Catholics Assisting Against Al Qaeda

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By Fr. Robert J. Carr
©Catholic Online 2005

The bombing in London may also be a break in predicting when the next terrorist attack could be planned.

The bombing in the British transit system actually fulfills a pattern that begins on September 11. Understanding the significance of that day allows one to understand the significance of July 7th and may allow us to be aware of plans for the next date. However, our academic community isolates itself from those elements of our society that understand such significance. This isolation may be a source of danger to all citizens under the hateful gaze of terrorists.

Sometime ago while the Catholics in Boston endured the attacks of anti-Catholic protesters harassing them as a tool against Cardinal Law, one of these attackers launched a call for all Catholics to boycott mass in the Archdiocese of Boston. The date September 22, 2002 seemed to have no significance, but rather a date chosen at random. I do not believe that people act that way really most of the time. If they are picking a date to boycott the Church, they pick it for a significant reason. My investigations proved correct.

Many of the protesters were actually part of the Massachusetts university community of Harvard, MIT, Boston University and Boston College and others. Christopher Reeve at the time was lobbying to develop a science only ethic in the United States. Such an ethic would silence the voice of religion, specifically Catholicism, in decisions for such things as eugenics issues and research grants. This is especially true in Boston which is rich in universities. In fact, in 2003 Reeve came to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to promote his science only ethic among MIT and Harvard researchers.

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The Thursday before the declared boycott date of Boston Area Catholic Churches, Christopher Reeve blamed the Roman Catholic Church and the Bush Administration for research policies that he felt contributed to his inability to walk on his fiftieth birthday. This was his goal when he planned to fully recover from his paralysis accident. He turned fifty the following Wednesday. The Sunday designated for the boycott actually was not some random day, but the Sunday closest to Christopher Reeve's fiftieth birthday and the boycott called by those close to the University Community was designed to be a tribute to Reeve. As I said, rarely do people pick dates at random.

The terrorist attacks on London and on the United States are similar examples. Why do people say let's do it on this day and not on that one? The attacks on Spain, The United States and England all fell on days connected to political events. The Spanish attacks preceded a national election. They successfully influenced that election in favor of the opposing socialist candidate, which was their intent, and the gay community, which may or may not have been their intent.

The Attacks on the World Trade Center in New York coincided with a city election. The London attacks coincided with the beginning of the G-8 summit.

However, there is a numerical message in at least two and maybe three of the three bombings. September 11 is obvious for Americans. The message that 911 means disaster and that disaster struck without question raises the significance of the now infamous date. Yet, what about July 7, 2005. If there is any date that one should have expected trouble from Arab terrorists it may have been this one. The numbers in that date have some serious religious significance.

First the year 2005, add the numbers together and you have the number 7. Therefore, the date can be changed to 7/7/7. Any person familiar with Christian and or Jewish numerology is familiar with key role the numbers seven and three play in both religions. 777 actually is the number for perfection as 666 is the number for the devil as seen in Revelation. 666 signifies that which in quantity looks like 777 but is just one short in each group. Such is the reality of the Devil. He can look like an angel of light, but falls short. In fact, Mel Gibson uses this technique in the movie The Passion of the Christ. The devil looks quite beautiful until the worm comes out of his nose, the lack of perfection becomes apparent but not until this point.

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Further, in mundane circles any gambler is familiar with the number 777. It signifies a jackpot. Yet, for members of the radical religious community gambling is a sin.

Imagine a group of terrorists who have been overcome by their passion of anger. They are not thinking like intelligent men driven by reason, but angry men driven by passion. Their passion is going to influence their decisions including as simple a decision as determining which day to stage a terrorist attack. The day will most likely have a special significance as it did in the called boycott of masses in the Archdiocese of Boston.

They are going to choose that date for a reason, and weather will not be the predominant factor because of pre-planning. There is a reason why 9/10 or 9/12 was not chosen as well as 7/06 or 7/08 were not chosen. The problem is that many university professors and government officials thinking with high levels of reason that reject faith put themselves far away from the passion centered reasoning of the terrorists. In short, they will over-complicate or underestimate terrorists' passion. Yet, people of faith, rooted in both reason and faith, may be aware ahead of time of warning signs that people thinking only in terms of reason may never comprehend.

A local college here in the Boston area would not hire a young adult with whom I was working because he had a criminal record for which he did probation. The reasoning was simple, students pay tens of thousands of dollars per year to attend the school and no one with a criminal record could be hired. It may jeopardize the students' feeling of safety. However, such an insulated environment may also keep such students from understanding the exact issues that cause crime and terrorism: poverty, oppression and feelings of powerless.

Al Qaeda uses the same reasoning in reverse. Passion centered reasoning is used to recruit angry inmates to their cause right under our noses in western prisons. The insulated in a safe college environment become a sense of false security when we rely strictly on their braintrust to keep us safe. Meanwhile, potential victims of terror must be aware of the very issues that grow out of the human heart to truly develop a strategy that in the long run keeps us safe.

I speak here from another perspective. This past January, I realized that the year added up to the number 7 (2+0+0+5). I also realized that July 7th of this year would be a significant date 7/7/7. I certainly did not expect a terrorist attack on that day, but I did realize that this day only comes rarely. The next time it will appear is in 2014. We are invested in this country in a belief that human reason is superior to any other human powers. Maybe it is time for the faith community to alert the non-believing educated community when such red flags may be coming again. They may prevent yet again another terrorist attack, because we would know that like 9/11 and 7/7/2005, the date would be just as significant as the act that could be planned for it and we could be on a stronger alert. There may be no excuse, if this pattern continues, for us to be caught off guard again. The key here is saving lives of innocent victims.

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Why did I not alert anyone? I wish now that I did, but mainly, I felt that no one in our government, nor universities would take such reasoning seriously. After all, people thought so little of Catholicism that members of our government and our educational establishment turned a blind eye to the plight of innocent Catholics. Who would listen to a Catholic priest, from Boston no less, speaking from the faith perspective about a faith-related date that raises the bar of alert. It was when I saw the date as a headline in the Wall Street Journal that I realized how important my observation was in January.

I still don't know if that attitude may change in our society, but as our government teaches us to be alert, so must people of faith who think in terms of passion centered and rational centered decision making also be alert. We may be able to give a warning ahead of time that many in our education community and our government could never imagine because they are only thinking with half their intellectual capacity: reason without faith. For example, would an anti-Christian or ex-Christian member of Al-Qaeda launch an attack on March 16th, 3/16 as in John 3:16. It certainly is a possibility. The Madrid bombings come close to this number at 3116. March 11 2004.

In the meantime, Al Queda has a pattern. They target transportation in politically charged major cities and also may pick a day that has numerical significance as seen through the eyes of the regular Joe and Jane who live in the real world and face real issues everyday.

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Fr. Robert J. Carr is the author of Evolution, Faith and the Future of Catholicism published by Lulu books. Fr. Carr has long been the proponent of what he calls four-dimensional thinking: Rational thinking that takes in the three dimensions of material reality connected to a fourth dimension which is faith.