An article from the Cathedral Times
by the Very
Reverend Samuel G. Candler,
Dean of the Cathedral of St.
Philip
This Sunday, September 11, 2011, will mark the tenth year since the
coordinated terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center
towers in New York City, and that crashed two other airliners into the
Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. Most of us will never forget where
we were that morning, and we will never forget the sheer bewilderment
and outrage of the following days.
Writers and
analystsÂ"”and preachers!"”will use this weekend to offer all sorts of
perspectives on that event. We will remember those who died. We will
remember those who survived. We will remember heroes. We will remember
lessons learned, and we will remember mistakes. Though lots of other
issues and events are occurring in our churches, especially on this
first Sunday after Labor Day Sunday, the tenth anniversary of 9/11 will
inevitably be the predominant news item of the
day.
Thus, on this Sunday, I will devote the Dean's
Forum"”the first Forum of the Fall"”to similar remembrances and
perspectives on 9/11. However, I will focus on the Church"”the Cathedral
of St. Philip, the Episcopal Church, and the Christian Church. I want to
review the State of the Church since that awful day, September 11,
2001.
The Church, too, at every level, has much to
remember from the past ten years. Some of what we have learned has come
as a consequence of the terrorist attacks. We have prayed and lived
through other conflicts that may have had nothing to do with 9/11 at
all. And some of the issues we have faced in Church are related to the
same issues that 9/11 made real to us.
The world got
smaller on that day ten years ago, September 11, 2001. But the world
got farther away, too. Many of us Christians came face to face with the
moral questions we have been struggling with throughout our faith: Who
is our enemy? Who is our neighbor? How should we then
live?
Join me this Sunday, September 11,
2011, in Child Hall at 10:10 a.m., for both presentation and discussion.
The Dean's Forum will be titled, "The State of the Church Since 9/11."
The Very Reverend Sam Candler