Guess Robertson's conscience got the best of him.
But that is not the point. Seems to me the argument is not whether he had the right to say it, but whether or not the head of the CBN should be saying it.
The Tyrannicide and the Catholic Church.'
There is nothing improper about the commentaries made by the Evangelical preacher, Pat Robertson, referring to the possible tyrannicide of the Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez.
Tyrannicide has been sanctioned as morally compatible with the teachings of the Catholic Church, based on the social doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas. Chavez has reaffirmed his intentions of establishing in Venezuela a genocidal regime following the Cuban model and the commands of Fidel Castro.
What are we going to wait for?, Allow Chavez to surpass Castro’s dreadful record of 20,000 shot by firing squads, and for more than half million of Venezuelans to suffer political imprisonment as the Cubans have suffered in Castro’s dungeons inside the Island prison of Cuba.
Chavez, like Hitler, was elected democratically only to become a dictator later. Castro kept well hidden his aims of establishing a Stalinist regimen in Cuba until he consolidated this power over the Cuban people. But, as Hitler exposed his diabolic plan in “Mein Kamp”, Chavez has no only openly and publicly bragged about his plans of imposing a communist regimen following the Cuban model, but he has put Venezuela under Castro’s control using his thugs and repressive apparatus to keep subjugated the people of Venezuela.
If Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Chavez’s life had been terminated, how many lives would have been saved and how much suffering humanity would have been spared.
In fact, tyrannicide is so justified that His Holiness Pius XII gave his approval for the plot by a group from the German’s army intelligence service planning to kill Hitler.
For St. Thomas Aquinas, tyrannicide is to opt for the lesser of two evils. Pacifism is a morally correct personal option, but is an option that is morally unaceptable for the state. A person might choose not to resist an aggression to the extreme of loosing his life, but a government has the duty to defend his people.
A pacifist might loose his life without offering resistance; but he cannot impassible allow in his presence the murder of an innocent person. Those are basic principles of Catholic teachings that are being ignored in the middle of the assault of the totalitarian correct ideological movement where political correct positions prevail even though they might be morally incorrect options.