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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.
2) Even if we were to decide that Roeder was not guilty of murder, it would not follow that his action was not wrong. Indeed, I think it was wrong. Regardless of the moral depravity of Tiller’s actions, Roeder had no authority to execute him, and, as if that weren’t bad enough, the prudential calculations were very bad indeed. That Tiller’s clinic is now apparently closing is, of course, a reason for great gladness. But incidents like this do real damage to the pro-life cause, insofar as they paint pro-lifers as violent and crazed. Had Roeder killed the doctor of death on his way into the clinic to perform an actual abortion, that would have been somewhat less bad. But gunning him down in church, while Tiller was engaged in that sinister activity of ushering? Come on. That just looks like a terrible act of cowardice, and also allows the liberals to obscure the core issue. Countless ridiculous leftist editorials made it sound as though the shooting was evidence of the pro-life camp’s unwillingness to engage in civil conversation. But of course, Scott Roeder didn’t shoot George Tiller because he was upset about something Tiller had said. The deed was done (hopefully, if we give him the benefit of the doubt) in an effort to protect the innocent unborn children that he had excellent reason to believe Tiller would kill if he were to go on living. Conversation, civil or otherwise, had nothing to do with it. But that would have been more obvious to the people at large if the incident had happened at Tiller’s actual clinic, and not in his church.
All right. Having established those two points, I think we need to start with a working definition of ‘murder.’ And I think a reasonable Catholic definition would be: the direct, deliberate killing of an innocent. Including ‘direct’ in the definition allows for cases of double effect, wherein a death is an anticipated but not intended consequence. ‘Deliberate’ of course rules out cases of manslaughter or other accidental killing. But the most difficult word of this definition is the last: ‘innocent.’ Who qualifies as an innocent?
In one ridiculous op-ed article that I read shortly after the Tiller killing (sadly, I can’t seem to find it now or I’d include a link), it was pointed out that, for Christians, nobody is innocent because we’re all tainted with original sin (and even after we’ve been cleansed, we’re still burdened by the secondary effects of that sin.) Well, on one level that’s true… but if that were the operative understanding of “innocence” with respect to defining murder, then there’s only been one murder in the history of the human race. Not a terribly useful word in that case, is it? So presumably if the concept of murder is to have any use whatsoever in ordinary civil society, we’ll have to use a somewhat narrower conception of “innocence.”
I suggest the following criteria. First, in order for a killing not to be murder, the person killed must be guilty of an offense that warrants death. And second, that person’s guilt must be the killer’s motivation for their violent act.
What offenses warrant death? This is a fractious question that could be discussed almost endlessly. Can it ever be right to kill someone for sexual perversions? For blasphemy? For heresy? I’ll just cut all that short by saying that, in this case, we needn’t puzzle too hard. If any crime merits death, it is the shedding of innocent blood. And if anybody qualifies as innocent in the relevant sense, it’s surely an unborn baby, who has committed no personal sins at all. A man like George Tiller, who specialized in the killing of the unborn, clearly qualifies as guilty in the relevant sense. Tiller was not an innocent, and since Roeder seems clearly to have killed him because of his guilt, I’m inclined to say that Roeder’s crime was not murder.
There is a further distinction that I’d like to draw, which I do think affects the wrongness of unlawful killing, but I’m not sure if it’s properly integrated into the definition of murder. This is the difference between executing a guilty person as a punishment, and executing them because they’ve proven themselves to be highly dangerous and a threat to others. A person who is dangerous but not guilty (someone with an infectious disease, say) certainly qualifies as an innocent, and should not be killed. If a person is guilty (of a sufficiently grievous offense), both punishment and prevention are potentially adequate reasons for the state to perform an execution (though, as we’ve discussed on this blog before, some may question whether the modern state has the authority to execute as a punishment.) But for private citizens these two motives need to be carefully separated. A private individual or organization is never authorized to kill another for punishment or revenge. If that was Roeder’s intention, his action was particularly egregiously wrong. On the other hand, private individuals are sometimes justified in killing for the protection of others… though only under particular circumstances, which are not met in this case.
Regardless of his motivation, then, Roeder is in the wrong. But the question is: would he, in either case, be guilty of murder? Under the definition I’ve proposed, I’m inclined to say not. He is guilty of vigilantism, of performing an execution without the authority to do so. That makes him a criminal, but not a murderer per se.
I’m not deeply committed to this position, however. Others might want to tinker more with the definition of ‘murder.’ So, to further reflection on this point, let me pose the following cases:
1) When a lynch mob kills a man known to be guilty of, say, multiple rapes and murders, is that murder?
2) Suppose my uncle is a particularly vicious mob boss, responsible for multiple deaths. I have it on very good authority (from the lips of his underlings, say) that he is guilty, but neither I nor the police can build a case against him sufficient to get him convicted. Now I get word that he’s plotting a particularly dastardly job that will probably lead to the deaths of several innocent people. If I decide to kill him myself, in the interests of protecting their lives, am I a murderer? (Note that I certainly would be if I killed him for some less noble motive — because I wanted to take his place, say, or because I was likely to lose money through the job he was planning.)
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
May we apply a “rational person” standard here? Roeder’s action may be seen as imprudent because it will bring pro-lifers into ill repute and possibly cause greater govt. protection for abortion. Of course, the same was true of violent actions by Resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Europe. When two Czech soldiers assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, a prominent SS officer, their hometown was wiped out. Was Heydrich’s death worth it? For every German soldier killed by the Resistance in Poland, ten innocent Poles were killed. By the standards applied in the case of Roeder, Resistance killings could be seen as highly imprudent, and hence evil.
Of course, those Resistance fighters often claimed to be working for a legitimate government-in-exile. In the case of Roeder, the legitimate govt. is completely missing in action. Tiller was openly recognized as a murderer and officially permitted and protected in his operations. The Fourth of July approaches. The current American govt. endorses far worse moral evils than George III was ever accused of. IF the Ameican Revolution was just (and I am not saying that it was), THEN it would be moral to overthrow the current govt. If people in the United States were rational, they would regard Tiller’s death as a vigilante killing, not a murder, and they would see that the vigilantism was the direct result of a formalized, official, persistent dereliction on the part of the legitimate government officers. And, according to American political theory, such abuses constitute abdication — the legitimate govt. ceases to be legitimate. If the populace were moral and rational, they would rise up against such unjust laws (provided democratic means of correction failed). However, the people will not do this. Rather, they will treat Roeder as a villain. Now, we can all see the possible negative repercussions of such a killing. However, to the extent that it is imprudent, it is imprudent only because of the massive evil and irrationality of the American people, who support their pro-abortion government. The bishops should have said that, whatever problems there may be with Roeder’s killing of Tiller, far, far worse was the fact that the U.S. federal govt. and the State of Kansas refused to do to Tiller what Roeder did. That is the far greater sin.
As for Reformation Lutheran “Church,” I am at worst ambivalent about the appropriateness of the location of the killing. Once again, to most Americans it will look like poor form. Even in the case of heretical sects, most of us Catholics would wish for a sense of “sanctuary” to apply if only so that heretics would grant us similar privileges (which we, unlike them, actually deserve). But it actually serves the members of that church right to witness such a slaying. After all, they’re the ones who let such an unrepentant murderer attend, let alone function in some official capacity. He should have been excluded as an awful, unrepentant sinner — an excommunicant. The pastor should apologize to the congregation for adopting standards of membership more appropriate to a Satanic cult than to a Christian church. At the same time, he should rebuke the congregation for staying at such a sect as would permit Tiller to be a member. The only real victims there were the pre-rational children who witnessed the killing. Their parents are at fault for bringing them to such a “church.” Arguably, if the word “church” means anything in regard to such an heretical (they aren’t lying about being Luther’s heirs, at least), murder-endorsing sect, Roeder actually avenged the title. Given the likely reaction of the irrational American public, yes, the killing in the church may seem rather imprudent. But for us Catholics, it should seem rather fitting.
It’s rather poetic justice that “sanctuary” was not given to one who invaded the natural sanctuary of the mother’s womb to commit his countless murders. If there is one place where God meant a child to be safe and protected it is there. But sanctuary on all scores is something of the Christian past. Remember how in April of 2002 the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was surrounded and besieged by Israeli troops and sharpshooters who picked off those inside while the whole world silently watched for 5 weeks?
I’m not sympathetic to all the handwringing by a lot of pro lifers over the killing of Tiller as if that were on the same plane as murder by abortion. Certainly Tiller’s crimes were far worse and as Bonifacius points out, so likewise is the state’s dereliction in the matter of allowing the injustice of abortion.
Yet on the question of murder per se, Saint Thomas uses Saint Augustine to back his own case when he quotes from the City of God: “A man who, without exercising public authority, kills an evildoer, shall be judged guilty of murder, and all the more, since he has dared to usurp a power which God has not given him.” (Summa II-II Q. 64 Art. 3)
Later in Article 7 he states that self defense is legitimate and yet “it is not lawful” for a man to intend killing a man in self defense, except for one who has public authority and is working toward the public good.
I agree with much of what Discipulus has said. Perhaps one of the negative aspects of Roeder’s killing is the fact that he gave so many pro-lifers an opportunity for rather disgusting handwringing. One very prominent pro-life priest has actually said that Roeder proved himself “no better” than Tiller. I hardly see how that is the case. Even if it is conceded that Roeder is a murderer, there’s still no comparison, unless one wants to say that Roeder’s sin is greater because he brought discredit to the pro-life movement. That’s the only possible score on which Roeder’s action might possibly be seen as remotely approaching Tiller’s in terms of gravity. Yes, even the evil of murder can be aggravated or mitigated by different factors.
I too thought of the siege of the Church of the Nativity. If someone objects to the killing of Tiller in a church, they should also object to the U.S. cops or military ever entering a Church to kill or apprehend someone. (Still, the Palestinian terrorists/militants/whatever-they-were shouldn’t have seized control of the Church.)
I don’t see any problem with condemning vigilantism under normal circumstances. However, where do the theologians ever address what happens when the rule of law breaks down and the responsible authorities refuse on principle to do their God-given duty of protecting the public? For instance, in the Old West there simply were no lawmen around. Were they supposed to simply sit back and let themselves get murdered until the people back East sent someone? Here I think that we see democracy at work. When anarchy arises, order is often restored when some group of people agrees to someone’s rule or someone charismatically or forcefully asserts control. I cite the following instance of vigilante justice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy
From the sounds of it, McElroy posed a genuine threat to the life, limb, and property of the people of Skidmore, MO. Law enforcement had repeatedly failed to protect the people and there was reason to believe that, as a result of the sheriff’s refusal to take McElroy into custody, there was a serious risk of further violence. The citizens as a body, democratically, met to protect themselves. One man, possibly more, took it upon himself to shoot McElroy. When the cops returned to town, not one person agreed to identify the shooter. As a community, they democratically and retroactively validated the (initially) private death sentence. Arguably, that “private” vigilante killing was an act of the body politic of Skidmore, acting extra-constitutionally when the official law enforcement mechanism failed the citizenry.
Until theologians or the Magisterium address what happens in instances where and when government utterly fails the citizenry, I decline to write off vigilantism as a moral evil in and of itself. When there is a functioning legal system, even an imperfect one, yes, vigilantism is out. But when the legal system is utterly corrupt for the foreseeable future? Once again, perhaps I am driven here by the exempla of the American Revolution and the anti-Nazi Resistance movements. If we are to condemn anti-abortion vigilantism in the terms many pro-lifers use, it is hard to see how the British colonists were right in attacking and killing the King’s officers and declaring independence over — taxes? The nature of governmental representation? Boy, I wish those were our biggest problems. As for the Germans whom so many Americans criticize for “doing nothing,” they can all say, “What, were we supposed to blow up the euthanasia centers and shoot at the SS officers as they rounded people up?” Now, I am willing to say that the American Revolution was unjust and to say that much of the violence committed by the anti-Nazi Resistance was useless; for instance, as bad as the Ardeatine Massacre was, the anti-Nazi killing that prompted it was simple cold-blooded murder that violated the laws of war and achieved nothing. I just don’t think that many of the pro-lifers who condemn Roeder want to apply their standards objectively to those situations.
There is also the divide between the natural law and the legal tradition (which I paraphrase as, “better ten murderers go free than one go to jail”) that we have in this country. In times past, it could be fairly easy for a community to drive an unwanted individual out of town. Now, this is not the case. I sometimes wonder if the cop shows on TV really get this aspect of our culture right. In almost every cop show, there will be one or more episodes in which the prosecution cannot meet the required legal threshold to arrest or convict a child molestor/dope dealer/murderer/rapist/gang leader, etc. So the tough-guy cop character grabs the perp in an alleyway, puts a gun to his head, and vows to kill him if the perp doesn’t leave town/leave the victim alone/vanish, etc. Even in today’s very liberal, PC climate, the scene is written in such a way that we empathize with the cop and support, albeit with some misgivings, his decision to take matters into his own hands. An ex-cop I know says that he thinks that law and order in this country is maintained largely by vigilante cops who murder the truly sociopathic criminals that the legal system fails/refuses to deal with. For whatever that’s worth.
In short, nature abhors a vacuum. Vigilantism (unless the vigilantes win and set up their own govt., as has often happened) entails a serious risk of exacerbating anarchy. Yet most of the responses of theologians to the issue are phrased as, “Thou shalt not become a vigilante.” I’d also like to see them say, “Magistrates, thou shalt protect the citizen and avenge crimes. For if you do not, the blame falls largely on you when the citizens take matters into their own hands. Do not drive the citizens into desperation or revolution.”
When I was weighing the different factors in this killing, I wondered whether Roeder shot Tiller in the nave of the church or in the foyer. If he did this in the nave, there was a more serious risk of hurting/killing other people. Also, more bystanders would have to witness the shooting. Then I found out that Roeder shot Tiller in the foyer. As an usher, Tiller probably would have been standing there for at least part of the service or before it. So even for shooting a man in a church, Roeder did so in a manner that reduced the shock value of the killing.
This discussion of vigilantism is very interesting… I’m inclined to agree with Bonifacius that the question hasn’t been adequately addressed. Like many people, the first thing I thought of when this all came up for discussion was the people who tried to kill Hitler… whom we generally regard as heroes. That, though, is often bracketed as a special case because Hitler was a tyrannical leader and regicide, or tyrannicide, is discussed by the medieval doctors as a special sort of case, and occasionally justified. (I think the basic idea being that the power has been unjustly usurped, so killing the tyrant opens the way for it to be restored to the proper channels.)
Okay, so maybe that’s special. But what if I, an ordinary German living in a small German town at the time of WWII, were to take it upon myself to assassinate the ruthless administrator of the local death camp (leading to at least a temporary break in the massacres there, and possibly even giving some of the prisoners a chance to use the confusion to escape.) That doesn’t seem to pass muster by St. Thomas’ standards (after all, the death camp administrator is not a king), but it’s hard to fault it. The existing government was manifestly evil, and, as Bonifacius points out, we DO often blame ordinary Germans for “standing by” while horrible atrocities were committed in their country. What exactly do we think they should have done, if vigilantism is such a crime?
So anyway. I don’t have an answer to that question. But I still stand by my claim that killing Tiller in church was a bad decision. Maybe he didn’t “deserve” to have sanctuary, but it’s important to visibly hold higher standards than your depraved enemies in cases like this. And what really gets me about this is that Roeder evidently chose that location, of all possible locations, for the killing. That doesn’t seem right. If you’re going to kill him, do it as he’s entering his clinic one day, or while he’s leaving. Do it while he’s off to give a presentation to potential sponsors of his clinic. That would be more like meeting the foe “on the battlefield”, driving home the message that it was done in order to stop Tiller’s evil actions. Choosing a place where he 1) won’t be expecting it and has reason to feel safe, and 2) is not functioning in any way in his capacity as abortionist, just confuses the issue, and also looks cowardly.
To tell the truth, I actually don’t think cops should arrest people in church, unless the circumstances render it very necessary. If you have reason to believe that the person in question is armed and dangerous such that they need to be apprehended as quickly as possible, or if church is for some reason the only place you can reliably find them (say, the criminal is a cleric and is in church much of the time), then okay. But if you have some choice about where and when to arrest, say, a white-collar criminal, or someone who almost certainly isn’t going to be hurting anyone in the 2 hours between the beginning of church and arriving back home… wait until they get home. Tiller was a murderer, but he wasn’t going to be murdering anyone while at church. Also, you have to take into account (in pragmatic calculations) that the media isn’t going to give the pro-life movement any quarter — they will always put the worst possible spin on things. Killing him in the foyer instead of the nave may diminish the shock value for the people there present, but it’s not going to be reported that way by the American media.
I also was bugged by the talk of the pro-life people in the wake of the shooting. I mean, I understand why they felt they had to do it, but it just seemed ridiculous, reading all these comparisons of Roeder’s crime with Tiller’s many crimes as though they were somehow equivalent. The two just don’t begin to compare. Meanwhile, the lefties kept quoting Randall Terry as though he were some kind of crazed radical saying ridiculous things, and every quote I read from him on the subject seemed perfectly sensible and fair. Then you have people like Mark Shea, who do make some noise about the gravity of Tiller’s crimes, but then end with a quote about how violence never solves any problems. Except… it manifestly does. Just ask the citizens of Skidmore, MO.
Perhaps I should add this. Bonifacius and Discipulus are inclined to like the choice of the church for the shooting because it seems like “poetic justice” or something like that. But in all events, it was not Roeder’s place to deliver that kind of justice. He was just a random outsider who was upset about abortion — rightfully upset, but still, you can’t take it upon yourself as an ordinary person to give people their “just deserts.” At best, you can take it upon yourself to protect the innocent even in defiance of the law. But that didn’t require something so dramatic as gunning a man down in church.
I won’t write off vigilantism either, short of maiming and killing. Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas were addressing the question of murder in the quote above and I agree. God is jealous of His power over life and death. Between praying the rosary outside an abortuary (highly to be recommended) and killing the abortionist (something we agree should not be done) there is a lot that can be done. In Gethsemane Our Lord told Peter to put his sword back into its scabbard but that did not mean the only alternative was to flee, which is what most pro-lifers have done—some quoting scripture, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Operation rescue had a lot going for it and was becoming somewhat effective but could not get the “critical mass” needed to carry the day. The fines and punishment in response to the civil disobedience were getting too harsh for the average person with families and other responsibilities to cope with.
You had to admire Fr. Weslin’s and his followers called the Lambs for their worthy approach. They gave away all they owned so that they couldn’t be sued or fined and then rushed the doors of abortion mills when they first opened in the morning, smashing the killing machines.
In New York a Vietnam vet familiar with explosives was blowing up abortion mills at night when no one was around to get hurt. I could not understand why Cardinal O’Connor made a plea for him to give himself up—maybe stop but why should he turn himself in? Was it to make restitution to Planned Parenthood?
I’ve heard stories of vigilantism in ethnic neighbors of big cities and how safe it is for women and children to walk home even in the dark. Law and order is taken care of “in house,” and there is no need to bring in the police. Obviously there has to be limits but if laws are for the common good and we are a democracy why can’t people in a neighborhood be on the lookout for each other, like an extended family?
Solzhenitsyn said, “And that if people had been heroic in exercising their civil responsibilities, there would never have been any reason to write either this chapter (2) or this book.”
Ann Coulter on The O’Reilly Factor (Fox News)speaking of the death of Dr. Tiller:
“I don’t really like to think of it as a murder. It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester.”
When pressed by O’Reilly on this statement, Coulter replied,
“I am personally opposed to shooting abortionists, but I don’t want to impose my moral values on others.”
Very good, James. Thanks.
I start off by saying that in this post I am not concerned with the question of whether it was just to kill Tiller or for Roeder to do it. I am concerned only with the rationale for shooting him at the church. Let us suppose that Roeder reasoned that Tiller was going to perform abortions on Monday. This seems to be a perfectly reasonable presupposition. Let us say that Roeder reasoned that nothing short of killing Tiller would prevent him from performing abortions again, sooner or later. This seems reasonable, as Tiller had been wounded by a shooter in the past only to return to performing abortions. Now, without saying that killing Tiller was just or not, one might say that it would be best to kill Tiller when he was at a location associated with his crimes. However, these places are heavily fortified and protected. It would be very, very difficult to kill the guy there. So that was not an option. Should Roeder have killed him at his house? Once again, this would be very difficult and there was the risk that others might be hurt. Stalk him? Difficult. The church was the one place where Tiller 1.) would be unprotected, and 2.) very likely to appear. I cannot see how this is cowardly or unmanly. If your motive is to kill the enemy (which in this case I am not arguing is just), then you pick the most opportune circumstances under which to do it. The church was literally the best place to catch him unawares. Should he have been caught unawares? Once again, I don’t see why we should import any spurious notion of pseudo-gallantry into this discussion. In war, you try to catch the enemy unawares and you shoot him in the back if he turns tail (I once read of a military study that showed that armies lose the largest number of soldiers when they’re retreating — they’re shot in the back). If you are in the right and your enemy is in the wrong, he does not deserve the benefit of a “fair fight.” It would be potentially suicidal, deliberately counter-productive, and positively unjust to give him any real advantages (which is part of the reason why duelling is stupid and immoral — if the guy who delivered the insult deserves to die, he should simply be killed, not given the opportunity to kill the person he has offended). So, tactically speaking, if Tiller should have been shot, the church was the place to do it.
Now, regardless of whether Tiller deserved to be shot or he deserved to be shot by Roeder, some will object that Roeder should have refrained from shooting him at a church. At the *very* least, I think that there are multiple factors that mitigate the sense of outrage that normally would attach itself to someone — anyone — being killed in a church. I have mentioned some of these reasons above.
1.) This was a Lutheran heretical sect. For reasons I’ve mentioned above, I do not regard this as a very large mitigating factor. The place was, at least ostensibly, devoted to worship of the Christian God. But let’s acknowledge that this is still objectively less egregious than killing someone in a temple of the true Faith.
2.) This particular sect corrupted not only the truths of revelation but also defied the natural law. They knowingly harbored and even honored this gruesome murderer in their midst. We know from the Old Testament how much God hates the worship of Moloch, and in tolerating Tiller the leaders and members of this church rendered themselves complicit with his crimes, and/or indifferent to them. From what I have read on the internet, no one at the church was shocked to learn that Tiller belonged to their church or to learn what he did. They should consider the shooting a wake-up call from God and not pretend that such chastisement was not coming.
3.) Now #2 doesn’t mean that Roeder should have done what he did. God often uses the sinful behavior of person A to chastise person B. However, presumably this wasn’t a case of a Babylonian idolator desecrating the Temple to punish the idolatrous Jews. Let’s say that Roeder is a Christian — something I actually don’t know. He might have reasoned that this church wasn’t worthy of the name. It is not at all as though Tiller was a guy who anonymously attended a Catholic Church, although the Church formally disapproved of his actions. He was fostered and promoted by the church, which belongs to the ELCA. This sect, when you scrub away all of the wishy-washy language, is officially pro-choice. Beyond the poetic and divine justice, which I think is undeniable, I think that there is reason for us at least to take less umbrage at the fact that the shooting occurred at this particular church. For Roeder’s own soul’s sake, I hope that he considered whether an ostensibly Christian place of worship was a fitting scene for such a killing and then decided that “Reformation Lutheran Church” simply wasn’t the sort of place or community that deserved the usual right of sanctuary.
4.) It could be objected that Tiller should have been killed while he was preparing for his act of murder. However, if he was shot while walking into the abortuary, I bet many of the same people would complain that he wasn’t given an opportunity to repent of his deed. Well, he was shot as he was walking into a church. If there’s anything to be said for the religious value of such a sect, then Tiller was killed while he was preparing for worship; if his soul wasn’t properly prepared at that moment, when was it supposed to be? (Here I am thinking of Hamlet’s decision not to kill Claudius in the church because he might die repentant.) Tiller was sent to his Maker as he was, presuming the best about him, preparing for Sunday worship. If we’re going to be charitable to Tiller and his Lutheran congregation, this was when his soul was best prepared. If we’re going to be invidious toward Tiller, then he was killed right before he was about to compound his murders with something *worse* than murder — lack of repentance and blasphemous and insincere “worship” (or show of worship) of God. In that case, Tiller really was killed just before he was about to commit a very grave sin indeed. Or, if we’re just going to write off this ELCA congregation as an evil conventicle of perdition, then it wasn’t really a sanctuary or act of worshipo deserving of respect. In that case, there was no sacrilege.
So, in conclusion, even if the killing of Tiller was a murder and its objective sinfulness was compounded by the location of the shooting, I think that there are factors that, to some extent at least, mitigate the gravity of the purported sacrilege.
It might also be objected that Tiller was not given due notice. Above, I compared Roeder’s tactics to those used in warfare. Of course, wars are generally supposed to be declared so that enemy troops know that there is a war on. Tiller knew that he was a target — he has been shot before and his abortuary is probably quite well-fortified. Pro-lifers (whose actions I am not judging to be either moral or prudent) have shown up in his church and denounced him during the course of a church service at the time of communion. So he apparently was aware that his enemies/opponents (I use the word in a neutral sense) were able to enter the church building during service times. Perhaps he presumed that pro-life vigilantes would not use violence within a church, but I find such a presumption at the very least incompatible with the sort of extreme rhetoric that pro-choicers use to characterize pro-lifers.
N.B.: For the most part, I have restricted myself to dismissing what I regard as bad reasons to object to the killing. That is different from saying that the act was actually justified.
I note your arguments, but my main concern was for the prudential aspect. That is, you should know that a case like this will become very high profile throughout the nation, and shooting people in church is particularly offensive to people’s sensibilities. As, really, it should be; we can’t expect most of the population to draw all the fine distinctions that you drew.
As for the “must kill him now because he’ll probably perform more abortions tomorrow” argument… I don’t actually know, of course, but I would expect that the deed had been planned for quite some time. In which case he selected this location in particular. Maybe there really wasn’t any other in which Tiller could be caught by himself, but somehow that seems unlikely to me. But really I don’t know exactly why Roeder picked the church.
The military analogies are some help here, but it’s a bit different because, as you say, this is not a recognized “war.” Yes, Tiller knew that he was a target in a very general sense, and that a lot of people hated him. That’s not the same as volunteering (or at least agreeing) to be a combatant per se. This was less like the hunting of an enemy soldier, and more like the execution of a criminal. A soldier need not be given warning when he is about to be killed, but that’s partly because it’s his *job* to be prepared for that at all times. It’s his fault (or the fault of his superiors or the men who are supposed to be watching out for him) if he’s taken unawares. Shooting someone unawares when they have no reason to expect the assault or be prepared for it is a different thing.
According to recent article in the Associated Press, “Dr.” Warren Hern is one of the few remaining abortionists in the country who performs late term abortions. In an interview after Tiller’s death, he claimed to have been receiving death threats since he opened his first abortion mill in 1973 and so he works “behind four layers of bullet proof glass.” “I’ll never be safe for the rest of my life,” Hern said. “No matter what I do. Even if I close my office….”
Tiller also knew he was a target at all times. His office was bombed in 1986. In 1993 he was shot in both arms. And when he was shot and killed passing out bulletins, he was wearing a bullet proof vest.
I’ve read a number of comments on articles about Tiller being shot in church and quite a few are amazed that a church would welcome a man who killed 60,000 babies. Someone pointed out that he was killing only deformed babies as if being prejudiced against the handicapped is acceptable. A few wondered how he could be honored with the position of usher. “Didn’t these people ever read the bible?” said one. The general tenor is that this church isn’t much of a church and that Tiller lived by the sword and so died by the sword. Sounds like another example of poetic justice.
There’s a difference between knowing that some people want to kill you, and being a voluntary combatant, i.e. someone whose proper function entails avoiding being killed by the enemy. An abortionist, of course, doesn’t have a proper function. But the fact remains that you can’t apply the same rules to civilians that would apply to soldiers, even when the civilians happen to be aware that they are potentially being targeted.
And again, I can concede that there’s a measure of poetic justice to Roeder’s action while still insisting that he shouldn’t have done it, and particularly shouldn’t have done it there. Yes, some people ask questions about what kind of church it must have been where a late-term abortionist could serve as an usher. I don’t disagree with them. But the great majority of Americans are mainly just going to recoil in horror that the deed would be done in church of all places, and while he was volunteering his services as an usher. Apart from the appearance of sacrilege, it just seems like such a nice thing to be doing, one that most emphasizes his being a good-hearted, genial sort of guy. Just like if Roeder had shot Tiller while he was working in a soup kitchen, or working a booth at the Fun Fair of the local elementary school. On first glance, it really makes it look like Tiller is the good guy and Roeder the bad one. And most people won’t look too much harder than that. Certainly the mainstream media isn’t going to.
Now, of course I agree with you that the “oh, but many of the babies were deformed or handicapped” line is disgusting. I find the desire to abort somewhat understandable in the case of babies with anencephaly, or other conditions that make it highly unlikely that the child will survive birth, and impossible that it will live much beyond. Mind you, I still don’t think late term abortion is justified… but the desire is understandable. But of course, the clinic was by no means limited to cases that extreme. Babies with Down Syndrome, paraplegics, children with spina bifada, etc., were no doubt also deemed too handicapped to live. Now, can you imagine offering that as an excuse for, say, a gunman who burst into a classroom full of children and started shooting? “Well, it was the special needs class, so actually he was doing the world a favor.” Just sickening that people would even think to say such things.
I check in to your excellent site rather often, but have never posted. Regarding this particular article on the death of Doctor Tiller, I wanted to share this quote with you:
“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”
Clarence Darrow