The Cincinnati Enquirer |
Editorial Page
|
Sunday, March 8, 1998 |
|
The Sunday Forum section contained an interview by the Enquirer Editorial Board with Sister Alice Gerdeman of the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center ["Death watch," March 1].
The subject was capital punishment and Sister Gerdeman said that executions were not moral and proper. This is more proof of the current liberal agenda of the "modernist" Catholics who pervert true Church teachings. The Catechism of the Council of Trent is universally recognized as the most authoritative Catholic catechism ever written. In explaining the Commandment "Thou shalt not kill," the catechism teaches: "lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, |
is an act of paramount obedience to this commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence."
Also, the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913 states: "The infliction of capital punishment is not contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church, and the power of the State to visit upon culprits the penalty of death derives much authority from Revelation and from the writings of theologians." Angela Kunkel, Independence
|
 |
 |
