Pope joins movement to ban the death penalty

Up to now, the Pope and the Roman Church have maintained a conservative stance on ethical matters.

Now they may have started down the slippery slope, with the Pope (and presumably the Church) now committed to opposing the death penalty.

From the point of view of most people who oppose the death penalty, life and death are of no ultimate value, so they seem to be against the death penalty mostly for sentimental reasons.

So the question to ask, from the viewpoint of society, is: does abolishing the death penalty for people who have undoubtedly committed murderer have any disadvantages?

Here are two:

1. because murderers are normally locked up for many years, jails become filled to overflowing; and

2. taxpayers have to pay for the food, exercise and security involved in looking after murderers for the years and years that murderers are in prison - and in a time of decreasing employment prospects, murdering one person and ensuring that you are caught can become an easy way of ensuring that you are looked after for many years (perhaps for the rest of your life) at the expense of taxpayers :)

Of course laws need to be reformed in relation to those accused of murder, so that only individuals where the evidence for murder is overwhelmingly clear are given their deserts.

Meanwhile, ironically, the most organised "death industries" (the suicide-help industry, the abortion industry, and the so-called "defense" industries - better described as the war industries) carry on their ever-widening and ever-more-profitable activities.

Few of these so-called liberals are willing to commit themselves to fight against organised death-mongering by the suicide industry, the abortion industry and the war industries. Sphere: Related Content