As promised, I thought I would write a few words on the question: is Scott Roeder a murderer? (This is working on the assumption that Roeder did, in fact, shoot George Tiller in the Reformed Lutheran Church in Wichita. If he did not, the discussion can be applied to the person who did in fact shoot Tiller.)

I’d like to start with a few preliminary observations.

1) There is no question that, legally speaking, Roeder’s crime qualifies as murder. As a private individual, and with no authority whatsoever, he intentionally killed a person who had been convicted of no crime, and who was posing no immediate threat to Roeder or any other person. The action shows every sign of having been premeditated. From a legal perspective, then, this looks like a clear-cut case of murder. My question concerns the moral status of Roeder’s action.
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Consider this an exercise in getting an assignment in under the wire.  For the rest of this week, it is still the Year of St. Paul.  (St. Paul is a worthy man to have a year for, but do you get the feeling that from now until the Second Coming the folks in the Vatican will declare every year to be the Year of X?)  So, in honor of the Apostle to the Gentiles, I have decided to transcribe the major events of his life.  In the Patriarchal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls (also known as the Ostian Basilica), there are 36 paintings that depict the life of St. Paul.  They begin with scene #1 (Saul’s participation in the martyrdom of St. Stephen) to the immediate right of the apse and line the nave down the right side, cross the middle, and line the left side of the nave until scene #36, the martyrdom of St. Paul, which is to the immediate left of the apse.  In other words, the apse of the church is flanked by the martyrdom of St. Stephen, to which St. Paul consented, to the right and the martyrdom of St. Paul to the left.  The entire story of St. Paul’s conversion is defined by these two acts of witness.  There is a side-chapel to St. Stephen (below the relevant painting?); I have read that St. Augustine attributed St. Paul’s conversion to the prayers of St. Stephen.
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Once again the pace of posting has become a little sluggish here of late. Personally, I have spent the last few weeks 1) finishing piles of grading from last semester, 2) writing a paper and then giving it at a conference, 3) attending a seminar on religion in the post-Soviet world, and 4) taking care of house guests. Now that these tasks are all through, I am settling into my summer routine, and I should be able to manage a post at least once a week for the coming months, and hopefully more often. What’s happened to my slugabed companions I can’t say… but check back! I’ll try to keep controversy brewing here. Among the things I hope to post in the next week or two are some reflections on whether or not Scott Roeder is really a murderer, and a self-indulgent recapping of my naming debate in which I clear up the misconceptions of some of my deluded commenters. :)

But for today, I thought I might start by throwing out this quote from a recent article in America magazine:

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