Cardinal attacks US over Lockerbie bomber reaction

[Rich_Olszewski]

As a Cardinal he had no right to misrepresent Church teachings on capital punishment.

I say that he can’t misrepresent the teachings of the Church on capital punishment.

Maybe that’s legal but hardly moral for a Catholic Cardinal to misrepresent the Church’s teachings on Capital punishment.

The Cardinal did no such thing. He said, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That is not our culture** in Scotland.**” Did he say, “That’s not in line with Catholic doctrine”? No, he was speaking of the way it is in Scotland.

Just because he is a Cardinal doesn’t mean that he has to be in favor of the death penalty. Many Catholic bishops and cardinals are opposed to the death penalty.

They got suckered. The Doctor’s said he had 3 months left to live. Its been over a year.

The Scottish government isn’t complainimg.

Scotland, by releasing him to the Libyan’s, relinquished control and final say over him.

Correct.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the way it stands now, he will stay in Libya till he dies?

I would think so.

 

[Adeodatus]

That’s true until Europe descends into slaughter, fire and sword. Again. And then America gets called to shed its blood and spend its money saving everyone’s behinds. Again. On that day we are the world’s police, have a moral responsibility, are beloved cousins, etc. Then a week after the fighting stops, we go back to being ignorant inferiors worthy only to be shat upon in the course of everyone’s grandstanding.

No, we’re not the world’s police. We’re the world’s moron, because every time we reach out our hands in friendship and self-sacrifice, we get used for all we’re worth and then discarded in a swell of empty rhetoric and unearned swagger.

And should the day ever come when our blood and money are once again, as usual, sorely needed, and yet they are not forthcoming, well we’ll be blamed for that, too.

Well perhaps if it were not for false friends, we’d have no friends at all.

 

[canadianguy1143]

The Cardinal did no such thing. He said, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That is not our culture** in Scotland.**” Did he say, “That’s not in line with Catholic doctrine”? No, he was speaking of the way it is in Scotland.

Just because he is a Cardinal doesn’t mean that he has to be in favor of the death penalty. Many Catholic bishops and cardinals are opposed to the death penalty.

I am opposed to the death penalty in some cases as well. But I wouldn’t demonize those that I disagree with on this issue.

Let’s review what was reported in the OP’s link about his comments on the Death Penalty:

He said Scotland had a culture of care, while the US was fixed on vengeance.

Broad sweeping ad hominem attack on the US. While there may be some cases in the US that would border on vengeance, to collectively blame an entire country on that is wrong and stupid.

In an interview with BBC Scotland, Cardinal O’Brien said Americans were too focused on retribution.

Again another ad hominem attack.

“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth - that is not our culture in Scotland and I would like to think that the US government, and these states that do still have capital punishment, would learn something from us.”

Arrogant beyond pale. Sure there are times when capital punishment should not be used but from what he said it was something that can never be used. If Bin Laden gets captured and brought over to the US, would he oppose the death penalty then?

He said the use of the death penalty meant the US kept “invidious company” with countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The US has the bill of rights and a separate judiciary. In Iran or Saudi Arabia, we couldn’t even be posting like this.

 

[Milesius]

When a Cardinal speaks publicly people see the Chruch speaking, especially when he is invoking his moral authority which he clearly was doing in this statement, as such he has a duty to speak not with his own voice but with the voice of the Church, this is not what he has done.

For a Cardinal to cause divisions among Catholics along national lines is wrong, that is what he has done, he was wrong to do what he has done, his actions have damaged the Church and have achieved nothing good except perhaps for himself, now he has ingratiated himself even further with the Scottish nationalists, but he has done so at the expense of the Church.

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

When a Cardinal speaks publicly people see the Chruch speaking, especially when he is invoking his moral authority which he clearly was doing in this statement, as such he has a duty to speak not with his own voice but with the voice of the Church, this is not what he has done.

He was speaking as a Scot, rather than as a Member of the College of Cardinals, and he is well within his rights to do so.

For a Cardinal to cause divisions among Catholics along national lines is wrong, that is what he has done, he was wrong to do what he has done, his actions have damaged the Church

How so? What divisions “among Catholics”? What damage to the Church? He did not say anything about the Catholic Church in his remarks.

 

[Milesius]

He was speaking as a Scot, rather than as a Member of the College of Cardinals, and he is well within his rights to do so.

How so? What divisions “among Catholics”? What damage to the Church? He did not say anything about the Catholic Church in his remarks.

He represents the Catholic Church as a result of been a Cardinal, that is automatic, been a Cardinal is not something you can turn on and off and if he wasn’t a Cardinal his opinions would not have been in the media and nobody would really care.

He spoke as a Cardinal and always speaks as a Cardinal because a Cardinal is what he is.

He has pitted the Scottish Catholics against the American Catholics who believe that the victims of this mass murderer deserve a greater measure of justice than they have received.

The Cardinal insulted and condemned a whole nation of people with his broad bush accusations, and yet pretends he is the just judge.

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

He has pitted the Scottish Catholics against the American Catholics who believe that the victims of this mass murderer deserve a greater measure of justice than they have received.

Where and how has he pitted Scottish Catholics against American Catholics?

The Cardinal insulted and condemned a whole nation of people with his broad bush accusations, and yet pretends he is the just judge.

You are overreacting. The Cardinal was expressing his personal opinion. Believe it or not, our hierarchy have their own personal opinions and may express them.

I do not question what the Scottish government has done in this case; it was their call to do so.

 

[canadianguy1143]

You are overreacting. The Cardinal was expressing his personal opinion. Believe it or not, our hierarchy have their own personal opinions and may express them.

Except that personal opinion isn’t really personal when its said to the Media. Furthermore, it is scandalous that a Cardinal publicly express an opinion that is in direct conflict with Church teaching.

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

Except that personal opinion isn’t really personal when its said to the Media. Furthermore, it is scandalous that a Cardinal publicly express an opinion that is in direct conflict with Church teaching.

What was in “direct conflict” with Church teaching?

 

[Milesius]

I don’t see how you can say he has not created a division among the faithful when the fact that you and I are arguing about his statement makes it clear that he has done.

If I was an American and someone said Americans are vengeful people I would be insulted and that is exactly what the Cardinal did.

Furthermore anyone who has spent any time in Glasgow knows that the Scottish legal system is not the great institution that the Cardinal is trying to present it as, having spent time in both Glasgow and Texas I can tell you which one I prefer to live under based on its impact on me as a law abiding member of society.

Figures for 2002 showed that Glasgow had a homicide rate of 58.7 people per million of population, the highest rate of any city in western Europe. That is the wonderful Scottish legal systems effect on society, I for one don’t want to live in a society like that.

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

I don’t see how you can say he has not created a division among the faithful when the fact that you and I are arguing about his statement makes it clear that he has done.

My argument with you is not about what American Catholics or the American hierarchy have said, it’s about whether or not he has created a division. I have heard of no American bishops who have criticized him for his statements.

If I was an American and someone said Americans are vengeful people I would be insulted and that is exactly what the Cardinal did.

We are a vengeful people. Did you know that a 13 year old boy in Florida was given a life sentence, not for murder, but because he was involved in the robbery that preceded the murder. He wasn’t even the killer, who got a lighter sentence! Was that justice or vengeance?

 

[Milesius]

You and I are divided, some will agree with me and some will agree with you, there is a division

 

[O_Duirnin]

I don’t see how you can say he has not created a division among the faithful when the fact that you and I are arguing about his statement makes it clear that he has done.

If I was an American and someone said Americans are vengeful people I would be insulted and that is exactly what the Cardinal did.

Furthermore anyone who has spent any time in Glasgow knows that the Scottish legal system is not the great institution that the Cardinal is trying to present it as, having spent time in both Glasgow and Texas I can tell you which one I prefer to live under based on its impact on me as a law abiding member of society.

Figures for 2002 showed that Glasgow had a homicide rate of 58.7 people per million of population, the highest rate of any city in western Europe. That is the wonderful Scottish legal systems effect on society, I for one don’t want to live in a society like that.

Cardinal O’Brien didn’t say anything about the Americans being a vengeful people - he criticised the culture of vengeance in the US justice system. What this has to do with a division between American and Scottish Catholics is beyond my comprehension. I know for a fact that the opinions of Catholics in Scotland vary greatly on Lockerbie (from those who doubt whether Megrahi was actually the Lockerbie bomber in the first place, to those who strongly disagree with the decision to free him).

I’ve spent a good proportion of my life in Glasgow (although I’m on the East Coast nowadays), and I know I’d feel safer there than in a place where every lunatic is armed to the teeth with weapons which even our police firearms units aren’t allowed to possess. Glasgow’s like any other big city - it has its problems - yet it’s a great place to visit and to live. Perhaps the reason that more visitors to Glasgow come across the city’s harder side is that ghettoisation hasn’t taken place in Scotland to the extent it has in the United States.

The United States homicide rate in 2002 was also around 58 per million. Some US cities have murder rates of over 400 per million. Texas has a murder rate of 70 per million, exceeding Glasgow! What does it tell you about the US justice system that the city with highest murder rate in Scotland and Western Europe only just manages to scrape past the US average and no more?

 

[canadianguy1143]

We are a vengeful people. Did you know that a 13 year old boy in Florida was given a life sentence, not for murder, but because he was involved in the robbery that preceded the murder. He wasn’t even the killer, who got a lighter sentence! Was that justice or vengeance?

I’d call that stupidity but I can see how that would be considered vengeful. I never stated that there weren’t some incidents of vengence but that is prevalent in all countries.

As for your earlier question:

What was in “direct conflict” with Church teaching?

It was his broad sweeping generalization that capital punishment (in all cases) is wrong and vengeful.

 

[Milesius]

n’t taken place in Scotland to the extent it has in the United States.

The United States homicide rate in 2002 was also around 58 per million. Some US cities have murder rates of over 400 per million. Texas has a murder rate of 70 per million, exceeding Glasgow! What does it tell you about the US justice system that the city with highest murder rate in Scotland and Western Europe only just manages to scrape past the US average and no more?

Tells me they need to execute more people like they used to before the 60’s when the murder rates where a lot lower as well as ending illegal immigration and encouraging more gun ownership and for peope to actually carry their firearms about with them like they used to do back when the murder rate was only 1 per 100,000 people back before WWI.

Things have only got so bad in the US SINCE the 1960’s because of the the passing of anti death penalty and anti-gun laws such as 1968 Gun Control Bill., though illegal immigration has also played a big part.

This is also why the most anti death penalty and anti gun cities in America are the ones with the worst crime rates, see Chicago and New York.

The other countries the Cardinal lists along with America in his little speech have some of the best crime statistics around by the way, Saudi Arabia in particular must be one of the safest countries in the world to live in.

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

It was his broad sweeping generalization that capital punishment (in all cases) is wrong and vengeful.

According to the cited article, the Cardinal said, “In many states - more than half - they kill the perpetrators of horrible crimes, by lethal injection or even firing squad - I say that is a culture of vengeance,” he said. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth - that is not our culture in Scotland and I would like to think that the US government, and these states that do still have capital punishment, would learn something from us.”

The cardinal said Americans should “direct their gaze inwards” rather than scrutinise how the Scottish justice system worked.

He said the use of the death penalty meant the US kept “invidious company” with countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran."

NOTE that he said NOTHING about capital punishment being wrong “in all cases.” He said that he hoped the U.S. would learn from the Scottish example and said that the U.S. was in bad company by using the death penalty.

Good points - just because the death penalty is available doesn’t mean it need to be used, and if a country uses it, it is in the company of some bad apples.

Nothing that contradicts Catholic teaching!

 

[kelvinf]

… For the ethical values and because of the lack of probative arguments to the contrary, the abolition of capital punishment is to be favored.

U.S. Bishops, 1974

We maintain that abolition of the death penalty would promote values that are important to us as citizens and as Christians.

U.S. Bishops, 1980

Among the individuals and groups against legalized abortion in the United States, there are some who support the continuation of capital punishment. This is an inconsistency and an unacceptable contradiction.

Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini, 1992

We cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing.

US Catholic Bishops, 1994

If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Pope John Paul II, 1995

The new evangelization calls for followers of Christ who are unconditionally pro-life: who will acclaim, celebrate and serve the Gospel of Life in every situation. A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform.

Pope John Paul II, 1999

It is time to abandon the death penalty – not just because of what it does to those who are executed, but because of how it diminishes all of us… We ask all Catholics–pastors, catechists, educators and parishioners – to join us in rethinking this difficult issue and committing ourselves to pursuing justice without vengeance. With our Holy Father, we seek to build a society so committed to human life that it will not sanction the killing of any human person.

U.S. Bishops, 2000

that there no longer be recourse to capital punishment, given that states today have the means to efficaciously control crime, without definitively taking away an offender’s possibility to redeem himself.

Pope John Paul II, 2000

The universal abolition of the death penalty would be a courageous reaffirmation of the belief that humankind can be successful in dealing with criminality and of our refusal to succumb to despair before such forces, and as such it would regenerate new hope in our very humanity.

The Vatican, 2001

Our voice must be heard not only in the fight against abortion, but in the fight against euthanasia and capital punishment as well. We can never condone the deliberate taking of human life created in love by God and redeemed in Jesus Christ.

Archbishop Martino, 2001

The death penalty does not fit into the concept of justice because the defense of life - which goes from conception to natural death - is preferred in every way by the Holy See.

Pope Benedict XVI, 2008

We should reach the point in which the death penalty is abolished throughout the entire world, because it is a sign of incivility, as one crime cannot be punished with another crime.

Cardinal Martino, 2009

“It cannot be overemphasized that the right to life must be recognized in all its fullness,…take into account the high value that a human being has at every moment of existence,…In this context, I joyfully welcome the initiative by which Mexico abolished the death penalty in 2005, and the recent measures adopted by some Mexican states to protect human life from its beginnings."

Pope Benedict XVI, 2009

References:
Catholics Against Capital Punishment. What the U.S. bishops have said. Retrieved 10th August 2010, from the World Wide Web: cacp.org/usbishopsviews.html
Catholics Against Capital Punishment. What the Vatican has said. Retrieved 10th August 2010, from the World Wide Web: cacp.org/vaticandocuments.html
The Vincentian Center for Church and Society. (2000). Church Teaching and the Death Penalty. Retrieved 10th August 2010, from the World Wide Web: vincenter.org/95/surlis.html
Vatican. Evangelium vitae. Retrieved 10th August 2010, from the World Wide Web: vatican.va/edocs/ENG0141/__PP.HTM

 

[CathFaith1]

Nowhere in the New Testament is capital punishment outlawed. On the contrary, the New Testament not only recognizes the right of the State to exercise authority in the name of God, but enjoins obedience to the State in applying the laws of God to its citizens.

As already noted, St. Paul explicitly declares that the State has authority from God to punish criminals. Christ Himself tells us to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. St. Peter enjoins Christians to be good citizens. Moreover, we are to obey civil authority – not mainly, but also “because you are afraid of being punished” (Romans 13:1-6).

Over the centuries, the Church’s writers have defended the traditional Christian teaching on capital punishment.

St. Augustine explained St. Paul’s teaching on the State’s right to inflict capital punishment. Certainly the State may execute convicted criminals. But it should exercise Christian forbearance and thus temper juridical severity.

Pope Leo I in the fifth century and Pope Nicholas I in the ninth century made it clear that the Church herself could not be directly involved in capital punishment; but the pontiffs assumed that the State was divinely authorized to do so. So, too, the Councils of Toledo (675) and Fourth Lateran (1215) forbade the clergy to take direct part in the juridical process or sentencing of a person on a capital charge. But again, the councils took for granted that the State may condemn a convicted criminal to death and execute the sentence.

---

In the twentieth century, Pope Pius XII provided a full doctrinal defense of capital punishment. Speaking to Catholic jurists, he explained what the Church teaches about the authority of the State to punish crimes, even with the death penalty.

The Church holds that there are two reasons for inflicting punishment, namely “medicinal” and “vindictive.” The medicinal purpose is to prevent the criminal from repeating his crime, and to protect society from his criminal behavior. The vindicative is to expiate for the wrong-doing perpetrated by the criminal. Thus reparation is made to an offended God, and the disorder caused by the crime is expiated.

Equally important is the Pope’s insistence that capital punishment is morally defensible in every age and culture of Christianity. Why? Because the Church’s teaching on “the coercive power of legitimate human authority” is based on “the sources of revelation and traditional doctrine.” It is wrong, therefore “to say that these sources only contain ideas which are conditioned by historical circumstances.” On the contrary, they have “a general and abiding validity.” (Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 1955, pp 81-2).

Behind this declaration of the Vicar of Christ is a principle of our Catholic faith. Most of the Church’s teaching, especially in the moral order, is infallible doctrine because it belongs to what we call her ordinary universal magisterium. There are certain moral norms that have always and everywhere been held by the successors of the Apostles in communion with the Bishop of Rome. Although never formally defined, they are irreversibly binding on the followers of Christ until the end of the world.

Such moral truths are the grave sinfulness of contraception and direct abortion. Such, too, is the Catholic doctrine which defends the imposition of the death penalty.

Certainly Christianity, like Christ, is to be merciful. Certainly Christians are to be kind and forgiving. But Christ is God. He is, indeed loving and in fact is love. But He is also just. As a just God, He has a right to authorize civil authority to inflict capital punishment

Capital Punishment
New Testament Teaching
by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

St. Augustine explained St. Paul’s teaching on the State’s right to inflict capital punishment. Certainly the State may execute convicted criminals. But it should exercise Christian forbearance and thus temper juridical severity.

The Cardinal’s remarks are entirely in line with the need to exercise Christian forbearance and to temper judicial severity.

The weight of the Church is against the use of the death penalty, even though it is still tolerable. The Cardinal did right in his remarks.

 

[CathFaith1]

The Cardinal’s remarks are entirely in line with the need to exercise Christian forbearance and to temper judicial severity.

The weight of the Church is against the use of the death penalty, even though it is still tolerable. The Cardinal did right in his remarks.

No one is right in remarks if they believe freedom after mass murder is justice. The death penalty may not be called for yet freedom is a sin against justice and charity.