We invited Pax Christi leaders, including Ambassadors of Peace, Teachers of Peace, national council members, and local-state-regional leaders, among others, to share their brief reflections on Catholic peacemaking 25 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US; responses are listed below in no particular order. Please share your own thoughts in the comment section, if you wish.
Our bishop president, Bishop John Stowe, OFM Conv., and Executive Director Charlene Howard offered their reflections on this solemn anniversary in this op-ed published by the National Catholic Reporter.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, Catholic peacemaking must ask what we have learned from a quarter-century shaped by fear, war and retaliation. I stood in the living room in Sierra Leone holding my one-year-old American son, and watched on TV as the towers fell, asking, “Is this really happening?” Having lived through war, I knew its devastation. Yet Sierra Leone’s saving grace was choosing reconciliation over retribution – refusing to let violence permanently divide religions, ethnic groups, perpetrators and victims. Today, we must choose again: resisting hatred, discrimination and collective blame; defending the dignity of every person, faith and nation; and pursuing justice without abandoning mercy. This is the courage peace demands.
Josephine Garnem
Chair, Pax Christi USA National Council
After September 11, the theologian Stanley Hauerwas struggled to articulate a pacifist response to the human horror of the attacks. What might the Christian say to an urgent national desire for retribution, for justice, for answers, for hope, for anything at all? “I do not have a foreign policy,” Hauerwas wrote. “I have something better—a church constituted by people who would rather die than kill.” This stark reminder of the cost of discipleship offers a way forward for the Catholic peace movement — surrendering not to evil, but embracing a Gospel of life that refuses the allure of violence and death.
Ryan Di Corpo
Pax Christi Young Adult Caucus
Our Lord Jesus Christ told us to “love one another as I have loved you.” He also said that “whatever you do to the least of my people, you do unto me.” That means every human being, regardless of race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation and income! Instead, what have we done? We have deported Jesus Christ! We have bombed Jesus Christ! We have jailed Jesus Christ! We have robbed Him of SNAP benefits and health care! On the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, we need to start acting like true followers of Jesus Christ and living His Gospel messages. Only then will we be acting with justice in honor of those lost on that day.
Nancy Oetter
Pax Christi Illinois
What grade would you give peacemakers after 9/11? A Brown University report concludes that millions have died as a result of our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Somalia, and Yemen. More in Iran, Gaza, and Venezuela. At home, our country vigorously hunts down, imprisons and deports millions of brown and black people while shameless merchants of war reap surging profits from weapons, jails and prisons. Our only hope to avoid a final failing grade lies with the hundreds of thousands who march for peace and justice and the hundreds who risk arrest for peace and justice. May they go forth and multiply.
Bill Quigley
Pax Christi USA 2003 Teacher of Peace
As I wrote on the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attack on the United States and New York City, in particular, I can repeat on this 25th anniversary that, despite the evil that has percolated and boiled over throughout this country and far beyond, our mission as Pax Christi is to live our faith, to work to promote love instead of hate, forgiveness instead of vengeance, peace instead of war, and understanding instead of fear and suspicion. We proudly collaborate with fellow peacemakers of all faiths and no faith to counter the violence and transform evil into good, to spread the Peace of Christ.
Rosemarie Pace
Pax Christi New York State
Commemorating 9/11 is a quandary for me. From Ground Zero, George Bush said the whole world would hear us. What did we say? We stole God’s prerogative. We said vengeance is ours with unceasing wars that killed millions, cost trillions, and still do in Iran, Palestine, and beyond. 9/11 now hosts a plurality of meanings: enduring wound, joke fodder, merch for sale, justifying violence. At 11, I cheered on war. At 36, I grieve that we fail to grasp this meaning: the violence we faced is a locus of our peacemaking. In commemorating, remember, too, our siblings whose lives we ended and upturned so “the whole world would hear us,” that we may evermore pursue nonviolence, which alone bears the peace we seek.
Robert Shine (he/him)
Executive Director, Pax Christi International Fund for Peace
A headline I read stays with me – “What kind of people would allow a genocide? Turns out, the US American kind.” We are still funding the ongoing Israeli genocide in Palestine. 25 years after 9/11, the US military industrial complex’s legacy is being Earth’s greatest polluter. The UN stated that global warming will exceed 1.5 degrees. Organizing towards collective liberation, for God’s just peace and nonviolence for all, remains a matter of survival.
Only after the last tree’s cut
And the last river poisoned
Only after the last fish is caught
Will you find that money cannot be eaten
– Indigenous Prophecy
Jessica Sun (she/they)
Pax Christi USA Young Adult Caucus
Postulant with the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods
Right after September 11, I wrote, “It is hard to tell how long this will last or how far our militarists are prepared to go. One thing is clear: these will be difficult days, weeks, months, and years ahead for us who see the futility of war and who feel like unwilling passengers on a train that is heading off a cliff. It will be easy to burn ourselves out in frantic activity and actions born out of despair rather than hope. Slow down and take time to think things through so you can respond from that place in your heart that is grounded in God.” Sadly, these words are still applicable.
Tom Cordaro
Pax Christi Illinois
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace
Reconciliation with God and our brothers and sisters remains the vision of Pax Christi as we stand in an increasingly fraught present and look to an uncertain future. Since 9/11, Pax Christi’s commitment to our mission—personal and nuclear disarmament, human rights, respect and care for our common home, the earth—through the antiracist lens of the dispossessed brings us closer to that vision. We, as a community of believers in Jesus, continue to choose to lose ourselves in love and in solidarity through prayer, study and action, and trust the Spirit of our faithful God to lead us to peace.
Cathleen Crayton
Pax Christi Southern California
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace
Originally written a few days after Sept. 11, 2001: My prayer is that someday our human consciousness will evolve to true global solidarity, and when we are faced with violence such as we saw on September 11, 2001, those who seek revenge will be viewed as momentarily “misguided.” All the rest of us will be so connected in mind and spirit that our response will be an outpouring of love –for the victims and for those who were so without love as to do such harm. We will love them into another way.
Judith Kelly
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace
In the last 25 years, Catholic peacemaking has grown more articulate about nonviolence and, in some cases, less honest about power. While I believe nonviolence is the most authentically Christian path, I am skeptical of the posture that often accompanies it: the declaration, usually issued from a safe position of privilege, that violent resistance is categorically immoral. Witnessing the immense violence inflicted on my own homeland of Cuba, in Iran, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza has helped me realize that it is easy to counsel turning the other cheek when your community is not in constant risk of extermination. The paradigm that only nonviolence is moral must be pushed because people have a right to defend themselves and assert their human dignity.
Joryán Hernández
Inaugural Sr. Dianna Ortiz, OSU Peacemaker Award
Today, 25 years after 9/11, we are again living a critical moment in human history. We are on a precipice; our future is at stake. Governments – including ours – inflict great suffering on the poor in the name of God; immigrant families are torn apart. It is time to chart another course, to break the cycle of violence, to offer a light in the darkness, to speak a word of hope amid despair. We are in a moment of kairos, the lives of present and future generations hang in balance. Our choice is clear: either nonviolent resistance to war and violence, or the destruction of all we hold sacred.
Scott Wright
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace
I gratefully remember New York City Catholics who welcomed peacemakers seeking alternatives to war after 9/11. Rev. Coman Brady, pastor of St. Vincent Ferrer parish, and Maryann Muller, the parish coordinator steadily extended hospitality to people whose rallying message was: “Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War.” At the parish’s kitchen table, following a walk from Arlington Cemetery to Ground Zero, people whose loved ones were killed on 9/11 formed “Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.” Aligned with New York’s Catholic Worker, Kairos, Pax Christi and Jesuit communities, they persisted. They embraced Afghans in Kabul and Iraqis in Baghdad, in union with Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Rev. John Dear, Rev. Simon Harak, SJ, and numerous Dominican sisters.
Kathy Kelly
Pax Christi USA 1998 Teacher of Peace
After September 11, 2001, I wrote that we need to hear voices from outside ourselves. We still need to hear and heed those voices. We have long resorted to violence to solve problems. Let’s take a fearless moral inventory of our professed values, deeds and attitudes. As we examine our record of violence at home and abroad since 2001, may we recommit to nonviolent tools like dialog and respect for others, no exceptions; and pray for compassion, forgiveness, and generosity. Let’s acknowledge our faults and work together to reduce violence, to practice respect for every human being, and to restore or establish economic, racial and social justice.
Nick Mele
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace
Twenty five years ago, some of us asked: what if, instead of dramatically increasing our budget for war, we would dramatically increase our budget for meeting human needs around the world? We said that creative minds and financial resources should be redirected to finding comprehensive nonviolent responses to terrorism and called for a new Catholic moral framework on violence and war. That transformation in Catholic teaching is happening now as the Church calls the just war theory “out of date,” Pope Leo invites the world to “unarmed and disarming peace,” and we who claim to follow Jesus embrace a deeper understanding of and commitment to Gospel nonviolence.
Marie Dennis
Pax Christi USA 2022 Teacher of Peace
Twenty five years later we still have a war budget that robs children of their future and those in need. We have a national government without compassion for people in the US, people in the world, and our Common Home. I believe we must support peace and carry it to places that don’t know the message of peace. We have too many resources going into war or the preparation of war and yet we have so many needs for people food, medical help, education and rebuilding here in the US and the world. I feel we are living through a time of great racism and suspicion of the other.
Beatrice Parwatikar
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace
I’m encouraged that Catholic peacemaking since 9-11-2001 has been enriched by the papacies of Francis and Leo XIV, who have re-emphasized the Church’s roots in the nonviolent Gospel of Jesus and called for the global abolition of nuclear weapons. I also applaud Pax Christi USA’s recent creation of the Ben Salmon No Just War Registry for Conscientious Objectors, a vital resource for young Catholics who conscientiously object to all war. I’m grateful, too, for the critical work of Pax Christi International’s Catholic Institute for Nonviolence, now training activists from around the world in peacebuilding through Gospel nonviolence.
Mike Moran
Pax Christi Massachusetts
PCAN (Pax Christi New England Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons)
Looking back at 25 years after 9/11, I see the intensity and depth of a violent ideology and propaganda that has consistently dehumanized and demonized Arabs – Muslims by labelling them as terrorists. At the backdrop of this I see Pax Christi’s commitment to advocating for the recognition and the treatment of each human being as a dignified image of God. Currently, our world is engulfed in armed violence, polarization and unprecedented disinformation and misinformation. I envision the role of Pax Christi as that voice that unceasingly cries in the wilderness, calling and reminding us as Church to witness to Gospel nonviolence.
Susan Nchubiri MM
Pax Christi USA National Council
As we reflect on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, it might be helpful for Christians in this country to recall one of the most challenging teachings of Jesus: to love our enemy as ourselves. Jesus shows that there is no violence in God. There is no vengeance. The desire for revenge is not God’s but projected onto God. As followers of Jesus, we must overcome violence by replacing it with other more humane strategies and tactics of moral struggle – particularly the restorative resources of forgiveness and community. We must do more than what is expected, we must love one another.
Vic Doucette
Pax Christi USA National Council
For me, the 25th anniversary of the bombing of the Twin Towers is a sober reminder that one of the most difficult—and most necessary—questions we must ask is: Why.
What pain, hatred, fear, or dehumanization allows one person to stop seeing another as human? Ignoring the answers does not make the violence disappear. It only leaves its roots untouched. And when the roots remain, the cycle continues.
To break that cycle, we need a different paradigm—one that does not excuse violence, but seeks to understand its origins; one that asks us to see the humanity and suffering of the other while still demanding justice and accountability.
Abigail Abysalh Metzger
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace
The Chinese character for crisis (危机) melds those of danger and turning point, or opportunity for change. I recall the immense losses of 9/11: friends who died, lives cut short, children and parents and spouses lost. We had the opportunity to respond in a way that created a world of dialogue over armed conflict, love over hate, peace over war. We missed that opportunity, God forgive us, and chose instead the danger of endless wars, with countless killed, orphaned and left bereft. As we commemorate this 25th anniversary of that tragic day, with crises on every side, may it mark a new turning point. May we face the future recognizing the innate worth of all humans, born in the image of God, and heed Jesus’ call to love our enemies.
Jeanne Allen
Pax Christi Massachusetts
The attacks of September 11, 2001 left a permanent wound on our hearts and strengthened our conviction that we must become instruments of peace, not instruments of war. We founded Little Friends For Peace in 1981 believing that if we want peace, we must teach peace. Now, 25 years after September 11, that work is more urgent than ever. Catholic peacemaking means teaching and practicing nonviolence, helping people learn peaceful ways to resolve conflict, and creating the conditions for people to live, work, and enjoy life together in peace. It begins with how we treat one another each day.
MJ and Jerry Park
Pax Christi USA 2007 Teachers of Peace
One event from the 9/11 nightmare taught me how important it is to speak up for peace. It was the post-9/11 Concert for NYC. Famous artists creating a semi-scripted patriotic fog for the families of the many victims. Anger and darkness palpable. Suddenly Richard Gere stepped to the mic. “Let’s turn this horrendous energy that we’re feeling… into compassion and love and understanding.” Serious booing. For me he spoke that night with a lot of guts for mercy as a better solution. Realized that night only love and compassion can defeat hate. And that’s what Pax Christi teaches us to do.
Dan Toussant
Pax Christi of Stark County (Ohio)
Whenever I hear prominent members of the Catholic hierarchy call for peace in the world, I feel deeply saddened by the disconnect in comprehension that patriarchal behaviors in cultures across the world are one of the most significant root factors in world violence. To say that it is moral, and divinely ordained, to have one set of people rule over another set, one superior and the other inferior, is to prime the stage for the ranking of humans everywhere. The ranking of some people’s, any people’s, value as “less,” or “nothing,” drives authoritarianism, wars, genocide and far more. The Catholic Church cannot uphold human dignity of each person and maintain patriarchal hierarchy. It’s like expecting 2+2 to equal (-3). The math simply does not and cannot work. We will not have peace in the world, nor in the Church, until we’re willing to act on this, and those who worship dominance rather than Christ, will fight it with everything they can, because they believe that the dominance represents God. It is not, however, the teaching of Christ.
Kim Vanderheiden
Pax Christi Northern California
Originally offered in 2001: “Let us pray that we have the patience to let this [heartbreak] seep deep into our personal and collective consciousness, to a depth where we have the potential to be most human, most loving, most at-one with ourselves, with one another, with the world, with the universe, and with the Transcendent –– God, Allah, Yahweh, Great Spirit, Higher Power. It is only there that we can truly see all options. It is only there that we can confront our own violence and transform it into a force for even greater good. It is only from these depths that we can possibly forge a response that will also change the course of history, one that will leave a legacy of hope for our world community and for generations to come.”
Joan Tirak
Pax Christi Michigan
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace Fr. John Dear invites all to listen to two special episodes of his podcast, the Nonviolent Jesus, for the anniversary of 9/11. In the first episode, he interviews Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace Colleen Kelly, co-founder of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows; in the second, he shares his own memories of serving as a chaplain at Ground Zero in the days, weeks, and months following 9/11. Use this link to visit his website to find the episodes.