Bishop says tighter gun laws will help build culture of life

[Ridgerunner]

I have provided what the bishops have said themselves, and invited everyone to take time to read everything for themselves. What you have not provided is the bishop that speaks in disagreement with them. That makes them say something they haven’t when one projects the opposite of what has been stated…

I really thought you were going to quit doing this, but I guess the temptation was too great.

“what the bishops have said themselves” is not a single thing, just to update anyone coming onto this thread late.

There is the 2000 communication from what appears to have been a majority of the bishops at a meeting of the USCCB. It is essentially about crime; its causes and remedies. There are three sentences in it dealing with guns. They are very general and non-specific. Certainly they don’t call for the Obama proposals. This is the only communication in which a significant number of bishops participated. As Prodigal does, I greatly encourage people to read it themselves rather than take either my interpretation of it or Prodigal’s. It speaks for itself to the extent it speaks at all. One of the sentences is in approximately the middle of the rather longish text. Two other sentences are in footnote 32

Then there is the letter by Bishop Blaire in which he appears to possibly support Obama’s proposals before obama made them. It appears some three or four other bishops agreed with Bp. Blaire out of the 500+ bishops in the U.S. The rest have not addressed Obama’s proposals either generally or specifically. Perhaps someday the bishops as a whole will feel it’s important enough to address. Perhaps not.

Neither of those communications are binding on Catholics, according to Canon Law.

Finally, if you want to know what your own bishop thinks about it, call your Chancery Office. If your bishop has thought it sufficiently significant to address, they will direct you to his statement.

 

[Bill1940]

I think the matter of gun regulation is one of prudential judgment. A decision to go to war is such so I’m sure this lesser matter falls into that category. That said, I also think the proposals of the Obama Administration are potentially draconian as they contain inchoate features which can criminalize innocent acts, things hunters and shooters do as mere matter of course. I have followed these issues for over fifty years. I can clearly see it as part of the larger culture war. I can also see an agenda on the part of many to completely disarm the American public. The totalitarian tendency thrives in the Utopian mind-set. The Founders were wise to foresee this potential and provide against it. Cast the Constitution lightly away and the heavy hand of the super-state will crush us all.

 

[Prodigal_Son1]

This is quite simply untrue. The clergy has one role and the laity has another - each has its own.
Just as we desire lay people not to usurp the rights of clerics,** so we ought to wish clerics not to lay claim to the rights of the laity**. We therefore forbid every cleric henceforth to extend his jurisdiction, under pretext of ecclesiastical freedom, to the prejudice of secular justice. Rather, let him be satisfied with the written constitutions and customs hitherto approved, so that the things of Caesar may be rendered unto Caesar, and the things of God may be rendered unto God by a right distribution.(4th Lateran Council)
Ender

Added emphasis, underlined.

You can’t piece something. It is taken as a whole. The men of the Church are to give us guidance on all moral issues in a secular world. The bishops have said this is in response to gun violence that takes away the dignity of life for some.

 

[Prodigal_Son1]

I really thought you were going to quit doing this, but I guess the temptation was too great.

“what the bishops have said themselves” is not a single thing, just to update anyone coming onto this thread late.

There is the 2000 communication from what appears to have been a majority of the bishops at a meeting of the USCCB. It is essentially about crime; its causes and remedies. There are three sentences in it dealing with guns. They are very general and non-specific. Certainly they don’t call for the Obama proposals. This is the only communication in which a significant number of bishops participated. As Prodigal does, I greatly encourage people to read it themselves rather than take either my interpretation of it or Prodigal’s. It speaks for itself to the extent it speaks at all. One of the sentences is in approximately the middle of the rather longish text. Two other sentences are in footnote 32

Then there is the letter by Bishop Blaire in which he appears to possibly support Obama’s proposals before obama made them. It appears some three or four other bishops agreed with Bp. Blaire out of the 500+ bishops in the U.S. The rest have not addressed Obama’s proposals either generally or specifically. Perhaps someday the bishops as a whole will feel it’s important enough to address. Perhaps not.

Neither of those communications are binding on Catholics, according to Canon Law.

Finally, if you want to know what your own bishop thinks about it, call your Chancery Office. If your bishop has thought it sufficiently significant to address, they will direct you to his statement.

Of course it doesn’t call for Obama’s proposals, since the call began under a different administration. Now, there have been men of the Church that have referred to the current administration, in light of the most recent mass shootings.

I see you still try to minimize the current calls, that refer to the unanswered calls in the 2000 document. The term reiterate was used by the ‘few’ you continue to try and minimize this to, even though the few represent committees of the USCCB.

Finally, to dispute the numbers, show us the one bishop that disagrees with the full body.

 

[BroomWagon]

I think the matter of gun regulation is one of prudential judgment. A decision to go to war is such so I’m sure this lesser matter falls into that category. That said, I also think the proposals of the Obama Administration are potentially draconian as they contain inchoate features which can criminalize innocent acts, things hunters and shooters do as mere matter of course. I have followed these issues for over fifty years. I can clearly see it as part of the larger culture war. I can also see an agenda on the part of many to completely disarm the American public. The totalitarian tendency thrives in the Utopian mind-set. The Founders were wise to foresee this potential and provide against it. Cast the Constitution lightly away and the heavy hand of the super-state will crush us all.

I think you are correct, the Democrats make hay out of Sandy Hook, yet, refuse to condemn Dr. Kermit Gosnell. Hypocrites.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Of course it doesn’t call for Obama’s proposals, since the call began under a different administration. Now, there have been men of the Church that have referred to the current administration, in light of the most recent mass shootings.

I see you still try to minimize the current calls, that refer to the unanswered calls in the 2000 document. The term reiterate was used by the ‘few’ you continue to try and minimize this to, even though the few represent committees of the USCCB.

Finally, to dispute the numbers, show us the one bishop that disagrees with the full body.

Quit blurring the distinctions between the 2000 communication and the letter of Bishop Blaire. They’re not at all the same thing. You cannot fail to know that.

What “calls” in the 2000 document are unanswered, and in what specific ways were they unanswered? All they did was call for regulation in a very general way for “sensible” regulation. I have no doubt many regulations some of them might have deemed “sensible” have passed in the various states since 2000. In what way do they fail to “answer the call”?

In what way does Rahm Emanuel’s call for increased prison terms for serious gun crimes fail to “answer the call”?

And just because Bishop Blaire wrote his own letter endorsing something he didn’t even have before him, doesn’t mean anything other than that he would like to see more gun control.

But he’s not my bishop, nor are any of the three who agreed with him.

And, of course, you know nothing in either communication is binding on Catholics, representing only the opinions of the writers.

The 500+ bishops who have evidently not seen Obama’s gun control proposals as something requiring their attention have obviously not seen them as a burning moral issue. If they did, they would have surely taken them up. But they didn’t.

If “the bishops” as a whole ever do take up Obama’s proposals, let us know. Until then, all you’re doing is presenting your opinions and Obama’s and wrongly attributing them to bishops who have never commented on them at all.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think you are correct, the Democrats make hay out of Sandy Hook, yet, refuse to condemn Dr. Kermit Gosnell. Hypocrites.

Democrats and their supporters don’t like to talk about Gosnell’s case because they know Obama and Gosnell share the same disrespect for human life. Also, in their hearts they know they are also participants in the slaughter of children and don’t like to see it represented graphically.

 

[Ender]

The men of the Church are to give us guidance on all moral issues in a secular world. The bishops have said this is in response to gun violence that takes away the dignity of life for some.

You still have not answered the question I keep asking: what moral choice are we faced with regarding gun control? Surely you cannot believe the dispute is between those who oppose “taking away the dignity of life” and those who support it … so what moral choice is involved? Unless you can identify what choice is sinful you cannot validly claim that this is a moral issue. A vague reference to “the dignity of life” is not adequate.

The problem of course is that you can’t define what moral choice we face because there is no such choice involved with this issue and this is precisely why I oppose the bishop’s involvement here. It isn’t a moral concern but a practical one with which they have no particularly useful expertise.

Ender

 

[pnewton]

You still have not answered the question I keep asking: what moral choice are we faced with regarding gun control?

Do we value life over our own convenience? Are we willing to wait and exercise patience, losing our own time either by filling out forms or undergoing a waiting period for the sake of keeping guns out of the hands of those that we perceive as a danger to society?

This is the third time I have done this. Can we dispense with this “not a moral issue” stuff already? Our bishops tend to think so. I gave you a moral issue.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Do we value life over our own convenience? Are we willing to wait and exercise patience, losing our own time either by filling out forms or undergoing a waiting period for the sake of keeping guns out of the hands of those that we perceive as a danger to society?

This is the third time I have done this. Can we dispense with this “not a moral issue” stuff already? Our bishops tend to think so. I gave you a moral issue.

Before even inconveniencing citizens, the government should have and meet the burden of demonstrating what benefit it will confer on society. When it comes to prohibiting person-to-person transfer between lawful citizens, the government has not demonstrated that anyone will be benefitted.

Criminals and assassins will pay no attention to such laws, so the only application is to citizens who are not criminals or assassins.

Undoubtedly regulation of guns can be seen as a moral issue, and should be. The bishops in 2000 said so in a very general way, relative to crime, but leaving specific policy up to those who make the laws. Society presently prohibits felons and the insane and anyone under guardianship from possessing a gun. Some states prohibit possession of guns on the part of anybody under a domestic violence court order. All of that makes sense. What society has NOT done is enforce those prohibitions in a meaningful way.

Consider for a moment that the Tsarnaevs had fully automatic and totally illegal weapons. Does that represent a societal failure? It certainly seems to, particularly given that their potential for jihadi violence was right there for law enforcement to see. Where are the proposals to prevent that kind of thing in the future?

Certainly in this thread there are none, and none in Obama’s proposals either. In this thread, the only objective seems to be to make things more difficult for the law-abiding.

Before imposing burdens on the law-abiding for no demonstrable reason, it simply makes good sense that governments would first enforce the laws already in existence; laws that actually do have rational purposes.

It must be admitted, and I did, that part of the wariness many have now of more restrictive proposals, is based on a distrust of this administration. Making every gun transfer, even inter-family, go through a background check is a way to keep record of who has a gun. Why is that needed, unless there is some thought (as was the case in Australia) to know from whom to later confiscate?

When a government sets the IRS on the political opposition, including prolife groups, and won’t come clean on why, exactly, it warred on a state (Libya) that posed no threat whatever to this country, handed it and its weapons therby to jihadists and then lied about it, should one be trustful of its objectives and motivations?

I don’t think so.

 

[Prodigal_Son1]

Quit blurring the distinctions between the 2000 communication and the letter of Bishop Blaire. They’re not at all the same thing. You cannot fail to know that.

What “calls” in the 2000 document are unanswered, and in what specific ways were they unanswered? All they did was call for regulation in a very general way for “sensible” regulation. I have no doubt many regulations some of them might have deemed “sensible” have passed in the various states since 2000. In what way do they fail to “answer the call”?

In what way does Rahm Emanuel’s call for increased prison terms for serious gun crimes fail to “answer the call”?

And just because Bishop Blaire wrote his own letter endorsing something he didn’t even have before him, doesn’t mean anything other than that he would like to see more gun control.

But he’s not my bishop, nor are any of the three who agreed with him.

And, of course, you know nothing in either communication is binding on Catholics, representing only the opinions of the writers.

The 500+ bishops who have evidently not seen Obama’s gun control proposals as something requiring their attention have obviously not seen them as a burning moral issue. If they did, they would have surely taken them up. But they didn’t.

If “the bishops” as a whole ever do take up Obama’s proposals, let us know. Until then, all you’re doing is presenting your opinions and Obama’s and wrongly attributing them to bishops who have never commented on them at all.

There is no blurring. Each recent call from the committee chairmen, and the president of the USCCB, all refer to the 2000 document, and all reiterate using the same quote from the document. That’s a fact!

 

[Prodigal_Son1]

You still have not answered the question I keep asking: what moral choice are we faced with regarding gun control? Surely you cannot believe the dispute is between those who oppose “taking away the dignity of life” and those who support it … so what moral choice is involved? Unless you can identify what choice is sinful you cannot validly claim that this is a moral issue. A vague reference to “the dignity of life” is not adequate.

The problem of course is that you can’t define what moral choice we face because there is no such choice involved with this issue and this is precisely why I oppose the bishop’s involvement here. It isn’t a moral concern but a practical one with which they have no particularly useful expertise.

Ender

It’s been answered, repeatedly. The easy access to guns has caused people to lose a dignity of life, through gun violence. The easy access to guns is why the bishops have called for support of measures to control the sale and use of firearms. The moral choice is to accept sacrifices, that are minor inconveniences to the law abiding citizen, in an effort to prevent the easy access of guns.

 

[Prodigal_Son1]

I don’t think the Bishops or Vatican surmised “non-negotiables” as just another issue, that to me, does not respect the spirit of their word.

Are we bound only by five non-negotiables? Is theft a non-negotiable? Is lying? Is dishonoring one’s mother, or father? Adultery? How about failing to care for our fellowman? etc. etc. etc…? Christ certainly covered more than just ‘non-negotiables.’

We are called to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give shelter to the poor, care for the sick, and visit the imprisoned, but we’re not called to take actions to prevent people from losing their dignity of life from gun violence, due to an easy access to guns?

This is a moral issue, one the bishops are right in addressing, in my honest opinion. Any unnatural loss of life is a travesty and the unjust causes are intrinsic.

 

[RACJ]

I don’t get the Bishop’s point. All the House of Horror nations of the past century had strict gun control and confiscation. :ehh: Rob

 

[Ridgerunner]

There is no blurring. Each recent call from the committee chairmen, and the president of the USCCB, all refer to the 2000 document, and all reiterate using the same quote from the document. That’s a fact!

It’s also a fact that the 2000 statement said almost nothing about gun regulations at all, and certainly nothing specific. So Bp Blaire cited the 2000 statement in favor of a proposal about which he then knew nothing because it hadn’t been made yet, and which is not binding on Catholics anyway.

But you can’t turn that into a majority of bishops supporting Obama’s gun proposals any more than I could become Shakespeare by quoting a line from MacBeth.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Are we bound only by five non-negotiables? Is theft a non-negotiable? Is lying? Is dishonoring one’s mother, or father? Adultery? How about failing to care for our fellowman? etc. etc. etc…? Christ certainly covered more than just ‘non-negotiables.’

We are called to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give shelter to the poor, care for the sick, and visit the imprisoned, but we’re not called to take actions to prevent people from losing their dignity of life from gun violence, due to an easy access to guns?

This is a moral issue, one the bishops are right in addressing, in my honest opinion. Any unnatural loss of life is a travesty and the unjust causes are intrinsic.

We are not bound only by the five non-negotiables. We are bound by the teachings of the Church, which include a great deal more.

But neither the 2000 communication of the USCCB, nor Bp Blaire’s letter constitute “teachings of the Church”. Canon Law says so. You don’t like that, and we get it. You prefer your own version of Church doctrine. We get that too. Follow your own doctrine if you wish, but don’t misrepresent Church doctrine as including Obama’s gun proposals, because it doesn’t. Obama and his supporters are on their own with his gun proposals, and neither should pretend it’s part of Church teaching if they find they can’t persuasively support them on their own merits.

Obama has failed to persuade Congress to pass his gun proposals on their merits. You have largely failed to persuade the posters in this thread of their merits. Even Obama doesn’t (yet) claim his proposals are teachings of the Catholic Church. So why do you?

 

[Prodigal_Son1]

It’s also a fact that the 2000 statement said almost nothing about gun regulations at all, and certainly nothing specific. So Bp Blaire cited the 2000 statement in favor of a proposal about which he then knew nothing because it hadn’t been made yet, and which is not binding on Catholics anyway.

But you can’t turn that into a majority of bishops supporting Obama’s gun proposals any more than I could become Shakespeare by quoting a line from MacBeth.

In my opinion, supporting measures to control the sale and use of firearms is specific. How much more do you require to recognize the point being made? All the chairmen of 3 USCCB committees, jointly, cited the 2000 document, as did Cardinal Dolan, president of the USCCB. They all reiterated the same quote:

“We support measures that control the sale and use of firearms and make them safer (especially efforts that prevent their unsupervised use by children or anyone other than the owner), and we reiterate our call for sensible regulation of handguns,” Bishop Blaire wrote, quoting the document.

Your “majority” has been shown. A full body of bishops approved the 2000 document. Your objection appears to be that the current administration made a move on the issue, even though the calls originated under a previous administration. I say it appears so, because you continue to return the discussion to politicians.

Before I would dismiss a call from the bishops, I would have support from other men of the Church for doing so, and not a particular partisan party of the secular government.

The early Church fathers distinguished the authority of the bishops. Everything does not have to be identified as ‘non negotiable’ to be binding. Christ covered much more than what is known today as ‘non negotiable.’ Are some of His teaching non binding?

 

[Ridgerunner]

In my opinion, supporting measures to control the sale and use of firearms is specific. How much more do you require to recognize the point being made? All the chairmen of 3 USCCB committees, jointly, cited the 2000 document, as did Cardinal Dolan, president of the USCCB. They all reiterated the same quote:

Your “majority” has been shown. A full body of bishops approved the 2000 document. Your objection appears to be that the current administration made a move on the issue, even though the calls originated under a previous administration. I say it appears so, because you continue to return the discussion to politicians.

Before I would dismiss a call from the bishops, I would have support from other men of the Church for doing so, and not a particular partisan party of the secular government.

The early Church fathers distinguished the authority of the bishops. Everything does not have to be identified as ‘non negotiable’ to be binding. Christ covered much more than what is known today as ‘non negotiable.’ Are some of His teaching non binding?

As I have said over and over again, I don’t have a problem with what a majority of bishops said in 2000, and certainly not the portion you quoted (which I will not do myself because the document says it’s copyrighted and can’t be lawfully reproduced in whole or in part).

In no way do I oppose all regulation of firearms, making them safer, and certainly not requiring “sensible” regulation of handguns. That isn’t the question.

One issue is whether the bishops who voted on the 2000 communication had obama’s and your proposals in mind. They didn’t know about them, so obviously they didn’t. So when trying to argue that Obama’s proposals and yours are “sensible” or not, that is where reasonable minds can differ. You refuse to defend your position on its own merits, which leads to the second issue.

You persist in representing that “the bishops” support your proposal and Obama’s, when they don’t. Their communication was very non-specific. Additionally, you suggest that somehow the 2000 communication and Bp Blaire’s are morally binding on Catholics when they are not. Canon Law says they’re not, and you know it, as it has been quoted to you several times.

In doing that, you are misrepresenting the teachings of the Church. But for that, I might argue with you whether your proposals and Obamas are “sensible” or not, and might not. But I cannot simply allow you to say the Church somehow teaches something it does not teach without opposing that proposition.

I truly hate it that this post has been allowed to go as long as it has. It just keeps going around and around. You keep trying to persuade people, quite wrongly, that the Church teaches something it does not teach. You keep trying to persuade people, quite wrongly, that the bishops support Obama’s proposals and yours, which they do not.

This thread is a big waste of time except that when somebody misrepresents his political beliefs as morally binding teachings of the Church, I can’t let it go, and neither should any of the other posters who keep addressing this misrepresentation.

You know what you’re doing, and so do I and some others on here.

As I’m sure you have learned by now, I do other things on weekends, so i won’t be back for awhile. But I will be back later if you keep this up. You can count on it. I will never quit correcting your false assertion that the bishops of the U.S. support Obama’s gun policies even if this thread runs to 10,000 posts. Neither I nor any other person who knows better will stand by and allow you to deceive readers of this thread without opposition.

You have, at least three times now, said you would not return to that assertion, but you keep doing it. Time to let it go, but I doubt you will. I believed you before when you said you would, but I don’t anymore.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The early Church fathers distinguished the authority of the bishops. Everything does not have to be identified as ‘non negotiable’ to be binding. Christ covered much more than what is known today as ‘non negotiable.’ Are some of His teaching non binding?

A new low.

Are you now asserting that Christ has declared that I can’t give a gun to my child without running a background check on him?

 

[Tomdstone]

The easy access to guns has caused people to lose a dignity of life, through gun violence. The easy access to guns is why the bishops have called for support of measures to control the sale and use of firearms. The moral choice is to accept sacrifices, that are minor inconveniences to the law abiding citizen, in an effort to prevent the easy access of guns.

I certainly oppose the current state of affairs where it is legal give rifles to 5 year olds so that they can go ahead and shoot their 2 year old sibling. I don’t see anything moral about that.