Take High Ground on Death Penalty

Published - Saturday, October 07, 2006

By MATTHEW R. DUNNIGAN
Rome, Italy

While it is unfortunate that the United States has failed to negotiate with Iran regarding uranium enrichment, it is also unfortunate that the U.S. is on the same moral level as Iran regarding capital punishment. To ask and receive a moral good from another party requires that the asking party be on a higher moral level.

If the referendum to reinstate the death penalty should pass in the November elections, in whose authority will the governor then execute?

In America there is separation of church and state. In 1999 while in St. Louis, the late Pope John Paul II stated that “a sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil.”

God never infringes upon our wills, and because of this, we are free. But for all of our actions, or inactions, we will have to give an account. If the governor executes in the name of the state, be very careful, because the governor will then be infringing upon God’s will. God is Lord of both life and death.

Furthermore the catechism of the Catholic Church states that if the guilty party can be incarcerated to protect society, the capital punishment of the offender is not justifiable.

Attention, Wisconsin, the cardinal who was president of the papal commission that wrote the catechism is now Pope Benedict XVI.

Badgers, teach your children, and teach them well. Teach them right from wrong, and may they choose right over wrong. But if they should fail, teach them that to err is human and to forgive is divine. Teach your children that two wrongs do not make a right. Teach your children to choose life over death, and that the violence of capital punishment only begets more violence.

Society will never learn to respect human life when the state hypocritically kills those who have killed.

God protect all the children from this wicked, presumptuous, self-righteous and perverse generation that thinks it will be doing right when in reality it will be doing wrong by executing.