09/11/2026
The story of 9/11, to me, is more about the ordinary virtues of everyday Catholic heroes than it is about terrorism or anything else. Actually a coincidence put the National Catholic Register in an extremely strong position to cover Sept. 11, 2001.
And it changed my approach to the way I did my job. I first wrote for the National Catholic Register when I was in college 32 years ago, in 1989, and I’d been editor since 1999. I became editor shortly before the Columbine school massacre. And I actually have, Jim Beckman, who is at the Oklahoma City Archdiocese, to thank for my new approach to covering tragedy in the Catholic Church.
He was a youth minister in Columbine, and he made it a point to minister to those high school kids. And he said, “We as a Church have got to stand up right now and say there is an answer. There’s a hope you can cling to. There is a hope that gives us reason to go on even in the midst of this terrible tragedy. Jesus Christ gives us a reason to carry on.”
That transformed the way I looked at Columbine. It transformed the way I looked at every tragedy that we had to cover. And so, when 9/11 happened, it transformed the way I looked at 9/11. We were right there in New Haven, basically on the commuter train line to New York City.
So we were right there at the heart of where the Twin Towers were struck and came down. By Providence, a number of our staff happened to be in New York as well. Our former associate editor, Joe Cullen, was actually at Mass, two blocks away from the World Trade Center, and gave us an eyewitness account.
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