Apportioning guilt. Guilt is paralyzing. Catholic Fundamentalists are so eternally grateful that The Programmer downloaded a “Forgiveness Program” that many are drawn to The Church simply so they can access it. Absolution is a relief that’s indescribable to those unable to receive it.
Before we realize the power of Confession, we to try to remove guilt by quibbling, like the scribes and Pharisees. “Well, I really didn’t do exactly that, there were reasons beyond my control, I really didn’t want to”, etc.
After St. Paul saw the light, he wrote to his former co-religionists to show them how the Hebrew faith validated the divinity of Christ. In his letter to the Hebrews, he described God’s ability to “separate thought from intent”, Hebrews, 10:4. (Catholic Fundamentalists believe that Ten Tribes of Hebrew people became the ancestors of most peoples from India to Ireland. St. Paul’s letter was addressed to all Hebrews, not just the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi in Southern Israel.)
Separating thought from intent helps us to separate ordinary behavior from sin. That fragment of St. Paul’s sentence is an invisible foundation stone in our system of justice. A man convicted of causing a death can be given different sentences based on his intent.
A death caused by negligence or accident is punished less severely than murder in the first degree. The more thought given to the deed before doing it, the more punishment is incurred.
A thought is different enough from an intent to do wrong that it can be analyzed separately from it. The more merciful and God-like the judicial system, the more clear the separation will be made between thought and intent and the better the punishment will fit the crime.
But, when government becomes overly devoted to its own power, jails need to be filled. More defendants are then found to be “guilty as charged” without taking motivation and extenuating circumstances into account. When the State is growing unhealthily, “maximum sentences” become the norm. Not to “protect society”, but to increase the power of the penal system.
As a nation gives longer sentences for ever-lesser crimes, it provides jobs for those whose increased employment is an ever-growing justification for blurring the lines between a prosecutor’s meat ax and God’s scalpel.
The self-righteous fairly glow at the opportunity of long sentences. Their guilt is the greatest of all. Their crime is not that they are blind, but that they say they see. Their punishment at Judgment is to be feared because the intent to hurt a neighbor is clearly there.
