Notice that these 'atheists' have no problem with Muslims or any of the 'designer religions' that have popped up, like Scientology. I think most of them aren't really atheists, they are just anti-Christian.
I have an idea though. The cross could be donated to a church and placed in the church's front yard. Some highly public church. Whatever makes them spin their heads at 360 degrees and spit out split pea soup. [Therefore, lets keep trying what we're trying. That really ticks them off.]
They are not "non-believers". They are strident believers in Atheism. That is their "religion". They want to push "their religion" on everyone else.
Is it just me, or has the number of people who have no lives exploded in the past year or so?
And no symbol stands for atheism by default. What a crock.
For Ghu's sake, EAT a little something before your brain starves to death.
The cross beams are obviously formed by an original joint that remained in place.
I didn't take the ramp tours. I mainly stood by that park to the south east of the center where lots of people played chess. When I worked downtown in the mid 90's, I went through there everyday. Now it's parking lot. I wasn't comfortable at all.
The one thing that surprised me was that the cross was still there. I remember reading about it when it was discovered but I had presumed it had been carted off site. Instead, it's prominately displayed.
Why people are so intent on taking away a symbol so meaningful to most of those who work at the site and presumably, to those who died there, is beyond me.
The prime motivating factor in the attacks of 9/11 was hatred. Cool, irrational, senseless hatred. Religion was the cloak it hid behind. Just as ir-religion is the cloak these vermin hide behind.
Religion WAS the sustaining force throughout the dark days when the rubble lay burning and the air filled with the stench of rotting flesh. The first official act of recovery was the High Mass at the National Cathedral. It was probably the most unifying gesture Bush could have made.
These naysayers have outlived their usefulness. It's time to shut them up.
RESURRECTION AT GROUND ZERO
by Robert N. Going
We are, scripture tells us, the Children of Light, and it is hard to imagine a more fitting tribute to the victims of the World Trade Center Massacre than those twin towers of blue light now rising from the rubble, far, far past the old 110 floor earthly limit, rising higher, ever higher, seemingly to the ends of the universe itself.
This memorial is scheduled to last for thirty days. It should never be extinguished.
Nor should that other great symbol be removed, the Cross at Ground Zero.
I have written about the cross previously, back in November when I was working as a Red Cross volunteer at Respite Center One, how the rescue workers had found these crossed steel beams and raised it up over the site.
After I wrote that story, I actually met the man who found it. He was introduced to me by the Fire Department Chaplain, Father Brian Jordan, who celebrates Mass every Sunday at 10:30 in the shadow of the cross. Frank Silecchia is a huge, gentle man with hands three times the size of mine. Born in Brooklyn of a Jewish mother and a Roman Catholic father, he is a simple man with native eloquence and Faith to move mountains. We stood in the muck and mire midst the spirits of shattered dreams between the cross and the then-standing remains of the North Tower as he told me his tale.
Many of the buildings surrounding the World Trade Center had been crushed by the falling debris. In the hours and days following the massacre, rescue workers risked their own lives in the desperate hunt for survivors. This brought Frankie into one of those tottering shells, the Customs House, Building 6. Eventually he reached the basement, and there, in the center of the building, was a crater, and rising up out of the crater a steel cross, fully erect.
It was the morning of the third day. For twenty minutes he stood there, and wept.
It had been part of the North Tower, and as that structure came down, this cross had passed through the roof of the building, plummeted through floor after floor after floor, down, down, down until finally coming to rest where he found it.
"This is holy ground we are walking on," he told me. "All those people that died here, they're still here in a way. Don't you see?" and here he looked up to where the tower once stood. "Don't you see? Jesus was raised up on the cross, He died, and He descended to the dead. Then He gathered them up, and then," and now he turned to where his Cross stood witness, high over the widening pit, "then, Resurrection! And He rises and takes everyone with Him to the Father!"
Father Jordan, who was still with us, nodded, and it is hard to imagine a thousand volumes of theology and philosophy that could have explained things any better.
Understandably, if the Cross remains, some will object to such a prominent display of religion in a public place.
But if, on a crisp autumn day when the pipes play Amazing Grace and the drum sounds the Dead March, some widow or child or mom or dad glances up at that cross and thinks for but a moment, "I am the Resurrection and the Life," who among us should say them nay?
She must be talking about her junk lawsuit. (If it hasn't been filed yet, it will.)
What part of "Freedom of Religion" don't these assholes understand?