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Cardinal Martino is absolutely correct. As was John Paul II before him when he counselled against invading Iraq.

The execution of Saddam is now nothing more than a footnote to the anarchic morass which is present day Iraq. The secular dictator is altogether irrelevant to the Islamic militants who now wage war against the US and their fellow Iraqi citizens, including Iraq's dwindling Christian minority.

The Church's opposition to the death penalty was not invented by Cardinal Martino. It's written in black and white in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Well, much as I revere him, I disagreed with John Paul the Great over the war in Iraq. And the problem with keeping Saddam alive yet providing a suitable punishment for his crimes is, I think, best phrased like this: If the Vatican wants him to live, let the Vatican have custody of him for the rest of his days. Put more formally, is it safe for Saddam to remain alive? Where can he safely be imprisoned?

I'm not trying to be needlessly offensive, (Evidently I can do that without trying.) But if there is EVER a legitimate use of the death penalty (and I concede that that's a tough one) I think this would be an instance.

"The Church's opposition to the death penalty was not invented by Cardinal Martino. It's written in black and white in the Catechism of the Catholic Church."

You need to re-read the Catechism---it says no such thing. The Catechism says, as it always has, that the death penalty is acceptable "if necessary to protect society".

The last couple of popes have weasel-worded it as follows--"in modern societies, the death penalty should be applied rarely, if at all, because other means to protect society are sufficient".

I see no evidence that the latter statement is true. No current society has taken the steps necessary to protect all of society from depraved individuals (life imprisonment IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT without benefit of parole). Current prisons do NOT protect the prison guards and other inmates.

And no Middle Eastern country qualifies as a modern society.

Saddam should be executed ASAP.

But the Church doesn't oppose the death penalty. She has always taught that it is within the state's right to take life to protect society, the Catechism taught that this taking of life should be done as a last resort, when there is not other way to protect society. Nowhere is there anything that would indicate in any way that the Church opposes the death penalty.

I think Saddam is a very clear example of where there will be no way to protect society from him if he stays alive. He still has many active loyalists and he creates a figure that the terrorists can allege they want released. He is just one more excuse for violence at this time.

Would you concur also with Martino's (and Sodano's before him) sponsorhip of Fr. Jean-Marie Benjamin: the former UNICEF official who was ordained a priest in record time, became a constant fixture of the Secretariat of State's on-the-road-show, produced anti-Bush "rap" CDs sold all over Europe, and who was - last we heard - holed-up in Assisi running a "peace institute" whose principal function was to provide a legal defense for Saddam's right-hand man, Tariq Azziz? We'll leave aside that nasty little matter of the Duelfer Report which has dear little Fr. Benjamin receiving vouchers for MILLIONS of barrels of oil!

Was it wise for Martino (and Sodano) to arrange for Tariq Azziz to visit John Paul II before the invasion (some of us prefer "liberation") of Iraq in the company of Melkite-rite Archbishop Hilarion Cappucci, who was arrested in the 70s for using his personal vehicle in the service of gun-running for the PLO and who was released from Israeli prison on the word of Paul VI that he would spend the rest of his life in a monastic retreat somewhere in South America?

It's all very well to appeal to the Catechism (and, remember, there were PREVIOUS catechisms and a whole body of moral theology that had quite a different take on capital punishiment than the one proposed by the EUROPEAN authors of THIS latest Catechism) - but the anti-USA rhetoric of folks like Martino, Tauran and Hmao (interesting nationality-mix there, don't you think?) was nothing less than despicable at the time of Saddam's overthrow. The first of those three stooges apparently forgot which side his country was on when WW II began and who had to bail them out; the second - well, really, what would you expect; and the last: lovely to issue anti-USA statements on the anniversary of Hiroshima when you apparently don't remember that your own country gave the world Pearl Harbor.

Finally, when the young Joseph Ratzinger - courageously and in peril of his life doing the right thing - deserted the Nazi military, he made sure he got to a POW facility run by Americans. Perhaps this is one of the reasons he spoke so beautifully about the United States to our new Ambassador: "Your nation's generosity to those in need is known to the peoples of every continent on earth."

Martino for Vatican librarian . . . or let him work under Marini as candle-changer at St. Peter's.

Cardinal Ratzinger then Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith...

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. If, for example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.