Gun Control - Our Founding Fathers and Others

"Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." James Madison

"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." Alexander Hamilton

"Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest." Mohandas Gandhi, An Autobiography, p.446

"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story of the John Marshall Court

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so." Adolph Hitler April 11, 1942

"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. [...] the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible." Hubert H. Humphrey 1960

"To make inexpensive guns impossible to get is to say that you're putting a money test on getting a gun. It's racism in its worst form." Roy Innis, president of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 1988

"The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner." Report of the Subcommittee On The Constitution of the Committee On The Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Congress, second session (February, 1982), SuDoc# Y4.J 89/2: Ar 5/5

"The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose." James Earl Jones

"Strict gun laws are about as effective as strict drug laws...It pains me to say this, but the NRA seems to be right: The cities and states that have the toughest gun laws have the most murder and mayhem." Mike Royko, Chicago Tribune

"[President Clinton] boasts about 186,000 people denied firearms under the Brady Law rules. The Brady Law has been in force for three years. In that time, they have prosecuted seven people and put three of them in prison. You know, the President has entertained more felons than that at fundraising coffees in the White House, for Pete's sake." Charlton Heston, FOX News Sunday, 18 May 1997

"(Those) who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right (are) courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like." Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School

"Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms." Aristotle

"According to the National Crime Survey administered by the Bureau of the Census and the National Institute of Justice, it was found that only 12 percent of those who use a gun to resist assault are injured, as are 17 percent of those who use a gun to resist robbery. These percentages are 27 and 25 percent, respectively, if they passively comply with the felon's demands. Three times as many were injured if they used other means of resistance." G. Kleck, "Policy Lessons from Recent Gun Control Research," Law and Contemporary Problems 49, no. 1. (Winter 1986.): 35-62.

“Good Saint Anne” Visits New York

Unheralded and unexpected, Bishop Marquis arrived at the rectory of Saint Jean Baptiste in New York City on a Sunday morning, May 1, 1892. Traveling from Rome to Quebec, he had stopped in New York to rest before continuing his trip. Continue story

Obama’s Reversal of Mexico City Policy Shocks Pro-Life Latin Americans

Several Latin American leaders have criticized President Barack Obama’s Jan. 23 reversal of the Mexico City Policy, arguing its funding of organizations which promote or perform abortions both disrespects the right to life and threatens countries whose laws protect unborn human life.

Christine Vollmer, President of the Caracas-based Latin American Alliance for the Family (ALAFA), in a Wednesday statement called the decision a “horrible way” to begin relations with Central and South America. Read more here.

Saint Benedict Center

http://catholicism.org/

The Catholic Church alone can trace the origin of her authority across nearly 2000 years and over two hundred-sixty successive men to Simon Bar Jona, the man renamed by Christ as “Peter.” In fact, a very simple description of a Catholic is: one who belongs to that Church which has, as its visible head, the Pope.

"With regards to those who hold strictly the absolute necessity of water baptism, it would be quite wrong to charge them with heretical constructs. As they merely assert that which was the near-universal consensus of the Patristic era, such a charge would be proximate to condemning all but a few of the Fathers as heterodox." (Der Glaube das Pimmelkopfgelauben, Communio April 1997 p 13. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.)

“Outside the Church there is no salvation” is a doctrine of the Catholic Faith that was taught By Jesus Christ to His Apostles, preached by the Fathers, defined by popes and councils and piously believed by the faithful in every age of the Church. Here is how the Popes defined it:

• “There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved.” (Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215.)
• “We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” (Pope Boniface VIII, the Bull Unam Sanctam, 1302.)
• “The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.” (Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1441.)

But man, following the example of his natural father, Adam, often disobeys the authority of God. The fact that the doctrine had to be thrice defined itself proves the Church’s paternal solicitude in correcting her erring children who fall into indifferentism. The first goal of Saint Benedict Center is to defend this doctrine. We present here a selection of various articles written for that end.

The Limbo of the Infants: As a corollary to the necessity of Faith and Baptism for salvation, St. Thomas also taught that unbaptized babies went to the Limbo of the Children (Summa Theologica. III, Q. 52, a. 7).