I know today is a day for foolery, but last night a man was executed by the state who was a child of God in the church. Spare a moment to hear his experience of the liturgy.
God was the only father Josh Bishop ever knew, and that knowledge came only after a childhood of violence and drug abuse led him to death row. On one hand, his experience of family:
According to family members, Bishop was steeped in violence, alcoholism and drug addiction from the day he was born.
When Leverett and Wills were murdered, Bishop had been living under a bridge with his mother, an alcoholic and drug addict who sometimes prostituted herself. She was heard telling her son that men show their love with punches, slaps and verbal assaults. She knew a man loved her, she told her son, if he beat her.
The details of Bishop’s life reside in written statements, used in his appeals, from almost four dozen people, including some from Morrison’s family. They described lives controlled by alcohol, drugs and physical and verbal abuse….
Raised in a world where violence and substance abuse were the only forms of communication and comfort he knew, Josh never had a chance to learn healthier ways to cope or connect. His mother’s skewed view of love and survival was passed down like a curse, anchoring him in a cycle of dysfunction that ultimately led to catastrophic consequences.
For individuals who have been shaped by such deeply rooted pain, healing requires more than punishment—it demands compassion, structure, and the opportunity to rewrite their narrative. A Vista CA drug treatment program that addresses both addiction and underlying trauma is critical in breaking that cycle. With the right environment that blends clinical care, accountability, and emotional healing, those who’ve lived through unimaginable hardship can find the clarity and strength to begin again.
“Josh was almost obsessed with finding out who his daddy was,” the brother wrote in an affidavit. “It was sad for me to hear Josh ask so many people while he was growing up who his daddy was. The answer was usually ‘I don’t know,’ and this was really painful for him to hear.”
Two decades in prison had given Bishop stability that had led him to become a positive influence on fellow inmates and others, and he still had good to do in the world, his lawyers argued.
Read more: http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/2016/04/georgia-executes-joshua-bishop.html#ixzz44aTOTxh1
On the other, in his own words from a 2014 article, his experience of liturgy with Fr. Austin Fogarty:
He gave his words, we’d always stand up and he made us, or rather told us to hold hands, to say God’s prayer. I remember looking at those hands, callused up from something or other, and I asked him. Father Austin, I said, what’s up with the rough hands? He told me he worked in a small garden and did other things. He said that God gave Jesus to us and he worked with his hands as a carpenter.
He talked about how we have a place in God’s hands, too, and we are those rough spots or calluses on God’s hands. But with time our roughness can be smoothed by prayer and meditation on God’s messages.
….The Body and Blood of Christ—that, he said, was in essence our belief. God gave to us life so we take in his gift of Body and Blood.
I used to fear dying, but Father Austin told me to fear only the things left undone. Take care of your heart, love others, and have your spirit clean from any hate or anger for the laws of man.
Read more: http://www.georgiabulletin.org/commentary/2014/02/remembering-father-austin-fogarty/
Today it’s been 17 years since I came into full communion with the Catholic Church, inspired by the power of the liturgy, and especially of the Eucharist, to smooth our calluses, connect us hand to hand, and help us share God’s love for the less fortunate. It seems fitting that today I am reflecting on the words and the witness of a penitent whose only experience of family was in a Georgia prison, his communion with his brothers and sisters in Christ.
Joshua Bishop, may you see your Redeemer face to face, and enjoy the vision of God for ever. And may your Father God have a like mercy and clarity to bestow on all of us.
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