Pro-LGBT Fr. James Martin calls for DeSantis to be denied Communion for supporting death penalty

Here is a quote on the subject by C. S. Lewis. He abandoned a scholarship to Oxford in 1916 to serve in the British army as an officer with the Somerset Light Infantry. He was wounded at the Battle of Arras and suffered depression during his convalescence. The quote comes from Mere Christianity, which was fleshed out from radio broadcasts he made during WW II. I consider his a durable example of Christianity combining experience with extraordinary scholarship.

"Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment - even to death. If one has committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged. It is therefore in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy, I always thought so, ever since I became a Christian, and long before the war, and still think so now that we are a peace.”

“It is no good quoting, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ There are two Greek words: the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder. And when Christ quotes that commandment He uses the murder one in all three accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And I am told there is the same distinction in Hebrew. All killing is not murder any more that all sexual intercourse is adultery. When soldiers came to St. John the Baptist asking what to do, he never remotely suggested that they ought to leave the army: nor did Christ when he met a Roman sergeant-major - what they called a centurion. The idea of the knight - the Christian in arms for defense of a good cause - is one of the great Christian ideas."

The distinction in Hebrew is ratsach in the commandment “Thou shalt not Kill”, which corresponds to our understanding for most cases of first degree murder. In military and other settings the words muwth, harag, shamad, charam and shachath are used, which King James translations of kill, slay or destroy. Sorry about missing all the accent points, but Word has its limitations.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.