By CARDINAL JOHN J. O'CONNOR

Death scores again. The federal government has removed the last obstacle to physician-assisted suicide in Oregon. Which state will be next? "Euthanasia advocates have been seduced by death," says world-renowned expert on suicide, psychiatrist Herbert Hendin, M.D., in his latest book, "Seduced by Death."

There is little room for surprise. Euthanasia advocates heralded the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion as opening the door at last to legalized suicide. We have yet to assess fully how far the presidential veto of the congressional prohibition of "partial-birth abortion" has advanced and will advance the culture of death, but we can make a good guess, now that RICO has been allowed to be used against pro-life activity. RICO? The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. That is the law drafted by C. Robert Blakey, now professor of law at Notre Dame. As Nat Hentoff tells us in the Washington Post (June 6, 1998), Professor Blakey never intended RICO to be used for such purposes. It was designed to break the mob, Mafia violence and corruption. Only in a culture of death could the use of such a law be perverted to destroy such social protest as pro-life picketing.

But for believers, death never has the last word. The Sisters of Life are believers. Founded seven years ago this month, they are now 40 strong and growing. New candidates will enter in August, others next February. They are a contemplative-apostolic community, which means they spend a large part of each day in prayer and contemplation and much of the rest of the day in various activities on behalf of pregnant women and their unborn babies, helping women pick up the pieces of their lives after an abortion, talking to young girls about abstinence and chastity, generally spreading the word about the sacredness of every human life. Now a purely contemplative component is developing within the community, with some sisters voluntarily spending full time in contemplation, which we consider one of the most powerful of all forms of activity.

The Sisters of Life are now in three houses in New York. One house is a postulancy and novitiate, one is for professed sisters who conduct retreats and engage in other pro-life activities, including the maintenance of a library on life issues, one is for taking care of pregnant women and houses our full-time contemplatives. More than a dozen bishops throughout the country have asked us for sisters. One of those days we will be able to accommodate them. And soon.

The Sisters of Life are hardly racketeers, although maybe someone will figure out how to invoke RICO against them for praying too strenuously or disturbing the peace by loving everybody too much. Who knows? In a culture of death it could become dangerous to defend life. But the Sisters of Life are willing to run the risk.

They are an exceptional group of women. Some are engineers, some nurses. The major superior is a psychologist. We have an editor, a computer specialist, a research scientist, a specialist in retardation, an industrial manager, the list of talents goes on. God has been good.

I will be conducting another discernment retreat from the second to the sixth of July, at St. John Neumann Residence in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, about a half-hour north of midtown Manhattan. All 40 of the Sisters of Life make the retreat together with all those inquiring about the Sisters of Life or religious life in general. Conferences are designed to help those trying to discern whether God is calling them to religious life. We can always fit more inquirers into the retreat. Last-minute inquiries can be made by calling Sister Margaret Ruth Mary, S.V., at (718) 881-8008.

In the gloom of federal support of physician-assisted suicide and partial-birth abortion and the use of RICO against pro-life protesters, the little sign that every sister has in her room is a wonderful light in the darkness: "Without joy, there can be no Sisters of Life." I will bet on joy against death any day.