(RNS) With a fresh 2010 calendar before us, we try to shake off memories of disturbing tales from Christmas 2009. A mentally disturbed woman tackled Pope Benedict XVI on Christmas Eve. A young Nigerian man tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day. She is 25. He is 23.

Do they represent out common future?

Each of these young people — Susanna Maiolo and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — appears to be healthy, well-clothed and well-nourished. We may never know what caused them to act as they did, but we do know that each spent a significant amount of time planning. She tried to hop the barriers in St. Peter’s Basilica at Midnight Mass a year ago; he was involved enough in Yemeni anti-Americanism that his worried father notified U.S. officials in Nigeria.

Finger pointing does little good. We know now that “the system” failed. But which “system”?

President Obama returned a day early from his Christmas break to sort out the causes of the intelligence failure. The papal bodyguards surely got a talking to, but the pope’s private secretary, Monsignor Georg Ganswein, visited a small psychiatric clinic outside Rome carrying rosary beads and forgiveness for Maiolo.

To be sure, blowing up a plane is not quite the same as tackling a major religious leader in a bid (it appears) to get a little closer. But, somehow I think the pope got it right in his response.

Of course, we first want to patch the torn security blanket, whether around air travel or the pope. But the deeper response to both threats is hinted at by the rosary beads. It is not enough to create better barriers; it is too much to respond in kind. As Benedict said in his Christmas message: believers invite the world to “abandon every logic of violence and vengeance.”

But how? Sensible people recognize boundaries, whether personal, professional or national. They who encroach on boundaries must be stopped and repelled. But, again, how?

I think the answer is only partly in barricades and body scanners. I think we need to promise hope more concretely than we have in the past, especially to the Susanna Maiolos and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabs of the world. They hurt, and they carry the world’s hurts with them.

There is something terribly wrong about the international consumerist society that projects itself in Technicolor to poor Yemeni men, for whom (truth be told) the real dream is having enough water for their crops and families.

There is little future in Yemen where, according to the CIA World Factbook, nearly half the population is under the age of 15. Oil reserves are sinking, agriculture is difficult, manufacturing is minimal. Yet there is enough technology in Yemen for angry young men to snare and reel in a young Nigerian from a privileged background, who soon became a mule in their deadly scheme.

It’s a shame that the world — including young people in Italy, Nigeria and Yemen — knows more about Tiger Woods’s dalliances than about what the great religions teach. For my part, I’d much rather see the pope’s Christmas message in the newspaper than details of yet another scandal about a starlet, sports figure, or stockbroker.

I know, I know — that’s not the way it works, but feeding the world with bad music, bad entertainment, and non-stop ads for cars and computers contributes to, if not causes, the sorts of mental imbalances that make young people think the cure is to explode a plane or jump the pope.

Surely we can do better than that.

(Phyllis Zagano is visiting professor of theology and religion at St. Leo University in Florida, and is the author of several books in Catholic Studies. She also holds a research appointment at Hofstra University in New York.)