Spiritual shifts. (Odds & Ends).

Recently I watched the video Thirteen Days. I had read Robert F. Kennedy's book on the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and wanted to see the film version of this memoir. The movie vividly recalls the responses the Kennedy administration considered to Soviet missiles placed in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy's brain trust generated many options. I was impressed with the judgment of JFK, who ultimately sided with advisors who counseled strategies other than bombs. I was depressed with the military who saw only one solution, all-out war, and tried to maneuver the commander in chief into a corner where bloodshed would be his only option.

Thirteen Days also reminded me that some of the emotions people experienced after September 11 were similar to feelings during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Both events triggered grave concern, momentary feelings of hopelessness, a desire to do something but not quite sure what, and a turn to religion and prayer.

Yet the religious and spiritual responses to September 11 have been markedly different from those during the Cuban Missile Crisis. One noticeable difference between October 1962 and September 2001 was the lack of incredibly long lines at confessionals. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Catholics lined the aisles of churches and chapels to go to Confession. Some lines snaked along the sidewalks surrounding these houses of God. Not so this time around.

Approaches to sacramentality have changed greatly in the intervening years. Since long before September 11 the practice of individual Confession has been waning. Gone are the days when many Catholics considered going to Confession to be a magic bullet that ensured eternal life. Many

Catholics today have a different and perhaps more mature understanding of sacramentality than in 1962. The popularity of communal reconciliation services may be a sign that they see God's forgiveness and reconciliation as transcending the confines of any one sacrament's rite.

Another spiritual shift since the Cuban Missile Crisis was reflected in the many interfaith services that followed September 11. Things were a lot more denominationally exclusive back in 1962. And the country's spectrum of religions was a lot narrower--primarily Catholic, Protestant, and Jew. The nation had not yet passed immigration acts that welcomed great numbers of people who embrace non-Western spiritual paths--Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Baha'i, and Jain.

Back in 1962 Catholics were taught not to "actively participate" in the services of other faiths. For the most part, interfaith services were nonexistent. Religion classes defined exactly what act of active participation in another's faith constituted a sin. Could a Catholic stand and sing during a non-Catholic service, or join in the praying of the Protestant version of the Our Father in a Reformed church? The answer: better to remain seated and mute.

The Catholics who after September 11 joined others in interfaith services lived out the Vatican II declaration on the relation of the church to non-Christian religions, Nostra Aetate. It says, "The Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions." In these interfaith services, many Catholics experienced what is true and holy in other religions, both Christian and non-Christian.

How lucky we were in 1962 to solve a crisis in just 13 days. We are not so fortunate this time around. But Catholics are graced to have grown beyond the narrow boundaries of a parochial Catholicism to a more mature understanding and practice of faith.

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.