Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ, 10/7/2000, “At no point, however, does Jesus deny that the State has authority to exact capital punishment. In his debates with the Pharisees, Jesus cites with approval the apparently harsh commandment, He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him surely die (Mt 15:4; Mk 7:10, referring to Ex 21:17; cf. Lev 20:9). When Pilate calls attention to his authority to crucify him, Jesus points out that Pilate’s power comes to him from above-that is to say, from God (Jn 19:1 l).Jesus commends the good thief on the cross next to him, who has admitted that he and his fellow thief are receiving the due reward of their deeds (Lk 23:41). ”
 
“Paul repeatedly refers to the connection between sin and death. He writes to the Romans with an apparent reference to the death penalty, that the magistrate who holds authority does not bear the sword in vain; for he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer (Rom 13:4). No passage in the New Testament disapproves of the death penalty.”
 
“Turning to Christian tradition, we may note that the Fathers and Doctors of the Church are virtually unanimous in their support for capital punishment, even though some of them such as St. Ambrose exhort members of the clergy not to pronounce capital sentences or serve as executioners.”
 
“The Roman Catechism, issued in 1566, three years after the end of the Council of Trent, taught that the power of life and death had been entrusted by God to civil authorities and that the use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to the fifth commandment. ”
 
“Summarizing the verdict of Scripture and tradition, we can glean some settled points of doctrine. It is agreed that crime deserves punishment in this life and not only in the next. In addition, it is agreed that the State has authority to administer appropriate punishment to those judged guilty of crimes and that this punishment may, in serious cases, include the sentence of death.”
 
“The Catholic magisterium does not, and never has, advocated unqualified abolition of the death penalty. I know of no official statement from popes or bishops, whether in the past or in the present, that denies the right of the State to execute offenders at least in certain extreme cases. The United States bishops, in their majority statement on capital punishment, conceded that Catholic teaching has accepted the principle that the state has the right to take the life of a person guilty of an extremely serious crime. Cardinal Bernardin, in his famous speech on the Consistent Ethic of Life here at Fordham in 1983, stated his concurrence with the classical position that the State has the right to inflict capital punishment.
 
“Pope John Paul II spoke for the whole Catholic tradition when he proclaimed, in Evangelium Vitae, that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral (EV 57). But he wisely included in that statement the word innocent. He has never said that every criminal has a right to live nor has he denied that the State has the right in some cases to execute the guilty. ”

(”The Death Penalty: A Right to Life Issue?” at http://pewforum.org/deathpenalty/resources/reader/17.php3
NOTE: although Dulles makes palpable errors of fact and logic within the sections “The Purposes of Punishment” and “Harm Attributed to the Death Penalty”, it is, otherwise, a solid historical treatment of the Church and the death penalty)

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/did-cindy-sheehan-commit-fraud-with-charity-claim

Did Cindy Sheehan Defraud With Charity Claim?

For at least the first seven months of its existence Cindy Sheehan’s Gold Star Families For Peace claimed to be a 501c3 tax exempt charity.

The folks at the CPH have lost their corporate charter and are being investigated by the Texas State Comptroller’s office and the IRS. (Cindy Sheehan is also a director of the Crawford Peace House.)

I rather think she made a decent arguement.

With people having made a point of getting the room next door to attack her, the chances that they didn’t plant questioners at her meeting are very slight. I would guess that the questioner wasn’t a Catholic and the answer I suggest above would have totally stumped them. Ms Sheehan’s mistake was that, instead of forcing the questioner on to her territory, where she could have made mincemeat of him/her, she went on to the questioner’s territory and by so doing, lost the argument before she had uttered a single word.