Posted on 03/21/2015 3:31:14 PM PDT by BlatherNaut
Why is it that we support clubs of people who think they can impose some unjust law upon the whole planet? How in the world is a collection of subsidized scolders, winers, and diners supposed to impose a worldwide moratorium on anything? Why does the Pope think they can?
Pope Francis delivered a letter this week to the International Commission against the Death Penalty
With these letters, I wish to have my greeting reach all the members of the International Commission against the Death Penalty, to the group of countries that support it, and to those who collaborate with the organism over which you preside. I wish, in addition, to express my personal gratitude, and also that of men of good will, for your commitment to a world free of the death penalty and for your contribution to the establishment of a universal moratorium of executions worldwide, with a view to abolition of capital punishment.
Plato was clear, “When there is crime in society, there is no justice,” and if you look around you’ll find plenty of crime. You’ll also find plenty of people teaching that actual justice is unjust or useless.
L.A. Archbishop Jose Gomez rolled out the tired pseudo-Catholic appeal against the death penalty once again this week, arguing that we’re so ‘advanced’ now it’s unnecessary, as if the point of an execution was to keep the convict from hurting anyone else. If we’re so advanced, why is there so much murder, and why don’t we understand that the point is to keep ‘others’ from killing, not the one already in jail?
(Excerpt) Read more at 66.147.242.160 ...
This is the Bernardinite “seamless garment” crap all over again, maybe worse.
There is an incongruity in what you write. I thought Christ changed the eye-for-an-eye doctrine. No?
As in: If a man rapes and murders your daughter, give him your other daughter? Because that seems to be the direction your understanding of Christ's teachings is taking you.
That again was the law God gave Moses on Mt. Sinai. The Bible makes a clear distinction between God’s law and man’s law.
Without the death penalty there would be no Christianity.
How effective would it be to say “Jesus Christ died of old age while serving a life penalty without possibility of parole, for our sins”?
I find it fascinating that the Apostles and the successors to the Apostles believed in authorities' right to punish criminals, but now, 2000 years later, we know better.
It's sad to learn the Apostles and martyrs and millions of Christians over two millenia were stupid and completely misunderstood Jesus. Thank goodness modern man is intelligent and enlightened. NOW WE KNOW what Jesus REALLY meant:
Mercy = Get Out Of Jail Free
The Holy Father is free to give his opinion. Pope John Paul II was also opposed, but for the good reason he had lived through the savagery of the Nazis. That, ironically is why the doctrine of the Church as always allowed the death penally. The state, that is to say, a society has the right to self defense. This goes to war; it goes to the violent criminal.
Francis is the spiritual heir of Bernardin, who was one of the worst people in the world but extremely influential in his time. Anybody who has ever read “Windswept House” will recognize this evil man from South Carolina.
He got control of a lot of things and went on to spawn awful but powerful clergy who really took over the Church in the US. He was the author of the “seamless garment theory,” which made the death penalty (always legitimate in the Church) the real evil and reduced abortion to the Democrat Party lines, which means not an evil at all.
He was an evil, evil man. And Pope Francis is in his mold.
No, it is okay to put someone to death if there’s no other way to protect society from him/her: http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2267.htm
Wait...I don’t mean that Pope Francis is evil. I think he’s actually just a media hungry fool. The Bernardin-type stupidities that come out of his mouth are very bizarre because they literally reflect views of 30 years ago, when Bernardin was very powerful. Pope Francis is actually a throwback to a really stupid time, but he thinks he’s really cool and forward thinking.
I honestly don’t think he’s evil, I just think he’s a shallow but ambitious person who somehow ended up in a powerful position and is really now a little puzzled about how to go on.
Meanwhile, the Muslims and the secularists are killing Christianity. But who is he to judge?
Murderers have more rights than their victims.
Spot on Luke. As a Texan by choice, I fully support the death penalty for the heinous crimes. Yep, sorry.
Bernadin's evil machinations are also documented in "The Rite of Sodomy" by Randy Engels.
No, its not a get out of jail free. You need to show proof that the apostles condoned the killing of capital defendants. This is doubtful since to be a Christian was a capital offense punishable by death or fed to the lions. Emperor Diocletian did just that.
You have it exactly backwards. The right of society to protect itself from heinous criminals through capital punishment has been ensconced in Scripture for thousands of years. If there were a change in that outlook, it is incumbent upon you to point out the change and back it up with documentation. (Hint: quoting recent modernist papal musings doesn't count.)
Your approach reminds me of the tact taken by sodomy supporters who claim that Jesus condones fisting because he never specifically condemned it.
The Pope does know that if there never was a death penalty, there would be no Christianity, doesn’t he?
We are talking neither musings nor doctrine here.
You mischaracterize the issue about the “right of society to protect itself,” That’s a straw man’s argument. The real issue here is revenge and deterrence. There are substitutes for capital punishment such a life imprisonment without parole.
Your reference to sodomy supporters is a non sequitur. Besides sodomy and adultery are condemned by Paul in the canonical texts.
“He’s in charge and you don’t like it. He was elected. He’s doing what the cardinals wanted. Get used to it”
Are you a Catholic?
No, it's justice and deterrence. Capital punishment achieves both. It is Biblical, and has always been understood to be deeply moral—until about 25 years ago, when modern therapeutic sensitivity was substituted for Judeo-Christian wisdom.
Putting murderers to death is the only law to appear in all five books of the Torah. The Torah regards putting premeditated murderers to death as foundational to a decent society. A person can say the Torah is dead wrong here, but no honest person can deny that the Torah views executing murderers as central to a decent society.
Yes, the Torah lists the death penalty for other offences as well, but (a) none are in all five books, (b) the death penalty for murder is one of the basic moral laws God reveals to Noah, and (c) no other time in the Torah is the death penalty declared a fundamental moral value: “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made the human.” The Torah asserts the truism that keeping all murderers alive cheapens the value of human life.
In the Torah, there is no other punishment, capital or otherwise, that has anywhere near the significance of the death penalty for murder. Even accidental homicide is punished — though of course not by death — because the taking of a human life is that serious. That is why an animal — even though it has no moral free will — is also put to death if it kills a person. Human life is cheapened when takers of human life are allowed to keep their own life.
This view was never repudiated by Christ nor his Apostles. But we are modern. We know better.
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