Executions rising; Catholic opposition grows

Inmates in six states put to death despite pleas for clemency.

Washington (July, 20, 1999 Catholic News Service)  -- As the number of executions in the United States continued to rise at a record pace, Catholic leaders around the country raised their voices against the death penalty.

     Despite Catholic pleas for clemency, inmates in Missouri, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Alabama, Arizona and Florida were put to death in late June or early July, bringing to 58 the number of people executed in 1999 and to 558 the number killed since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.
     The 1999 total seemed likely to exceed the previous record of 74 executions in 1997.
Will our citizenry be any safer, will our state be any better protected, if we execute these men? The Catholic bishops of Florida asked Governor Jeb Bush before the July 8 execution of Allen Lee Davis and the scheduled execution of Thomas Provenzano, which was later postponed to September 14.
     "Will not the safety of persons and the preservation of public order be as secure if instead you commute these sentences to lifelong confinement? they added.
     Urging a review "of the entire question of the death penalty," the Florida bishops said the "recurring question of innocence (of the executed, the exorbitant cost, the inconsistency in sentencing, and the capriciousness of who is executed, each calls for re-examination."
 

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Life issues are all over the public media... 
The need to read these signs of our times with a Faith perspective is essential.

The sentencing of Timothy MacVeigh for his part in the Oklahoma federal building bombing is current headline news.

"When will we ever learn? Hatred begets hatred, violence begets violence." Cardinal John J. O'Connor, New York City.

The pursuit of legislation to protect "assisted suicide" grows and spreads throughout our country.

The push for assisted suicide arises from a failure of the medical profession to provide adequate pain relief and to deal with the fears of the terminally ill, according to Dr. Herber Hendin, medical director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. He addressed legislators and lobbyists from 21 states at a July 25-26 conference in Washington sponsored by the National Right to Life Committee.

Hendin said: "Unless we are in the forefront of those seeing that patients get what they need, we will fail" in the assisted-suicide debate. "I don't think you can win just by putting forth the right to life." Hendin also said that by declaring that terminally ill patients have a right not to suffer, the Supreme Court's recent decisions have already made "a substantial contribution to the practice of medicine in the care of patients at the end of life."