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 ...
I’m a Catholic and I love my Church, but I must say that the Cardinal is very wrong in his take on this. Americans, who if I remember correctly made up the majority of the victims in this bombing, are not necessarily looking for vengeance but they are looking for justice.
Cardinal O’Brien’s motives in making all these accusations against the US may be very sincere and heartfelt, but sadly they come across as an attempt to muddy the water and take the, well deserved, heat off of his country. Scotland made a bad decision and now they are mortified and embarrassed. Unless something dramatic and unexpected happens to rectify the situation, it seems that Scotland as well as all the rest of us, will just have to live with it.
O’Brien is a well known leftist, gay-friendly fool who hates the current Pope.
They are all derived religions from Christianity, Roman Catholicism included!
It would have been compassionate to execute him.
Unlikely.
You’re wrong, Keith.
“With Catholics like this, Protestant Churches pandering to homos, and Unitarians spreading confusion who wants to be a Christian? “
But none of these is Christian.
” Just about any church upsets me now. “
I hear you.
There’s one church that I don’t think will upset you. It doesn’t have steeples and it doesn’t have stained glass.
It’s the Body Of Christ and it does not know denominations.
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