I am flabbergasted. I am almost speechless (but not quite). I shouldn’t be surprised though.
I’m talking about “lefty” Catholics who, upon seeing coverage of the capture of Saddam Hussein, have as a first reaction the need to denounce the US for showing “demeaning” video images of him. What?! Here’s just one syrupy example, from a nun in Australia. It’s not the only one I’ve seen though.
For one thing, the reason video footage was shown is so that no one can say that we really haven’t caught him. (Of course, the kookiest of kooks will still deny it, like they deny the moon landing. There are plenty of them on the radical Democrat web sites.) Still, it is necessary to get the point across to those still fighting in Saddam’s name that he is out of circulation, that he is gone.
A friend told me today that a co-worker said to him, “So what if Saddam killed thousands of his own people. What does it mean to me? Why should I be excited?” You may as well re-phrase it, “So what if Hitler killed millions of Jews. What does it mean to me that he’s dead?” That is the most self-centered garbage I think I’ve heard. But if next week someone they know dies in a terrorist attack financed by Saddam’s money, they’ll be crying for his head, too.
Back to the original point: It’s not like Saddam was being manhandled or beaten or tortured on videotape. Saddam used to have his victims videotaped as they were tortured and watched them as entertainment. No, our troops were treating him a lot better than he deserved. Don’t feel sorry for him. He is a brutal evil man. Pray for his conversion, pity his pathetic waste of a life, but don’t feel sorry for the Butcher of Baghdad.
Where is the widespread sympathy of these same people for Saddam’s hundreds of thousands of victims? Where was their outcry then?
The Nun seems to have forgotten the theology of how and when an individual is an image of the sacred.
Only when the soul has the Grace of the Lord living within the soul does the God the Father see the reflection of His Image and Likeness.
Saddam did not nor does he have what it takes to be that image and likeness of the sacred.
It is also the moral theology of the Church that when one takes innocent life, and Saddam has taken thousands and thousands of innocent lives, that one loses his “right” to life.
And concidering all of the acts of inhumanity to humanity that Saddam has done, how can anyone say he deserves human treatment of any kind?
The most we can and ought to do is at least say a prayer for his welfare. But it is also a principle that if ones life has been so directed toward disobedience against the Creator’s Will, there is little chance of repentance.
However, the Lord Jesus is the only Judge of his immortal soul.