He is Right
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
1,582 executions have been carried out since the early 70’s.
63,000,000 executions since 1973, not including the criminals who were put to death, the 1,582.
Just what exactly was the crime of the unborn?
The crime the baby committed?
A liberal Catholic can’t come up with a truthful answer to that question. Once they do, they will no longer support abortion on demand.
IT’S A BABY for God’s sake.
INCONVENIENT TRUTH
That is the killing of the innocents.
That is a climate change par excellence.
An ice age of the heart.
May God melt those hearts, receding the glaciers that have caused so much pain. Taken so many lives.
A global warming is needed.
NOW…..
before it’s too late.
Neither the Pope nor his Institutional Church can overturn Genesis 9:6. I don’t like capital punishment. I don’t want there to be capital punishment. But God said:
Whoever sheds the blood of a human,
by a human shall that person’s blood be shed;
for in his own image
God made humankind.
And that holds true for those doctors who murder children in the womb.
The scandal in this case is the incompetence of the courts and those doing their bidding. This man was convicted in 1990. Somehow, agents of the State of Alabama cannot contrive a method of execution that is reliably effective, so they resort to the contrivance of giving him nitrogen gas. Here’s a how-to video on how to run an execution:
execution Marshal Ion Antonescu (youtube.com)
I wouldn’t want people execution three weeks after trial (as was the man who assassinated Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago). Eight years is more than sufficient for appellate courts and state governors to sort through these cases.
Everything appellate courts have done over the last 60 years has made this process stupid. They complain about inconsistent application of the death penalty, then deny legislatures the discretion to prescribe precise circumstances in which is to be applied and insist on juries making the decision.
Meanwhile, you have wrongful convictions in these exceedingly time consuming cases. Nothing is done to systematically sanction investigators who fabricate evidence, prosecutors who make use of fabricated evidence, and judges who allow the introduction of fabricated evidence. See, for example, the disastrous case in Ada, Oklahoma. There were lawsuits contra some crooked state police investigators, but the odious local district attorney received no sanctions whatsoever from any authority (IIRC, the perjurious forensic technician employed by the state police also got off scot free). No one in the local bar thought to organize a campaign to replace him and he turned over his office to his protege eleven years after it was revealed what a fraud had been the case he’d presented.
The death penalty is not unacceptable to modern thinking because of its “cruelty”. It is unacceptable because modern thought on death has changed.
To a modern thinker, death is the end of this life. Whatever is beyond is nebulous. Moreover, the state does not officially recognize anything beyond. As such, tho modern thinker is taught to see the death penalty as very likely the annihilation of the individual.
In contrast, a properly catechised Catholic knows with certainty that death is not the end of anything. For the repentant, it is the beginning of purification or the heavenly rest.
There is certainly plenty of time in the system for repentance before the death penalty is executed, and I have argued previously that the set date can encourage a reckoning of accounts that is not encouraged by a nebulous life sentence.
I support the death penalty for the purpose of public safety (those who cannot be rehabilitated and let back out into the community) and for justice for the victims – not for the purpose of punishment! God dishes out the punishment in His perfect way.
So I can’t quite work out if what happened in Alabama was deliberate punishment being implemented or botched up incompetence…. “Experimenting” Nitrogen Gas on a man and letting him squirm for 20 minutes is inhumane. And wrong. The execution process should be quick and done with. You would think after 5 minutes someone would have stepped in and ended it. Just my opinion..
I’m no fan of capital punishment, but I understand and accept that it has its place. This botched fiasco gave lots of ammunition to the anti-capital punishment crowd … A firing squad would’ve been preferrable.
CAG-
Yes, a firing squad would have been preferable
The badge of the modern age is that it screws up what prior centuries could easily accomplish.
Execution. Voting. Education. Conclaves…
Drop hanging, where the fall is calculated to snap the neck, is about as humane of execution style as you can get. Pair it with someone standing by with a gun for a headshot if somehow the drop fails to break the neck, and you are far ahead of pretty much any modern method.
The reason that this will not be considered is that it looks primitive and messy. New methods are always very “sciency”, done in clean rooms with fancy chemicals. If there was a chemical that left you conscious to die in agony over the course of an hour, but which froze enough of your muscles to leave you unable to express any sign of distress, people would prefer that most of all. It’s about looks, not about what it does to the condemned.
The right to life of murderers.
In one of our many talks, one of my boys once observed about things over the last few generations. He said sometimes it seems like we give heroes a harder time than the villains. Like we look for any reason under the sun to criticize the heroes of the world, while bending over backwards to fight for and excuse the villains. I don’t think he’s too far off the mark.
I had to do some research on this. I am against what Alabama did. There are quicker ways to execute than this.
https://apnews.com/article/nitrogen-execution-death-penalty-alabama-699896815486f019f804a8afb7032900#:~:text=The%20state%20said%20the%20method,mask%20to%20cause%20oxygen%20deprivation.
“Just what exactly was the crime of the unborn?
The crime the baby committed?”
The newly begotten innocent sovereign person was invited through the marital act by the parents.The parents lie about the marital act, but no one believes them.
” Whoever sheds the blood of a human,
by a human shall that person’s blood be shed;
for in his own image
God made humankind.”
The nurderer of homicide in the first degree inflicts capital punishment upon his victim without trial or cause, violating all civil rights.
Please remember that the power of attorney of the condemned nurderer of homicide in the first degree is used to execute capital punishment on him, a temporal punishment made to spare the murderer of homicide in the first degree hell.
If capital punishment were not temporal punishment, the state (the citizen) could not employ it.
Consider this: a man rapes and strangles a seven year old girl and gets life, life in prison for thirty years. Equal Justice ?
Any citizen is empowered by his citizenship to execute the condemned murderer through the murderer’s own power of attorney as he deserved execution starting with the murderer in the state as a citizen.
Germaine Grisez fell into error when he displaced the human dignity of the murderer of homicide in the first degree. Homicide in the first degree is the free will choice of the murderer. All, individuals who deny the murderer his free will choice and the consequences deny what God has made and endowed to all men, free will and the consequences.
The murderer of homicide in the first degree as a member of the state and of the government brings himself to Justice and is executed through his own power of attorney.
I can forgive my murderer. I cannot forgive your murderer without becoming an accessory after the fact.
By defining the murderer of homicide in the first degree by his human dignity, Germaine Grisez defines all men as murderers of homicide in the first degree.
God creates all men souls in original innocence.
Men who maintain their soul’s original innocence as the Blessed Virgin Mary does, cannot be denied by their original innocence.
Germaine Grisez bears false witness against the Blessed Virgin Mary and all men who maintain their soul’s original innocence.
Is it Justice to define the murderer ( of homicide in the first degree) by his human dignity and refuse to define the victim of homicide in the first degree by his human dignity? Is it Justice to define hatred, jealousy and evil as human dignity?
Retribution is given to the innocent victim of homicide in the first degree. Retribution is the acknowledgement of the indwelling of the Supreme Sovereingn Being, the image and likeness of God, in the soul of the homicide victim. Acknowledgement of the indwelling of God in the homicide victim defines the human dignity and sovereignty of the personhood of the victim.
By way of this crime, homicide in the first degree, the retribution due and demanded in Justice and given for the victim, all mankind is acknowledged as children of God. Mankind’s sovereign personhood and human dignity in each and every individual’s human soul is acknowledged by the state as endowed by their Creator. Each and every human soul’s existence is ratifed by society.
If retribution is not demanded in Justice for the innocent victim of homicide in the first degree, Justice will not have been done. The fabric of society will not have been mended. Mankind will spill into the bottomless pit. Is it Justice to allow the condemned to relive and enjoy getting away with murder in the first degree for years?
Note I: Lex Talionis, the law of an eye for an eye, is promulgated to prevent the killing of a person for striking his neighbor or for other injury. Lex Talionis also prohibits killing innocent persons for crimes done by others as in war; retaliation for bloodguilt.
When forgiven by their victim and by the Sacrament of Penance, the murderer in homicide in the first degree must be executed according to the Bible: “He must be put to death, taken even from my altar (sanctuary) and put to death.” Exodus 21:14. The death penalty is the temporal punishment for homocide in the first degree.
Capital punishemnt is deterrence. Do not let your child be seduced into believing that he can exchange his life in prison for a million dollars by becoming a contract killer.
I believe Justice is to give the murderer the same as the murderer did to his innocent victim.
Hitler and John Wayne Gacy both may have repented on their death.
Dutch Schulze, a killer with ten bullets in him dying was baptized on his death bed.
The killer of homicide in the first degree, murder in stealth as a citizen of the state brings himself to Justice. The executioner of capital punishment exercises the power of attorney of the condemned. The murderer is brought to Justice by his own power of attorney which cannot be denied to him as the condemned murderer of homicide in the first degree is a sovereign person.
Giving a murderer of homicide in the first degree a pass by ostracizing him from the human race and calling it human dignity is wrong because the murder cannot be ostracized of his sovereign personhood endowed at the very first moment of his existence by God. Evil has no place in sovereign personhood. The murderer again has separated himself from the human race and by his own power of attorney brings himself to Justice, eternal and infinite Justice before God.
All self-defense is the power of attorney of the aggressor employed by the victim to maintain his freedom and civil rights.
I generally object to the death penalty.
No person or State can act in the name of something–or someone–whose existence it doesn’t admit, so we can’t say it’s God’s Justice. As we typically have ability to imprison someone, I think the need for capital punishment is debatable, at best. And, if you inflict the act for a semi-private audience near midnight, it can hardly be said to deter anyone from future crime.
And …regardless of the optics, I consider the idea of “humane execution” to be an intrinsic contradiction in terms. You can’t call something humane in any fashion if the aim of the act is to end a person’s life before natural death.
If we must insist on inflicting a death penalty, I think it ought be inflicted at noon, in the public square, and all persons ought be required to be witnesses, by television, if needed.
That’s the only way it stands a chance to be horrific enough to deter anyone.
I also consider the convicted needs to be given five minutes with a duly installed Catholic priest no more than 15 minutes beforehand. That’s the only way I can have any confidence that the convicted has proper opportunity to repent.
I’m not keen to risk time in purgatory myself for want of offering another man a chance to be reconciled with God before it’s too late.
That thought about hanging someone so their neck snaps seems the most proper. Gory enough to be a genuine deterrent; quick enough to avoid inflicting needless suffering on the convicted.
I think it ought be inflicted at noon, in the public square, and all persons ought be required to be witnesses, by television, if needed.
For the same reason, abortion and it’s grotesque details should be viewed, mandatory viewing, three days prior to the appointment date for execution of the innocent baby.
These ideas just might deter the criminal from criminal activity… and the scared pregnant woman from following through with pulling the tiny child apart in her womb.