Is the National Catholic Reporter...Catholic?

In an unbelievable display of coldness-disguised-badly-as-compassion, Canadian writer Isabel Gibson ineffectually tries to make the point that the deliberate slaughter of 2,996 people on 9/11/01 is not all that different from the deaths that occurred the day before, or the day after, or last week, presumably. Ho-hum, is Gibson's evident attitude, as far as the 9/11 victims are concerned.

There are no national monuments to the dead of Sept. 10, no televised commemorative services, no international attention or community events, for they offer us no way to think about them as a group. They did not die in an attack on the United States, nor for any other cause that might stir our souls. Instead, they died in the normal course of events, as part of the normal wear and tear of life as we know it.

There are people -- too many -- who would have us believe that 9/11 never happened. This is only a new way of trying to use the Catholic doctrine of praying for the dead, all dead, into trying to justify the notion that the United States should simply roll over when people try to kill her citizens.

Nice try, Isabel.

Yes, we should and must pray for all those who have gone before us. But to try and equate a natural, inevitable death with cold blooded murder is beyond the pale.

Not incidentally, it should be noted that, on September 10, 2001, there were probably 3,600 unborn babies killed. This was not mentioned in Isabel Gibson's National Catholic Reporter column.

(Thanks to Dom for the link.)