Justice Brandeis warned: “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding” (Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438). The Casey administration reviles abortion but it sanctions the application of capital punishment for capital crimes. On the surface, it seems well meaning but it is ill-informed of the moral incompatibility which these two viewpoints present. How can one be “pro-life” and argue in favor of capital punishment simultaneously?
If Governor Casey really appreciated the true meaning of his “pro-life” philosophy, then as a minister of his faith he must know that life in all its forms is sacred -- of itself, by itself and for itself; it is no tangible thing. To destroy life would “...reduce it to pious irreverence and remove it from effective influence on the mores of the people” (John A. Hardon, S.J.) which Governor Casey is succeeding in doing.
It might be said that Henry P. Fahy deserves death. But I’d like to think of the United States as being a more enlightened society for its “love” of life, liberty and perpetual pursuit of happiness. Thus I find the commonwealth’s response to Fahy’s atrocity to be just as emblematic of the completest system of bureaucratic hypocrisy that ever God in his displeasure allowed to be created by a froward, stubborn and morally inept generation.
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