My decisive moment came on September 11, 2001. From the safe vantage point of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the chaos and disaster of lower Manhattan seemed next door. I had only recently left a position at Union Theological Seminary Library (Burke Library) of Columbia University. I knew intuitively that an act of terror so immense was powered by something far deeper than human political hatred. I looked for relevant and available theological resources in response, and at length I remembered reading Karl Barth.
Months later, Msgr.Lorenzo Albacete expressed it beautifully in PBS’ moving Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero:
“From the first moment …I recognized an old companion. I recognized religion. …The same passion that motivates religious people to do great things is same one that that day brought all that destruction.”
But this is one face of religion; the other is equally important. Albacete went on,
“I see it every Sunday. [His poor Lower East Side parishioners] have to struggle to live every day. And in that struggle … their religion, their church, their parish stands for life, stands for hope, stands for home. It sustains them. It helps them.”
(The whole quotation can be found here–or see more below)
As I watched that morning and the following days, everything I thought I knew about God seemed thrown into question. Where did such evil, such malevolence come from? On the other hand I considered the actions of those first responders and countless bystanders that day, of those on the pile in following days. Where did that commitment, that selfless giving come from?
Since 2001 we have all lost sight of those days and weeks in 2001. In the years immediately after that September, “9/11” (a short-hand expression) has become a Swiss Army knife of politics, exploited by all those who seek to inculcate fear (Bush, Cheney, Giuliani, and a host of others), and the notional “war on terror” has provided dubious rationalizations for ill-conceived wars, violations of internationally recognized human rights, and a fundamental perversion of the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights.
The divisiveness of those times was fertile ground for the hateful rhetoric and shrunken horizons of the campaign and presidency of the Great Orange One. (I will not give him the courtesy of a name.). Religion –Christianity in particular—has gained a foul odor, both Catholic and Protestant, and especially Evangelical –the “court evangelicals” that John Fea has written about so incisively. The accelerating abandonment of the churches is a sign, I believe, of divine and human judgement on institutions and ideologies that merely become an excuse for the exercise of power, hate, and alienation. When I began this blog in 2009, I did not foresee the extent to which the world of the 21st century would come to resume the 1930s.
Far beneath the bitterness and rancor since 2001 (and since 2003 and 2014-2015 in particular) there remains a sense of otherness in the events of September 11th. That otherness compelled me to consider Barth again. In the violence of Europe (and the world) 1914-1918, from his days as a pastor to his death in 1968 he recognized both human lostness, and a holy grace that creates its own basis for acknowledgement –an address from above by a gracious Reality quite inconceivable by ordinary human capacities. Barth recognized utter human lostness, but also –that it is not the final Word.
Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete is a professor of theology at St. Joseph’s Seminary in New York, and formerly served as associate professor of theology at the John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and Family. This interview was conducted by FRONTLINE producer Helen Whitney in the winter of 2002.
[What have been the challenges to you as a priest?]
From the first moment I looked into that horror on Sept. 11, into that fireball, into that explosion of horror, I knew it. I knew it before anything was said about those who did it or why. I recognized an old companion. I recognized religion. Look, I am a priest for over 30 years. Religion is my life, it’s my vocation, it’s my existence. I’d give my life for it; I hope to have the courage. Therefore, I know it.
And I know, and recognized that day, that the same force, energy, sense, instinct, whatever, passion — because religion can be a passion — the same passion that motivates religious people to do great things is the same one that that day brought all that destruction. When they said that the people who did it did it in the name of God, I wasn’t the slightest bit surprised. It only confirmed what I knew. I recognized it.
I recognized this thirst, this demand for the absolute. Because if you don’t hang on to the unchanging, to the absolute, to that which cannot disappear, you might disappear.
I recognized that this thirst for the never-ending, the permanent, the wonders of all things, this intolerance or fear of diversity, that which is different — these are characteristics of religion. And I knew that that force could take you to do great things. But I knew that there was no greater and more destructive force on the surface of this earth than the religious passion.
My friends in the business, religious leaders, we all took to the streets to try to salvage something of it. Funny, suddenly every government official became a religious leader, reassuring us that all religions are for peace. I understand. It was embarrassing. And now I think we have a religious duty to face this ambivalence about religion, and to do something about it. To promote that which makes it a constructive force and to protect us from that which makes it a destructive force. …
If I thought what we saw on Sept. 11, the dreadful and horrible possibilities of religion, were the only face of religion, I assure you I’d take off this collar. There is another face — maybe harder to see after Sept. 11 and what has followed it — but it’s there. I see it every Sunday. The parish where I work is not far from the World Trade Center. The Lower East Side, 90 percent Hispanic. Poor people, many affected by death in the World Trade Center. And yet they weren’t asking the great difficult questions about why, or the nature of evil.
They don’t have time for that. They have to struggle to live every day. And in that struggle, which somehow embraced even that terrible day, their religion, their church, their parish stands for life, stands for hope, stands for home. It’s sustains them. It helps them. It’s not their opium, as Marx would say. On the contrary, it encourages them to struggle, not to give up, not to surrender. They are poor, but they know, they experience, they feel that each one of them has a link with an infinite mystery. No need to worship any other source of power, economic power, political power — that they have a dignity that cannot be taken away from them. …