“I do not believe those executions made us safer. Certainly I don’t believe they made us nobler as a society. And I simply cannot participate once again in something I believe to be morally wrong.”
— Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, who on Nov. 22 placed a moratorium on the use of the death penalty for the rest of his term, while stating his regrets for allowing two men to be executed during his first time in office in the 1990s
“We understand the desire to protect the minds of young people but why include the name of Christ? What is obscene? Banning it is a violation of our right to evangelize and hurts the feelings of Christians.”
— Father Nadeem John Shakir of the Pakistani bishops’ conference, objecting to a proposal by a Pakistani telecom agency to ban the name Jesus Christ in text messages on mobile phones among other words the agency declares “obscene”
“Empathy, alone, does not help the poor. We need a firm societal commitment to action — a grass-roots movement that begins with individuals, and then expands to family, community and government.”
— New Jersey’s bishops, in a Nov. 21 statement on the growing rate of poverty
