09/23/01

A simple hope

It’s being called the death of our innocence: foreign terrorists striking our shores with a hateful, deadly hand.

Truth be told, however, our innocence died long ago. We’ve just been unwilling to admit it.

When the Pentagon and the twin towers of Manhattan’s World Trade Center flared and crumbled Sept. 11 such an admission became impossible to ignore. The question is, where do we go from here?

That’s a question each generation faces: There was Pearl Harbor, the defining event for what is being called “the Greatest Generation.” Then came the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the Vietnam War, events which split a generation—galvanizing half to reach for the stars and to better humankind and sending half tumbling into a morass of sex, drugs and lost hope.

Today there is the tragedy of New York. And Washington. And Pennsylvania. Lives wasted in an ideological struggle beyond most of its victims.

The question is, still, where do we go from here?

There is no going back. The flags wave, and patriotism is abroad in the land again. So are expressions of faith. Both are wonderful and welcome. But we cannot recreate what has been destroyed, physically or emotionally. Nor can we remain where we are: struggling with loss, celebrating true heroes, fearful for what’s around the next corner and awash with red, white and blue.

None of that is wrong, and none of that should be unexpected. It is wholly appropriate, for now, for recognizing that loss of innocence.

But it is not moving ahead, being called to a maturity of purpose, and of faith.

Because move ahead we will. People turn back to life, without forgetting Sept. 11. And a nation comes together in a remarkable unity as it seeks justice. But that unity, and that justice, must not be blind revenge, must be careful not to exclude Americans of Arab background, or of the Muslim faith. They, too, share the pain.

The tragedy brought an eerie silence in the skies, unlike any in decades. But the buzz of planes again fills the air. Life, though never to be the same again, will reassume a normalcy.

But some things remain grim reminders:

My 4-year-old granddaughter tells her father as he leaves for work each day: “I love you, and don’t die today.”

George Brooks, director of advocacy for the archdiocese’s Kolbe House prison ministry, learns that Flossmoor native Navy Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Murphy, a Marian Catholic grad, died at the Pentagon Sept. 11. “I coached Patrick in grade school football,” recalls Brooks.

But even as we pull together, we must move ahead.

Elsewhere in this special, abbreviated edition of The Catholic New World is the story of an exchange of letters from children in Chicago with those in New York.

One of those letters is from fifth-grader Romero Magana of St. Nicholas of Tolentine School to a student at St. Columba School not many blocks from New York’s “ground zero.” It carries a huge red heart and reads:

“Have faith!! Keep your faith! And God will make things better!!!”

Inside, the words are stark and honest: “I feel very sorry about what happened in New York. … I just wanted you to know you’re labeled in my heart. And I’m sending you this heart to make you feel better. I’m praying for you.”

Simplistic, yes. Powerful, certainly. And a testament to that faith in the future.

Tom Sheridan
Editor and General Manager

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