9-11 As it Occurred
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
The terrorists do not get the souls of 72 virgins without the cross.
They are in hell unless God saw them as insane inter alia which I doubt. Sanctifying grace is needed to reach purgatory which is a reward with medicinal punishments. Trent forbids us to be certain about such matters outside revelation including our own grace about which we can have moral certitude not absolute certitude. But I suspect they are in the “storm of darkness” since a good tree does not bring forth bad fruit unless with a sincere erroneous conscience but these guys attended a strip bar right before the event because they were opportunistically accessing taqiya…deception…by which they could do sins in order to blend in. But they had already blended in for years. Even Allah would confront them on that rationalization if he existed. But he doesn’t. The Trinity does…whom the Jews revealed without knowing they were revealing Him. Go to 2 Kings 4 where Augustine saw the Trinity under heavy revelatory veils. A woman sends to Eliseus for help because her only boy is dying. Eliseus sends his servant Gehazi with Eliseus’ staff to be laid upon the boy. But still the boy now dead …does not move so Eliseus comes himself and descends on the now dead boy matching his eyes, hands and mouth to those of the boy who grows warm. Eliseus walks about the house and descends again on the boy but this time there is no mention of matching body parts. The boy sits up and coughs seven times.
The boy is mankind dead in sin. Eliseus symbolizes the Trinity who first sends His law ( the staff ) through His servant Moses ( Gehazi) which does not heal mankind…Galatians 3:21…” had there been a law that giveth life, salvation would be by the law”….Hebrews 7:19 ” the law brought nothing to perfection”.
Because the law failed to make men good, God had to come Himself first conforming Himself to our flesh ( eyes, hands, mouth )… we grew warm..alive but then God descended again a second time on Pentecost without conforming to eyes et….the Holy Spirit. We sit up and cough the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
There is nothing this deep in the Koran. Trinity means God loved prior to angels and men within Himself. God is Love prior to angels and men therefore. A one person God could not love or be Love but was a loner prior to angels, jin and men. That loner god symbol explains a lot of bad Islamic behaviour. Any muslim reading this…this is your moment. Know your moment.
It’s so difficult to process all of the different kinds of emotion that flood in.
Sorrow, anger, fear for their last moments and the sadness that is their families.
Unreal. Unbelievable. Incredible act of cowardice. To Hell with the extreme Muslims… All of them to Hell.
https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.catholicnewsagency.com/amp/news/32605/911-when-john-paul-ii-grieved-with-america
Ceterum autem censeo Islamum esse delendum.
https://suburbanbanshee.wordpress.com/2021/09/11/ewtn-9-11-memorial-mass/
EWTN news also ran some of their coverage from 20 years ago.
Excerpt from “Your Life Is Worth Living: 50 Lessons to Deepen Your Faith” by Fulton J. Sheen:
Some years ago there was an Indian who went into Tibet. He went in to do evangelizing in that non-Christian country with a Tibetan guide. During the trip they got very cold crossing the foot-hills of the Himalayas and sat down, exhausted and almost frozen. This Indian, whose name was Singh, said, “I think I hear a man moaning down there in the abyss!”
The Tibetan said, “You’re almost dead yourself, you can’t help him!”
Singh said, “Yes, I will help him.”
He went down and dragged the man out of the abyss and carried him to the nearby village and came back completely revived from that act of charity. When he returned he found his friend, who had refused to aid the neighbor, frozen to death. Therefore, the first way to escape the anxiety of life is to find your neighbor.
The second way is to leave yourself open to experiences and encounters with the divine which will come to you from without. I say leave yourself open. Your eye does not have light. Your ear has no sound or harmony. Food of your stomach comes from outside. Your mind has been taught. A radio pulls in unseen waves from the outside. Allow yourself to receive certain impulses that come from without which will perfect you. No matter how far away you are from what I’m talking about, they will still come.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DBQY79F
Excerpt from Wikipedia article for Brian Clark (September 11 attacks):
Rescue of Stanley Praimnath
After Flight 175 struck the South Tower, Clark and seven other employees of his floor who had survived the impact gathered together and started to descend Stairwell A. They only made it to the 81st floor when Clark and his group were met by a woman and a man coming up the stairs. The woman blocked their paths and warned them there were flames and smoke further down, and their only option was to try and go up to the roof in hope of being rescued from there.
Clark and his coworkers stopped and debated on the stairwell landing about what to do next; whether to listen to the woman and go up the stairs or to ignore her warnings and go down the stairs. As the group stood there debating their next move, a faint scream for help coming from inside the 81st floor caught Clark’s attention. While his group continued to debate what to do, Clark grabbed coworker Ron DiFrancesco and entered the 81st floor to look for the person screaming for help. As Clark and DiFrancesco entered the floor, Clark turned around to observe his coworkers as they started to go up the stairs to the roof instead of down. That group would all lose their lives that day, as access doors to the roof were locked, and there were no plans for helicopter rescues from the roof, as the NYPD deemed it too unsafe to attempt due to dense clouds of smoke and rooftop antennas.
As Clark and DiFrancesco made their way to the voice screaming for help, DiFrancesco became overcome with smoke and returned to the stairs, which he would also ascend. Unlike the rest of his coworkers who went up the stairs, however, DiFrancesco reversed course and survived. Clark made his way to find Fuji Bank employee Stanley Praimnath, who was pinned underneath some debris behind a wall that had stood firm.
Praimnath had initially evacuated the building after the first plane had hit the North Tower but was told to go back inside. Once he had arrived back at his office on the 81st floor, he was on the phone when he noticed the second plane coming right at him. He screamed and jumped under his desk as the plane was hitting the building. After the impact, Praimnath found himself alive under his desk with only minor injuries. When Clark found Praimnath, there was a wall standing between the two, and the only way for Praimnath to escape was to jump up and go over the wall.
Praimnath was unsure he would be able to get over the wall but tried due to Clark’s urging. Praimnath made several unsuccessful attempts to climb the wall, on one occasion injuring his hand, but he persisted, and on another attempt Clark was able to hook his arms around Praimnath and help pull him to the other side.
Descent
Clark and Praimnath’s descent through the floors of the impact was impeded by some debris and smoke, but by moving the debris, they made it passable.
The phones were working in Oppenheimer’s offices on the 31st floor. Clark was on the telephone for over three minutes and talked to three different people before his 911 call was understood. This call might have been the only chance for rescue workers to learn that there was a clear stairwell that the several hundred people trapped above the impact could try to use to escape. Clark described how he and Praimnath did not feel a sense of urgency, and before calling 911 they each made one brief personal call.
At 9:55 am, they got to the ground floor where there were rescue workers. One advised them to run once they exited onto Liberty Street, at the southeast corner of the complex. At 9:56 am, Clark and Praimnath ran out of the World Trade Center complex. Clark described how, when they had gotten about two blocks away, Praimnath told him he thought the buildings were going to go down. Clark was skeptical, repeating how solidly built the towers were, but he did not finish his sentence before the South Tower (Tower Two) started to collapse. Clark and Praimnath had left the South Tower just four minutes before it collapsed; they were two of the last 25 people to exit the building; Clark was number 22. Only two other people exited the South Tower after Clark and Praimnath.
Aftermath
Praimnath thanked Clark for saving his life. Clark, in turn, also thanked Praimnath since he felt that the act of leaving his group and freeing Praimnath drew him out of a debate that might have ended with his joining the others who went up to their deaths. His Euro Brokers colleague, Ron DiFrancesco, who had initially turned around because of the smoke, mustered the strength to resume the descent and was the last person to escape the South Tower before its collapse; he awoke several days later in a hospital, suffering from extensive burns and a head laceration. They were among only four out of 18 people who managed to escape from in or above the impact zone in Tower 2. Richard Fern, a Euro Brokers IT manager, was the fourth.
Sixty-one of Clark’s co-workers were killed in the incident. Clark was later appointed by his company’s management to be President of the Euro Brokers Relief Fund, created to help take financial care of the families of those who were lost. He retired in 2006, a year after Euro Brokers merged with another company. Since his retirement, he has been volunteering with various non-profit organizations, including serving on the board and as treasurer of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Jersey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clark_(September_11_attacks)
Thank you QUOTERMEISTER.
Great story.
Excellent lessons.
“The great gift of service is that it also helps the one who serves.”
– Sadhu Sundar Singh
(This is probably the missionary that Fulton Sheen mentions in the excerpt above. Note how Singh’s story eerily parallels that of September 11 survivor Brian Clark.)
https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/book-reviews/excerpts/view/14866
Of the three “Abrahamic” Religions:
Judaism and Christianity are practically identical; one is waiting for the Messiah and the other believes the Messiah has Come.
Islam, which came after both the original two yet claims it proceeded the other two, preaches something entirely different. Islam claims both Judaism and Christianity are unequivocally false. Islam really cannot be one of three “Abrahamic” religions; if Islam is true there are no other Abrahamic religions, and if false -it’s false. What are we to say of a religion that claims to be Abrahamic yet hates Judaism and apes Christianity? I do not hold any hostility towards Muslims, but they’ve been terribly misled.
I heard a fine homily on 9/11 by Fr. Mark Mary on the EWTN Mass. One of his remarks has stayed with me: “It is better to suffer evil than commit it.”
The following was posted by a friend on LinkedIn:
On September 11, 2001, Heather Penney, a 26-year-old Air National Guard lieutenant, was ordered to ram her unarmed F-16 fighter jet into United Airlines Flight 93 to prevent it from reaching Washington, D.C. Penney’s commanding officer, Colonel Marc Sasseville, was also ordered to take part in the mission.
The pilots were ordered to scramble after two hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center and a third hit the Pentagon. They were given shoot-to-kill orders but no weapons. Penney and Sasseville’s plan was to aerodynamically unbalance the plane by ramming it from both ends, causing it to crash into the ground. However, passengers on the plane were able to change the hijackers’ plans, and the plane crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board.
Penney is now a Senior Fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, where she works on defense policy, research, and analysis. She also served two combat tours in Iraq during the Global War on Terror.
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Lt. Heather Penny –> another Ja’el, another Judith. We need more like this.
9/11 is my youngest son’s birthday. My husband took the train to NYC on the 10th with a train reservation to return on the afternoon of the 11th. We had planned a family birthday dinner for Lawrence at a restaurant near National Airport. When I heard on TV that a twin tower had been hit I called the Crystal City office because I didn’t know where Stephen was in NYC. Turns out he was a mile away at Widlinger Engineering being briefed on a new exterior construction material that could deflect bomb blasts. Ironic. The group saw the second tower be hit and crumble. With overnight suitcase in hand my husband walked 4 miles in the midst of chaos to the train station. Because of the reservation he was able to get on the first train to DC. Birthday dinner was rescheduled to the 12th. The restaurant overlooked National Airport. All planes were grounded. The airport was empty. Only movement was an empty train that ran in circles. I called Lawrence tonight. He is contracted to a LNG station in south Louisiana. 4 weeks on 2 weeks off. Great salary and benefits but not much of a social life. He bought a cottage on the Saints St and wants to marry and have a family. When we visit Lafayette I can’t help myself but be on the lookout at the Cathedral Masses for tall gals. Lawrence is 6’5″.