September 9, 2002
A year after Sept. 11, some still
wonder, 'Where was God?'
___By Shelvia Dancy
___Religion News Service
___NEW YORK (RNS)--One year after the Sept. 11 attacks prompted national soul-searching, heavyweight questions about religion, God and evil persist.
___Chief among them: Where was God on that day?
___PBS tackles that question in "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero," airing Sept. 11.
___"I got a sense there was really an intense conversation taking place--not just in New York, but nationally--about where was God," said Helen Whitney, the program's producer and co-writer. "And not only about where was God and who is this God, but also the problem of evil and the role of religion. All of the big theology questions were being asked."
___Asked by priests, rabbis, chaplains, security guards, stockbrokers, opera singers, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, atheists and Catholics--all of whom speak candidly in the film.
___For some, the collapse of the towers signaled a collapse of faith--the opening act of a drama with faith and doubt as foils.
___"Religion drove those planes into those buildings," said Rabbi Brad Hirschfeld. "And that's upsetting, but that's what happened."
___In the mesh of fire and steel, Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete--a priest for more than 30 years--saw the face of "an old companion."
___"I knew it before anything was said about those who did it or why. ... I recognized religion," he said, adding, "The same passion that motivates religious people to do great things is the same one that, that day, brought all that destruction."
___Some told of faith found or reaffirmed.
___"Whatever God's plan is, was and shall be--is, was and shall be," said one investment banker who escaped from the burning towers. "I can't question it."
___The attacks prompted Terry McGovern, a lapsed Catholic whose mother died in the World Trade Center, to "re-examine all of my feelings and wonder if I didn't need to re-enter the church community."
___"I want the church's teachings on the spiritual life after death to be true," she said. "I need them to be."
___For Bernie Heeran, a retired firefighter whose son died in the towers, God "had nothing to do with this."
___"There were a lot more people who could have been killed," Heeran said. "He was fighting evil that day like he does every day."
___Others told of faith lost.
___"After Sept. 11, the face of God was a blank slate for me," said one Episcopal priest. "God could not be counted on in the way I thought God could be counted on. I was left with nothing but that thing we call faith--but faith in what? I wasn't so sure."
___Security guard Tim Lynston said he "let loose at God, ... damned him."
___"I look at him now as a barbarian, and I probably will, and it's a sad situation," Lynston said. "I think I am a good Christian, but I have a different view and image of him now and I can't replace it with the old image."
___Similar questions about faith and religion surfaced among atheists and agnostics, too, some of whom "wound up aching for faith," Whitney said.
___"For many atheists who were thinking about these questions, a few of them said it was harder for an atheist than a believer to deal with it all," she said. "They had put so much of their faith in humanity and then to see what man could do to man--it seemed like their very foundations were shaken too."
___Agnostic photographer Luca Babini, who said she doesn't know if she ever believed in God, now wishes "there was a God that I could access and that it could be proven that I can access him."
___"I wish God had a telephone number since Sept. 11," she said.
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