Back in April, before I renewed blogging, a conference was held at the Vatican at the invitation of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace, to consider putting aside the Church’s teachings on just war. The belief of many is that in today’s world, no war can be just. Nonviolence is more consistent with the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels and is considered by some the next step in the development of Papal teachings initiated when St. John XXIII wrote Pacem in Terris in 1963.
The 80 or so church officials, theologians and activists from many troubled parts of the world met for three days to discuss the theory and practice of nonviolence. At the end of the conference, they issued “An Appeal to the Catholic Church to Re-Commit to the Centrality of Gospel Nonviolence.“
I encourage you to read the two-page document and consider its recommendations.
“The time has come for our Church to be a living witness and to invest far greater human and financial resources in promoting a spirituality and practice of active nonviolence and in forming and training our Catholic communities in effective nonviolent practices.”
Our experience at the refugee camp at Calais was an immersion in our common humanity. Understanding and accepting our unity is the basis for nonviolence. We can no longer wish harm to anyone. Some people may do bad things, but all are offspring of the same Divine author of life.
Now we all have an opportunity to affirm the findings of the conference on nonviolence and just peace and to urge Church leaders to act on its recommendations. A website has been created where you can sign up as an organization or as an individual to affirm the statement by the conference.
Even if you do not understand nonviolence or think it is too passive in the face of injustice (not at all true) this is a chance to ask church leaders to immerse themselves in understanding nonviolence and to pass on that understanding to others.
When we come to believe that everyone on earth is our sister or brother, we will be on our way to ending war and the tragedies it creates.
Nonviolence means avoiding
not only external violence
but also internal violence of spirit.
You not only refuse to shoot a man,
but you refuse to hate him.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.