Friday Free-for-All: November 12

Because I haven’t seen it written anywhere else or heard it mentioned on the radio, I thought I’d point out that Saturday Night Live, during a Sweeps month, aired a rerun last week.

I wonder if they would have done that if the Democrats had won big — after all, we are often lectured that it is just comedy (like Bill Maher and Jon Stewart) and there’s no agenda involved.

I love the hand-painted tiles above the various botanicals-boxes. And sign me up for the taste test of the 160-proof still, just to say that I did.

Is it five o’clock somewhere?!

“…I’m ( … ) grieving ( … ) over a Pope ( … ) having the nerve to imply in 208 pages that he is really Aquinas-like…Augustine-like scriptural…”
Even if the above had been a sentence written by a critic about someone else’s book, this would be an unfair criticism… I recognize that I have not had time to read Verbum Domini yet, and I marvel at Mr. Bannon’s having been able to digest all of its 208 pages in such a short time, but from the excerpts I did read, I just cannot reach the same conclusion as Mr. Bannon. Besides, his comment sounds much too antagonistic and belittling to be coming from a Catholic who sufficiently recognizes the Pope’s authority to at least show some respect! Actually, the comment sounds rather Protestant to me…
Then: ” …I’m ( … ) grieving over a Pope calling the death penalty “cruel” twice now in a obvious bid to make that untenable position a two Pope hermeneutic of continuity… ” I do happen to believe that the Pope in exercizing his teaching mission is not necessarily bound by what was said or not said by every other pope from earlier centuries. It seems to me that he should be entitled to look at a matter such as the death penalty from a different perspective. If and when circumstances have changed to the extent that it is no longer necessary to take the life of a person guilty of a serious crime to prevent that person from reoffending, there is nothing wrong with choosing a different way, and the Pope is surely entitled to saying so, and, since he has been chosen as the representative of Jesus on earth, his word should be listened to with a measure of respect. First and foremost is the commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” Maybe Jesus words in Mark 7:8 could be used here: “You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition”…

see sections 38 and 42 of Pope Benedict’s above mentioned work and you will see in generalities….the source of his circumvention of what God affirmed. The problem is this: the active gay then can transcend the literal level of those passages that condemn gay actions just as Benedict can transcend the literality of passages that affirm execution. The adulterer can transcend the 6th commandment’s literal level if life at home is a rough patch. The leftist can transcend ” he who does not work shall not eat”. The right wing can transcend “feed the hungry”. The Bible becomes a mirror of what we will. Benedict is not hoping that….but if he gets to nullify Romans 13:4 that way….the gay active will nullify Romans 1 that way.

and very perverted…just read about it and saw the rediculous photos. But you are 2.76 times safer from murder than people in the US but Japan is 4.11 times safer than Canada as to murder….they have ethnic homogeneity, bowing and the death penalty. But you have half their suicides. Japan is 4th safest in the world as to murder but 5th worst as to suicide. Lithuania is 3rd worst as to suicide and is 79% Catholic….most suicides are due to males there.

His “foregive them Father, they know not what they do”….. would never have been said by Him about Pablo Escobar, the drug lord, who blew up an entire plane of innocent people in order to kill one adversary who was on that plane. Keep classic quotes within their parameters….it was said by Christ not about criminals but about those Jews who unlike Caiphas and his close conspirators actually thought Christ guilty of blasphemy with sincere erroneous consciences caused by lives lived below what God wanted from them. Nor was Pilate someone who knew not what he did.
Paul’s behaviour and that of other Jewish persecutors was given unofficial free reign by the local Roman civil officials in line with the permissiveness wherein Pilate urged the Jews to punish Christ on their own Jn 18:21 but Caiphas wanted to showcase Jewish loyalty to Rome and wanted the Romans to kill Him. Often the Jews acted in broad daylight so Paul was not in danger of even being arrested.
Thirdly….not one Catholic voice seems aware of the danger to the souls of lifers. It is presumed that such men will not enter prison gangs and do commanded violence within prison nor spend decades sinning sexually within prison either solitarily or with men and thus building a worse record for their particular judgement before God. A condemned man has years of appeals during which he has exponentially more time to repent than the good thief did…..since Mark has the good thief revile Christ at first along with the bad thief….and repent only later in the other gospel. 1952 Pius XII affirms the death penalty….1999 John Paul calls it “cruel”…. you can call that developement but it’s not….especially when two Popes make sure the catechism sounds traditional while they verbally call cruel….what their catechism affirms in theory as traditional.

It seems at least part of what Christ was asking forgiveness for was not homicide (which they did know and understand) but rather the deicide, blasphemey, apostacy, and sacrilidge that they did not fully know and understand they were committing.

As to the death penalty, the Church has taught and continues to teach that the just authorities have recourse to the death penalty in certain cases and circumstances. The only change has been that recently it has been thought that it should be applied only under very tight limits, where at other times it was applied very broadly and no one thought much of it. Personally I think governments should retain capital punishment in the law, but in many cases a lesser sentence will serve, or a capital sentence may be pronounced but perhaps suspended/commuted to a life sentence on condition of “good behavior”. However, when a crime is such that no other penalty can possibly serve the cause of justice, or no other penalty will protect society, then it may in those cases be the unfortunate duty of those in authority to carry out such a sentence.

My personal qualms about capital punishment come from several points, one is that I would not be particularly eager to be the executioner myself, and none should advocate capital punishment without giving thought that someone must carry the burden of making the laws, passing judgement, pronouncing sentence, and then executing it. Another issue is lack of certainty in the process. Another is that our modern methods of capital punishment essentially negate the point of the punishment: it is carried out too long after the fact (justice delayed), it is carried out almost in secret (no deterrent value, no ownership of our societal responsibility), it is applied on the basis of subjective and arbitrary criteria (special circumstance, prosecutorial descretion, hate crimes, and other non-objective and extra-legal factors), and our justice system does not understand the need to seek the salvation of the condemned (we may be a Christian majority population, but not a Christian country). Thus I find little cause to advocate for wider use of the death penalty.