Four Years

Julie at Happy Catholic has a nice roundup of Sep 11 remembrances. I don’t have anything really insightful to add, but that has never stopped me from posting before. It is both hard to believe that it was both only four years ago today and that it wasn’t much longer ago. Thinking back to that day that divides time for most of us the memories of that day are more clear than others. After the second plane hit and it became evident what had happened I remember running home to watch the coverage with my family. The shock of what we were seeing before us as the towers fell and the reports of the attack on the Pentagon and the other plane that went down in Pennsylvania. As my wife and I went to daily Mass that day it was as if the whole world had changed. That while driving you would see more planes used as weapons flying into buildings before you. The uncertainty of the Cold War years had returned. For the coming weeks I noticed that daily Mass attendance had increases at my parish and I had read antidotal evidence of increased attendance at churches across the country. This appears to have been a temporary phenomenon as was all the flags attached to our cars. I remember in the months ahead the economic hit our country took with people not wanting to fly. Seeing hotels closed down and places that relied on tourism experiencing major problems. Our recovery from this event is really quite amazing. Seeing the unity of the Country in the aftermath with members of Congress singing "God Bless America" on the Capitol steps was a site to behold. Unfortunately our memories are short and we soon went back to typical party bickering. Contrast the aftermath of this man-made disaster to the the political sniping that occurred after Hurricane Katrina.

There has also been much ink spilled since then whether Islam is really a religions of peace. Only truth leads to peace and Hilaire Belloc calls Islam "The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed." This is not to say that are Moslems are inheritantly terrorists. Just that Christians get into trouble when they don’t act like Jesus and Moslems get into trouble when they act more like Mohammed.