USCCB Official Calls for Elimination of Police and Prosecutors and Prisons

Okay. I made that up. But, he's close.

Gerry Powers, "director of the Office of International Justice and Peace at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops", has been quoted comparing America's War Against Terrorism to... get this... the reign of the vicious and maniacal Roman emperor Caligula:

Post September 11 2001 jitters are leading the US to embrace a formula of instilling fear of the United States as a protection from catastrophic attacks that echoes the philosophy of the brutal Roman emperor Caligula, acording to the director of the Office of International Justice and Peace at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops....

He said: "While a doctrine of preventive war may derive in part from an ethic of responsibility - to protect ourselves and the world from catastrophic attacks - it also has elements of an ethic of fear." ....

"Let them hate us if they will, provided only that they fear us," he said, chacterising the new phenomenon.

Powers was speaking at a colloquium on the ethical issues of pre-emptive war hosted last week by Wesley Theological Seminary and its Churches' Centre for Theology and Public Policy.

"That formula might work for the New York Yankees, but it did not work for the Romans and it will not work for us," Powers said. "It will not work because it creates a cycle of fear that fuels a cycle of violence."

Why can't the USCCB hire more people who sound like they work for the successors to the Apostles rather than for the Democratic National Committee? (I suppose one answer to my question could be that the USCCB seems quite often to be effectively a subcommittee of the DNC.) Is that really too much to ask?

Christopher Johnson has an excellent reply at Midwest Conservative Journal, the lynchpin of which is Romans 13:1-4. I will add that the fear of police and prosecution and imprisonment is what keeps a lot of people from committing crimes, no? Is it somehow wrong to instill fear in the criminal element to keep them from doing harm?

One mustn't assume too much from brief quotations in a media report of what somebody said. Perhaps the article left out how Powers put the blame for this situation squarely where it belongs: with Muslims who deliberately murdered 3,000 innocent unsuspecting Americans, and who had come from a culture in which instilling fear by acts of terrorism aimed at innocent unsuspecting civilians is but a tactic in a strategy to get what they want, anyway they can.

Do you think it's very likely that Powers did that? Do you think it's even a factor in how he thinks about this?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 05/07/03 09:56:57 AM
Categorized as Most Notable & Religious.