Friday, November 04, 2005

A few updates...and tyrannicide

Mrs. Curley is out of town visiting number 1 daughter, so I have a little extra time to do some housekeeping here at Bethune Catholic. I added a couple links: Southern Appeal because they have been right there the Supreme Court nominations and recent court decisions, and Dappled Things because of entries like this:

"One of my own practices, and one that I recommend to others, is to consider what particular temptations and sins we commit in life. Whether our own particular recurring sin is judgmentalism, or wrath, or pride, or this or that sin of the flesh, there are souls in Purgatory even now undergoing their purification for precisely those sins. I like to pray for those particular souls, doing my part to help them through, in the hopes that they will return the favor for me once they bask in the light of God's perfect charity. We're all in this together, and Christ has knit us together in a way that not even death can break. Our compassion for the poor souls in Purgatory is mirrored by the hope we see in the victory of the vast multitudes of all the Saints -- among whose number are those who underwent every kind of trial imaginable, every sort of temptation conceivable, and in the end, by the grace of God, conquered."

Fr. Tucker also recently posted a link about tyrannicide, here . This is of interest (to me) because something I read some time ago in Dr. Warren Carroll's book on French Revolution (The Guillotine and the Cross, Christendom Press) about the 'age-old Catholic Doctrine' of justified tyrannicide :

"If it is clear that one man rules outside the law; that he rules by terror and killing which will continue indefinitely if he is not removed; that there is no peaceful or political or judicial way of removing him; and that there is good reason to believe that his removal will bring the regime of tyranny and oppression to an end, then it is moral to kill that man by any means available." (Klaus von Stauffenberg's attempt at killing Hitler is given as an example of justifiable tyrannicide.)

The 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia, (here) tends to take the view that that tyrannicide (for a tyrant by oppression) is contrary to natural law.

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