"War is suicide for humanity."
Pope Francis
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By PATRICK O’NEILL
Watching black and white newsreel footage of anti-Vietnam War rallies in the 1960s and 1970s, one is struck by the large numbers of Catholic religious men and women clad in black and white clerical garb who joined those protests. The anti-nuclear protests of the 1980s also drew large numbers of Catholics. Yet, with the US in a second decade of a seemingly endless war on terror, can the same be said of today’s Catholic anti-war movement? Is there anything significant enough to be called a Catholic peace movement?
In June, at it's 40th anniversary national conference in Atlanta, Pax Christi USA drew less than 200 people. The group that bills itself as the “National Catholic Peace Movement” is struggling to increase membership and to raise funds despite being the nation's most influential Catholic peace organization. At present, PCUSA includes just four full-time staff members and a part-time bookkeeper, down from the days when more than a dozen were on staff.
JustFaith, the Louisville, KY-based organization that provides peace and justice-themed faith formation resources for parish small group programs has also seen interest in its programs level off in the last two years following nine years of growth, said JustFaith founder and president Jack Jezreel.
At Marquette University, Carole Poth, associate director of the Center for Peacemaking, said she gets few bites when she invites students to attend anti-war or peace events. A few students participate in the annual trip to the School of the Americas Watch gathering in Georgia each November, she said, but the total number of people attending the SOA Watch gathering has declined by more than 75 percent in recent years.
"It's a struggle finding students who are passionate about being involved in the peace movement," Poth said. "We have a lot of social justice, less peace activism."
There are myriad reasons Catholic peace activism seems to be in decline, but a major problem cited by those working for peace and justice is the lack of leadership coming from the Church.
Jezreel said JustFaith has been suffering the effect of declining peace and justice offices throughout the country. He has used his connections with diocesan peace and justice offices as a way to bring his programs into Catholic parishes. As more and more bishops close those offices or combine them into multipurpose ministries, Jezreel said he has fewer inroads to parishes.
JustFaith is looking toward more creative ways to do outreach, Jezreel said. He said permanant deacons “have been a great resource because they studied Catholic Social Teaching in their deaconate training.”
Thirty years ago, the US Bishops issued, “The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response,” a pastoral letter on war and peace. The letter encouraged the flock to get involved in peacemaking. Jezreel said nothing comparable has come “from this current core of bishops as a body over the last 30 years. There has been less and less support for peace and justice.”
Poth, 60, says her generation benefited from having been taught by nuns who instilled in her a hunger for the Catholic faith. Poth is still in touch with Sr. Mariel Wozniak SSSF, her second grade teacher at Milwaukee’s Our Lady of the Savior Catholic School.
“In the classroom, the sisters had a strong influence on our lives on a daily basis,” Poth said. “We learned to know what we should and should not be doing and that we may need to step out of our comfort zone to do the right thing.”
While she is a big fan of Catholic sisters, Poth says priests are to blame for Catholics' general lack of interest in peacemaking and gospel nonviolence.
"The priests are the key, and they're not doing it," said Poth, who knows just one priest in her area who preaches "a nonviolent gospel, a nonviolent Jesus.”
Gospel nonviolence is “not preached in the homilies,” Poth said. "You go into church on the Fourth of July and they're singing patriotic songs. It's awful.”
Michael Baxter, visiting associate professor of Catholic studies at De Paul University said he does see interest among students in peace studies programs, but “in terms of direct opposition to war” there are fewer local organizations with less active local chapters, with less focus that are less likely to attract young people.
"I think part of that is due to the fact that most people are not cognizant that there's a war going on,” Baxter said. “They don't feel it personally because of the lack of a draft.”
Baxter, who teaches a class titled, "Coming home for war," said of the 40 students enrolled in the class this past spring, seven were male veterans of the war on terror. He plans to teach the class again this fall.
"People need to meet people who have been to war," Baxter said, “learn about their plights. A lot of people have friends and family members who have gone to war.”
Baxter said his class looks at the human consequences of war, hopefully resulting in young people starting to question the morality of violence and killing, also giving students “a stronger sense of the tragedy and the horror of war,” something Baxter says the US bishops "fail to point out.”
Baxter calls The Challenge of Peace, “The great missed opportunity in American Catholic history" because the bishops failed to condemn nuclear weapons as intrinsically evil. “Using utilitarian logic,” the bishops stepped back from condemning nuclear weapons, instead justifying them on Just War grounds.
Another contradiction exists when it comes to the Church’s position on conventional warfare, Baxter said. "Pro-war Catholics have very shrewdly argued that this is a matter of prudential judgement, and one may in good conscience participate in war,” Baxter said. Hence, the bishops fail to make the case for “principled opposition to war, so the hard analysis that comes with other issues, it kind of breaks down when it comes to war,” and participation in war “becomes a matter of free choice” for Catholics unlike the more vividly clear teachings that condemn abortion and euthanasia.
In his keynote address at the Atlanta PCUSA gathering, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton stayed true to his pacifist legacy telling listeners that the Church’s embrace, since Augustine, of the Just War Theory was “a terrible tragedy in the history of Christianity.”
Gumbleton also said Catholic priests should refuse to be military chaplains. In an interview with NCR, Gumbleton said Pax Christi’s purpose is not to attract large numbers to its rolls, but rather to remain faithful to the Gospel of nonviolence.
Gumbleton said PCUSA “should stay small and get more radical.”
Both Gumbleton and Jezreel spoke of their excitement about Pope Francis, who has spoken often and with passion about social justice, the plight of the poor and the immorality of war, an indication that some things might be changing in the Church under Francis’ leadership.
“The Pope is great,” Jezreel said. “It’s still an early papacy, but he’s thrown out lots of clues about where he’s going. I can’t find anybody who talks like this guy.”
The pope has “a lot of integrity,” Jezreel said. The pope’s Holy Thursday service at a youth prison in which he washed the feet of a Muslim woman “was stunning,” Jezreel said. “How much of an embrace can you expect from one person in one gesture. It’s such a rich image of what the Church can be at its best.”
Francis has also inspired Washington DC Catholic Worker Kathy Boylan to promote the words of Francis every Sunday when she attends mass at Holy Redeemer Church in downtown DC. Boylan made a smock out of a pillowcase, which she wears during mass hand-lettered with Francis’s quote: “War is suicide for humanity.”
Boylan, a mother of five adult sons, said she has seen the numbers of peace activists decline, but she remains impressed by the sacrifices many people make in the name of peace. She has lived in community for many years with Michael Walli at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House. Walli faces sentencing next month in Knoxville for his part in a break-in at the Y-12 nuclear weapons facility in Oak Ridge, TN.
“Michael Walli is in jail for the Gospel,” she said.
Catholic deacon Thomas Cornell lives with his wife Monica and son Thomas and others at the Peter Maurin Catholic Worker Farm north of New York City. Mentored by Dorothy Day, Cornell says with the support of Pope Francis, the Catholic Church can become "a peace church."
"We have all we need, on paper at least, and with Pope Francis yet more," Cornell said. "We have Pacem in Terris and Gaudium et Spes. The former declares war 'contrary to reason' in the present (atomic) age for the restoration of violated rights. The latter highlights conscientious objection to war and military service even before recognizing the respect due to the military who honorably perform their duties for the defense and security of their peoples. It also calls upon military personnel to disobey immoral commands and unequivocally condemns the use of weapons of mass destruction."
The Holy See has informed the United Nations that time has run out, and "the Church no longer sees any legal or moral justification for the production and maintenance of nuclear weapons by any nation," Cornell said. "What remains to make the Roman Catholic Church a true peace church is to make these teachings known as well as the Church's attitude toward abortion."
Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, is a much-sought speaker on numerous peace and justice topics. A world traveler, Kelly said the work of peace takes many forms, and she prefers to spend her time focusing on “the mystical body concept,” rather than lamenting what’s going on with the Church hierarchy.
In her travels, Kelly said she meets lots of young activists by seeking them out where they are.
"I think if you go to the places where the works of mercy are being exercised, you see young people, fantastic young people who roll up their sleeves and undertake hard work and make sacrifices," Kelly said. "I think it's important to look towards the ones who are really exercising their Christianity in important ways."
Stephen Dear is executive director of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, a North Carolina-based abolition group. Dear says the US peace movement "doesn't really exist," and a new, broader peace movement must be established.
"I don’t think we can separate issues into silos any more," he said. "We have to connect the US military empire and multinational corporate hegemony to climate change and local issues. We need fusion politics among Latino, black, Asian and white communities and interweaving among groups concerned about the environment, civil rights, militarism, economic justice, etc.
"Organizers should look outside America for new organizing models and for inspiration. Ordinary people have to sacrifice their careers and become grassroots organizers. Organizing seems like our only hope. Not prophetic witness, organizing. We need to go out and sit down with the pastors, rabbis, imams and all pastoral leaders in our communities and invite them to join our efforts. We need to ask our local government leaders to pass resolutions on these issues. We need to be creative in our hometowns and fellowship halls."
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