Posted on 12/16/2003 5:54:51 AM PST by sitetest
Edited on 12/16/2003 7:13:44 AM PST by Lead Moderator. [history]
[LM's note: This thread is degenerating a bit into Catholic bashing and general flaming, and is in risk of being moved to the smokey backroom. Please stop. I've locked it once, and it has continued. Any more and it is gone. Thanks.]
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A top Vatican (news - web sites) official said Tuesday he felt pity and compassion for Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and criticized the U.S. military for showing video footage of him being treated "like a cow."
Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Justice and Peace department and a former papal envoy to the United Nations (news - web sites), told a news conference it would be "illusory" to think the arrest of the former Iraqi president would heal all the damage caused by a war which the Holy See opposed.
"I felt pity to see this man destroyed, (the military) looking at his teeth as if he were a cow. They could have spared us these pictures," he said.
"Seeing him like this, a man in his tragedy, despite all the heavy blame he bears, I had a sense of compassion for him," he said in answer to questions about Saddam's arrest.
Martino was referring to the videotape released by the U.S. military which showed a grubby, bearded and disheveled Saddam receiving a medical examination by a military doctor after his capture in an underground hole Saturday.
Martino was one of the Vatican officials most strongly opposed to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq (news - web sites).
"It's true that we should be happy that this (arrest) has come about because it is the watershed that was necessary... we hope that this will not have worse and other serious consequences," Martino said.
"But it is not the total solution to the problems of the Middle East," he said.
Martino said the Vatican hoped the arrest of Saddam "can contribute to promoting peace and the democratization of Iraq."
He added: "But is seems to me to be illusory to hope that this will repair the dramas and the damage of the defeat for humanity that a war always brings about."
The Vatican did not consider the war in Iraq "a just war" because it was not backed by the United Nations and because the Vatican believed more negotiations were necessary to avoid it.
Martino said the Vatican wanted an "appropriate institution" to put Saddam on trial but he did not elaborate.
U.S. forces were keeping the ousted 66-year-old dictator at a secret location for interrogation before he is put on trial in the months ahead. He could face the death penalty.
The news conference was called for Martino to present the World Day of Peace message, in which Pope John Paul (news - web sites) took a swipe at the United States for invading Iraq without the backing of the United Nations.
Amen!
I was bringing Congressman Ashbrook's primary petitions to the New Hampshire State Capitol to file them and I noticed that Senator Edmund Muskie (an alleged Catholic) was approaching the Capitol from the same direction. There were three college-aged young people, two men and one woman, sitting on the steps (looking vaguely counterculture and a bit out of place, buckskin jackets and long hair). I was close enough to hear the conversation as the three young people got up and stood in Muskie's way to repeatedly ask him: Do you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?
I was a bit relieved since I had thought it possible that they meant him harm before they asked the question. On the other hand, I had never heard the question before and, apparently, neither had Muskie. When Muskie replied: "Of course, if He isn't, who would be?", I discovered that even Muskie had some common sense. This question is not as meaningful to Catholics as to those who see it as part of being "born again." We have never imagined anyone other than Jesus Christ as Savior and certainly accept Him as such.
We do not hold the Church itself to be divine. Nor do we regard Scripture, per se, as divine. Divinely inspired, yes. The word of God transmitted by Him through human agents, certainly. A reference to the Church is that it is the Mystical Body of Christ with Christ as the Head and we as the members. We RCs would also recognize non-Catholic baptized Christians as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, albeit separated brethren. Jesus Christ, in the Garden of Olives, not only prayed to His Father over the matter of whether His cup should pass away but, less noticed, wept over His knowledge that His flock would not be one flock. I accept that. I hope you do too.
We RCs differ on a limited number of theological points with our separated brethren but agree on far more (95%+?). In emphasizing the differences, we, on both sides, often neglect the vast areas of agreement. Don't feel excluded any more than I feel excluded from. say, the Assemblies of God or the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, admirable institutions in many ways, but I exclude myself from them as you exclude yourself from Roman Catholicism.
I certainly am a "papist" and proud of it even in light of the many sinners who have occupied the office (each and every one, no doubt). If I thought that we were trying to run an exclusive, snob appeal, kind of club of some sort, I would flee. We are not. The late and mostly great Archbishop Fulton Sheen said quite insightfully that he wouldn't be a Catholic either if a significant fraction of the charges of its enemies were true. He remained a Catholic through death.
Without the once and once only sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, none could be saved. No human work, on its own horsepower, can atone for the slightest sin. We are more in agreement on this than many who are reformed may imagine.
We RCs believe in purgatory and most reformed would not since they reject Maccabees as Apocrypha. We accept the broader Old Testament Canon of the Jews and the reformed accept the less extensive Old Testament Canon of the Jews. Our idea of purgatory includes the notion that if God is inviting you to His house (heaven), you would want to be ready for the experience and shorn of residual attachment to sin. We all wanted to dress well for our senior proms or our weddings. C. S. Lewis was not a Catholic but his book The Great Divorce is really a metaphor for purgatory. RCs believe in temporal punishment due to sin. I may forgive my child for stealing a candy bar from the grocery store. In justice, I cannot refrain from insisting that the child make restitution and apology to the person wronged. God is just.
If all that we disagree over is purgatory, what was all the fuss about? We also probably disagree over the Mass and the sacraments and the perpetual virginity of Mary and a number of other matters. We Catholics have a very high regard for St. Thomas Aquinas. We are very confident that he is in heaven. Hence his first name: "St." I am certainly willing to bet that, upon arrival in heaven, St. Thomas Aquinas discovered a number of things that he had not realized on earth, smacked his spiritual forehead and said "Why didn't I realize that on earth?" He is a saint anyway. I live in the hope that I will join him in heaven if not in the honors of the altar. I'll take the poor little shack by the river. He can have a mansion. I hope for heaven to be the destination of separated brethren of good faith too.
In truth, you probably would expect a person to believe in more than the sacrifice of the cross. Would you not expect a person to believe in the Fundamentals of the Christian Religion as exposited by the fundamentalist scholars in the World War I era? The inerrancy of Scripture? The Trinity? The virginity of Mary at the time of Christ's birth?
We are not so much called to squabble among ourselves over this or that theological distinction as to teach and baptize the world in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
Mel Gibson will be releasing his masterpiece The Passion on Ash Wednesday of 2004. He is a turbo-Catholic. He personally brought the film (not Catholic, not Protestant but very Christian) a couple of weeks ago to show it to the Reverend Mr. Billy Graham at the Graham home. Asked for his reaction, the Reverend Mr. Graham responded that he had spent 60 years and more of his ministry ever imagining what it must have been like to experience the walk with Jesus in His time and place and witness those remarkable events. "Now", he said, "I know."
As for the Catholic Church lamenting the mouth exam scene, I wonder if this priest remembers the great assistance the Church gave escaping Nazi SS assassins after WW II when they gave them passports that allowed them to go to and get asylum in Latin American countries?
Leave it to the vatican to have compassion for evil. I suppose it only goes to follow ... they have compassion for pedaphiles, Priests, at the expense of little boys. At least they are consistent when it comes to befriending evil.
Agreed.
Unfortunately, Cardinal Martino sets a bad example as a Catholic. My guess is most Catholics disagree with him.
I've not yet scrolled through this thread. Have any FReeper Catholics agreed with Martino?
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