**2) With knowledge that it was wrong and the possible punishment. This works similarly to how the Church handles it. There are really very few acceptable excuses for not knowing something is wrong. The main example is if a young child shoots someone. You could argue that were not of a state of reason to be able to say they did it willfully but you could also argue that they could not be expected to know what they were doing was wrong. Full access to the laws of the land are available and negligence in pursuing an answer to this is not an acceptable excuse.
- Punishments are doled on with respect to the degree of the wrong committed.**
re: point #2) some things are obviously wrong and illegal, like armed robbery, assault, stealing another person’s bank account info and then cleaning out his account, vandalism, rape, murder. Many, many other things are not so obviously so. Must we study all the Laws of the Land before we do anything? “Very few acceptable excuses for not knowing” is really very very harsh. For example, I was raised on the doctrines of a non-Christian cult. We read the bible, we prayed, the people were nice and godfearing. I had no rational reason whatsoever to even REMOTELY SUSPECT that I even POSSIBLY MIGHT be in the wrong religion. Many years later, to my surprise, I found out that I was.
Should I burn in hell for all those years of being wrong and for failing to spend hours a day in historical research of Christianity, when I had no rational reason whatsoever to even suspect we were in total error? Those who judge harshly like that, will be judged harshly by God, even if they are just doing their job.
re: point #3, punishments are doled out with respect to the degree of the wrong committed.
WELL, ideally, that would be the case. In reality, it is not.
I’ll give you some examples. Someone I know had a son who apparently committed something called wire fraud to the tune of several million dollars, and got caught. He was sentenced to a very PLEASANT, low security (not even fence around the place to keep them from escaping) federal prison camp for three years. He was out in a year and a half.
While a black teenager from the ghetto who is caught with a pound of cocaine in his possession (whether on his person, in car, or in his bedroom at home) gets 20 years in a standard state or federal pen where he will be beaten, raped, stabbed and forced to join a god-hating, racist prison gang. He will emerge much more corrupt than when he went in.
Or this: a woman who used to work at my company was caught red-handed embezzling from the company, after she had already embezzled half a million dollars. She was not about to stop. She got caught. Half a million, willfully, knowingly, deliberately, by plan, design, and execution. It would have been much much, more had they not caught on when they did. They prosecuted her. SHE got three years in a nice, low security ladie’s facility in upstate New York, placed THERE so that she could have frequent visits from nearby relatives. Had she been black, I can all but guarantee you that her sentence would have been far, far more severe. Three years for half a million, done on purpose.
But a 17 year old boy recently forged his mom’s signature on 3 checks, totalling Three Hundred Dollars. (he was the kid on one of the reality tv shows). HE is looking at 60 to 90 years in an extremely dangerous prison. For 300 bucks.
No, good friend, punishments are very frequently NOT doled out in accordance with the seriousness of the offense. There is a great deal of back-room dealing, politicking, and all kinds of stuff. The legal system’s “icon” of sorts is the blind woman holding the “scales of justice.” In reality, in practice, that is pure bull-feathers. If you are wealthy and well-connected, you will likely have no problems. You will also be able to (illegally) BUY OFF members of the jury, too. You will likely face little or no time if you are very wealthy. Unless you committed murders.
Bernie Madoff is an exception, not the rule.
Thank goodness Jesus Christ died for all human beings’ sins. If you repent, all due punishments, temporal and eternal, are washed away at your baptism. If you sin AFTER baptism, once you are genuinely sorry you sinned, and determined to try with God’s help to avoid any future sins (at least mortal ones), you can erase your temporal punishments remaining (whether in this life or the next) by acquiring plenary and partial indulgences.
We are supposed to be people who try to bring people to repentance and amendment of life, leading to peacable, holy behaviour, not people who are out to have people made more corrupt than they were before due to extremely harsh punishments.
Saint Paul, writing to the Corinthians about the repentant Incestuous Man (a crime considered extremely heinous even in ancient pagan societies), Paul was not vindictive at all. He urged the congregation to comfort the man and confirm their love for him, not throw the book at him, because otherwise the repentant man might be swallowed up by grief and despair, caused directly by the Devil for, as Paul put it, “we are not ignorant of his designs.”
Of course, I have again digressed (sorry!!). But no, all too often, if you are loaded with money, you’ll get very little if any time regardless of what you did, OR, if you know the right people OR make the right backroom deals. A year and a half for several million bucks of “wire” fraud, but 60 to 90 years for 300 bucks on a couple of forged checks.
Sound right to you??
