Photos from Execution Vigil – Feb 16, 2010

Opposing February Execution

We will be publicly opposing Florida’s execution of Martin Grossman on Tuesday, February 16th.

We are ever mindful of the unimaginable pain and suffering which the family and friends of the Margaret Park continue to endure.

As Catholics and as citizens of this state, we voice our unequivocal opposition to the practice of State sponsored killing.

Florida’s Catholic Bishops have concurred that the death penalty has been discriminatory toward the poor, the indigent and racial minorities. In their position statement released in January 2002, they stated,
“Capital punishment contributes to the escalating atmosphere of violence in our society and undermines belief of the inherent worth and dignity of human life.”

This is a Pro-Life event.  Please join us.

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
5:45 – 6:15pm (the execution is scheduled for 6pm)

St. Ignatius Loyola Cathedral (9500 N. Military Trail, Palm Beach Gardens)

For more information, contact Beth Cioffoletti, 561-267-7288 Email: shoofoolatte@gmail.com

(signs will be provided)

etc

How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder…. But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?
~ Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845

There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used…. Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed.
~Gil Bailie

etc

American preachers have a task more difficult, perhaps, than those faced by us under South Africa’s apartheid, or Christians under Communism.

We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white and blue myth. You have to expose, and confront, the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion and caring of most American people, and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly and indirectly, by the poor of the earth.

You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them. This is not easy among people who really believe that their country does nothing but good, but it is necessary, not only for their future, but for us all.

~Peter Storey, former president of the Methodist Church of South Africa

A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men’s (other’s) lives should not stake their own.  ~ H.G. Wells

The soul of our country needs to be awakened . . .When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders.  ~Veterans Fast for Life

If we work in marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds and instill into them just principles, we are then engraving upon tablets which no time will efface, but will brighten and brighten to all eternity.  ~Daniel Webster

It is not the critic who counts: not the man (or woman) who points out how the strong man (person) stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man (or woman) who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself (herself) for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he (she) fails, at least he (or she) fails while daring greatly, so that his (her) place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat  ~ Theodore Roosevelt. “Citizenship in a Republic,” Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

We’re not a democracy. It’s a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we’re a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.  ~Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General

Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy. ~John Pierpont Morgan

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.  ~Thomas Jefferson

If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.
~ Robert Frost

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.   ~ Samuel P. Huntington