ROME, OCT. 8, 2001 (Zenit.org).- The response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks must be a more-just world for all people, says an editorial in the latest issue of La Civiltà Cattolica.
Drafts of the bimonthly Jesuit review are always reviewed by the Vatican Secretariat of State.
«In addition to defensive and repressive measures against terrorism, everyone´s conscience has been shaken by the attacks on the United States,» the editorial states. «If the globalized economy involves everyone, everyone ought to have an equal opportunity to participate in global wealth, in order to be able to build a more habitable world.»
The title of the editorial quotes John Paul II´s description of Sept. 11: «A Dark Day in the History of Humanity.»
According to the review, the struggle against terrorism should entail a «cultural revolution in the West,» to be able to «understand the causes» of the «expansion of such a phenomenon.»
To do so, «it is important to begin to drain the water in which terrorism swims, which consists of pervasive anti-Western sentiments, especially in the disinherited Arab and Muslim masses,» the article states.
Given the concern in the West caused by terrorism, which has resulted in the restriction of some liberties and a brake on the economy, Civiltà Cattolica believes that it would help «to begin to look at these problems through the eyes of the inhabitants of Third World countries who, in the great majority, are anguished by their daily struggle for survival.»
«Thus, for example, the stance of the G-8 countries gathered in Genoa will seem increasingly unwise, having avoided every specific commitment to allocate 0.7% of their own gross national product to poor countries,» the editorial continues.
This is the reason for the need to globalize solidarity, an expression coined by John Paul II.
As regards the struggle against terrorism, La Civiltà Cattolica stresses the need to be aware of the difference «between moderate Muslim states and movements, and fundamentalist Muslim movements and, within the latter, between those who reject recourse to violence as contrary to the Koranic mandate, and those who take recourse to terrorism.»
The editorial warns against the «danger of a hunt for Arabs and Muslim believers» being unleashed, which «would also be a tragic error.»
