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CNN Live Today

Search for Meaning

Aired September 03, 2002 - 13:25   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Helen Whitney produced "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" for PBS. She joins us now live from New York to talk about the project.
Helen, what a pleasure to have you.

HELEN WHITNEY, "FAITH AND DOUBT": Thank you.

PHILLIPS: I am glad that we could work this out. I watched this last night. I have to tell you, I cried, and then I turned this corner and got really deep. It was amazing just how you made such a spread in such a case. You talked to believers. You talked to believers that are mad. You talked to atheists. I want to know, how did you know that you had something here, you had had something of such depth?

WHITNEY: Well, I think in any crisis situation, you know when our certainties evaporate, when our foundation are sort of crumbling, that's when the big -- that's when the drama of faith sort of begins. That's when people ask those big questions about good and evil, about God, about divine justice, about, you know, all the big existential questions. And I suspected that's what was going to be happening and I felt that if these questions were being asked, as they were, they would be asked in a personal, and urgent and vivid way, and that's in fact what was happening.

PHILLIPS: You found some incredible characters, some very powerful testimony. Let's start by listening to Bernie Heeran.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BERNIE HEERAN, FIREFIGHTER: I asked him in the beginning, you know, if you can give me that one. I would appreciate it, but he had nothing do with this. He -- there was a lot more people that could have been killed. He was fighting evil that day, like he does every day. You know, fire department calls fire the devil. You know, firemen call fire the devil. That day we fought the devil, and we saved a lot of people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: We know that Bernie lost his son. His son was a firefighter. He didn't lose his faith in God. As a matter of fact, he said, God just knew something that I didn't know.

WHITNEY: There were a number of people like Bernie, whose faith is deep, and unquestioning and profound, and they lost people, and yet they didn't question the way a number of other people did, and I interviewed quite a range of people, But there were many Bernies, and there they were not asking -- people that were questioning, where was God, as much as who is this God? And what is his nature?

PHILLIPS: One thing that was very memorable for me, and it was a part of the interview, where you interviewed Luca Badini (ph), a photographer, and I took notes here of what he said. He said, when he was seeing the pictures and the live video of humans jumping out of the windows of these World Trade Center towers, and he said, "I could only think of what was going through those individual's minds as they jumped. Is there a heaven. They must have know something. They must have had a piece of mind. Do we have a device inside of us that ells us, it's time, it's OK, we're going to jump into something beautiful like a garden."

You know that really made me think. I guess it sort of quelled my anxiety for a moment, and I sat back, and I thought, wow, I sort of feel at peace about death right now.

WHITNEY: That was an extraordinary quote. And It comes from a lapsed Catholic, and someone who thinks of themself as an atheist now, and someone, though, who aches for faith and yearns for faith.

PHILLIPS: I saw a lot of people really are yearning for faith, and they're yearning for something to believe in since this happened. A lot of people in your piece don't have peace with God. Let's listen to Marian Fontana.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARIAN FONTANA, N.Y. FIREFIGHTER WIDOW: I got back to the hotel room, and I guess that's when really I felt the stark reality of everything, and I sat there by myself and watched the sunrise, and it was startling beauty that I couldn't believe that this God that I had talked to in my own way for 35 years could make the most beautiful place in the world and turn this loving man into bones, and I couldn't reconcile the difference between those two extremes, and I guess that's when I felt that my faith was so weakened by the 11th, and so I felt like God was just not present in me the way it had been.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Helen Whitney, we're going to ask you to stand by. We're going to continue talking about faith and doubt at ground zero.

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