Things are really bad in Jamaica when ministers of religion are calling for the reinstatement of capital punishment. One clergy man has even gone as far as disregarding the sixth commandment “thou shall not kill” by volunteering his services as a hangman. Personally, I am pro-death penalty and in agreement with these holy men. The government both past and present obviously have no clue how to stem the island’s high murder rate which is now spiralling out of control. We have nothing to lose, I say we give it a try. After all "If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not a tough call." - John McAdams
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
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It actually says "thou shalt not murder". Murder is very different from killing. Both in the eyes of the law, and the eyes of God. One is justified and therefore acceptable such as self-defence, war, etc. And the other is not i.e. murder. New translations of the bible trying to make it "easy to read" changed murder to kill ...
"Capital Punishment: New Testament Teaching", Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
Father Hardon is considered one of the most prominent Roman Catholic theologians of (the 20th) century. See bottom.
http://www.therealpresence.org/archives/Sacred_Scripture/Sacred_Scripture_014.htm
"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."
"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."
"Equally important is the Pope's (Pius XII) insistence that capital punishment is morally defensible in every age and culture of Christianity." " . . . 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)."
Some writings re: Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.
http://www.therealpresence.org/archives/archives.htm
http://www.mariancatechist.com/html/general/fatherhardon.htm
http://www.saintphilomena.com/newpage4.htm
http://credo.stormloader.com/Saints/hardon.htm
I would have loved to have been able to offer more than my 'gut feeling' on this matter, but I agree with you...and John Adams....hang them high...it will do more good than bad and at least the families of the victims can get some sort of closure. My only concern is that given the deficiencies in our investigative processes, a few good men will suffer for the bad.
E? we share the same concern. I don’t know how many CSIs the Jamaican government has on its payroll and I doubt DNA testing is widely used outside of carrying out paternity tests.
TC and Dudley thanks for enlightening me on the bible's stance on capital punishment. I initially thought these were some rogue priests or something.
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