian countries of the world have deviated from Catholic teaching over the last century and more for abolishing the death penalty?
Click to expand...
The death penalty is not a positive command that all governments must follow, so sure, they had the choice to eliminate it if they felt they could do so without threatening society. The change is in the Church’s position of implicitly chastising countries that continue to use the death penalty.
Click to expand...
As a non American, I don’t view it as a chastisement of continued use of the death penalty. It is countering the false claim muddying the waters of the debate, that abolition of the death penalty amounts to a deficiency of justice or worse, a heresy.
 
Pope Francis most certainly did not pronounce infallibly that the death penalty was always evil.
 
It would be one thing for the Church to encourage countries not to use the death penalty if possible, like Pope John Paul II did. But it’s another to pretty much call it wrong now, even after centuries of teaching that it was permissible. It’s one of those topics this pope just had to touch, becausewhynot? He doesn’t seem to like America too much. My feeling is that if we didn’t still use the death penalty here, he wouldn’t really have cared to speak about it.
 
Given that most countries in the world have abolished the death penalty already, and most states in USA have either abolished it or de facto abolished it, the Pope’s statement is not going to be controversial with most of the world, so I can’t see why the Pope would be all that concerned about the few places and the few people who are bothered by his current position on it.
 
But people are on death row for decades sometimes. Are you suggesting to fast track the process so that people are executed before they have a chance to appeal?
 
No, I’m suggesting that the death penalty should be reserved for convicted criminals who would otherwise be imprisoned for life, but have shown to be a risk to the lives of other inmates and officers with whom they have contact with.

And nowhere did I say the death penalty should be fast tracked… I just wanted to point out that just because a person becomes incarcerated does not mean they stop becoming a risk to all other people. Which is what I felt was implied by the quotes of the Pope.
 
But if you can successfully incarcerate them for 10-15 years, which you have to do while they use up their appeals, you can successfully incarcerate them for 50 years.

If they pose a danger to prison guards, that’s a problem for the warden to fix. But a guy who is sent to prison for 5 years can be more dangerous than a guy on death row. You can’t execute every violent prisoner.
 
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