This is just the type of thing I was afraid I’d see following Geoghan’s death. In this letter to the editor, the writer says that Geoghan’s death was “prison justice” and that it may have been God’s will that he be strangled to death by a homicidal maniac.
If it had been anyone else other than John Geoghan, do you think the Boston Globe wold have printed a letter that called the jailhouse murder of a homosexual the will of God?
And since when does Massachusetts have the death penalty? Since when do we let other inmates be judge, jury, and executioner?
I had no love for Geoghan, apart from the love of a Christian for a fallen away brother, and what he did to children nauseates me even now. But to sit back with a self-satisfied smile at his brutal murder is just more evidence that our culture is no less barbaric and prone to sin and no more progressive and advanced than any that has come before it, at least in this respect.
Ephesians 4:31-32 “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
I guess the difference is that those who recognize in themselves the sins that have been forgiven should not be so quick to demand the wrath of God upon other sinners. I think that’s a lesson I am re-learning now. And that I must constantly re-learn.
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Acts 11:7-9.
7. And I heard a voice saying to me, `Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’ 8. But I said, `No, Lord; for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ 9. But the voice answered a second time from heaven, `What God has cleansed you must not call common.’
Who are we to judge the relationship Geoghan had with the Lord at the time of his death. Let us pray for him.
Perhaps, many should remember the words of St. Maria Goretti as she lay dying. Referring to her murderer she (only 11 years old) said:
“Yes, I forgive him and want him to be in Paradise with me some day.”
31 years later, after living for some years with the Capuchins (there they are again), Alessandro visited Maria’s mother. Assunta Goretti said:
“Alessandro, Marietta forgave you, Christ has forgiven you, and why should I not also forgive. I forgive you, of course, my son! Why have I not seen you sooner? Your evil days are past, and to me, you are a long-suffering son.” (DiDonato, p. 142)
Saint Maria Goretti, Patroness of the Abused, and Raped, pray that all may be give the Grace to forgive, as both you and our Lord did, as you lay dying.
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Geoghan is an acknowledged homosexual, which was known prior to his conviction and now by all the journalists and government officials. It’s just that it wasn’t P.C. to refer to him as a homosexual then because it brought up all kinds of uncomfortable questions. I don’t know what your other statements after the first sentence have to do with whether he was gay or not. I think that his being gay was a pathology that can be traced to his acts against pre- and post-pubescent children.
And my publications will report the results of whatever the investigations find. We always do. Are you suggesting that we slant our news reporting like the Globe?
We already have. Look in the Off the Record blog on our Catholic World News web site. Or read any of the editorials about the Scandal that we’ve written in Catholic World Report magazine.
If you think we only publish within a safe circle, then you either haven’t been reading closely or have a strange definition of safe.
I just noticed femalewithcommonsense’s comment.
I’m not equating Geoghan with Maria Goretti.
I’m equating him with her murderer.
I equate the victims and their relatives with Maria and Momma Goretti.
They were able to forgive as Christ forgave.
Maria forgave the unrepentant Alessandro.
I do not equate Geoghan with Maria Goretti and his murderer with Alessandro.
My apologies with the confusion.,