Pope Supports Self-defense A Higher Calling Against Guns?

The Pope Supports Self-defense and Defense of the State

http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=1088

This should be very useful in contacting your Catholic clergy when they take an anti-gun position, thereby endorsing denial of a human right acknowledged by the Pope, who further states that it is a DUTY, as well as a right.

 In his Encyclical Letter from 1995, EVANGELIUM VITAE, Pope John Paul II writes:

"......Christian reflection has sought a fuller and deeper understanding of what God's commandment prohibits and prescribes. There are in fact situations in which values proposed by God's Law seem to involve a genuine paradox. This happens for example in the case of legitimate defense, in which the right to protect one's own life and the duty not to harm someone else's life are difficult to reconcile in practice. Certainly, the intrinsic value of life and the duty to love oneself no less than others are the basis of a true right to self-defense."

He goes on to say:

"...legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another's life, the common good of the family or of the State. Unfortunately, it happens that the need to render the aggressor incapable of causing harm sometimes involves taking his life. In this case, the fatal outcome is attributable to the aggressor whose actions brought it about, even though he may not be morally responsible because of a lack of the use of reason."

The Catholics who rebuke the right to self-defense are rebuking the Pope himself.


A Higher Calling Against Guns?

Washington Post, July 15, 2000; Page B09

The Rev. Michael R. Duesterhaus, a Roman Catholic priest, awakened at 3 a.m. to the sound of someone entering his study at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Annandale. He saw the angled beam of a flashlight and knew he had an intruder--and no way out.

Trapped in his bedroom, just beyond the study, the priest quietly unlocked his gun kit and took out a 9mm pistol. He flipped on a light and ordered the stranger to freeze and lie on the floor. The man stopped, then reached for his belt and charged.

Duesterhaus fired. The man paused, apparently wounded, then ran into the hall. The priest pursued and fired again, this time at the man's feet. He chased the intruder in the hall and looked down the stairs, expecting him to be gone. Instead, the man raised his hand toward the priest, who fired a third time, deliberately wide of his target. The man ran out a side door, taking with him a small amount of cash.

Total time elapsed: 15 seconds.

The outcome of this 1993 incident contrasts sharply with last month's brutal slaying of an unarmed Germantown priest, Monsignor Thomas Wells, during an apparent burglary overnight. And such attacks, although infrequent, have generated an unusual, chilling dialogue about whether priests and other clergy--as models of compassion and love--are justified in using violence for self-defense.

The idea of a priest or bishop owning a handgun shocks many Catholics. But some do, whether for hunting, target practice or self-defense, and church law allows it. But theologians and ethicists differ on whether priests should ever point a weapon at another person--and fire.

Duesterhaus, then 28, shot at the intruder, and he and three other priests living in the Holy Spirit rectory were unharmed. Wells, 56, who stayed alone in the rectory at Mother Seton Catholic Church, died after being stabbed repeatedly in a violent struggle.

Would the outcome have been different if Wells had owned a handgun? John M. Snyder, 60, a Catholic layman and chief lobbyist for the Washington-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, believes so.

On June 9, the day after Wells's body was found, Snyder released a statement saying Wells "most likely would be alive today if he'd had a loaded handgun and knew how to use it."

Washington Auxiliary Bishop William E. Lori objected strongly. He called the suggestion that priests be encouraged to own handguns for self-defense "unworthy of Monsignor Wells's memory."

The Rev. Aaron Joseph Coty, administrator of Mother Seton parish, finds abhorrent the idea that priests--or anyone, for that matter--own handguns. "You don't need weapons to defend yourself," he said. "There are other ways. You can talk with the person, reason with the person, get into a fistfight."

'The Last Resort'

But the Rev. Robert J. Rippy, chancellor of the Diocese of Arlington, has a different view. "A priest, like any other citizen, has a right to self-preservation," he told the Arlington Catholic Herald after the Duesterhaus incident. "A person has a right to preserve their life from an unjust aggressor."

Priests have the same right as anyone else to own a legally purchased handgun, Rippy said in a recent interview. But the use of a weapon should be "the last resort" after attempts to disarm or dissuade the aggressor--and never with the intent to kill, only to repel or maim.

The Roman Catholic Church has no official policy on the ownership and use of guns by clergy, members of religious orders or lay people. The "Catechism of the Catholic Church," a 900-page book outlining the church's theological position on a vast array of moral, practical and ethical issues, is silent on gun ownership.

But the guide asserts the right of "persons and societies" to defend
themselves.

"Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality," reads Paragraph 2264. "Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one's own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow."

Whether the catechism applies equally to clergy and laity on self-protection is a matter of dispute. John Berkman, assistant professor of theology and ethics specialist at Catholic University, said priests are held to a "higher standard of perfection" that includes the rejection of any form of violence that results in another person's death.

"I challenge anyone to come up with a contemporary Catholic teaching that sanctions priests defending themselves in a way that will lead them to kill," he said.

But Monsignor Thomas J. Green, professor of canon law at Catholic
University, said the catechism applies to everyone. Furthermore, in canon law, the official body of ecclesiastical statutes revised in 1983, "there's clearly no prohibition on self-defense, whether cleric or not," he said.

Green said the previous code, enacted in 1918, prohibited priests from carrying weapons "unless there is reasonable cause for such a precaution."

The old code also barred them from "habitually hunting" and hunting "with a pack of hounds," to discourage priests from spending too much time with members of the upper class.

As for priests owning guns, the new canon leaves the question "open-ended" and subject to "local conditions," meaning the bishop of each diocese can determine whether it needs a policy on gun ownership, Green said.

One church organization that has taken a strong stand against handguns is the U.S. Catholic Conference, the public advocacy arm of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"Some have suggested that homeowners and citizens should arm themselves to protect their families from murder, assault or robbery," the conference's Committee on Social Development and World Peace said in a 1975 document on handgun violence. "The sad fact is that a handgun purchased for protection is often used in a moment of rage or fear against a relative or acquaintance."

The defensive use of handguns throughout society is "one of the most controversial topics within the field of gun policy right now," said Jon Vernick, associate director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and a gun control advocate.

"Even if you believe that a person who brings a gun into a home might have an opportunity for self-defense, there's still a question of what societal harm might be done," he said.

A burglar might steal the gun and use it to commit a crime, or a child might find the gun and shoot himself or another child while playing with it. And the risk of domestic homicides is three time greater in homes with guns, he said. Suicide is five times greater.

Gary Kleck, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University, calls such arguments "completely irrelevant." The "corresponding benefit" would be that someone's life could be saved by a handgun. And that happens more often than many people think, he said.

Analyzing seven years of data from the National Crime Victimization Survey, conducted by the U.S. Justice Department and the Census Bureau, Kleck concluded that robbery and assault victims who brandish or use handguns are least likely to be injured during those types of crimes.

The surveys, taken from 1979 through 1985, found more than 40,000 victims who used a range of defense strategies--from guns and knives to oral persuasion and nonviolent resistance, he said.

Although 33 percent of all robbery victims were hurt by an aggressor, 17 percent of those who produced a handgun were injured, Kleck said. Thirty percent of all assault victims were injured, while only 12 percent who used a handgun were harmed. In both crimes, the highest rate of injury--52 percent and 51 percent respectively--occurred with victims who responded with physical force.

Not a Case of Martyrdom

Whether or not handguns are proven deterrents, the question of whether it is right and proper for a priest to use one remains.

Berkman, the ethicist, sees a "profound inappropriateness" in a priest owning a handgun, especially going to a firing range to practice. If nonviolent response to brutality is not the goal, "why are the martyrs the highest ideal?" he asked. "Were they stupid?"

But Duesterhaus, the priest who shot at his intruder, said one should not confuse martyrdom with "being mugged for petty cash."

"I would love to die for the Lord Jesus Christ and His Church," said
Duesterhaus, who responded to written questions. But "dying due to crime is not martyrdom; it is just a tragedy. And dying when it can be avoided is just a waste of a life."

Not long after the break-in at Holy Spirit, Duesterhaus served four years as a U.S. Navy chaplain, and he is an officer in the Naval Reserve. In 1997, during an 18-month stint on Okinawa, Japan, he accompanied a Marine battalion in Operation Pacific Haven to Guam--the temporary home for Kurds who had escaped from northern Iraq and were on their way to the United States.

Now assistant pastor of St. Michael's Catholic Church in Annandale, he said his firearms training dates to his Boy Scout days. He still owns the 9mm pistol and practices alone and with military officers.

Honoring Self-Defense

Knowing how to use a gun properly is important, the priest said. Training includes thinking, in advance, of the moral implications of drawing a weapon on someone and, "when conditions are such that force is necessary," knowing what you would do and how you would do it.

Snyder, the gun lobbyist and a former Catholic seminarian, believes such force is necessary, even for priests. "It's tragic when good clergymen suffer violence," he said.

In 1989, Snyder founded the St. Gabriel Possenti Society to promote the "historical, philosophical and theological bases for the doctrine of legitimate self-defense."

The society is named after a 22-year-old seminarian who used a display of marksmanship in 1860 to scare off 20 terrorists threatening to rape and kill residents of an Italian village. Possenti grabbed a pistol from the holster of one of the soldiers and, barely taking aim, killed a lizard sitting in the road, awing the invaders.

Possenti was canonized in 1920 as the patron saint of youth, and the society is pressing the Vatican to designate him the "patron of handgunners." It distributes a 28-page booklet called "Self Defense and the Bible" and awards a medallion--depicting Possenti, a pistol and a lizard--to legislators, police officers and private citizens who contribute to public understanding of its goals.

Snyder said the attack on Wells shows how a victim could have protected himself if he had been aware of "some of the more muscular aspects of the Gospel."

Exodus 22:2, for example, says that "if a thief is caught breaking in and is struck so that he dies, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed." In 1 Samuel, David tells Goliath before slaying the giant Philistine: "This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head."

Jesus supported carrying a weapon for self-defense, Snyder said, quoting Luke 22:36. "He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one," Jesus tells his disciples at the Last Supper.

Duesterhaus, who was awarded one of the Possenti Society's medallions but refused to accept it, would not comment on whether Wells would have survived his attack if he had owned a handgun.

"I would leave speculation on the issue to law enforcement and security professionals," he said. "I did not know Monsignor Wells, and not knowing the type of person he was makes it nearly impossible to judge how he would use or handle a weapon."

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