Terror strikes in the US

This morning, on his way into church, Dr. George Tiller was murdered. A doctor who was one of the few in the country to perform legal abortions in later months, he has been repeatedly targeted. Regardless of what your beliefs are in regards to abortion, surely anyone who values life will condemn this murder.

I lived in Boston during the Planned Parenthood clinic shootings in 1994, and I remember the anguish and pain of our community as we struggled to come to grips with what it meant to be Roman Catholic and opposed to abortion when a so-called "pro-life" person had just killed two people, and viciously wounded several others. One of the responses that emerged in the aftermath in Boston is the powerful work of the Public Conversations Project.

I confess to feeling (hoping? wishing?) that our country had moved beyond that kind of horrible violence, but clearly we have not. I am praying for Dr. Tiller's family, I am praying for the people who murdered him, and perhaps even more I am praying that those people who stoke this kind of violent rage will reconsider what they are doing.