St. Gabriel Possenti Patron Saint of Handgunners

via Joe.My.God from the gunsaint site.

The St. Gabriel Possenti Society promotes the public recognition of St. Gabriel Possenti, including his Vatican designation as Patron Saint of Handgunners.

St. Gabriel Possenti was a Catholic seminarian whose marksmanship and proficiency with handguns single-handedly saved the village of Isola, Italy from a band of 20 terrorists in 1860.

The Possenti Society offers a variety of materials related to St. Gabriel Possenti and a biblical understanding of self-defense.

The Savior of Isola

In 1860, a band of soldiers from the army of Garibaldi entered the mountain village of Isola, Italy. They began to burn and pillage the town, terrorizing its inhabitants.

Possenti, with his seminary rector's permission, walked into the center of town, unarmed, to face the terrorists. One of the soldiers was dragging off a young woman he intended to rape when he saw Possenti and made a snickering remark about such a young monk being all alone.

Possenti quickly grabbed the soldier's revolver from his belt and ordered the marauder to release the woman. The startled soldier complied, as Possenti grabbed the revolver of another soldier who came by. Hearing the commotion, the rest of the soldiers came running in Possenti's direction, determined to overcome the rebellious monk.

At that moment a small lizard ran across the road between Possenti and the soldiers. When the lizard briefly paused, Possenti took careful aim and struck the lizard with one shot. Turning his two handguns on the approaching soldiers, Possenti commanded them to drop their weapons. Having seen his handiwork with a pistol, the soldiers complied. Possenti ordered them to put out the fires they had set, and upon finishing, marched the whole lot out of town, ordering them never to return. The grateful townspeople escorted Possenti in triumphant procession back to the seminary, thereafter referring to him as "the Savior of Isola".

Catholicism and Capital Punishment

The Examiner.com has published an article which might surprise some considering the last two Popes' opinions on the death penalty. Here's John Paul II's, here's Benedict XVI's.

From the Examiner article:

According to the Catholic Catechism (2265), “Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another person’s life, the common good of the family or of the state.”

The church understands that the scale for punishment should reflect the gravity of a crime. “Preserving the common good of society requires rendering the aggressor unable to inflict harm.” The traditional teaching of the church “acknowledges… the right and duty of public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty” (CC 2266).

Pope John Paul II chose another sentence from the same article of the Catechism.

In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: 'If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.'

The present pope feels the same way, in spite of his reputation as a conservative theologian.

But, I would imagine many people couldn't care less what the popes or the Catholic Church think. These people, not unlike their Catholic neighbors, are faced with the same difficult questions. Is it possible to remove the vengeance factor from our feelings about capital punishment? Is executing a person ever necessary to set the social order straight?

Even unabashed supporters of the death penalty recognize that revenge is not a good motive for it; they invariably insist they're driven by justice not vengeance. And, although it escapes me, many people seem to put a lot of weight in the eye-for-an-eye theory.

What's your opinion? Do you find it interesting that even the Catholic Catechism can be variously interpreted? In that regard it's a bit like our own Constitution and Bill of Rights, isn't it.

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