September 19, 2004

Last Sunday I joined various city officials in dedicating the block of East 40th Street in front of Engine Company 21 to Captain William Bourke who gave his life on September 11, 2001. The parish provided the chairs from our undercroft for the crowd that gathered, and the men of our firehouse did all the work in setting up the chairs, and expressed their gratitude. This is humbling, since all of us are honored by being able to show in such small ways our gratitude for the sacrifices of our firefighters and for the spouses and children who are left to mourn fallen heroes.

The war against terrorism engages everyone in various ways. The shocking events of September 11 taught our nation that we are no longer able to enjoy isolation from the sufferings caused by malignant people driven by hate. The unspeakable torture and slaughter of hundreds of children recently in Russia was more evidence of the viciousness which marks the enemies of basic human dignity.

For several generations it has been the fashion to deny the reality of good and evil, and to reduce human behavior to a pragmatic naturalist calculus of psychological adjustment and maladjustment. Once you shun God and stop believing in the existence of supernatural evil, it becomes hard to explain holiness and villainy. Mixed with political motives, this helps to explain why so many journalists shrink from identifying terrorists as terrorists. With remarkable consistency, our major news services have called those who massacred the Russian children in Beslan virtually everything except evil. Only slightly less remarkable than the term "activists" (Pakistan Times) are these euphemisms: "hostage-takers" (Los Angeles Times), "fighters" (Washington Post), "commandos" (Agence France-Presse), "radicals" (BBC), "separatists" (Christian Science Monitor) and "insurgents" (New York Times).

Jesus never hid behind euphemisms when He confronted evil. He not only told the truth, He is the Truth. The Christian must expose what the morally shy would conceal: The present horrors which fill the landscape with innocent victims are caused by rejection of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Economic and political complexities are precisely that: complications, but the radical cause of terror is not complicated. It is the denial of the Truth of God. Man did not invent evil, but man is accountable for not converting souls to the Truth as the Living Truth Himself commanded us to do as He ascended to the right hand of His Father. Our Lord wills that each of us His children be born at a certain time in history. He has honored us by giving us life in this season of the human drama and we must honor Him by bringing souls to conversion. The essential dynamic for this is the grace which daily converts our own hearts and minds.

Fr. George W. Rutler