Defending the 12th century since the 14th; blogging since the 21st.

Catholicism, Conservatism, the Middle Ages, Opera, and Historical and Literary Objets d'Art blogged by a suburban dad who teaches law and writes stuff.


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Who was Cacciaguida? See Dante's PARADISO, Cantos XV, XVI, & XVII.


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I don't have any original thoughts on the Saddam execution. He certainly deserved it, unless he deserved something much worse than a quick broken-neck hanging with no lingering. Perhaps he should have been fed into the human-size shredder that he used on many of his victims. "And this was just" (or "it served him right," in Musa's version), as Dante said in regard to the inventor of a particularly horrendous death-by-torture machine who eventually died in it: Inferno XXVII 7-12.

But deserving it is only a necessary, not a sufficient, justification for an execution. It could be that the execution will do so little to solve Iraq's problems that it does not fit into those "practically nonexistent" categories in which Evangelium Vitae would admit the death penalty, and therefore should have been avoided. It could be that, as the work of a Shiite government (with Shiite militiamen mysteriously invited in for the occasion), it will make Saddam a Sunni martyr.

Be that as it may, certain Vatican officials, including Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace, and formerly the Holy See's ambassador to the United Nations, seem to be coming unhinged on this issue. Jimmy Akin explains.

From Christopher Blosser, more intelligent commentary than I have time to read through, as usual.

And from Letterman: Top Ten Things Overheard Outside Saddam's Execution. As you can see, I'm dreadfully cut up about the whole thing.
posted by Cacciaguida at 8:47 PM