"So long as we live, they too shall live and love for they are a part of us as we remember them."- Gates of Prayer
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Remember
the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=614096131982070&set=a.449146001810418.103770.449143508477334&type=1&theater)
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Unit 1012 will not forget those 27
angels killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting. Every year on
December 14, we will have a 27 minute silent for you all.
One of our favorite Bible Verse is
Romans 12 verse 15, it will be a verse to show that we walk in your families' shoes:
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Romans 12 verse 15 (NKJV) [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.word-picture.org/romans-12-15-we-have-each-other/]
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Unit 1012 will rebut the Episcopal
Leaders from Connecticut who worked with the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty.
INTERNET
SOURCE: http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2012/06/13/episcopal-leaders-push-to-abolish-death-penalty-across-the-country/
When Gov.
Dannel Malloy signed a bill in April making Connecticut the fifth state in five
years to abolish the death penalty, Episcopal
Diocese of Connecticut Bishop Suffragan James Curry’s attendance at the
ceremony testified to the influence of Episcopal leaders on ending capital
punishment in the state.
Curry and
other members of the diocese had worked with the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty since the
2005 execution of serial killer Michael Ross, the first prisoner put to death
in New England in 45 years.
Abolishing
the death penalty became “a very, very contentious issue” in Connecticut after
two recently released prisoners invaded a home and “brutally murdered” two
girls and their mother in 2007, he said.
“In
the midst of that, it was very hard to have a conversation in this state about
not demanding the death penalty for such horrific crimes,”
Curry said. “It was also a time in the church where we
started to shift the conversation from that this is punishment to [that] the
death penalty is really about the kind of statement we want to make about what
we want our society to be.”
REBUTTAL: Wait a minute! Bishop
Curry! Where are your empathy and sympathy to Dr. William Petit whose family
members were murdered? As mention above, Unit 1012 quotes Romans 12 verse 15 to
remind the grieving victims’ families that we care for them. You ask what we
want our society to be? Of course, we want our society to wipe out evildoers
for justice and protection.
The Episcopal Church officially has opposed the
death penalty for more than half a century, and its advocacy is gaining
traction as momentum builds across the country to end capital punishment.
Bishops and other church leaders are writing letters, joining coalitions,
testifying before legislators and publicly demonstrating their opposition to
the death penalty.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have
ended capital punishment. In total, 3,189 people remain on death row in the
United States, including some in Connecticut and New Mexico, which repealed the
penalty without making it retroactive, according to the Death Penalty
Information Center.
The Episcopal Church first passed a resolution
opposing the death penalty in 1958, said Alexander Baumgarten, Episcopal Church
director of government relations. “It’s been reaffirmed in multiple conventions
since then, so our position as a church has been clear for a long time.
“I think the fact that we’ve seen a recent pattern
of bishops and other leaders in the church in the dioceses of the United States
raising the profile of our advocacy is a reflection of the climate in which
public opinion in the United States seems to be moving against the death
penalty for the first time in a number of years.”
A 2011 Gallup poll showed about one in three Americans opposing the death
penalty, a 19 percent drop in support for capital punishment over 17 years and
down from an all-time high of 80 percent supporting it in 1994. Baumgarten
attributes the trend to an understanding of “the inherent flaws in the application
of the death penalty.”
Repeated studies, for example, have documented that
capital punishment does not deter crime, he said. The death penalty also
carries inherent racial and socio-economic biases and the chance of killing
innocent people, he said.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center:
- Studies indicate the chance of being sentenced to death is much higher when murder victims are white, and a 1998 study reported a pattern of race-of-victim or race-of-defendant discrimination or both in 96 percent of states where race and the death penalty had been reviewed.
- More than 130 people have been released from death row since 1973 with evidence of their innocence, with an average of five people exonerated annually from 2000 to 2011.
“As people start to understand the
complexities of how the penalty is applied in practice,”
Baumgarten said, “I think we start to see people who on
its face might not be opposed to the death penalty now start to say: As a
matter of applied justice in this country, this doesn’t really work.”
While the Episcopal Church has an official stance
against the death penalty, this primarily is a state issue, and church
abolition efforts have originated mostly at the local level, noted Baumgarten,
who works in the church’s Washington, D.C., office.
“It’s not something that I think has been
driven by central structures of the Episcopal Church or central governing
entities of the Episcopal Church,” he said. “Bishops and congregations and leaders in the dioceses have looked at the
church’s historic stance on this and applied it to the … context that’s
evolving around them.”
REBUTTAL: To the Episcopal Church, why do you
reject God’s law and obey the Satanic ACLU? The Death Penalty Information Center is a dishonest organization that fight
for the rights of murderers. That is why the death penalty in the United States
has little deterrent effect.
Note that the EC first opposed the
death penalty in 1958 and the official Church of England originated in the
1500′s, with Henry VIII’s direction to separate from the Catholic papacy, not
in small part because of the Pope’s refusal to aprove of Henry VIII’s divorce
request.
The EC supported executions for about
400 years, before voicing its recent opposition, which is largely the result of
liberal, secular influence, in opposition to the 400 years of biblical and
theological based death penalty support, as well as the total 2000 years of
support from the Catholic Church
In
Connecticut, the diocese worked with the Connecticut Network to Abolish the
Death Penalty on legislative efforts that fell short more than once before the
governor signed the April 25 bill abolishing the death penalty in the state.
Then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed a bill in 2009. A 2011 abolition bill failed by two votes in
the state Senate.
The 2012 bill
ended the death penalty, but not for those previously convicted – including the
two men sentenced to death for the high-profile 2007 murders.
“It’s
a flaw in the bill,” Curry said. “I think that’s going to be a legal battle.”
During the
push for the successful abolition legislation, the Connecticut network helped
organize conversations in churches around the death penalty, he said. “We
started organizing letter-writing campaigns to state representatives and
senators. We made ourselves available for conversation. We were lobbying at the
legislative office building.”
The diocese
also partnered with the church’s Washington, D.C., office, sending alerts
through a Connecticut public policy network.
The diocese’s
public witness included inviting clergy to renew their vows during Holy Week
this year while participating in a Stations of the Cross service that meditated
on issues of justice in society and particularly on abolishing the death
penalty. Between 175 and 200 people participated, mostly Episcopal priests but
also some clergy from other denominations, Curry said. “We
had one rabbi join us … It speaks to the
power of this issue and the power of the coalition, because the very language
of our Stations of the Cross was unsettling to him.”
While they
walked in prayer, the last senator needed to pass the abolition bill held a
press conference saying she had changed her mind after opposing similar
legislation last year, Curry said. The church made a difference in the bill’s
passage, he said, from the letter writing to the image of three Episcopal
bishops and numerous clergy in their cassocks processing through the state
capital.
“For
me, the other reality is that the church learned that we have the possibility
to affect public discourse by staying true to who we are and by creating
alliances with other groups like the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death
Penalty, and that’s a learning that were going to keep as we’re looking into
social justice,” said Curry. ” We need to always keep looking beyond ourselves, outside of
ourselves for other voices that we can ally with.”
REBUTTAL: <<“It’s a flaw in the bill,” Curry said. “I think that’s going to be a legal battle.”>>
Please see our blog post, ‘DISTURBING IDEA: LET THE PETIT KILLERS LIVE?’
<<“For
me, the other reality is that the church learned that we have the possibility
to affect public discourse by staying true to who we are and by creating
alliances with other groups like the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death
Penalty, and that’s a learning that were going to keep as we’re looking into
social justice,” said Curry. ” We need to always
keep looking beyond ourselves, outside of ourselves for other voices that we
can ally with.”>>
Bishop Curry, if you choose to help
the ACLU (ACLU are one of the highest ranking Anti Death Penalty advocates),
you are helping evil to triumph and Satan will laugh at you for sure. Please
our blog post, ‘DEFEATING THE DEVIL’S GAME: VOTING NO ON PROPOSITION 34(NOVEMBER 6, 2012)’ and Irish Philosopher, Edmund Burke has a message for you.
In the Diocese of Montana,
Bishop C. Franklin Brookhart Jr. belongs to the Montana Abolition
Coalition, an umbrella group of religious and other organizations seeking
to end the state’s death penalty. He has written editorials and letters to
legislators opposing the death penalty and testified before a state Senate
committee.
“It’s
difficult in some ways because, in doing this, you have to speak to people with
a broad range of ethical and religious backgrounds,”
he said. “It’s easiest for me simply to speak as a
Christian.”
He raises
issues such as whether the death penalty is justice or vengeance; how
accurately it can be applied; whether it deters crime; and whether it serves
the common good. He views the death penalty as “morally
corrosive to a society,” he said.
“I
think we have to say that there is no question from the Scriptures that the
state has – the traditional phrase is ‘the power of the sword’ — to do this,
but is it in this day and age really a Christian witness to say let’s kill
people? I don’t think it is.”
REBUTTAL: Morally corrosive to a
society? No way capital punishment does not go against Christianity at all.
What is moral corrosive to society is homicide where innocent people are
getting murdered, NOT executions!
<<“I
think we have to say that there is no question from the Scriptures that the
state has – the traditional phrase is ‘the power of the sword’ — to do this,
but is it in this day and age really a Christian witness to say let’s kill
people? I don’t think it is.”>>
John Calvin supported the death
penalty and he knows the government was given the power of the sword to smite
evildoers. The Death Penalty was taught in the Bible and it is meant for today.
Do you want our society to become like
Norway where there is no death penalty and no life imprisonment at all? That is
what is call moral corrosive to society!
Immanuel Kant would explain why:
Like Curry,
he believes the church’s witness makes a difference.
“I believe
there is power in being a bishop and speaking on behalf of the church. I know I
get listened to more carefully because of that,” he said, adding, “The other
side is, I think that for some people it is easier to dismiss me: Well, what
would you expect a soft-headed Christian to say?”
The Montana
legislature meets for 90 days every two years, and death penalty abolition is
an issue every session, he said. “It nearly got through last time.”
“Every
time it comes up … the idea of the death penalty seems to have less power and
appeal to it, and it will come up again this time when the legislature meets in
January 2013,” he predicted.
Episcopal
leaders advocate against the death penalty in other states as well.
As president
of the Ecumenical Leaders Group of the Central Maryland Ecumenical Council, Diocese of Maryland Bishop
Eugene Sutton most recently led a march to Maryland’s State House following an
early-morning Ash Wednesday service at St. Anne’s Episcopal Parish in
Annapolis, said Sharon Tillman, diocesan spokesperson. The Feb. 22 event
culminated in a press conference and discussions with religious leaders and
legislators.
In 2008, at an
anti-death-penalty rally in Annapolis, Sutton said, “There is no room for state-sponsored killing and
state-sponsored revenge. To kill and to revenge for the killing of another
person contributes to a cycle of killing. … Love is doing what is right
precisely when it is hard. Jesus taught his disciples to go beyond an ‘eye for
an eye’ and ‘a tooth for a tooth,’ for that would inevitably lead to what Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. and others would call an ‘eyeless and a toothless
society.’ Instead, he taught us to love even the unlovely and stop the cycle of
violence.”
REBUTTAL: <<“There is no room for state-sponsored killing and
state-sponsored revenge. To kill and to revenge for the killing of another
person contributes to a cycle of killing. … Love is doing what is right
precisely when it is hard. Jesus taught his disciples to go beyond an ‘eye for
an eye’ and ‘a tooth for a tooth,’ for that would inevitably lead to what Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. and others would call an ‘eyeless and a toothless
society.’ Instead, he taught us to love even the unlovely and stop the cycle of
violence.”
Please see our blog post: ‘JESUS CARES FOR VICTIMS’ FAMILIES’
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George Orwell and Robert A. Heinlein
have quotes for you in regards to the cycle of violence.
- Robert A. Heinlein
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SOURCE: http://izquotes.com/quote/139782
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In the Diocese of Los Angeles,
Bishop J. Jon Bruno and Bishops Suffragan Mary Douglas Glasspool and Diane
Jardine Bruce endorsed the SAFE California Act, which will replace the state’s
death penalty with a sentence of life in prison without chance of parole as the
maximum punishment for murder.
Helping to
recruit signers in the successful petition drive to get the initiative on
California’s November 2012 ballot were the diocesan Program Group on Peace and
Justice Ministries, the diocesan PRISM Restorative Justice Ministries and All
Saints Church, Pasadena, and St. Michael and All Angels Church, Studio City,
among other congregations, said Robert Williams, diocesan canon for community
relations.
Diocese of California Bishop
Mark Andrus also has supported abolition efforts.
In the Diocese of Ohio, the Rev. Will
Mebane, canon for Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland, testified in February before
the Senate Judiciary Committee to support a bill to abolish the death penalty.
In Kansas,
Episcopal and other bishops have participated in letter-writing campaigns and
other efforts encouraging abolition of the death penalty.
REBUTTAL: To all these Christians
working for abolition of the death penalty, it is like working for Satan more than
God. You are disobeying God’s Justice and obeying Satanic Justice.
Calvinist
Theologian, John Murray was quoted as writing in Page 122 of his book, of
Principles of Conduct:
Nothing shows the moral bankruptcy of a people or of a generation more than disregard for the sanctity of human life. And it is this same atrophy of moral fiber that appears in the plea for the abolition of the death penalty. It is the sanctity of life that validates the death penalty for the crime of murder. It is the sense of this sanctity that constrains the demand for the infliction of this penalty. The deeper our regard for life the firmer will be our hold upon the penal sanction which the violation of that sanctity merit.
19th
Century Theologian George B. Cheever warned against abolishing the death
penalty as it will invoke God’s wrath. Revoke the death penalty, such thinking
went, and famines will strike, plagues will sweep across the plains, rivers
will flow backwards — God will destroy us. Cheever’s words appear to be too
harsh but in this case, since Connecticut had ended the death penalty (except
for those who had been sentenced to death before the repeal date), the Sandy
Hook Elementary School Shooting prove all the abolitionist wrong that the State
will have no more violence. It is absurd in the face of it. End the Death Penalty
and God will destroy us for disobeying him. Dietrich Bonhoeffer would agree to
that.
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| Dietrich Bonhoeffer (PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.quoteswave.com/picture-quotes/410567) |
Nevertheless,
Unit 1012 honors the 27 innocent lives lost in the mass shooting every year on
this date, December 14. To the EC leaders, better to spend every year on that
date honoring the victims than working for the devil to destroy God’s justice,
the death penalty.
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