In The Wake Of This Tragedy

[Guest]

I hope that all mankind goes to Heaven.

ya that would be cool...then again mabey not...cause in revelations it says murderers, adulters, cowards ect ect go to hell...so how can all go to heaven ? People who murder innocent people (let alone children) don't deserve heaven...hitler doesn't deserve heaven... people like him don't deserve heaven...and before you say no1 deserves heaven you're right....but if God loves us which I think he does then good people who live life in love should be able to spend. Eternal life with him...on the other hand people who do evil hatefull things shouldn't... Edited December 15, 2012 by Guest

[theculturewarrior]

I do not question how you feel.  It is a perfectly rational response, and I respect it.

[Gabriela]

Thank you, kujo, for a thoughtful and moving OP.

[Lil Red]

Well good for he and his wife. Something tells me they are in the vast minority in being so perfect and balanced in their grief.

 

 

really? you're going to judge someone on how they processed their grief? :blink:

Mass murderers don't kill people.  Masturbation and missing church on Sunday do, silly. 

 

:rolleyes: you're more intelligent than that. what a stupid post.

[Lil Red]

It's days like today that we must remember a message that should be repeated every day: The message of the Gospel, that death does not win the day. Ever. Sorrow, suffering and pain do not get the last laugh in life. Death is dead.

 

Why? For unto us, a Child is born.

 

 

"God is Love. We eventually have to ask ourselves the question; why was Love nailed to a cross?" Bl. John Paul II

 

This is a quote that comes to mind.

 

"Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord..."

 

This.

 

And it reminds me that now, ever-changing, and ever-new, we need Christ to come. O come, O come, Emmanuel. Holy Innocents, pray for us.

[Ice_nine]

I keep thinking this guys needs a bullet in the brain. Like I keep forgetting he's already dead and need to keep reminding myself. That's not very Christian, wishing death on someone who is already dead. I can't wish him suffering for eternity either but I'm not ready to pray for his soul especially with all the energy it takes to pray for the victims and their families.

 

[Selah]

Edit: Never mind.

Edited December 15, 2012 by Selah

[Spem in alium]

In a case like this, people want to assume it was mental illness. Me too. It is a pretty common reaction. The reason for that, I believe, is that we do not want to accept that we are capable of such evil actions.

But if you can think of it, you are capable of it. And that is terrifying. It should be terrifying.

Wow. Yes.

This is such a tragedy, and it can be difficult not to feel anger or hurt, especially when innocents are involved. We can speculate and judge to no end, but it's important to remember that God's judgement is really all that matters. Praying for the eternal rest of those lost, for forgiveness, for a better world. Be with us, O Lord.

[kujo]

Keeping guns in the house with someone with mental illness is kind of like keeping guns in the house with a curious child, except the stakes are higher if the disabled American has an episode.

 

Again, is it been documented that this young man was mentally ill.

 

really? you're going to judge someone on how they processed their grief? :blink:

 

I didn't judge them. I'm simply saying that other people aren't quite as rational in their state of grief.

[r2Dtoo]

Make sure not to mention the arm's industry.  

 

Typical Democrat.  Never let a tragedy pass you by without getting some political gain out of it.

 

 

Thanks for taking the day off yesterday, at least.

[XIX]

Typical Democrat.  Never let a tragedy pass you by without getting some political gain out of it.

 

 

Thanks for taking the day off yesterday, at least.

 

The pro-gun people are guilty of this, too.  It's awful how opportunistic some people have been.

Edited December 15, 2012 by XIX

[vee]

nm

Edited December 15, 2012 by vee8

[LittleWaySoul]

You don't really mean that.  We believe in the possibility of salvation for everyone, through Christ's sacrifice. 

 

That being said, it's probably not the most tactful thing to talk about God having mercy for the perpetrator around people who are trying to grapple with this senseless tragedy.  

 

We all deal with these things differently, and we all have to keep this in mind.  I hope the last thing we want to do is fight over this particular tragedy.  

A father whose daughter died by being shot to death in a school tragedy in 1999 said the best thing he and his wife decided to do was not to be bitter about the killer, to forgive him, and to celebrate their daughter's life. Forgiving heals, hate destroys. Forgiving does not mean excusing. It means forgiving. Forgiving this guy does not mean if he were still alive we wouldn't throw him in jail. It means we forgive him.

His exact words were "You never get over it." He said after the first two or three years the sting lessens, but it never leaves. He will always be in pain about it. But if people would stop being bitter and hateful, they would be happier. Being bitter and hateful leads to more violence. Hate can only breed hate.

There's nothing wrong with feeling anger and outrage at the guy who did this.  But we can't ever know for sure if anyone is in Hell, nor should we encourage others to hope that someone is in Hell.  Even Hitler.  We don't know what is going on in a person's mind right before they die (which is why the Church no longer condemns victims of suicide, for example).  Instead, we can hope that God's justice be done, whatever that may be.  And we can pray for the victims of terrible things like what happened today.  

 

I think I like to point out that even these people have "a shot at mercy" like you said because the instinct is to want to condemn them to Hell.  The Church emphasizes the seriousness of other sins because we usually belittle them (It's not really about missing mass, it's about putting God first in your life, etc).  

How could he have had full culpability in order to commit a mortal sin? In order for a mortal sin three things are necessary: Full consent, full knowledge, and it must be grave matter. We have grave matter down most certainly, but the other two are pending. This guy wasn't thinking right. He is suspected to have a plethora of mental problems, such as autism, being a sociopath, and having asperger syndrome. With these in mind, he didn't have full consent of what he was doing, and he didn't have full knowledge. He didn't have empathy, and that isn't his fault. I'm not excusing what he did by any means. What he did was wrong and it has to be one of the most evil acts I have ever heard of. But he can still be forgiven by God, especially if he didn't meet the criteria for Mortal sin. In fact, according to the Church even if he didn't have these things and knew exactly what he was doing, he still could have been forgiven. In those last moments, he could have sincerely told God he was sorry and felt remorse for what he did. We can't think of sin in black and white situations. We don't know his mind at the time, and therefore cannot make a judgement. That's why we cannot make a judgement about anybody. That is God's job, for only he knows everything about the situation.

 

And I'm with Basilisa Marie. It is okay and in fact good to feel outrage and anger. There is such a thing as just anger, and this is certainly one of those cases where it is used. Emotions are running high, so it's really not the time to make statements. Talking about our feelings is good, but when it is something as sensitive as this and we know others will disagree and be greatly offended, it is best to not say anything until people start coping with the situation.

It is really not our place to speculate.

I hope that all mankind goes to Heaven.

The pro-gun people are guilty of this, too.  It's awful how opportunistic some people have been.

 

I agree with all of this with my whole heart.

Requiem Aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetuae luceat eis. 

Requiescant in pace.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

 

[Era Might]

But when some gangbanger shoots up another gangbanger, or a platoon of soldiers gets blown up in Afghanistan, or a genocide is quietly occurring in Syria, we just don't feel that same moral indignation, at least not at the level we are feeling this now. 

 

I have to say I don't understand social grief. When I heard about this story yesterday, I thought it was a horrible thing to happen, and I feel bad on some level for these people, but I don't have an emotional attachment to them. I don't know them, they are as unknown to me as all the other people who die every day. Maybe it's a flaw in me, I don't know, but I don't understand stories of people weeping on 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination or this.

 

I've been thinking a lot recently about what is love? What does it mean to love another person? I think love is largely a selfish thing...why do we care about the handful of people in our lives, why do we love them, and not feel the same way about the billions of other people in the world? I think it's because the people in our lives make us feel good, are part of our memories, etc. We can't imagine ourselves without them, and in some sense loving them is a way of avoiding death, having something to hold on to in this world. I feel the same way about grief over these kinds of events, it's more about our fear of having this happen to us, than some vague thing called "love." Can I "love" these children who died? I don't know. I woke up today and my life went on as it always does. I'm not crippled by their death.

 

I think there is something to the idea that we have made love into an idol. It's an emotional attachment. I think of what does it mean to love a spouse or your own child. It's largely an emotional thing, and it's reflected in our inability to let people be, to see the people in our lives as their own people, on their own journey, that we share and help along the way, but ultimately, we are all going on our own journey to death, where we will be utterly alone. That seems really sad and despairing, but if we simply accept love as something temporary, something that is not really "real," then it makes death easier to understand, as the logical end of our individual lives. And if you're religious I guess you can believe in a supernatural theory of love as something real...though it's interesting to me that Christianity revolves around the resurrection, the idea that love is something tied to this world, and we must rise again forever and return to our earthly form. Seems like a myth to me, but I can understand it if I understand love as an earthly thing, and the resurrection as a way to save our selfish attachment to this world.

 

Sorry for going on a tangent, and I am not trying to argue about anyone's experience or response to anything...simply stating honestly my own feeling.

Edited December 16, 2012 by Era Might

[Guest]

The reason it touched me cause they were little kids at school murdered in cold blood...it had nothing to do with fear of it happening in my own life....its pure evil what happened yesterday...mabey it happens everyday in some form and I'm just biased to this situation...but I dunno...little kids at school don't deserve to be killed by some coward bastard....mental problems or not...

Edited December 16, 2012 by Guest