The Church, Guns & Self-Defense

As a Latin-Rite (Roman) Catholic I have found a number of serious problems with the teachings of my church as to self-defense, the duty to defend innocent others and the private possession of the means to enforce that right and to execute that duty.

The first problem is the English language translation of the Fifth Commandment as "Thou shall not kill". I have it on expert advise (Two learned Rabbis) that the correct translation is "Thou shall not murder". The Church's (English) translation provides a subtle, but real, bias against the use of deadly force as needed where the authorities of the State (Or, in some cases as the Sudan, international bodies) are unable and even unwilling to protect the innocent in a timely manner (That is to say, before harm is done to the innocent).

Secondly, the writers of the Catechism Of The Catholic Church appear to never have been in close personal combat as they presume an ability to instantly determine, in such settings, how much force to use to repeal attacks on the innocent, limiting it to only that which is necessary to repeal such assaults. (As a matter of reality, the only way to insure self-defense or defense of innocents is to kill the attacker as a wounded attacker or one only threatened with harm is still capable of attacks and evidence is such that such criminal assaults will occur in those cases.)

Thirdly, that Catechism should have clearly denoted such attacks as rape or taking away the means of livelihood (To prevent starvation or other serious harm) as attacks which justify the use of deadly force. (Those mostly-or-totally male-and-clerical authors of that work have been too shaped by their general immunity from hunger and isolation from women to be reliable in this matter.) [Those authors also forget the mental or physical sweat which goes into the lawful earning of property and that the criminal taking of that property is also the taking away of that part of persons' lives which was expended to earn it---Making every robbery a little murder.]

Fourthly, that Catechism extends its authors' ignorance of combat to the military world of war when-and-where it is impossible to control the side-effects and "collateral damage" (Even with the extreme care exercised by the Armed Forces of the USA and State Of Israel) through the use of modern weapons. For a proper instruction for the waging of war, those authors should have referred to St. Bernard of Clairvaux's De Laude Militae Novae. Those authors also are unaware that terrorist-prisoners, not protected by the Geneva Conventions, continue to wage war against the innocent by withholding information needed to protect such, wherein "forceful, non-deadly" questioning is justified. (After all, terrorists caught in their illegal acts could, by international law, be otherwise subject to very-summary, field courts-martial and immediately executed.)

Lastly, that Catechism forcefully comes out in favor of the State or international bodies "regulating" the manufacture and sale of arms. Those ivory-tower theorists have apparently not studied history and noted that such control is the first step of any tyranny (eg By such as Hitler and Stalin against their subjects and the rulers of Islamic nations against non-Muslims) before going on to murder, rape, enslavement, robbery, genocide and the other horrors of such lords-of-misrule.

A supplementary thought: Can you think of any persons more innocent than unborn babies as are being murdered by the agents of the state-terrorism supported abortion industry?


REFERENCE: Kopel, Dave; "The Sword & The Tome"; America's 1st Freedom; February, 2009; Pages 28-31.