Posted on 08/07/2018 1:15:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
Last week, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had changed the Catholic catechism. After 2,000 years of teaching that a moral use of capital punishment for murder is consistent with Catholic teaching, the pope announced that the catechism, the church fathers and St. Thomas Aquinas, among the other great Catholic theologians, were all wrong.
And God and the Bible? They're wrong, too.
Pope Francis, the product of Latin American liberation theology -- along with many other Catholic religious and lay leaders -- is remaking Catholicism in the image of leftism, just as mainstream Protestant leaders have been rendering much of mainstream Protestantism a branch of leftism, and non-Orthodox Jewish clergy and lay leaders have been rendering most non-Orthodox synagogues and lay institutions left-wing organizations.
The notion that it is immoral to execute any murderer -- no matter how heinous the murder, no matter how many innocents he has murdered, no matter how incontrovertible the proof of guilt -- is an expression of emotion, not of reason or natural law or Christian theology or biblical theology.
Regarding the latter, the biblical commandment to put premeditated murderers to death is unique.
First, it is fundamental to biblical morality. The injunction of putting murderers to death is the only law found in each one of the first five books of the Bible (the Torah).
Second, all other sins involving the death penalty were only applicable to Jews (and for thousands of years, Jews regarded those death penalties not as literal but as pedagogic -- to teach the seriousness of various offenses in an attempt to create a moral and holy nation).
But the Bible makes it clear capital punishment for murder is applicable to all of humanity. It is the first law God gives Noah after the flood, after commanding him to be fruitful and multiply. Putting murderers to death is therefore the first moral law God gives the world. Why this draconian penalty for murder? Because the penalty is a statement about the seriousness of a crime, and the God of the Bible deems the wrongful, deliberate taking of a human life the pinnacle of injustice. Allowing all murderers to keep their own lives diminishes the evil of murder and thereby cheapens the worth of the human being. In God's words, "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image" (Genesis 9:6).
It is precisely to preserve the unique worth of the human being that the Bible mandates putting murderers to death.
In 2015, Pope Francis wrote, "today capital punishment is unacceptable, however serious the condemned's crime may have been."
Unacceptable? To whom? It is acceptable to about half of American Catholics and about half of the American people. But it is unacceptable to the elites of our time, the people who have the most contempt for Catholicism and every other Bible-based religion.
The death penalty, Francis wrote, "entails cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment." These are all subjective opinions. I suspect most people do not think the death penalty as punishment for premeditated murder is necessarily cruel, inhumane or degrading. What are all of us missing? And why isn't life imprisonment cruel, inhumane and degrading? (Indeed, opposition to life imprisonment is already the norm in many progressive countries like Norway, where someone murdered 77 people, mostly children, and received a 21-year prison sentence.)
The Pope also writes that no matter how serious the crime that has been committed, "the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person."
Most of us think it is the murderer, by committing murder, who has attacked his dignity and inviolability, not the society that puts him to death. We also think it is the dignity of the murder victim that is attacked by rewarding the murderer with room and board, TV, books, exercise rooms and visits from family members and girlfriends.
Furthermore, why isn't keeping a murderer in prison one day longer than is necessary to protect society an "attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person"? For that matter, isn't every punishment an attack on the dignity of the punished? Of course it is, which is why progressives ultimately oppose all punishment, equating it with vengeance.
In the middle of the night on July 23, 2007, two men entered the Cheshire, Connecticut, home of Dr. William Petit Jr. and his family. They nearly beat Dr. Petit to death with a baseball bat. Then, one of the men raped his wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and the other man sexually assaulted her 11-year-old daughter, Michaela -- an assault he photographed with his cellphone. Dr. Petit managed to escape, but Hawke-Petit was strangled to death; Michaela and Hawke-Petit's other daughter, Hayley, were tied to their beds; and the house was doused with gasoline and set on fire.
In a 4-3 decision, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment violated the Connecticut Constitution, thereby preventing the execution of the murderers and assaulters of Dr. Petit's family.
This was Dr. Petit's reaction: "I think when people willfully, wantingly, without any remorse take someone else's life, they forfeit their right to be among us."
For those who believe in the Bible, Dr. William Petit of Cheshire, Connecticut, echoes God's view. Pope Francis of the Vatican does not.
The Bible teaches that there must be a “falling away” before that antiChrist comes (and Jesus returns.) We are seeing it in the Pope’s actions and in many Protestant denominations.
2 Thessalonians 2:3
Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
Is he trying to soften what’s coming for those that have been preying on children?
No.
As a Post-Modernist, Frankie doesn't believe in good and evil. Nothing will happen to those nice priests who like children and each other.
He believes pederasty and homosexuality are merely lifestyle choices.
He is removing God from the Church and replacing Him with the idea of a modern Godless man...for whom all things are relative and acceptable. All things except Righteousness, that is.
There'll be none of that.
Dope Francis is one of those fools who praises Charles Manson for his leadership abilities and Jeffrey Dahmer for his “culinary skills” Shitler’s attitude toward the Jews sucked but he was a vegetarian who cared about the environment. When you show mercy to the cruel you become cruel to the merciful. And notice how the anti DP activists were MIA when Tim McVeigh and Larry Brewer who dragged James Bird, a Black man, behind his truck, were executed. Not that these POS didn’t deserve it. The leftists think they’re slick at how they pick pick and choose their battles.
The fact that we are physically mortal is part of the penalty of the original sin. Thank God for Jesus. Literally.
A good pope was pushed away so that a Latin American commie could take over. Once that happened, the floodgates opened and all the other homo/commies rose to the top like spoiled cream. They must have been lurking there for decades. It’ll take a century to clean it up, if ever.
Prager is right about the Protestants & Jews being no better.
Find a good parish with a Latin Mass and a devout priest and congregation. They are out there.
There'll be none of that.
It is looking like there has been less and less of that for quite some time.
Nevertheless, things are looking up.
I'll bet he didn't expect our guy to become President, either.
But the money you give to that good congregation still goes to support Rome and with your presence in the pew you are supporting the entire corrupt system. Find a goos bible believing Protestant denomination or community Church. Or get painted with the popes brush...
Henry VIII is looking better to me...
I’m a Catholic. Unlike a lot of people, I don’t run. I stay and fight back. People like me make Francis miserable.
I’m a Catholic. Unlike a lot of people, I don’t run. I stay and fight back. People like me make Francis miserable.
I have no intention of looking for a Protestant church.
I’ve quit going to church. In the past twentyfive years I’ve been to many churches looking fvor one that preached God’s word but found them all faling away from God. Churches today are beset with PC and social justice. Some are just cess pools.
I believe that God does wish us to worship him with out fellow man. I also believe that God knows that someetime this is not possible.
I refuse to contribute to sin in God’s name.
No, you're not. Even worse, you're not worrying the people who put him there and are keeping him there.
Dennis Praeger did a good job putting this pathetic Pope in his place on his radio show yesterday.
How would you know that?
Please, give me specifics on how Catholics of my stripe are not making the Pope and the hierarchy miserable? Because they are always inveighing against us, I can assure you. It is no short term fight, either, against enemies within. It is the same fight to preserve America - would you suggest I leave the country?
I repeat: I am never leaving the Church. Protestants and Jews must look to their own congregations. They will find plenty of trouble there, I’m sure. Prager knows this even if others do not.
So sorry I missed that. I love Prager but he comes on at the same time as Rush (I don’t do podcasts). When Rush is away, I always listen to him. He’s a great admirer of the Church although no fool about its problems.
Francis has been having a bad time, hasn't he. Particularly since May, or so.
From a non-Catholic Christian, Bless you. You stay and fight.
And keep a holy eye peeled for the ones preying on the children.
Well, thank you! A lovely post and makes my day.
If you give money to your congregation you are supporting Rome like it or not. By your presence in the pew you lend your support to the system like it or not Francis is laughing all the way to the banksitb your opposition
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