B16: “Give eternal light and peace to all who died”

April 10, 2008 By

231006spet11We are beginning to see some interesting advance stories based on the texts that Pope Benedict XVI will use during his upcoming trip to Washington, D.C., and New York City.

This is very tricky territory, as any reporter will tell you who has covered one of these trips — the Olympics of Godbeat writing. Here is an example of why.

While in New York, Benedict will visit Ground Zero. Rest assured that one of the tmatt trio questions will come into play, as journalists cover this event. Which one? In this case, watch out for controversies linked to No. 2:

(2) Is salvation found through Jesus Christ, alone? Was Jesus being literal when he said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)?

Now, here is the full prayer text as released by the Vatican:

O God of love, compassion, and healing, look on us, people of many different faiths and traditions, who gather today at this site, the scene of incredible violence and pain.

We ask you in your goodness to give eternal light and peace to all who died here — the heroic first-responders: our fire fighters, police officers, emergency service workers, and Port Authority personnel, along with all the innocent men and women who were victims of this tragedy simply because their work or service brought them here on September 11,
2001.

We ask you, in your compassion to bring healing to those who, because of their presence here that day, suffer from injuries and illness. Heal, too, the pain of still-grieving families and all who lost loved ones in this tragedy. Give them strength to continue their lives with courage and hope. We are mindful as well of those who suffered death, injury, and loss on the same day at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Our hearts are one with theirs as our prayer embraces their pain and suffering. God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world: peace in the hearts of all men and women and peace among the nations of the earth. Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred. God of understanding, overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy, we seek your light and guidance as we confront such terrible events.

Grant that those whose lives were spared may live so that the lives lost here may not have been lost in vain. Comfort and console us, strengthen us in hope, and give us the wisdom and courage to work tirelessly for a world where true peace and love reign among nations and in the hearts of all.

So where is the controversy in that text?

Here is the lede for a Reuters report by Philip Pullella about this prayer:

Pope Benedict will pray for the conversion to love “of those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred” when he visits New York’s Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade towers destroyed on September 11, 2001.

A prayer he will read also commemorates those who died or were injured in the other September 11 attack at the Pentagon and on United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought off hijackers. Nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11 attacks, including the 19 hijackers.

9 11storyThere are several questions here. For example, what, pray tell, does “conversion to love” mean?

The crucial phrases to be used by the pope are the following. First, there is the prayer to “give eternal light and peace” to all who died, which would, naturally, include the 19 hijackers. Later, the pope will pray for God to, “Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred.” This is interesting language, since “turn to” is a phrase that, in New Testament language, is, literally, the meaning of the word “repent.”

The headline for the Reuters report jumps on this angle: “Pope Ground Zero prayer seeks terrorists’ redemption.” At first I thought that was a bad headline, but now I think that it does capture the essence of the text.

So the pope is praying for the eternal salvation of terrorists, including the leaders and followers in the Al-Qaeda plot. This may offend Muslims, since it can be read as a prayer for the conversion of some Muslims — in this life or the next. It will certainly raise eyebrows among Christians who believe that it’s impossible for non-Christians to find salvation after death, and certainly after the non-Christians in question have flown passenger planes into towers full of defenseless people. Both sides of that coin are controversial.

Stay tuned. And let us know about the other interesting pre-visit stories that you see in the mainstream media.

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Filed Under: Catholicism, Godbeat, Islam, Journalism, World Religions, Worship
About TMatt

Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes a weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service.

  • Asinus Gravis

    Such “prayers” which are really, in my view, sermons aimed at the listeners or readers are a serious distortion of what the gospels tell us about how to pray.

    Treating it as the sermon that it is, I think the primary focus of “Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred,” is to those who–as a result of 9/11–now are consumed with hatred of Muslims (or some subset of Muslims). I do not think the audience for the sermon is primarily the Muslim world; it is the Americans with their irrational hatred of those whose religion and culture is different than their own.

    I think he is calling upon many who already think of themselves as Christians to begin to worship and follow the God of Love who was revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. That would involve much needed “redemption.”

  • Chris Bolinger

    Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred.

    That is a prayer for those still living, not one for those who have died already.

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    Yes, Chris: That will be seen as a prayer for terrorists still alive.

  • Martha

    “First, there is the prayer to “give eternal light and peace” to all who died, which would, naturally, include the 19 hijackers.”

    Do you know, that hadn’t occurred to me? That’s a very interesting point to raise, and I am wondering whether that was intended to be there or not.

    “It will certainly raise eyebrows among Christians who believe that it’s impossible for non-Christians to find salvation after death.”

    Not just non-Christians; you don’t get a second chance after you die, Christian, non-Christian, atheist, whomever. If this is a reference to Purgatory, then Purgatory isn’t a second chance or means of salvation: the souls in Purgatory are already saved.

    Now, could it be that some of the hijackers made it to Purgatory? God alone knows.

    Good points, though.

  • http://www.draknet.com/proteus Judy Harrow

    In terms of the TMatt trio, remember that the hijackers were far from the only non-Christians who died on that day.

  • http://www.misterdavid.typepad.com David (in Edinburgh)

    Or is he maybe praying for hate-filled Christians?

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    Dave:

    I am sure that is part of his prayer, but not the part implied by being at Ground Zero.

    Judy:

    You are right of course. But this is a journalism blog, not a theology blog. So I was discussing the implications of the prayer that will make headlines and news.

  • Jerry

    There are several questions here. For example, what, pray tell, does “conversion to love” mean?

    To my untutored eye, it reads like an allusion to the two greatest Commandments.

  • http://holyincarnation.org fr john w fenton

    “First, there is the prayer to “give eternal light and peace” to all who died, which would, naturally, include the 19 hijackers.”

    Could one, perhaps, infer kindness on the part of the Pope? In other words, might he be asking God to have mercy on the souls of all, including the hijackers?
    If thought of this way, perhaps journalists could see this phrase as the demonstration of the Pope’s encyclical on love; namely, that by his prayer he is urging all who pray to pray in love for the terrorists.

  • http://sccos.blogspot.com KKairos

    It raises a couple of eyebrows for me too. Of course, the Vatican often says misinterpretable things (for instance, awhile back when it simply affirmed its belief that the Catholic Church was the one true church and this was read by everyone and their mother as “Pop says only Catholics saved.”

  • danr

    “Pop says only Catholics saved.”

    Intentional, or Freudian typo? Either way, hilarious.

  • http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld Tom Heneghan

    As we read it, the structure of the prayer strongly implies that Benedict is referring to terrorists abroad. He mentions the victims right there at Ground Zero in the first section, expands that in the second section to their families and casts an even wider circle in the third section by recalling the victims at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. He then begins the fourth section by looking even further afield by mentioning “our violent world” and “the nations of the earth” before getting to “those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred.”

    This not the first time Benedict has spoken about terrorists this way. In his first meeting as pope with Muslims, during the 2005 World Youth Day in Cologne, he brought up the issue right away and thanked the Muslim leaders present for denouncing Islamist terrorism. He then said, according to the official Vatican translation: “If together we can succeed in eliminating from hearts any trace of rancour, in resisting every form of intolerance and in opposing every manifestation of violence, we will turn back the wave of cruel fanaticism that endangers the lives of so many people and hinders progress towards world peace.”

    The original German text that he read out spoke of “das Haßgefühl” (the feeling of hate), which is closer to the term in the Ground Zero prayer than the weaker phrase “any trace of rancour” that the Vatican translator chose for the English text. There has not been any 9/11-like attack in Germany in recent years, so he could not have been referring there to hatred among relatives of victims there.

  • Julia

    Remember all those prison movies when the condemned man meets with a minister or priest in the hours before the execution? The rabbi or priest or minister invariably prays for the soul of the murderer or rapist or kidnapper. It’s not so unusual for a man of the cloth to pray for the soul of people who have committed horrific acts of violence – whether the criminal repents or not. An entire movie was made about a nun whose vocation was to minister to and pray for “Dead Men Walking”. I wonder why the reporter (and many of you guys)found the Pope praying for the souls of living (and maybe dead) terrorists/criminals remarkable?

  • danr

    “I wonder why the reporter (and many of you guys)found the Pope praying for the souls of living (and maybe dead) terrorists/criminals remarkable?”

    I don’t think anyone did (or would) find prayer for the souls of living terrorists remarkable. We are commanded to love and pray for all, including (and perhaps especially) our enemies.

    Prayer for the dead is a whole different ballgame. With certain exceptions (Mormonism comes to mind), there is absolutely no teaching within any strand of Christianity (Catholic or Protestant) that recognizes prayer for impacting the salvation status of dead people. Hebrews 9:27 “Man is destined to die once, and then to judgment”, and Martha above explained that purgatory (for those who believe in it) exists only for those already determined saved at the point of death.

    I found it interesting that though the Pope prayed for “eternal light and peace for all who died here”, he then listed almost all the different groups who died. Conspicuously absent were the terrorists.

  • Jimmy Mac

    Martha:

    The Catechism of the Catholic Church (#847) teaches, “Those who through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation.”

    Note the word “may” rather than “will.” However, the possibility is held open as none of us knows how the Mind of God works.