“Why in the name of all that is just, merciful, and humble, would a priest have a gun?
Even military chaplains don’t have guns. The Geneva Conventions underscore their noncombatant role in war. The U.S. Navy forbids chaplains from qualifying with weapons, earning warfare qualifications, or bearing arms.
A priest with a handgun? Canon law forbids all clerics - bishops, priests, deacons - from anything ‘unbecoming to their state.’ That would include working as a bartender, driving a cab or, one would think, carrying a gun.
Protection is not a do-it-yourself affair. While some municipalities provide police presence for major locations and clerics - St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and its cardinal archbishop, for example - the concept of a gun-toting padre is beyond the pale.”
Just Catholic: In thinking of the shooting death of a Phoenix-area priest last week, I have to ask: Why would a priest have a gun?
www.ncronline.org
I’ve never had the experience of Roman Catholic clergy saying to me,
”You are not a follower of Jesus if you aren’t armed, ready to kill.” If I ever do - which is highly unlikely - I would ask if he himself lives by that teaching. Of course he doesn’t.
Then I would ask him why he is saying to a Christian clergyman - which is what I am - that I must do what he must not do. Would he dare respond by saying that I’m
”a man in form but not in substance”? I don’t think so. He’s much too wise to say something that foolish.