God and evil: PBS documentary gives voice to those who cursed or called on God when the towers fell - Television - documentary Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero - media coverage a year later

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 27, 2002 by Raymond A. Schroth

One U.S. senator declined to express enthusiasm for the idea that Congress was moving for a day to New York's historic Federal Hall, where the first Congress had met, to make speeches on the meaning of Sept. 11. He figured that everything that could be said had already been said.

He may have been right. But in the media world, nothing has been heard--little will sink in--until it has been said a hundred times.

So, especially in New York, we relived those days with the publication of dozens of books, at least three dozen TV specials, and the editors of the newsweeklies, The New York Times, the Newark Star Ledger and the New York Daily News determined that this time the journalists' "first rough draft of history" would be closer to the last word than the rough draft.

The most-asked question was: What has changed?

From where I stand--on a Jersey City hilltop--I see the hole in the New York skyline, but I walk the bustling streets of lower Manhattan. The city is very much alive.

Nationally, President George W. Bush has declared a police action against terrorists, a "war" in order to achieve his administration's original goals: abrogate international treaties; plunder the environment; and consolidate corporate wealth and economic power permanently in the hands of the I percent of the population who financed his election.

According to The New York Times and the New York Daily News, Bush has also told friends that he has been "chosen by God" to take command of this "war."

Which leads us to the most challenging question posed by the PBS "Frontline" documentary, "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero": Where was God that morning when those two planes came hurtling through space aimed at the more than 2,000 men and women about to perish?

This is not a new question.

We hear it in our own families when a parent or dear friend--especially a good, innocent, saintly person--loses a kidney, is diagnosed with ALS or pancreatic cancer. When a child dies at birth or a young man or woman keels over on the football field or dance floor and does not get up. Why her? Why me? For the existentialist literary philosophers--atheists like Camus or Christians like Dostoyevsky--the suffering of children was the greatest challenge to religious belief.

For the middle-aged fireman or policeman--the majority of whom are Catholic--the irrational "scandal" is the loss of the fireman/policeman's son, the handsome young fellow with a wife and 2-year-old child who will grow up thinking of his or her father in images of the Twin Towers crumbling in fire and smoke.

"Frontline," broadcast twice, needs to be seen at least twice to begin to deal with its questions. And it is best reviewed in tandem with the A&E/New York Times documentary, "Investigative Reports: Anatomy of September 11th," a highly technical, rational analysis of why so many people "had to die."

They didn't all have to die. Some died because they heroically took risks to save others. More died because architects who designed narrow stairways and so on did not foresee planes that big or that fast shimming into the walls. Police and firemen died because their respective communications systems were not designed to talk to one another. They could not broadcast: "Get out. Your tower is about to fall!"

So A&E dealt with human responsibility. "Frontline" gave voice to those who blamed--or thanked--God. They talked, for the most part, with victims mourning their losses; then with ministers, atheists, Muslim scholars, rabbis, artists and a few priests touched by the tragedy who struggled to say something consoling to people so hurt that an attempt at consolation was almost a denial of their grief.

And who is this God they kick around? He is the great puppeteer in the sky. He is Providence, the Big Planner. Our resumes are in his head before we type them. He simultaneously knows past, present and future, and pushes the buttons that send otherwise free individuals marching like mechanical figures in a medieval town hall clock to do his will.

To them, God is personally responsible for whatever goes wrong. How come if he's so great he didn't see those planes heading for the towers and reach down out of the clouds and swat them from the sky?

An Episcopalian priest, 31, in his black suit and high collar, who pre-Sept. 11 saw God as the one who could be "counted on" to "keep things in order," describes himself now as cynical and "alone in a cruel world."

To others, God is the family patriarch or next-door neighbor best friend who let them down and they are confused and teed off. In fact, the depth of their anger affirms their belief that he is there to absorb their sense of betrayal. We can't "hate" someone and deny his/her existence at the same time.

A security guard, Tim Lynston, who knew 30 victims, is filmed walking the beach in the evening, the surf washing around his footprints, as he tells us he "cursed" God. He is "having a rough time." This God is a "barbarian." "I believe in the Son," he says, "but not the Father."