Posted on 08/07/2010 11:07:29 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland has made an outspoken attack on the United States over the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
Cardinal Keith O'Brien said the Scottish government was right to free Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi last year on compassionate grounds.
US lawmakers want Scottish politicians to explain to a Senate committee their decision to release Megrahi.
But the cardinal said ministers should not go crawling to the US like lapdogs.
Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish government's justice secretary, released Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, after being told that three months was a "reasonable estimate" of his life expectancy.
However, he is still alive after almost a year and the decision continues to provoke anger in the United States, which was home to 189 of the Lockerbie victims.
Cardinal O'Brien said it was understandable why the families and friends of the 270 people killed on board Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 would want "justice" and "even vengeance".
But in an article for the newspaper Scotland on Sunday, he suggested Americans should "direct their gaze inwards" rather than scrutinise how the Scottish justice system worked.
"They seem to think they have got it right, and I don't think they've got it right, and I don't think most Christians would believe they have got it right either. It's not an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. And they really should look to the beam in their own eye rather than thinking what's wrong with us."
He added: "I think the United States government in many, many states - more than half of the states in the United States - they have a culture of vengeance."
He said the use of the death penalty meant the US kept "invidious company" with countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
With Catholics like this, Protestant Churches pandering to homos, and Unitarians spreading confusion who wants to be a Christian?
If he feels compassion for a terrorist, them pray for him. Pray for him publicly if you feel strongly. But to chastise the victims and their representative who are only seek secular justice is way, way over the top, and not legitimately within His Eminence’s purview! Those who are more qualified than I, please correct me if I am missing something here
Fudaidh!
Cardinal O’Brien is out of his mind. He is not preaching compassion, he is preaching injustice and disrespect of human life. Murderers, especially mass murderers, must be put to death or innocent life loses worth.
Without justice, mercy is meaningless.
“May God have mercy” is an appropriate speech, but “Release the mass murderer” is just plain nuts.
Justice is not vengeance - it is the order of good civilization.
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>> who wants to be a Christian?
Comparing those derived religions to Christianity is like comparing our current form of govt to the Constitution.
You’ll find Catholic priests at most of the pro-illegal alien demonstrations also.
The jerkwad you want everybody to show compassion for may outlive many of the victim's families as a free man. Their punishment will go on until the day they die.
One thing about the death penalty. It has a 100% success rate stopping repeat offenders.
Yes it is. A small minority of leftist do-gooders seem to have positioned themselves at the reigns of government and the pulpit. Just about any church upsets me now.
“...Murderers, especially mass murderers, must be put to death or innocent life loses worth.
Without justice, mercy is meaningless...”
Worth repeating! Your whole reply was great.
I think this is the greatest problem facing the world today. We in America and the West have the freedom and prosperity we enjoy today as a result of our Christian heritage. Yet Christianity today is almost completely undermined by demonic leftists pretending to be Christians. If the evil ones succeed in redefining Christianity as collectivism then humankind will return to the spiritual and political desert of paganism.
I believe you have hit several nails smack dab upon their heads.
Mercy has no meaning without justice, right and wrong (morality) has no meaning without judgement, and love has no context without morality.
When these attributes are Divine, they are Infinite, Flawless, Unchanging, and hardly comprehensible by human standards. Cardinal O’Brien needs to explain a whole bunch more, as in what about the victim robbed of earthly life! IMHO
Well, Ol’ Kenny needs to understand that if America has a culture of vengence, it is our culture of vengence. He needs to get concerned about the prostate function within his church.
When the American relatives of the victims request an official and open inquiry into the circumstances of this transparently fraudulent transaction, the author of this article, a Roman Catholic cardinal, writes that Americans should not presume to inquire into the Scottish justice but rather consider their own declensions. Evidently, the good Cardinal objects to an "invidious" practice which he says Americans have in common with other nations which practice the organized religion in question, to wit, capital punishment.
The article does not make explicit how the Cardinal logically connects the fact that about 50 percent of American states have capital punishment to an inquiry into a fraud perpetuated against Scottish justice. Does the cardinal mean that capital punishment creates a "culture of vengeance" which disqualifies those tainted by this association from inquiring into miscarriages of Scottish justice? Curiously, the cardinal does not distinguish between those Americans resident in states which have capital punishment from those resident in states which do not. He disqualifies both classes from such inquiry, evidently on moral and religious grounds.
By his own words, the cardinal associates American citizens of one state with those of another state and finds all equally disqualified perhaps because, "the use of the death penalty means the US kept "invidious company" with countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran. " It could be that the cardinal believes that since the United States as a whole has retained the death penalty on the federal level all citizens of the United States are tainted. How are they tainted? Guilt by association, of course, the United States somehow resembles countries "like Saudi Arabia and Iran" which are theocracies conducted by the religion in question, the religion of the mass murderer, the religion of the jubilant public celebrating the mass -murderer's release from prison.
Finally, the cardinal does not tell us what capital punishment in America has to do with imprisonment in Scotland. Why should Americans, even those benighted American who support capital punishment, be disqualified from inquiring into the allegedly corruptly procured release from prison in Scotland of a mass murderer of 189 Americans? Are Americans so corrupted by the mere presence of capital punishment in their midst that they cannot even ask about corruption which permits the guilty to escape punishment by imprisonment?
Maybe the cardinal's objection really has not so much to do with capital punishment, maybe it has to do with compassion and the avoidance of the sin of "retribution ." "Cardinal O'Brien said Americans are too fixed on retribution." Maybe, no punishment is in order less we seek retribution?
The cardinal could have considered that Americans are considering deterrence. What about the effect in places like Saudi Arabia and Iran, does the cardinal think they will be deterred by the travesty in Scotland? By all accounts, the mass murderer is healthy enough to murder again. If he does, I am sure the relatives of new American victims will take Cardinal O'Brien's admonition to heart and avoid fixating on "retribution."
Punishment is so Old Testament.
He could be your pope one day...
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