Sanctity of Life postcard campaign underway

Friday, Jan. 13, 2017

SALT LAKE CITY — If all goes as planned, Utah legislators will receive 10,000 postcards from Catholic constituents, asking them to oppose legalizing assisted suicide and support repealing the death penalty in the state.  

Both of these issues are addressed in Catholic social teaching, which states that every human life is sacred from conception to natural death. 

This year will be the third time the Utah Legislature has considered assisted suicide legislation, and the second attempt at repealing capital punishment. Combining the two issues in the postcard campaign “helps us present very clearly the Catholic position on life issues, which is that all life has dignity, all life deserves protection and we should not be encouraging intentional killing of anyone, including those who are on death row and those who are terminally ill,” said Jean Hill, government liaison for the Diocese of Salt Lake City.

Hill has distributed the Sanctity of Life postcards to parishes throughout the diocese, and is asking Catholics to fill them out while at Mass the weekend of Jan. 14-15 or Jan. 21-22. Pastors are asked to collect the postcards and return them to Hill the following week.

 “The idea behind the postcard campaign is to let legislators know that there is a Catholic voice in Utah, and we want to make it very easy for Catholics to raise that voice by sending out these postcards to the parishes,” said Hill, who plans to present the postcards to legislators in early February and tell them, “This is how your constituents feel about these two very important life issues.”

The postcards will be a “tangible, visual message that we can put directly into their hands during the session,” she said. “They won’t be able to ignore it because it’s right there in their hands.”

Some parishes have social justice committees that will incorporate the postcard campaign in their ministry. For example, the Social Justice Team at St. Catherine of Siena Newman Center in Salt Lake City will encourage parishioners to sign the postcards after the Masses, said Cate Adams, one of the team leaders.

Because statistics show that many Catholics in Utah are in favor of the death penalty, the campaign is an opportunity to explain Church teaching on the issue and explain facts, such as that people who are poor and of color receive the death penalty at a much higher rate than those who are well-off and white, Adams said. 

At Saint Joseph the Worker Parish in West Jordan, the Peace and Justice Commission will encourage parishioners “to write letters, make phone calls, attend meetings, hearings, and visit our elected officials on these and many other important social justice issues,” said Tim Cosgrove, who heads the commission. “As Catholics we have a moral obligation to become educated on those issues of social injustice, and speak up and let our elected leaders know that we have a voice and that we want and expect to be heard, listened to and represented on those very important issues.”

If postcards are not available at the parish, they can be downloaded at http://www.dioslc.org/ministries/governmentliaison and send it to the Diocese of Salt Lake City, Attn: Jean Hill, 27 C St., SLC, UT 84103, by Jan. 27.