Building bridges. (you may be right).

Once again Tom McGrath has hit the nail on the head in his November The Examined Life ("What do you do with such pain?"). We must be building bridges rather than burning them. Find those who perpetrated the foul deeds of September 11 anti bring them to justice. Vengeance is a slippery slope to the tit-for-tat situations that McGrath describes so eloquently and that will only be lose-lose situations. Hate consumes us like a cancer if we let it. If we truly follow Jesus, we will love our enemies, we will build bridges with Islam, we will build relationships that are right, since "right relationships" is another (better) translation of the Greek word in Paul's letters that is often rendered as "righteousness."

The triune God, in whose image we are made, calls us into relationships. Will we respond to that call? Or will we deny our cross, act out of pain, rather than live and love through it?

Patrick Jurd
Melbourne, Australia

I am a mother of two children, and I live in Cape Town, South Africa, where we have also been victims in recent years of indiscriminate bombing by supposed Muslim extremists. My parish priest and local Catholic paper have always called us to task about laying blame at the feet of all Muslims and in fact called us to admire the devoutness of the majority of Muslim people. I have needed these reminders to prevent me from labeling all Muslim people.

We live in an information age. People can be reached by newspapers, magazines, radio, television, film, and the Internet. Those responsible for disseminating information through the media have a responsibility to ensure that a spiritual message is relayed.

We need to hear these messages at least in balance with all else that is thrown at us by these media.

I would have liked to have seen more religious leaders from around the world on CNN giving their responses to the tragedy that we witnessed in horror.

As a Roman Catholic, I wanted to see and hear the pope, and I would have definitely been very interested in hearing from Muslim and Jewish spiritual leaders.

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