Archbishop of Sydney

War on America

By + George Pell
ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY
16 September 2001

I stumbled down to breakfast as usual, after some prayers, to see the newspaper headlines. My first instinct was that it was a spoof or an advertisement. Others had turned on the T.V. during the night and thought it was a horror movie. It was all too true, as the flowers outside the U.S. Consul's office testified.

Thousands of deaths anywhere are terrible, but the United States of America has a special place in the hearts of most Australians, despite the fact that the majority in the U.S. know next to nothing about us. Together we are New World democracies, largely immigrants or their descendents, imperfect societies, but proud, free and multi-racial. We share a common language as well as common constitutional roots and too much common television.

We also remember that the United States saved Australia from Japanese invasion in the Second World War, especially through their great naval victories at Midway and in the Coral Sea.

Only Canada has a way of life closer to the U.S. than Australia's and New York is the world's number one city. It might not be the capital of the U.S.A., but it is the capital of the Free World and we grieve for those who died and those left behind, there and in Washington. Millions of the poor have gone there to escape poverty, and millions, if not all of them, have made that escape. The Statue of Liberty was a beacon of hope.

These bombings are an escalation, a new level of evil. Through a combination of blind hatred, fanaticism and superbly orchestrated hijackings the world has seen another breakthrough. These were acts of war. In any thriller before this such a succession of strikes would have been dismissed as implausible. In many ways now impossible to foresee, what we regarded as normal will be redefined. There will be more money spent on armaments, tighter travel restrictions, higher insurance premiums and this is only a start.

We have all suffered a brutal shock, but the shock has been greatest for our youngsters; too young to remember even Vietnam, let alone World War Two. This should be a terrible lesson for them, that evil and violence don't belong only in nasty, escapist adventure films, but sometimes erupt in spectacular and destructive real life situations.

All of us will have to take more care that this catastrophe overseas does not worsen our pressure points here in Australia. We do have some racial and religious tensions; not bitter and deep by world standards, but trends to be reversed. Hostility towards aborigines; violence and threats of violence against Jewish synagogues; Moslems, even their children, insulted and threatened; violence from race-based gangs, and propaganda hostile to our traditions of public tolerance and diversity. We need to pull together; without exception. It is unjust to scapegoat the local Islamic community: they too reject these murders.

All religious people will pray for the victims and their loved ones, as all the Catholic school children did at 11.00 a.m. on last Thursday. We also pray that justice will be done, that the leaders of the Free World will be wise and strong, that those working for a spiral of hate and violence will be disappointed.

We pray too for all our dear friends in the U.S.A. We know the Statue of Liberty will long remain a beacon of hope for the poor and oppressed.