Holy Father on killing in the name of God

Again and again the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI has been categorically stating that we cannot and must not kill in the name of God. Just this weekend, he repeated this message in relation to the 9/11 attacks that were justified by Islamic terrorists in the name of Allah.

“Once again, it must be unequivocally stated that no circumstances can ever justify acts terrorism,” [Pope Benedict XVI] said in a letter to New York’s archbishop, Timothy Dolan, who is also head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Recalling what he called the “brutal assault” on the United States, the pope said: “The tragedy of that day is compounded by the perpetrators’ claim to be acting in God’s name.”

“Every human life is precious in God’s sight and no effort should be spared in the attempt to promote throughout the world a genuine respect for the inalienable rights and dignity of individuals and peoples everywhere,” he said.

Earlier this year, the Benedict's second book on Jesus was released. In it he explains more fully the where a Christian must go in the face of persecution and injustice - The Cross.

Looking at the way Christ was portrayed by theologians during the 1960s as a revolutionary, Benedict XVI said that according to theologians of that era Jesus belongs within the line of the Zealots, who rebelled against the Roman Empire.

The Pope said: “The cleansing of the Temple serves as the central proof of this thesis, since it was unambiguously an act of violence that could not have been achieved without violence, even though the evangelists did their best to conceal this. Moreover, the fact that the people hailed Jesus as Son of David and harbinger of the Davidic kingdom is construed as a political statement, and the crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans for claiming to be ‘King of the Jews’ is seen as definitive proof that he was a revolutionary – a Zealot – and that he was executed as such. The cruel consequences of religiously motivated violence are only too evident to us all. Violence does not build up the kingdom of God, the kingdom of humanity. On the contrary, it is a favourite instrument of the Antichrist, however idealistic its religious motivation may be. It serves not humanity, but inhumanity.”

Jesus, he said, was not a Zealot. He rejected the idea of political violence and his “whole ministry and his message … point in a radically different direction”.

“No,” the Pope said, “violent revolution, killing others in God’s name, was not his way. His ‘zeal’ for the kingdom of God took quite a different form.

“In the just man exposed to suffering, the memory of the disciples recognised Jesus: zeal for God’s house leads him to the Passion, to the Cross. This is the fundamental transformation that Jesus brought to the theme of zeal-zelos. The ‘zeal’ that would serve God through violence he transformed into the zeal of the Cross. Thus he definitively established the criterion for true zeal – the zeal of self-giving love. This zeal must become the Christian’s goal; it contains the authoritative answer to the question about Jesus’s relation to the Zealot movement.”

Related links: Pope condemns violence in God’s name ~ Holy Post
Pope: violence in God’s name is inspired by the Antichrist ~ Catholic Herald