Good for him!

Pontiff Lauds Efforts to End Death Penalty: Notes Human Dignity of Prisoners

Despite the horrific things some of the people who have been given death sentences have done, I remain pro-life, and to me that means these people too. I certainly don't have the right to take their lives from them, nor should a government or anyone else...

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On this date,

in 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in Boston.

The Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti

Sacco-Vanzetti Case

The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti

"In 1921, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, both Italian-Americans, were convicted of robbery and murder. Although the arguments brought against them were mostly disproven in court, the fact that the two men were known radicals (and that their trial took place during the height of the Red Scare) prejudiced the judge and jury against them. On April 9, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti's final appeal was rejected, and the two were sentenced to death. Felix Frankfurter, then a professor at Harvard Law School, was considered to be the most prominent and respectable critic of the trial. He was appointed to the Supreme Court by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939"

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Interestingly,

in the Catholic Church most religious conservatives are also political and social conservatives.

Tweeting about an Execution

Still, the same people who tell us that the Catholic Church is right in all things and must be followed to the letter for salvation will, as political and social conservatives, tell us exactly where the Catholic Church is wrong in both the Catechism and Encyclicals.

It's a very odd form of schizophrenia that they just can't see...

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I like this bishop

Bishop Reflects on Death Penalty Following Execution

And I feel sorrow for what we all do to each other, both as individuals and as 'the State'...

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It's all part

of the political game, but it sounds like a good thing to try...

Doctors' role in executions part of new tactic against death penalty

Good for them!

In 1831, on this date

Nat Turner was executed

Nat Turner - Wikipedia

Today in history

A woman, Mary Surratt, was arrested as a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination. She was the first woman put to death by the United States Government. (Well, not counting all the Native American women killed while the U.S. troops were eradicating them from the land, but the first woman to be punished by capital punishment through a court of law, anyway...)

"Because she and several other of the conspirators were Roman Catholics, there was speculation that the assassination was somehow connected to a papal plot. There was still fairly rampant anti-Catholic sentiment in the country at that time. "

Of course. And just in time for the Pope's visit. Have Americans always been this paranoid?

Blessings on him

New Jersey governor signs law ending death penalty

This really IS pro-life!

Mother's intervention wins life without parole, not death penalty, for daughter's murderer

What a difficult and courageous thing to do.

If they can't get anyone else to do it...

...the lack of people to perform the act of killing may actually halt executions.

Executions halted as doctors balk

Unless, of course, the hard-nosed Governors do it themselves.

And people still support the death penalty?

Catholic wrongly convicted seeks end to death penalty

I suppose their argument would be that it's better to have a few dead innocent people that live killers. Unless you're that wrongly convicted innocent person. How can people support the death penalty?

Great quotation

"God never asks his people to have faith the size of a mountain, Mr. Bloodsworth said, he just asks to have faith the size of mustard seed to 'move that mountain.' "

Saddam's Sentence

Top Vatican official condemns Saddam's death penalty

Sadly, all the Catholic hawks will be using all the casuistry at their command to dissent from the Pope's position on this. Personally, I believe Saddam did commit crimes and should be punished but I also believe that no one has the right to play God in taking away his life. I wonder why there wasn't the same outcry by the political right over some other dictators who commited crimes/atrocities then, like the following ones who were trained at the center formally known as the 'School of the Americas':

General Leopoldo Galtieri, (Argentina)
General Juan Melgar Castro, (Honduras)
General Efrain Ríos Montt, (Guatemala)
General Manuel Noriega, (Panama)
General Policarpo Paz García, (Honduras)
General Guillermo Rodriguez, (Ecuador)
General Hugo Banzer Suárez, (Bolivia)
General Omar Torrijos, (Panama)
General Juan Velasco Alvarado, (Peru)
General Roberto Viola, (Argentina)
General Guido Vildoso Calderón, (Bolivia)

Military dictators who were 'friends' of the United States government.