Never Forget 9/11

CARDINAL Theodore McCarrick recalls that he was preparing a homily on the morning of September 11, 2001. He had only been in Washington nine months, installed as Archbishop of the capital of the United States on January 3. His priest secretary came into his study and told him a plane had flown into one of New York’s World Trade Center towers. McCarrick remembered a plane flying into the Empire State Building when he was a boy and returned to his work. A few minutes later the priest came in with the news that a second plane had struck the other tower. “I went in to watch the television,” McCarrick recalls, where the rest of his staff had already gathered. “I sat with the others in horror, watching this disaster unfold. I recall it vividly.”

That day, the Administrative Committee of the US Bishops’ Conference was meeting in Washington. The bishops went to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception where McCarrick led them at a noon Mass. The cavernous basilica, which seats more than 4,000 people, was filled to overflowing, mostly with students from the neighbouring Catholic University of America. In the face of this tragedy, the bishops, the students, and Catholics nationwide, almost instinctively turned to the Eucharist.

 

A priest at Ground Zero

 

In New York, Father Kevin Madigan was already at Ground Zero when the planes struck. He had finished saying Mass and hearing confessions at St Peter’s church which sat in the shadow of the Twin Towers. When the second plane struck, he recalls an airplane wheel flew over his head. He went out to search for victims, but he needn’t have left the church: St Peter’s became a makeshift morgue. A few weeks after the attacks, a man approached him to apologize for something he had done that morning. The man was a doctor who happened to be in the area that morning. He had no medical supplies, and as he attended to some of those brought to St Peter’s to await an ambulance, he pulled the linens off the altar, ripped them into small sheets, and used them as tourniquets. The doctor thought his action was especially offensive because he himself was not a Catholic. “Of course, there was nothing offensive in his action, since what he had done was to use the same cloths that we employ for our most sacred ritual, viz., the Eucharist, for what is our most sacred responsibility, viz., to bid up the wounds of those in distress,” Father Madigan recalled in a recent homily.

Catholic Americans were at the center of the immediate period of mourning. “Most of the firefighters who lost their lives at the World Trade Center were Catholic, which meant that the Catholic sensibility was somewhat more ‘public’, as Americans saw a great deal of photos and coverage of Catholic funerals at New York churches,” notes Father James Martin, SJ, author of the book Searching for God at Ground Zero. “And as someone who worked at Ground Zero afterwards, I can say that I’ve never seen so many devout Catholics in one place outside the Vatican and Lourdes,” Martin adds. “In the days and weeks following 9/11, Ground Zero was the biggest Catholic parish in the city.”

 

Vivid memories

 

This year, American Catholics are preparing to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Every American can recall, like Cardinal McCarrick and Fathers Martin and Madigan, the circumstances of that day. They remember what they were doing when they first heard the news. They remember who it was that told them. They remember whom they called. If they had friends who lived or worked in lower Manhattan or at the Pentagon, they remember the long hours of waiting to find out the fate of their loved ones. They remember that it was a cloudless day both in New York and in Washington. They remember the feelings of shock and horror.

In the ten years since the attacks, however, the vividness of the memories is perhaps the only thing that all Americans agree on regarding the events of September 11. Two long wars, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq, and both conceived in some sense as a response to the attacks, have left Americans deeply divided about America’s role in the world. In the days after the attack, President George W. Bush, publicly visiting a mosque to meet with American Muslim leaders, went out of his way to state that the US was not at war with Islam, but only with those extremists who attacked us. Now, a right-wing preacher burns Korans and millions of Americans object to the building of a mosque several blocks from Ground Zero, despite the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of worship.

 

Muslim-hating

 

The occasional anti-Muslim graffiti found on the walls of New York in the weeks after the attack were the work of anonymous bigots. But, sadly, tragically, Muslim-hating has become more pronounced in recent years in America and it has become more respectable. It is no longer a case of a lone, crazed pastor burning a Koran. Republican candidates for the presidency have warned ominously about the ‘threat’ of Sharia law being imposed in the United States, which is about as likely as the Pope becoming a Buddhist. In Oklahoma, the state legislature passed a Constitutional Amendment banning the introduction of Sharia Law. Some analysts contend that anti-Muslim bigotry is fast becoming in the 21st century what anti-Catholic bigotry was in the 19th century, a political rallying point and focus of national identity in certain xenophobic circles.

When the US military killed Osama bin Laden earlier this year, many Americans took to the streets to celebrate. A few days later at a dinner, a bishop said he thought most Catholics did not celebrate the death of another human being, no matter how much evil he had done. But, a layman at the dinner offered a different interpretation, saying that most Catholics did celebrate bin Laden’s demise, as they would the news that a cure for cancer had been found. Upon reflection, many, perhaps most, would recognize that a man is not a disease, and they would recognize that they needed to confess their celebratory instincts. Catholics, whose experience of the confessional gives them a steady reminder of the mystery and miracle of God’s mercy, were ambivalent. A scourge was lifted, but a soul had been killed.

 

Role of religion

 

The rise in anti-Muslim bigotry, however, is not the whole picture. More responsible religious leaders recognized in the tragedy of 9/11 that they must re-double their efforts at inter-religious dialogue. As Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, a leader of Comunione e Liberazione in the US, commented in a documentary shortly after 9/11: “That September morning I recognized a familiar face, the face of religion.” The attacks were not political in motivation, they were religious. “Many a man will live and die upon a dogma,” commented Blessed John Henry Newman. “No man will be a martyr for a conclusion.”

A religious attack, however deranged and inhumane, required a religious response, and it was forthcoming immediately. “That very week, at Georgetown University, a group of religious leaders got together from all religions to call for peace and harmony,” Cardinal McCarrick recalled. “We wanted to say, ‘Don’t blame the Muslim religion.’ This was the work of evil people who could have been acting on behalf of any creed.” McCarrick says that the meeting began a real inter-faith effort for him. “We had to go beyond what we were doing.” Inter-religious dialogue, since the Second Vatican Council, has been seen as an important task. In the wake of 9/11 it became an urgent one.

McCarrick had long known many Muslim leaders from his work trying to promote peace in the Holy Land. But, after the attacks his work changed. “It became not only a political movement seeking peace in the Holy Land, but an attempt to really understand Islam and work with Muslim leaders to achieve harmony in the whole world,” McCarrick says. “Our understanding of peace became much deeper, not only in the Holy Land, but throughout the world.”

 

Example of St Francis

 

This emphasis on inter-religious dialogue is reflected in many of the commemorations being planned to mark the 10th anniversary of the attacks. In Boston, New York and Washington, various inter-religious gatherings are being held. The Franciscan Action Network is working with a number of interfaith groups such as Muslim Coalition of Connecticut in organizing a day of forgiveness, healing and understanding of the different faith traditions to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of 9/11. According to Franciscan Action Network Executive Director Patrick Carolan, “There is a long tradition of Franciscans and Muslims working together to promote peace. This goes all the way back to St Francis when, in the midst of the Fifth Crusade of 1219, Francis dramatically crossed the battle lines at Damietta in order to speak with Malik al-Kamil, the Ayubid Sultan of Egypt.” Such a vivid example continues to inspire the Franciscans today. “In our own Franciscan tradition, we seek inspiration and direction from life of St Francis of Assisi, whose goal was to follow in the footsteps of Jesus,” Carolan said. “St Francis believed the message of Jesus to bring healing and reconciliation was so strong that he journeyed to meet with the Muslim leader during the Crusade. Such an example of crossing apparent barriers in a time of actual war is a truer example of what it means for Christians to follow Jesus. This type of action is needed more and more these days as we must counter the un-Christian example of those who want to discriminate against our brothers and sisters from different ethnic and religious backgrounds.”

 

Limits of military response

 

At Catholic University, the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies, an on-campus think tank, is sponsoring a symposium to commemorate the attacks. The event features three university alumni, all members of the military who were at the Pentagon when it was attacked. They are discussing their personal memories of that day, but also how that experience, combined with their Catholic faith, led them to re-think their work in the military, to explore the ways cultures, and not just armies, meet, and how peace can be achieved in the midst of so much strife. “9/11 demonstrated for many the necessity of an armed response, but it also exposed the limits of a military response,” says Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies director Stephen Schneck. “Peace is more than the absence of war, and it will take a long time, but there is no alternative.”

 

Fitting ceremonies

 

Such inter-religious and academic meetings are vital. But, for Catholics, there must be more. Just as the bishops and Catholic University students headed to Mass on the day of the attacks, Catholics will largely mark the anniversary by going to Mass. In the face of the mysteries of life, we are drawn to the Mass where we draw close to Christ or, better to say, Christ draws close to us. We know that we must make our stance in the face of evil the stance of Christ. When we confront hate and pain and suffering, we must discern love and cling to that greatest of loves shown at Calvary.

It is fitting then, that at St Peter’s Church near Ground Zero they are holding an inter-faith service on the Wednesday before the anniversary, and a memorial concert on the Friday before, but on the day itself, a Sunday, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan is coming to St Peter’s to preside at Sunday Mass. And, in Washington, Cardinal McCarrick is returning to the National Shrine to say the noon Mass there. At both churches, and countless others, prayers for peace are being offered, and offered with a fervency born of the experience of the attacks and the wars that followed.