This is not true from a Catholic perspective. Period. It is blasphemy.

Again, you don’t know me and I don’t appreciate your presumption of my character and nature. I assure you that there are Roman Catholics on this very blog who have exactly the same perspective on violence that I do, so the fact that the pope is protected by armed bodyguards has nothing to do with whether I am Roman Catholic or not. I have never been tempted to hurl while reading the Old Testament, which I do so daily. It is the Word of God as much as the New Testament.

I’ve not said anything about the state and violence here. I am not advocating that the state be pacifist. Simply that Christians have been called to a new type of life through the gospel of Jesus Christ, and being conformed into the image of Christ involves imitation of his refusal to defeat violence and evil with violence. By living this new life, Christians could contribute more to the common good of society than by serving society as executioners.

Now with Romans 13, moving from the state using violence to punish evildoers to citizens being deputized to use violence in their own homes goes way beyond the meaning of the text, especially given the pacifist position of the early church. If anything, it reserves violence for the exclusive use of the state. Even when the state used that violence against the early Christians, they did not resist but submitted themselves to the judgment of the state. Hence the exaltation of martyrdom as the ideal Christian death.

Rodak-
Duty to the oppressed, I suppose. Duty to our conscience. Duty to imitate the opposition of Christ to sin and evil. I could say that fighting does not necessarily involve violence (there is always a third way between violence and doing nothing), which would reconcile my statement and Matthew 5:39. Human nature being what it is (and my own nature in particular), I know that I likely would not be able to fight without violence. However, the difference is that I call my actions in such cases sinful, not justified.

Hence they conclude that some mideastern insult ritual was meant wherein the person uses his weaker hand to strike the right cheek.

Proof is that Christ was struck violently on the cheek when before Pilate and Christ did not turn the other cheek but rebuked the one doing it:

Jn 18: 22
“When he had said this, one of the temple guards standing there struck Jesus and said, “Is this the way you answer the high priest?”
23
Jesus answered him, “If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong; but if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”

Paul too did not turn the other cheek when before the High Priest

Acts 23

The high priest Ananias ordered his attendants to strike his mouth.
3
Then Paul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall. Do you indeed sit in judgment upon me according to the law and yet in violation of the law order me to be struck?”

Duty to whom? How do you file your statement in the same drawer with:

Matt 5:39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

In that latter quote, God deputes to the state the right to kill (notice “scourge” was not used as the synecdoche but “sword”…and it is not a ceremonial sword if you do a word search) and the state having been deputed by God over life and death deputes to citizen people ad hoc to do the same thing with guns in self defense within the home in my case as to my state when one perceives an innocent life is at stake….that is the litmus test. Romans 13:4 deputes the state who deputes me and Steve. And in many scenarios even advanced martial arts will not save an about to be killed victim. The instantaneous power of a gun saves lives where martial arts can fail miserably (that’s why advanced Kung Fu people do badly against shoot fighters who don’t obey parameters). It’s why Bruce Lee really saw the theater that dominates so much of Asian tradition in that area and so he came up with something different toward the end.

Again, I don’t know you and you don’t know me. I happen to be a hunter, so I know the shot patterns of various types of shot. But I’m still not interested in debating hypotheticals – too many variables.

I agree that God has no problem with us trying to control what we can control. But taking another human life is one of those things God does not want us to try and control. Insurance or seat belts are preventative or restorative – more like an alarm system than a gun.

To kill another person is to take for ourselves the authority that rightfully belongs only to God. I value my loved ones more than I value a stranger. I value my own life more than the life of a stranger. That’s only human. However, and this is a hard concept, God does not value me or my wife or my kids more than a stranger. In God’s eyes, I am no more or less valuable than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (to bring it back to the topic of this post). In God’s eyes we are both human beings made in God’s image, we are both sinful and evil, and we are both worthy of redemption through Jesus Christ. So while I value my life and the lives of my family more than the life of KSM or a rapist, God does not. And while I may value my country more than the country of Iraq or Afghanistan, God does not. And if God does not, then for me to decide my life is worth more than the life of someone else by taking their life is to take for myself the authority that only belongs to God. Of course I would fight the rapist to save myself or another. Of course I support the capture and incarceration of KSM. That is part of our duty to oppose evil and protect the innocent.

“In a torture situation, the captive by nature is not engaged in aggression against me, since he is under my control. Thus, my torturing of him cannot be justified by the principle of double effect.”

I would fundamentally disagree. The whole principle behind torture is precisely because the capitve is NOT under your control. If he were, you would be able to extract the necessary information from him without violence. It is precisely to gain this control that is the premise of torture.

Second, if the captive under your control had information which, if disclosed, would avert a great evil, and he chooses not to disclose it, he is acting as aggressor, only passively.

(Anyone with a passive aggressive wife will back me up on this one) ;)

I’m not sure how you can postulate that homicide is not an intrinsic evil. We have a clear commandment on the matter: “Thou Shalt Not Kill” – far less ambiguous than torture, which is a derivative of this commandment. Man was not meant under any circumstance to terminate the life of another man. In whatever ways that torture would be immoral, homicide is the sum and summation of those terms. It is the moral equivalent of torture with an irrevocable finality. I would suggest that our lack of clarity on this issue is solely because of desensitization, and that if we lived in a society where homicide was uncommon, we would think of homicide as exponentially more evil than torture.

JohnMcG –

I think this is a prime example of how we’ve been conditioned to ignore the implicit double-effect reasoning with regards to war. If war was moral in any sense of the word, we would not have to beat our swords into ploughshares in the Kingdom. A so-called “just war” is licit, but only as a response to a greater evil. There are no just wars without a pre-existing evil that poses a grave threat. I see no difference between that and torture. The same rules which justify a “just war” also justify “just torture”; it is only licit as a required aversion to a greater evil, and is only licit if there is a great degree of certainty that it will succeed in averting the evil.

God wants you to control those things that you can. That is why you have auto insurance, medical insurance, safety belts, Advil rather than miracles for all those things… all of which do not suggest you distrust God. I do not carry a gun out of the house because the law forbids it in our area with good reason due to congested population in my area and the danger of innocent bystanders. So I surrender control easily where it should be surrendered. God will compare our faith at the judgement. Wait til then.
See you there.

I was wondering about that, but I am not all that familiar with shotguns. It does seem to me that a shot to the head or even the torso or backside is enough to stop anyone from doing anything. In any case, if you have this much time to plan for something that will almost certainly never happen, you should be able to come up with a plan that doesn’t involve blowing someone’s head off. Even the police don’t carry shotguns to blow people’s heads off.