President welcomes pope; other U.S. actions send a different signal

Published: 2008-04-18

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The official words from the U.S. president to the pope were an interesting contrast to simultaneous actions being taken by two arms of the U.S. government April 16. As President George W. Bush was telling Pope Benedict XVI on the South Lawn at the White House that the United States is "a nation of compassion," the U.S. Supreme Court, with a majority of its justices who are Catholics, was upholding the constitutionality of a form of capital punishment that the church opposes in nearly all circumstances. In a splintered ruling, six justices wrote separate opinions that, added together, constituted a 7-2 majority upholding the legality of lethal injection. In another ironic bit of timing, immigration agents in several states were conducting raids of workplaces where largely Hispanic immigrants work, while back at the White House April 16 Bush was telling the pope at the official welcoming ceremony for him that "Americans believe that the measure of a free society is how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable among us." At that hour in half a dozen states, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were processing hundreds of workers, suspected of being in the country illegally, detained that morning at poultry processing plants, a doughnut factory and a chain of Mexican restaurants.

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