INSIDE AMERICA

THE HEART
STILL UNDER ATTACK
A MID THE ANNIVERSARY HYPE AND THE GROWING POLARITY BETWEEN THE INTOLERANCE OF ATHEISTS AND RELIGIOUS ALIKE, THE EXISTENTIAL DRAMA EXPOSED BY 9/11 HAS BEEN IGNORED. TEN YEARS AFTER, THE FIRST PRIORITY IS REDISCOVERING THE RELIGIOUS SENSE IN OUR PUBLIC LIFE.

BY LORENZO ALBACETE

I AM WRITING THIS ON THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE TERRORIST ATTACKS AGAINST THE UNITED STATES ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001. NO FEWER THAN 40 9/11 TELEVISION PROGRAMS HAVE AIRED OVER THE PAST FEW WEEKS OR WILL AIR IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS. THEY COVER EVERYTHING FROM ANIMAL PLANET'S HERO DOGS OF 9/11 TO THE OPRAH WINFREY NETWORK'S TWINS OF THE TWIN TOWERS (ABOUT TWINS WHO LOST THEIR SIBLING ON 9/11). THE PLETHORA OF SPECIALS IS WORRYING SOME CRITICS WHO FEAR THAT THE PROGRAMMING ONSLAUGHT WILL AMOUNT TO WHITE NOISE THAT TRIVIALIZES THE OCCASION. I AGREE WITH THEM. I LEARNED ABOUT THE ATTACK WHILE STUCK IN TRAFFIC ON MY WAY TO LA GUARDIA AIRPORT FOR A FLIGHT TO HOUSTON, TEXAS. A FRIEND FROM MEXICO CALLED ME ON MY CELL PHONE TO ASK ME HOW I WAS DOING AND WHAT I THOUGHT ABout the attacks, which were just beginning. I was able to turn around and return home in time to watch it all on television.

Like almost everyone else away from Ground Zero, I was in a daze and was immediately convinced that these events would have a tremendous impact on American history, and that the religious dimension of the attacks was crucial to understanding what had happened. I want now, ten years later, to elaborate on this point. My conviction about the religious dimension of the attacks had nothing to do with Islam as such. I knew Muslims who were horrified as much as anyone else and, in fact, feared the Islamophobia that has indeed sprung up here and there. My concern was with religion itself, of whatever kind.

I had spent a couple of years seeking to convince my friends in the media and academic and literary worlds that the ideological secularism that sought to extirpate the religious experience from public life would give rise to such a pressure in the hearts and minds of our religious citizens that sooner or later there would be an explosion of anger and frustration that would lead to violence.
Today, I fear that something like this has happened with an aggressive atheism confronting an intolerant religiosity. I believe it is urgent to learn how to correctly locate the religious sense in our public life, especially in the areas of politics, economics, scientific conclusions, education, and religious liberty.

For Catholics the key is to remember that the origin of our faith is not the religious sense (which cannot be extirpated from our nature as humans) but an event in the form of an encounter with the risen Christ in the flesh, through the life of the sacramental Church. I am sure that in these pages we will be expanding on this insight in the coming months.