Biden Catholics and Ryan Catholics

Well, the choice of Paul Ryan for the Republican Vice-presidential nominee has thrown a barking dog in among the Catholic chickens.  Liberal Catholics are appalled; conservatives delighted.  Of course, at the present we have Catholics slated for the number 2 slot in both major parties, though—and I could be wrong—I don’t believe that I have heard that it is certain that President Obama is keeping Vice President Biden on the ticket.  There can always be a switch though Biden has certainly been a team-player—with a more than occasional foul, of course—with the President. 

I was away over the weekend and in my room at a beautiful retreat house in the mountains, was a copy of Catholic Digest.   I hadn’t seen this little magazine in years.  Someone had written to it asking about the possibility of the “Social Justice Catholic Church” being reunited to the “Orthodox Roman Catholic Church.”  The columnist responding made it clear that the “Social Justice Catholic Church” is and consistently has been well within the boundaries of the “Orthodox” Roman Catholic Church.  But the question was interesting because it shows how successful elements of the religious right have been in pushing those Catholics who support the very causes of social justice taught by the magisterium—opposition to the death penalty, rights of workers to organize, rights of access to education, health care, housing, and other necessities, human rights and freedoms (worship, speech, association, press), equal dignity of women, rights of women and children, rights of people to migrate—how Catholics supporting magisterial teaching have been emarginated within the Church by those whose politics ironically differ from magisterial principles.   For some who consider themselves to be “faithful Catholics” there are only two magisterial points that matter—opposition to abortion and to same-sex marriage.  They condemn “cafeteria Catholics” while they themselves hit only the coffee-bar of Catholic teaching. 

At the end of the day, one has to say that both Paul Ryan and Joe Biden are practicing Catholics.  Neither Paul Ryan nor Joe Biden are the Catholics they should be.  I am happy to see them both at communion on Sunday Mornings, I wish both of them would bring their religious faith more into their politics.  More to my concern, however, is that there are increasingly two Catholic Churches in this country.  There are historical reasons that go back a long way—actually into the early nineteenth century with the split between the old time Maryland Catholics whose heirs are today’s “liberals” (and Joe Biden Catholicism) and the “new immigrant Catholicism” of the 1840’s whose heirs are the “conservatives” (and Paul Ryan Catholicism.)  (See entries for January 21, 23, 26, 28, March 7, 9, 2011, January 6, 7, 2012)  When you know the history of the American Church you know that both groups have long and strong roots; the challenge today is to keep them together at the same altar sharing the One Bread of Christ’s One Body.

Death Penalty II: Troy Davis, Mark MacPhail, And the Need for Vengeance

Massacio's Crucifixion 
Museo Capodimonte, Naples

Sorry for the break in entries!    I was called out of town for a few days—fascinating days that will give me some topics for future entries—but didn’t have a chance to get to this blog while I was gone.  I had wanted to do a follow up on the last entry which was about the Church’s evolving stance on the Death Penalty and to speak to what I find to be particularly heart-wrenching in the case of the judicial murder of Troy Davis who was executed for the 1989 murder of Savannah police officer, Mark MacPhail.   Officer MacPhail, off duty but working as a security guard at a Burger King, was shot when he attempted to stop the pistol whipping of a homeless man, Larry Young, by Sylvester “Redd” Coles outside a nearby pool hall.  The day after the shooting Coles went to the police and accused Troy Davis of having shot MacPhail.  Witnesses agreed that the murderer was wearing  a white shirt.  Thirty-four witnesses testified for the prosecution; nine of those witnesses identified Troy Davis as the man who shot and killed Officer MacPhail.  Seven of those nine witnesses later recanted their testimony claiming that the police had coerced them into testifying against Davis. 
     Was Davis guilty of the murder?  I don’t know.  I certainly can’t second guess a situation about which I know only from reading media accounts.  And I don’t think that is even the issue.   Innocent or guilty, the Troy Davis case doesn’t meet the severely restricted criterion that the Catholic Church has set for a legitimate use of the death penalty.  Sadly it actually meets one criterion that the Church specifically condemns as a “justification” for capital punishment, and that is vengeance.  I understand why police are anxious to find a conviction in a murder, particularly the murder of one of their own.  But when that passion to find the perpetrator implodes into a mindless drive that someone must die—anyone, guilty or not guilty—and a prosecution becomes a matter of anger rather than justice, then use of the death penalty loses any moral credibility to which it may pretend.  What filled me with the greatest heartwrenching was seeing the Anderson Cooper interview of Officer MacPhail’s mother, Anneliese MacPhail.  Mark MacPhail was twenty-seven years old when he was killed.  He had six years with the United States Army behind him.  He was married and had two small children who will never know their father.  I can understand why Anneliese MacPhail has had to cling to her conviction that Troy Davis murdered her son.  She needed answers—any answers—if she is to move on; she has said that she has had no peace since her son’s brutal death.  Will she find it now?  Only she will know.  But how sick a society we are to tell one another that one life can atone for another.  As a historian I cannot but see that this is a marker that we have not advanced beyond those barbaric days of primitive societies that called out for blood feuds and vendetta murder.  In the Law of Moses only death could repay wrongful death.  The Book of Deuteronomy, written about seven centuries before Jesus, declares:  Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. (Deuteronomy 19:21).     But Christians believe that Jesus has changed that ethic and the Church has specifically ruled out vengeance as a moral option for the use of Capital Punishment.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church declares: “In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord recalls the commandment, ‘You shall not kill,’ and adds to it the proscription of anger, hatred, and vengeance.”  It continues on to say “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.”  In his 1999 visit to the United States, John Paul II called unequivocally for an end to the Death Penalty in this country.  Unfortunately the pope’s plea is only a matter of historical note and even the Church in this country remains silent on the issue of judicial murder. 

Catholics and the Death Penalty--then and now

Well, Troy Davis was executed in Georgia Wednesday evening.  It was a very complex case with seven of nine witnesses recanting the testimony that convicted Mr. Davis of killing a white policeman and several of those witnesses publically stating that they had been bullied by police and prosecutors into testifying falsely.  Did we execute an innocent man?  God—and Mr. Davis—alone know.   Thirty-five people have been put to death so far this year in the United States.  Derrick O’Neal Mason is to be executed in Alabama Thursday evening at 6 pm; the judge who sentenced him sixteen years ago wrote earlier this month that if he, the judge, had tried the case as a more experienced jurist, he would have sentenced him to life without parole, not death.  Unfortunately that was then and this is now.  A third man, a white supremacist from Texas named Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed the same evening as Troy Davis. Brewer had been convicted of killing James Byrd Jr, a disabled African American in 1998. John William King is also sentenced to die for that murder.  King, Mason, and another man are convicted of dragging Mr. Byrd behind a pickup truck for three miles before dumping his body.  There were no demonstrations or appeals from world leaders for Mr. Mason.
      Among those appealing for Mr. Davis’ life was Pope Benedict XVI and this brings up the issue of the Catholic Church and the Death Penalty.  For centuries the Catholic Church had no problem with the Death Penalty.   Indeed, traditional Catholic theology justified it as long as it was used as a deterrent and not exercised as an act of vengeance.   Moreover the Church, while claiming to keep its hands clean from blood, turned countless people over to the “Civil Power” for execution for crimes ranging from parricide to heresy to witchcraft.  Sometimes, as in the case of the Papal States, there was a fine line, perhaps an imaginary line, between the “Church” and the “Civil Power.”  When I lived in Rome, a priest friend of mine, a historian, showed me the home of the last executioner for the Papal States before the Kingdom of Italy replaced the Pope as King of Rome in 1870. The man piously arranged for a mass to be said for each of his victims after he had carried out his official duties.
       One of the most horrendous instances of the Church’s use of the death penalty was in the execution of Beatrice Cenci, her step-mother, and her brother (see entry of May 2^nd  2011).  Beatrice was the daughter of Francesco Cenci, a Roman aristocrat with a vile temper.  Cenci repeatedly abused his wife and his two sons and raped Beatrice.  Beatrice brought her father’s crimes to the attention of the papal police but noblemen were not normally prosecuted for such crimes as domestic abuse and rape.  Beatrice, her step-mother, and her siblings murdered Francesco at their country home.  When the murder was discovered—despite the best attempts of family and friends who knew the situation to protect Beatrice and her family—Beatrice, her step-mother, and sibilings were sentenced to death.   The Romans, common folk and wealthy alike, went crazy—protesting in the streets against the injustice but Clement VIII would not tolerate an act of violence against a nobleman no matter how serious his crimes.  The younger brother, still a child, had his sentence commuted to serving for life as a galley slave.  (He was released after one year.) The older brother was savagely beaten to death with large hammers and his body dismembered within site of the papal window.  Francesco’s wife, Lucrezia, was then beheaded at the same site.  Finally Beatrice was beheaded, also at the Ponte Sant’Angelo.  There is a legend that each year she returns on the night of her execution (September 11^th) and walks the bridge with her head tucked beneath her arm. 
     In the late twentieth century the Catholic position on Capital Punishment began to change.  As nation after nation eliminated capital punishment and as a greater consciousness about human rights emerged in Western society, theologians began calling into question the morality of the state executing criminals.  Slowly papal pronouncements began to question the morality of capital punishment.  It was  only with the papacy of John Paul II, however, that the issue moved from a question to a definitive teaching.  John Paul made a number of statements over the years indicating that there were serious moral issues involved in capital punishment, but it was  only with his 1995 Encyclical Evangelium Vitae that the subject came under the ordinary magisterium and even there the door was not closed completely to capital punishment.  Not closed completely—but pretty much shut.  The Pope wrote:
This is the context in which to place the problem of the death penalty. On this matter there is a growing tendency, both in the church and in civil society, to demand that it be applied in a very limited way or even that it be abolished completely. The problem must be viewed in the context of a system of penal justice ever more in line with human dignity and thus, in the end, with God's plan for man and society. The primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is "to redress the disorder caused by the offense." Public authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or her freedom. In this way authority also fulfills the purpose of defending public order and ensuring people's safety, while at the same time offering the offender an incentive and help to change his or her behavior and be rehabilitated. xxxIt is clear that for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: In other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare if not practically nonexistent.” xxxIn any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: "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."
     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.  Public authority must limit itself to such means….  Hmm   there are circumstances in theory, but in practice?   The pope wrote “Today however, as a result of steady improvement in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare if not practically nonexistent.”  Moreover, in a variety of addresses Pope John Paul made it clear that the penal systems of Western Europe and North America were sufficiently developed as to render the death penalty unnecessary and therefore not morally justifiable. 
       That was not the final word on this matter.  Cardinal Ratzinger, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote a letter to the American Bishops in 2004 clarifying certain issues in light of the political significance of Evangelium Vitae in an American presidential election.  Ratzinger distinguished—quite legitimately—between issues which involve an intrinsic evil (abortion, euthanasia) and a contextual evil—a decision or action whose moral character is dependent on the situation or context.  The death penalty is not an intrinsic evil.  Current Cathlolic teaching declares that there are circumstances under which it is permissible to be used.   The same applies to war.  Catholic moral teaching recognizes limited circumstances under which war is moral.  Of course Pope John Paul had clarified that he did not see circumstances under which the death penalty was morally acceptable in the penal systems of developed nations (and he explicitly referred to the United States), systems that could guarantee that a convict would not again be a threat to life.  The pope had also clarified that the Iraq War in which the United States was at the time engaged did not meet the criteria for “just war.”  Nevertheless, since both war and the death penalty are not intrinsic evils, under certain circumstances recourse may be given to them.   Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in his letter: 
“Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.”
Yes, there is a legitimate diversity of opinion as to the morality of a particular war or whether a given situation meets the pope’s criteria for a legitimate use of the death penalty.  One cannot give a blanket approval to war or to the death penalty and say that an individual Catholic is free to agree or disagree with the Church on these matters.  Evangelium Vitae, as an encyclical letter, is part of the ordinary magisterium and Catholics are required to give intellectual and moral assent to the teachings of the ordinary magisterium. 
       What I find most disturbing about the executions this week—even more disturbing that the possible miscarriage of justice in regards to the execution of Mr.Davis—is that there was no outcry against the execution of Mr. Brewer.  “Well,” some people would say, “Mr, Davis was quite possibly, almost certainly, innocent.  Mr Brewer is a racist who murdered a man simply because he was black.”  But for a true pro-lifer the guilt or the innocence of person sentenced to death is not the issue.  Nor does the moral bankruptcy of racism mitigate the moral character of the execution.  The issue is that God alone is Lord of Life and no one, even all of us together in the corporate body we call “The State,”  has the right to usurp that prerogative of God to take (or give) life.  It is not that the person has a “right to life” or that by their guilt they have forfeited a “right to life.”  It is about God’s right.  God alone has the right to give and take life.  Capital Punishment is no more than judicial murder.

Church Reform Today: The Political Ties of Bishops, 1

One of the goals, indeed the chief goal, of the Gregorian Reform was to free the Church from political entanglement with the Empire.  The purpose was not create the two separate spheres, or I should say separated spheres, of Church and State which our American mythology values so highly because the Church, with its mission to proclaim the kingdom of God, cannot act as if the State—or any other institution—simply exists in a universe parallel to itself.  The Gospel demands that we take an appropriately critical, critical according to the norms of the Gospel, stance towards the world and all that is in it.  By critical I do not mean negative.  A negative critique of creation slides too easily towards Gnosticism.  By critical I mean that we as Church must critique the world as to where it does and where it doesn’t match up to the Gospel.  Note: we as Church.  It is not the role of the “Institution” alone to do this.  Indeed, the Institution, which is not the Church but only one aspect of Christ’s Church, itself must stand under the critique of the Gospel.  That itself is a lesson that most people in the Institution seem to have forgotten these days.   But to critique with integrity we must not only have stood under the judgment of the Gospel ourselves, we must not be indebted to the institutions we critique.  I am not sure that as the Catholic Church we are equipped to critique our society.  The sex abuse scandal has revealed the lack of gospel integrity in the Church, not because of the sinfulness of certain clergy or religious (though that does not help), but because we, both as Institution and as Community of the Faithful became complicit in the abuse by our failure to address the issue honestly and openly.  We will always have sinners in our midst.  There will be sexual predators of all varieties because human society, and we are a human society, will always have sexual predators.  We will have adulterers and fornicators of both gay and straight sorts. We will have drunks and druggies, thieves, embezzlers, abortionists, those who practice euthanasia, who bear false witness, who cheat their employees, who don’t give their employers an honest day’s work, and who pollute the air and water.  We will have people who take us to wars that cannot be justified, and those who sell bonds that are junk.  Sinners are what makes the world go ‘round and moreover Jesus died for them.  They belong in Church.  indeed, they—or rather we—are the Church.  Don’t get on your high horse about “those” or “that kind of people” or “them.”  We have met the sinner and he is us” to paraphrase Pogo.  That being said, however, it is not our task as Church to bless sin by tacit complicity in remaining silent.  Acknowledging our own sins and failings, individually and collectively, we need to be able to speak out about injustices in the world around us—from sexual abuse of minors to abortion to the death penalty to unjust wars, to human rights abuses, to whatever is wrong and unjust in the ways that we relate to one another whether individually or societally.  Because I sin, there are fundamental wrongs in the way I myself and an individual treat people around me.  I need to be reminded of that and challenged to take responsibility for that.  And there are fundamental wrongs in the way that I, not as an individual but as a member of our American society, treat people around me.  I—and other Americans—need to be reminded of that and take responsibility for that.  And there are fundamental wrongs in the way that I, not as an individual but as a member of the Church, treat people around me.  I—and others in the Church with me—need to be reminded of that and take responsibility for that. 
     One of the ways that I, as a member of American society, am guilty of fundamental wrongs in the way I relate to others around me is that I tolerate the murder of the unborn, hundreds of thousands of the unborn.  I don’t approve of it but I am as complicit in it as any bishop has been complicit in the sexual abuse of minors.  I know it goes on.  I confess it is wrong.  I lament it.  But I go about my day; I eat my meals; I go to work; I hang-out with my friends; and I sleep at night in spite of it.  “I wish we could do something about it.”      But that is only one of the sins I am complicit in as a member of our society.  I stood by while Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield led George Bush like a pig with a ring in his nose to war—and led us to war along with him—a war that cannot and never could be morally justified and a war that was energized by a knowing web of lies about WMDs.  And I see the coffins come home and the mothers and the wives and the children trying to make heroes of those who are in fact victims because these deaths must have some significance more than the loss of pawns on a chessboard to make the Vice President and his friends even richer than they are.  And I watched while hundreds of thousands of senior citizens were robbed of their retirements by the Savings and Loans Debacles.  And I have no idea how many people are put to death—legally but not morally—in Texas and Virginia and wherever else while I sit down to dinner, or have a drink on the patio, or sleep undisturbed at night.  And Latinos who just want a chance for them and their children to have a better life die in the desert night after night while I dream undisturbed.   And I know that racism didn’t die with Miss Hilly Holbrook when I hear Sunday Mass goers say “Well, he isn’t my president.” 
     There was a time when our bishops gave moral leadership.  There was a time when our bishops wrote a pastoral letter warning us about the fundamental moral evils beneath “Reaganomics”—you know that system that made some people rich before it made a lot of people poor when it imploded back in 2008.   There was a time when our bishops gave moral leadership and wrote a pastoral letter on War and Peace.  They didn’t make these letters up out of whole cloth.  They took the scriptures, the Fathers of the Church, papal pronouncements, the Documents of Vatican II—they mined the whole tradition to give leadership in our day and age.  But today?  Where are they today?

     “When a Baptist gets money, he becomes a Presbyterian,” a friend told me a few years back. “And when a Methodist wants to join the country club, he becomes an Episcopalian.  When a Catholic priest becomes a bishop, he becomes a Republican.”  One of the senior bishops in the United States, a man who has been a bishop since the “old days,” even before the Apostolic Delegation of Jean Jadot and his crop of liberal Vatican II bishops, told me “The problem with the bishops today is that they are the sons of doctors and lawyers and professionals.  They have no connection with the working class—they were raised to see the working class people as a threat—they come from ‘management’ families.”  Yes, I think that is part of the problem.  The bishops know only a segment of society, they have lost touch—as most white Americans—with their own roots.  But I think the problem is far more serious.     You have men as bishops who have lost their socio-political autonomy and who see the challenges facing society not from the perspective of a Gospel critique but from a political ideology.  More to come.   

Thoughts on Osama Bin Ladin and John Paul II

The faith of the Church is not static but continues to deepen in its understanding of the Revelation that it has received through its faith in the Risen Lord.   Wait, that is not a historical statement, but a theological one and I am determined to avoid theology—it’s far too dangerous as the History of the Church will demonstrate with its burnings at the stake of theologians ranging from Jan Hus to Charles Curran.  Curran wasn’t burned at the stake?  Are you sure?  They wanted to.   In Rome they’re convinced of it.  Where did he go?  Southern Methodist University?  OMG, that in Dallas!!!  The stake would have been more merciful!   So lest such a fate befall me, let me restate that from a historical point of view.  If you look at the History of the Church in different periods you will see that at different periods of the History of the Church, doctrines are articulated not only in different words, but with significantly different—and even contradictory—formulations.  There was a time when the Church endorsed—even practiced—the death penalty.  Ask Beatrice Cenci, the sixteenth century young woman who had been sexually abused by her father and murdered him to prevent her siblings from being abused in the same way.  For her crime, Ms. Cenci and her mother were beheaded within site of the Pope’s window, but only after she saw her brother having his head smashed with a hammer and his body being ripped to pieces by the papal executioners.  Oh, yes, and then there was Jan Hus; we talked about him a few days ago.  And if not Charles Curran, then Marguerite Porete, Giordano Bruno,  Joan of Arc (later repented of), Thomas Cranmer, and lots of others.  No problem with the death penalty—well that is, no problem until Evangelium Vitae of John Paul II.  Today we can see a different doctrinal formulation—far more restrictive about judicial murder.  By John Paul’s standards Hus would have Curran’s job teaching at Southern Methodist; Porete a feminist theologian at Fordham; Bruno would have a red hat in old age; and Cranmer would still be Archbishop of Canterbury—welcoming the Pope to his Cathedral there when he came on an ecumenical visit.  Joan of Arc would be under censure, of course for her GLBT tendencies of wearing male clothing and Curran would probably be a pile of ashes being swept into the Anacostia River for his subversive ideas.  But (snap) things change, Kundun.      

Similarly with the Just War theology.  There was a time when the Church did not scruple to go to war.  Julius II in his papal helmet surmounted by three concentric tiaras climbing over the walls of Bologna!  And the Crusades—all of them—not just the ones in the Holy Land but the crusades in the Balkans and in the Baltic, against the Turks and against the Albigensians.  What is the problem?  Well today we scruple a bit about war.  People get hurt.  It isn’t nice.  And so we find a more restricted theory on what makes a war “just.”

So what are we to think of the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. 

Let’s look first at Evangelium Vitae, paragraph 55:

This should not cause surprise: to kill a human being, in whom the image of God is present, is a particularly serious sin. Only God is the master of life! Yet from the beginning, faced with the many and often tragic cases which occur in the life of individuals and society, Christian reflection has sought a fuller and deeper understanding of what God's commandment prohibits and prescribes. There are in fact situations in which values proposed by God's Law seem to involve a genuine paradox. This happens for example in the case of legitimate defence, in which the right to protect one's own life and the duty not to harm someone else's life are difficult to reconcile in practice. Certainly, the intrinsic value of life and the duty to love oneself no less than others are the basis of a true right to self-defence. The demanding commandment of love of neighbour, set forth in the Old Testament and confirmed by Jesus, itself presupposes love of oneself as the basis of comparison: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself " (Mk 12:31). Consequently, no one can renounce the right to self-defence out of lack of love for life or for self. This can only be done in virtue of a heroic love which deepens and transfigures the love of self into a radical self-offering, according to the spirit of the Gospel Beatitudes (cf. Mt 5:38-40). The sublime example of this self-offering is the Lord Jesus himself.

Moreover, "legitimate defence can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another's life, the common good of the family or of the State". Unfortunately it happens that the need to render the aggressor incapable of causing harm sometimes involves taking his life. In this case, the fatal outcome is attributable to the aggressor whose action brought it about, even though he may not be morally responsible because of a lack of the use of reason.

It would seem from Evangelium Vitae that the assassination of Osama Bin Laden is, according to Catholic teaching, one of the few legitimate instances of a direct taking of human life.  This warrant for the killing of Obama is not the same as the death penalty which the Church sees as almost never a moral option and which has been specifically condemned by both Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI for how it is used in the United States, a situation in which non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety.  What makes the assassination of Bin Ladin  different from the death penalty is that it is not an execution after a judicial process, but an extra-judicial decision to take a life in order to protect the lives of others.  Let’s hope it works. 

And then there is article 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church

 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."

I think we can concur that the assassination of Osama Bin Laden is a morally justified act.  That does not mean we should rejoice over it.  That is a profoundly un-Christian sentiment.  Ezekiel 33:11 says Answer them: As I live, says the Lord GOD, I swear I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked man, but rather in the wicked man's conversion, that he may live.

In fact, Ezekiel writes:  Answer them: As I live, says the Lord GOD, I swear I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked man, but rather in the wicked man's conversion, that he may live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! Why should you die, O house of Israel?  In other words, this is a time for us all, not only our “enemies,”  but those of us who think we have the moral right, to look and ask ourselves what we must do to turn from evil ways.   Instead of turning to violence, prejudice, and war it is time to see what the Lord calls us to.  How can we build peace with those who believe differently than we rather than how we can crush them.   The times have changed.  A Church that once supported the violence of the Crusade has embraced the Gospel of Reconciliation.  It is time for us to do so also.