What terrible bargain it turns out to be if personal criminal liability is achieved at the cost of Church responsibility. Especially, at the cost of sustaining moral authority and financial stability necessary for continual apostolate and visibility of the only true Church - Mystical Body of Christ.
Collective culpability for individual crime derives from misunderstanding of the requisites of justice. Collective crime can not be committed by an individual, a random group, or a collectivity understood as the mere sum of its members. It presupposes the collective intention to commit a particular type of crime:
1. collective awareness about the nature of the intended crime,
2. organized effort to realize the intention (to perform the chosen action),
3. and collective awareness about its consequences.
Thereby construction of collective crime unfolds in three stages, which, taken together, form a peculiar implicit pact between the regime and its subjects.
[1]Today, the concept of collective responsibility is present in the minds of heretic Churchmen who want to apply neo-Mosaistic practices in the Church. In the Old Testament there are records with interpretations of collective responsibility, including culpability of innocent people (i.e. children). Thereafter, the New Testament fulfills the Old forming the Christian civilization based build on Greek philosophy and Latin law with the concept of individual responsibility, which the Church law has also adopted. Therefore in western law should apply the principle of individual responsibility for crime. Following are few examples how collective responsibility as a sign of authoritarian tendencies in societies was and is used to enforce collective punishment.
1. During authoritarian communist rule in the Soviet Gulags, all members of work units were punished for bad performance of any of its members.
2. During World War II the Germans occupying Poland applied collective responsibility for help given to persons of Jewish faith or origin punishable by death (not only for the rescuer but also for his/her family). Moreover, for every German killed by a Pole, 100-400 Poles were shot in retribution. Communities were held collectively responsible for the purported Polish counter-attacks against the invading German troops. Mass executions of "łapanka" hostages were conducted every single day during the Wehrmacht advance across Poland in September 1939 and thereafter.
3. In global business corporate enslavement where the entire workforce is held responsible for failure to achieve corporate targets whatever performance of individual.
4. In political economy as in the case of sanctions against Russia. Guilt of association with government members punishes individual citizens in countries targeted by sanctions.The notion of collective culpability denies individual moral responsibility and free will. It is most disturbing if Churchmen lack understanding of the requisites of justice which in turn makes feasible the process of the terrible destructive consequences against the Church - Mystical Body of Christ - negatively impacting its earthly visibilty.
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