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Deus Caritas
A message from the Presiding Bishop of the Old Roman Catholic Church in North America, the Most Reverend Francis P. Facione, Ph.D.

The images of the senseless destruction and loss of life that we witnessed on September 11, 2001 remain on the memories of all Americans, and will remain so for the rest of our lives. Let no one doubt that evil is real, and that the face of evil and hatred that touched our shores has inexorably changed the America weÕd known and loved on September 10th. The perpetrators of this evil hoped to create discord and division throughout our nation. However, the opposite has occurred. The outpouring of shared mourning for those whose lives were lost and the renewed sense of patriotism are clear evidence that the purveyors of hatred miscalculated. As we ponder this horrific act of terrorism and its aftermath, some few have opined that it is GodÕs judgment on America and its way of life. This, however, is bad theology. Certainly America has received a wake-up call. It is a call, a reminder to live what we profess in our Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. That is, to live as one nation under God. In this free and open society that we love so dearly, Americans actualize that duty to God in diverse ways. This is one of the reasons that America is so great! No one forces us to pray or practice a religious faith. Yet in the wake of this terrible tragedy, Americans of every religious conviction and ethnic heritage are turning to God in prayer. For some, perhaps, it has been a very long time. But it does not matter how long. The reality of the conflagration on September 11th has not brought Americans to their knees in defeat and confusion but rather to a renewed sense of their need for out all-loving and all-merciful God. This unwarranted and cowardly act of war has incensed all Americans. We are justly angered by it. We know a response is forthcoming. Even as this piece is written, investigations are underway and plans are underway and plans are under discussion to bring the perpetrators to justice, and end the threat of hatred and terrorism around the globe. Now, more than ever, fervent and continued prayer must be a priority for all Americans. Not only prayer for those who died on September 11th and for those who mourn their loss but also-and perhaps moire importantly-for our president and other leaders as they formulate AmericaÕs response. We must pray that the Holy Spirit will guide our nation and itÕs leaders as they formulate AmericaÕs response. We must pray that the Holy Spirit will guide our nation and its leaders so that the response will be just and measured. We must pray that our anger will abate. In the aftermath of this tragedy, though we may be less trusting, we must pray that we not become less tolerant. Not The Last Word The Most Reverend Raphael J. Adams I have so many tangential thoughts, so many loose associations. Yet they all relate to one another, but they defy my poor ability to organize them in some coherent, sequential fashion. Sometimes one thought flows from another. Sometimes one thought contradicts another, and yet both seem to have validity. I think I understand now why Pascal wrote his reflections the way he did. They actually wrote themselves as they erupted, crawled, or squirmed their way out of his psyche and onto the page. I really canÕt organize my thoughts, even after reflection. The feelings evoked are too diverse, too contradictory. Reflection serves to clarify each other them, but not to bring order to the whole of them. But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be an affliction, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of men they were punished, their hope is full of immortality. Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself; like gold in the furnace he tried them, and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them, In the time of their visitation they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble. They will govern nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord will reign over them forever. The Book of Wisdom 3: 1-8 I will always remember September 7, 2001 and September 10, 2001. On the seventh and the tenth, I was in the air. On those two days, in the course of my travel, I met three remarkable young men. They had little in common with me or with one another. They are totally unaware of one anotherÕs existence. I doubt that they have any awareness of the extent to which each one of them affected me, but each of them did, profoundly. I think of them every day. I pray for them. In a short time, I come to know a lot about each of them-their occupations, their loved ones, their values, their personal histories and ambitions. People have a way of connecting with priests, especially priests who are open and genuinely interested in what people have to say (and can therefore ask questions that would otherwise be considered intrusive, and go deeper in a short time than most people are allowed to go). Or perhaps some priests just have a way of connecting with people. In regard to this phenomenon, I have received conflicting advice about traveling attire for clergy. One older priest insisted that clergy should always be Òin uniformÓ when flying. He assured me that if clerically attired priest in coach would be Òbumped upÓ. On the other hand, the late Father Currie always jokingly insisted that one should fly incognito so as not to become a Òmagnet of every divorced Catholic in the terminalÓ With all due deference to the opinion of the late Donald, I have discovered that it is a moot point. With collar or without it, people sense our presence. They gravitate toward us. They find us out. And they find us for a reason. There is something confessional-like about terminals and airplanes. The comfortable anonymity allows for a brief but intense intimacy. People talk to us about the things that they have needed to talk about to someone, but could not discuss with anyone. Sometimes they are surprised that they confide so much. Sometimes we are surprised that they confide so much. This characteristic tendency to relate openly and comfortably to priests in transit is not exclusively Catholic thing. One of the young men I recently met was a Jew. One was a Protestant. The other was a Muslim. I know so much about each of them, yet I have no useful identifying information about any of them. I know only their first names, and the names of the cities in which they live. I wish now that I knew their full names, their addresses, their phone numbers, how to contact them. I want to talk to them. I want to find out if theyÕre all right. I want to know if one of them has enough work or needs help, how the girlfriend of another is doing, and if another has been able to get back home to his daughters. Each of these chance encounters has been elevated to symbolic significance by the events of September 11. The conversations I had with these men were somewhat extraordinary in term of their depth and extent even at the time, though their content was quite ordinary; but they have taken on a new meaning in the light of subsequent events. I was naturally responsive to these young people when I met them. There was an openness and sincerity about each of them, a natural likeability. Each was so genuinely and unaffectedly human that in retrospect, I have come to view them as angelic in the most pristine sense of the word. They were all angeloi-messengers. Each one had a story and a message. I only heard the story at the time. I have come to understand that the story was also a message. ÒMen have entertained angels unawareÓ (Hebrews 13:2). Abraham in his tent beneath the spreading branches of the oak grove at Mamre did not realize-at least not at first-that the three strangers whom he encountered on an otherwise uneventful day were angelic visitors. It was only in the light of subsequent events, I suppose, that the full significance of that first meeting became glaringly apparent. The narrative of that meeting has been handed down to us as a reminder that no casual encounter should be taken for granted. I have always known that angels do not have halos, wings and harps. Some angels wear khaki shorts and baseball caps. Some drive cabs. One of the young men I met is a cab driver. He drove me to the airport. He is from Pakistan. He came to this country, as so many do, to make a better life for himself. He had had a good job with one of the major employers in the area, but the company had undergone extensive downsizing and laid off thousands of workers. He had been one of them. With thousands of people with similar work qualifications applying for only dozens of jobs, he had so far been unable to find the kind of work that he had been trained to do. But the rent still had to be paid and food put on the table. So he was driving a cab for as many hours a day as he could log. Now he felt caught in a double bind. Living almost hand to mouth, he could not take time off from driving to look for another job. I heard on the news yesterday that Pakistani cab drivers in the city have been the objects of threats and harassment , and that many are now afraid to drive. I hope that the young man is able to make a living. I hope that no pseudo-patriotic cowboy has harmed him or his family or his friends. I hope that he is safe. On one of my flights I sat next to a young man whose girlfriend is a flight attendant. He cares about her very much. Her occupation didnÕt seem to be that important at the time, but it does now. I find myself wondering if any of the airline personnel who were so cruelly murdered were their friends. I am concerned about how this terrible incident will affect each of them, how it will affect their relationship with one another and with their friends and families. I am worried about their worrying, about her worrying for her safety and about his worrying for her safety. IÕve heard that there will be massive layoffs by the airlines. I wonder if she will lose her job, and if she is afraid of losing her job during an economic recession. I wonder if she wants to keep her job, and if , psychologically and emotionally, she can keep on doing her job. I hope that they are safe and will remain safe. On the other flight I sat next to a young man who was traveling out west on business. He talked about his work, his divorce, his ex-wife and his new girlfriend. Mostly he talked about his two little girls and how much he loves them, how much he values his time with them. He and his ex-wife live in the same town, and have amicably worked out an equitable visitation and joint custody arrangement. He has declined to accept various job offers and opportunities because they would require relocation. He would have to leave his girls behind. He could not even consider this option. He was already missing them. He was hoping to conclude his business soon and get back to them quickly. I hope he was able to find a way home. I hope theyÕre all together now, safe and sound. IÕve prayed for the dead and the dying, and for the survivors and the rescuers. But IÕve prayed for these angels of mine as well. This disaster has affected me in the way that it uniquely has because of them. The Muslim victims of misguided hatred are not nameless, faceless people. At least one of them has a face and a name. I know him. Those thousands of people stranded across the country, separated from home and loved ones are not all strangers to me. I am especially concerned about one of them. When I heard that United flights had been hijacked and crashed, I wondered if one young manÕs girlfriend was aboard, and I was immediately afraid for him and for her. My angeloi have brought me to understand that there are many more victims than there appear to be, and that there will be many more, and that they all have faces. They all have names. They are all angeloi. ÒWhy do they hate us so much?Ó This is the question so often repeated by stunned Americans in the news stories. The question is sometimes followed with, ÒThey donÕt even know us.Ó This statement does not further clarify the question. It answers it. ÒWhy do they hate us so much?Ó The young woman was completely distraught. Her cousin was missing. No one could find him. No one had heard from him. All they could tell her was that some type of attack had been directed against the place where he was and that many people were rumored to have been killed. All she could do was pray for him. She has asked me to pray for him. She could not personally go out searching for him. After all, she was in America and he was in Bosnia. She and he were Muslims. ÒTheyÓ were God-fearing Christians. ÒWhy do they hate us so much?Ó We deny responsibility for having done anything that would provoke such hatred. We maintain that we have done nothing. Sadly, thatÕs true. We deny responsibility for what we have not done, for what we have failed to do. The Master has told us that one who has the opportunity to do good but does not, does evil. There is much that we could have done for the displaced and disenfranchised people of the world, but we have not done it. Our failure certainly does not justify the horrible crime against humanity that we have witnessed. Neither will this crime justify our failure. I know young people who can tell me all sorts of things about Britney Spears, Madonna, NÕSync and the Back Street Boys; whose weekly allowances is more than some peopleÕs annual salary, and who know every shop in the mall. They do not know about poverty or injustice. They have never known hunger or cold. They donÕt know that there are hungry, homeless people or at least they donÕt seem to. ÒWhy do they hate us so much?Ó Minister Louis Ferrakhan of the Nation of Islam addressed this question. I heard a portion of his address on my car radio. He was eloquent, articulate, compassionate and insightful. I related much better to what he said than to what has been said by some ÒChristianÓ leaders. I found Minister FarrakhanÕs response much more Christian than theirs. What is the world coming to? I predicted that within twenty-four hours of the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon Bible-bangers would say something unconscionably insensitive and downright stupid from a theological perspective. Such prognostication did not require the spirit of prophecy. ItÕs like predicting gravity. I remember all of the absurdities about AIDS being GodÕs punishment of gays and drug users. Now, if one follows this line of reasoning, one has to ask what God found so abhorrent about children in the forties and fifties that He was moved to cripple and kill them with polio. ÒSeeing is believing.Ó Well, the converse is equally true. Believing is seeing. People see what they want to see, and as much as theyÕre willing to see. Those who have trouble seeing things from more than one perspective has no choice but to see them simplistically. Consequently, rooted-- or rather, stuck- in one place, they see only one aspect of anything. Which means that they never see very much of anything or never see at all. Hence, the inevitability of their misunderstanding rather than understanding anything and everything. But because they believe it so firmly, and see it so clearly, they are adamant in their ignorance. And sometimes, dangerous. Believing is seeing. If one believes in a continually agitated, wrathful, vengeful, punitive God, one is inclined to interpret untoward events as signifying divine wrath and punishment. This basic premise requires one to ask the reason for all this roiling wrath. Having identified the offending precipitation behaviors, one may then point the moralistic finger of blame at the offending parties. And they should be singled out! After all, theyÕre the ones who went and got God REALLY MAD at us. Because they wouldnÕt behave, weÕve all been sent to bed without supper. Now, all of this assumes that God is too stupid to figure out exactly who was bad, or too lazy to find out, so everybody has to suffer. In this schema, God is not only mean, HeÕs not too smart either. Put the two together and you have a cosmic bully. Attitudinally, itÕs all about blaming. ItÕs also about blaming THEM. Christian fundamentalists have rounded up the usual suspects and declared THEM guilty and deserving of blame for this atrocity (and apparently, for just about everything). Taken to its inevitable conclusion, this curious reasoning absolves the actual perpetrators of accountability for their actions: they were just doing GodÕs dirty work. With so much attitudinally in common with one another, is the defining difference between Islamic fundamentalists and extremist Christian fundamentalists one of being overtly aggressive rather than passive-agressive? Do some extreme Christian fundamentalists and extreme Muslim fundamentalists have more in common with one another than with orthodox Christianity and Islam, respectively? The most primitive defense mechanisms are denial, projection and displacement. Anger has been projected onto God. Blame has been displaced onto the usual suspects, and we deny responsibility for having done anything. ItÕs all quite primitive. Many people in our society have been brought up by television and absentee parents who have substituted cash for affection. Of course they know only about Britney Spears and the Back Street Boys and mall crawling. this is the myopic world view they have been given--egocentric, ethnocentric, and materialistic. Extreme Christian fundamentalism is counterbalanced by extreme media-material fundamentalism (often, within the same psyche). Everything is out of kilter. The continuation of the holy gospel according to Matthew, beginning at the twenty-fourth chapter, the third verse. Glory to Thee O Lord. At that time: As Jesus sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying: Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming? and of the end of the world? And Jesus answered and said unto them: Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name saying: I am Christ, and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of war; see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you; and ye shall be hated of all nations for my nameÕs sake. And then shall many be offended and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved. --Gospel from the Mass in Time of War, from the Common of Many Martyrs. Some fundamentalists tend to become preoccupied with end-time happenings. Some believe that the Bible is filled with prophecies written for us twenty-first century Christians, prophecies which provide a list of warning signs and a veritable time-table for destruction. One just has to sift carefully through the Bible to nail down the order of events. They warn us that we should take all this stuff seriously. They insist that what we consider to be allegory, metaphor, or a symbol is fact. A little history lesson is warranted here. This peculiar belief has its origin in what was once called figurism. Our own Jansenist forefathers invented figurism. Along the way, their descendents realized that it was a silly idea, and abandoned it. Please stop trying to sell us our own garbage. I donÕt think that Jesus was predicting end-time events, though clearly that is what his disciples wanted from him. He was providing his disciples with a little reality orientation. War, famine, epidemics, natural disasters, and human treachery and betrayal are perennial and inevitable; and human beings, predictably, can be expected to behave shamefully under these circumstances. Some even attempt to capitalize on the chaos economically and politically-- false prophets and false Christs. In such unstable environments, the tendency to toward self-preservation, toward protecting oneself physically from harm and emotionally from pain. So we isolate and insulate ourselves. We become calloused, thick skinned, distant--ÓsafeÓ. We adopt either an angry, prejudiced, hateful attitude toward life, or a cold, hardened demeanor. Òand because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.Ó I am so terribly saddened by the procession of people on television who show pictures of their missing loved ones and talk about how dear they are. Those photographs are icons. They make those people present to me. They make them real. The missing people have faces and names. their absence is tangible. I wish I could have known them. I wish the people who had orchestrated and carried out this diabolic work could have known them. If they had known them, would they still have been able to do it? I retreat again within myself to pray. Within the sanctuary of my mind I stand before an iconostasis. I see the faces of old friends from Manhattan, with whom I have foolishly lost touch. I see the faces of friends who are firefighters and police officers, and the faces of their spouses, parents, and children. I see beyond them to the faces of other firefighters, other policemen--faces obscured by dust and ash. I look at the faces of the missing people that I have seen on the news programs. I see the faces of my angel-messengers. Soon other faces begin to take shape, but never arrive at full clarity. They remain shadowy and ephemeral. I donÕt see them clearly, but I am aware of them. I sense them. I feel them. They are not only before me but now behind, beside, beneath, and above me as well. They number in the thousands and the tens of thousands. Some are quick. Many are dead. Many are yet to be. the Letter to the Hebrews called them a great cloud of witnesses, there are so many of them. And I am immersed in that cloud, praying for them, praying with them, praying to them to pray for us all. O Lord Jesus Christ, King of Glory, deliver the souls of all the faithful departed from the pains of hell and from the bottomless pit: deliver them from the lionÕs mouth, that hell swallow them not up, that they fall not into darkness: but let Michael the standard bearer bring them into the holy lightÓ which thou didst promise of old to Abraham, and to his seed. We offer thee, O Lord, this sacrifice of prayer and praise: do thou receive it for the souls whose memory we this day recall: make them, O Lord, to pass from death unto life. Which thou didst promise of old unto Abraham and his seed. -- Offertory, Mass for the Dead >From its origins, the Franciscan Order has had an intimate relationship with Islam, sometimes peaceful, sometimes not. At a time whine Christendom and Islam were at war, militarily as well as ideologically, Franciscans managed to insert themselves into the action or just get caught in the crossfire. One Franciscan, Saint John Capistran, even led Christian troops against the Turks in Hungary. Another Franciscan, Saint Benedict the Moor, was, as his name implied, a descendant of Muslim ancestors. the first martyrs of the Franciscan Order were Saint Berard and his four companions. they were killed by Muslim extremists in north Africa in the thirteenth century. They were soon followed by Saint Daniel and his six companions, who were martyred in like fashion. In the short period of intervening time between the murders of Berard and Daniel, Saint Francis himself had walked boldly into Sultan Malek KemelÕs encampment at Damietta in Egypt to negotiate better treatment of captive Christian soldiers and had walked out again unscathed, having been recognized and respected as a holy man. Franciscans were allowed to remain in Egypt and in Palestine, where they cared for Christian shrines. So even then, there were no stereotypical universal Muslim attitude toward Christians. And even then, there were moderates and extremists on both sides of that religio-political controversy-- just men as well as fanatics. St Francis was said to have found the behavior of Crusaders far more reprehensible than that of the Saracens. In all their dealings with Christians and Muslims alike, Francis and Berard and Daniel were motivated by love and compassion. Berard and Daniel died by the sword, Francis from tuberculosis. Yet I would contend that all were martyrs, that martyrdom is a state of mind, a way of living unintimidated by risk of dying. The act of being killed is coincidental to martyrdom as a lifestyle. Father Mychal Judge was buried Saturday. He was the NYC fire department chaplain who was killed while ministering to injured firefighters at the World Trade Center. Mychal was a Franciscan. In the most genuine sense of the word, Mychal was a martyr. He face his life for the faith, not just in principle, but in action as well. Like Francis, Berard and Daniel, Mychal was moved by love and compassion to be where he was, doing what he was doing. The risk factor was irrelevant. Like many of his confreres of that first generation, he got caught in the crossfire. In a psychological sense, thatÕs what a martyr really is, someone so moved by compassion that he doesnÕt think about the crossfire. Some martyrs die of old age. Others get hit. When I was a little boy-- in the second grade, I think -- Father asked us all a question one morning in catechism class. His question wasnÕt in the book. Òif you were outside now, playing, and God spoke to you all and said that the world will be coming to an end very soon-- in just five or ten minutes--what would you do?Ó A field of waving hands blossomed, except for mine. I knew my answer would be wrong. Appropriately pious responses from my classmates came quickly to the fore: go to confession, say the rosary, make a good act of contrition. None of these seemed to satisfy him. My reticence did not escape notice. ÒRafey, what would you do?Ó ÒIÕd keep on playing, Father.Ó ÒOh? You wouldnÕt go to confession or make an act of contrition?Ó he asked. Having ventured this close to perdition, I risked further honesty, ÒI shouldnÕt need to. I should already be in a state of grace.Ó He hugged me. Some years ago I sat down to write the outline for a eulogy for a young man who had died of AIDS. I found the inspiration for my homily in the tenth chapter of Acts. The young man had died just when his career was beginning to unfold. He had not had a chance to accomplish most of the things he had hoped to do, and yet he had already accomplished the most important challenge in life. Everyone who knew him loved him; he had shown kindness to so many persons. In the book of Acts, St. Peter said about Jesus, ÒHe went about doing good.Ó To go about this world doing good is the greatest accomplishment, and the opportunity for that is everywhere: at dinner with friends; on the subway with strangers; in the office with bosses, subordinates and co-workers; at home with family. All moments are potentially sacred. No human expressions of caring are mundane. Making the morning coffee, waking up the kids, remembering to bring home roses, apologizing for forgetting to bring home roses-- all of these are spiritual activities. Thousands of people went through their usual routines on the morning of September 11th. They had breakfast, drank coffee, emptied the trash, walked the dog, hugged and kissed spouses and children before leaving home. Even these little rituals had a sacramental character to them. Doing good is the only true calling. Love is the greatest legacy. ÒBeloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows GodÓ (1 John 4:7). np

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