- I'm Drew Christiansen, I'm
a Distinguished Professor
of Ethics and Human Developement,
and senior research fellow
here at Berkley Center,
and I'm chairing this
panel on the ventures
of non-violence in the Catholic tradition.
With me today, immediately at
my right, is David Hollenbach.
He is the creator of Arrupe
Distinguished Research
Professor in the Walsh
School of Foreign Policy,
and a senior fellow here
at the Berkeley Center.
Before coming to Georgetown
he was the Director
of the Center for Human Rights
and International Justice
at Boston College, where
the university chair
in Human Rights and
International Justice is teaching
research deal with human
rights, theories of justice,
religious and ethical
responses, humanitarian crisis
and religion and political
life, approach the way shaped
by the Catholic social
thought, contemporary theology,
moral philosophy and
social science approaches.
David and I go way back
to theology together
and our paths have
crossed here at Georgetown
at the Woodstock Theological Center
and again at Boston
College a few years ago
when I was a sabbatical there with him so.
We're happy to have David
with here now with us
for the last couple of years
and happy to have him on the panel.
Next is Marie Dennis.
Marie is co-president of
Pax Christi International,
the global Catholic peace movement,
a position she's held since 2007,
and now chairs with Bishop
Kevin Dowling from South Africa.
She worked for Maryknoll
from 1989 to 2012,
including 15 years as director
of the Maryknoll Office
for Global Concerns.
I knew Marie when she was
getting started with her friends,
starting the 8th Day center
here in the Washington area,
Back in the 70s wasn't it?
- [Marie] Center for New Creation.
- Center for New Creation, okay.
She is the closest
thing we have these days
to a lady cardinal.
(group laughing)
She's taken Delores Lucky's place.
Deloris was it's Bishop
consummate so many years
and she was so trusted and admired,
we always called her the lady cardinal.
So I think you're trusted
enough for so long
that you inherited that position.
And alongside her is Gerald Schlabach.
Gerald is a professor in
the Department of Theology
at the University of St.
Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota.
In the past year the
Department of Justice and Peace
Studies there that doesn't say all
that Gerald is responsible for.
He was really an initiator
of the Mennonite Catholic
dialogue in the US
with a group we call Bridgefolk.
Initiated some very important discussions
between advocates of the
Just War and non-violence
with an article about
how Just War concedes
to be a church dividing issue
and that went through a
couple of different editions
In which I was a respondent
to different points
and then he did important work
out of that on Just Policing
as an alternative to Just War.
He's been an important interlocutor
on these issues for many years.
I'm really happy to welcome him
from Minnesota here in Washington.
And without further ado
Gerald, I give you the floor.
Gerald's gonna talk to us
about where we came from.
- Well thank you for the
invitation to be here.
I want to begin by giving
special thanks to Drew
not just for the invitation.
About,
if my talk today were a paper,
there would probably be a
footnote to Drew on every page.
He could probably do
this better than I can,
but he has to be on the other side
of the podium today, I guess.
It doesn't mean that he and
I have agreed on everything.
You know, academics when
they write acknowledgments
at the end by saying, I'm
indebted to all these people
but of course if there are any mistakes
you know, it's my fault.
So don't blame him if there's mistakes
or things he wants to disagree on.
A year ago today, I learned this morning
when I looked it up, Pope Francis signaled
what would happen 10
months later, last August
when he made a speech to
various church leaders
and said more definitively
than had been said before
that capital punishment is contrary
to the gospel and is inadmissible.
My thesis, signaling that there'd be
a revision of the catechism accordingly
which then got announced last August.
My thesis this afternoon is
not particularly original
but it's that Just War seems to be going
the way of capital punishment.
Whether it will go all the way
to what's happened with capital punishment
as of August, I don't know.
I think we're now with Just War,
more or less where capital punishment was
the last 20 or 30 years beginning
with John Paul II,
the capital punishment
was possible in theory,
that the church can imagine situations
where communities had no other way
of protecting themselves
from sociopaths and so on.
But given modern realities,
given the way we can
for better or for worse,
can put people away for life
and so on who are really sociopathic,
That,
what's possible in theory
is no longer permissible in practice,
indicative of this same kind
of status with Just War.
Yes, Just War is still in The Catechism.
Principles of the criteria
of Just War is still cited.
A continues to play an obvious role
in diplomacy and advocacy,
since it has contributed
to the framework of international law.
Occasionally, though less
often, one hears the Vatican,
more often US bishops,
talk in general language
about the right of national self-defense,
and yes there's a reluctance
to give up the option
of humanitarian military intervention
for the particularly egregious cases
of human rights abuse, genocide and so on,
which seem to call for,
humanitarian intervention
according to principles of
responsibility to protect, R2P.
So I'll return to that,
Those are all,
Yes of course in those ways, Just Wars is,
the Just War Theory,
the Just War tradition
of moral discernment
is still on the books,
still appeal to some situations,
and yet here I quote Jerry Powers
from the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame.
Yes, it's got a new name now.
But, I haven't done this research myself.
But he has said that, there hasn't been
a Vatican declaration,
that any given war is just,
since the middle of the 20th century.
So,
Yes there, in theory but in
practice not approved of.
Here, I'd like to outline
the basic trajectory
that has gotten us here,
and then list some further signs
and then come back to this question
of humanitarian intervention
as the sort of best case
for continuing the Just War tradition.
Already, prior to the
second Vatican Council,
there were some lonely voices
in some unexpected places,
saying that war should
be entirely forbidden.
Those of you that lived
through the council
or have studied it, know that one of the,
there was a group of about five cardinals
who kind of drag their feet
at every point, one of them,
the head of the holy
office, Cardinal Ottaviani.
So, reputation for an arch-conservative,
but he had been a pastor
during World War II.
He'd seen the damage.
He'd seen the way that even,
Just War does great
injustices to the poor,
and so he'd written in
some obscure places,
that war is always to be forbidden.
And in fact then, at the
Second Vatican Council,
when he made a speech giving support
for the section on war and
peacemaking in Gaudium et Spes,
reports that the longest
sustained applause
in all four years, came
in response to his speech.
Probably because people were surprised.
(group laughing)
The Vatican II documents,
especially Gaudium et Spes
then made invitation to the
church to reappraise war
in the modern world, especially
in light of the lethality
of modern weapons, even
conventional weapons.
Not just nuclear weapons,
which seems to kinda
blow off the map, the
possibility of discriminating,
making discriminating attacks that would
avoid damage to civilians and so on.
The Council recognized
conscientious objection in a way.
It commended people who are
willing to renounce their right
of self-defense, at least for themselves
at a personal level.
And it's significant that
they then issued this,
an invitation to the church
to, in light of all this
reappraise war in the modern world.
Make a fresh reappraisal of war.
Historically, popes and church councils
don't open up debate.
They tend to conclude it.
Hopefully, can debate
whether this always happens,
by summarizing the
consensus of the faithful.
Well here they did something different.
They invited a discussion,
which in a way, we're still in.
David is, I saw from his hand out,
is gonna talk more about the,
significance of the US
bishop's 1983 statement
on the challenge of peace,
recognizing two traditions in the church.
In a way, a kind of an
uneasy compromise perhaps,
but historically,
historically based Just War,
but then and also tradition
of active nonviolence
and resistance to injustice.
And then came the 1989
revolution wherein which,
John Paul II played a major role,
and reflected on it two years
later in, Centesimus annus.
Where, as he looked back on what happened
with the fall of the Soviet Union,
the nonviolent uprising in central Europe,
is what he credited.
He played a role, presumably
he was humble enough
that he wasn't gonna be triumphalistic
and said I did this, but
he also didn't credit
as many as our politicians do.
You know, Ronald Reagan's buildup of arms
against the Soviet Union,
wearing them down bringing, and so on.
No, he credited, how was
it that the Cold War ended
when look, we thought for years,
he's writing that the
only way to get out of it
would be another world war.
He said it had instead been overcome by
the nonviolent commitment of people who,
while always refusing to
yield to the force of power,
succeeded time after time
in finding effective ways
of bearing witness to the truth.
And here I do want to
give a footnote to Drew,
as I don't know that I
would've noticed this,
thought about it otherwise,
points out that, in Centesimus annus,
Pope John Paul II, 1991
looking back on the revolution
in 1989, is saying
implicitly, active nonviolence
has a role in public affairs
at the highest level of geopolitics,
and we've come a distance,
this is Drew's point,
we've come a distance from Vatican II,
which yes, it's okay to be
a conscientious objector.
That was enough of a
breakthrough given things
that Pious XII it said,
Christian pacifists
conscientious objector,
were all but heretics.
So, that was significant.
But that was a personal matter.
They held up individual
conscientious objectors
to military participation and so on,
as an example of particular holiness.
But by 1991, nonviolence is being credited
with the success of the world
war fought by other means,
as I think one political
scientist has called it.
So a few further signs along the way.
John Paul II took a personal interest in
Mennonite Catholic ecumenical dialogue.
Drew played a role in this.
And that was began I think in 1998 or '99,
went for five years.
Those of us that follow it closely
think that, again John Paul
II actually may have known,
Mennonites, Mennonites
is one of the historic
peace churches, in some
ways kind of the archetype
of church committed to pacifism.
But looks like John Paul II
took a personal interest in that
or it wouldn't have happened,
because it's the smallest group with which
the Vatican has ever engaged
in a formal ecumenical dialogue.
Since people have mentioned
the Assisi World Day of Prayer
at various points, say little more than
I was going to about
that, but very briefly.
Again, for those of us following,
again Drew mention my interest
in Mennonite Catholic dialogue, of course.
Those of us following it closely,
there was a significant symbolic move
in the choreography of the event in 2002.
In 1986 it was significant enough
that the president of
Mennonite World Conference
was invited at all, but
he sat as far away from
the Pope is you could and be a Christian.
No, these are the dissidents.
They not only broke with Rome,
they broke with mainline magisterium.
So there really not, you know, whatever.
1980, excuse 2002, the last
religious leader at the event,
the litany where both
Christian and non-Christian
religious leaders make this
commitment to renounce violence
for religious purposes.
Litany, they have all of these pledges.
The last one to make that
statement before John Paul II,
closes, infirm as he is,
but speaking as loud as he can
at that point, never again war.
(mumbles)
The last person before him
was the new, now Indonesian,
president of Mennonite World Conference.
Symbolic but,
the Vatican does their
choreography pretty tightly
from everything I've heard.
Anyway, so a few more
of signs along the way.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,
before becoming Pope Benedict XVI.
At one point in an interview,
is asked about in 2003
is asked about the war in
Iraq, whether it's just,
not only reiterates the Pope has not said,
has said it wasn't just to,
it wasn't adequate
reasons for it at least,
goes on to say on his own, unprompted,
I'm paraphrasing but the
idea is, given the lethality,
of modern war, we need to
take another look at whether
any war is elicit at all.
Okay.
And then in,
as Pope 2007 says some more in
terms of love of enemy as a,
is a Realistic Manifesto,
the Magna Carta of Christian nonviolence,
the nucleus of the Christian revolution.
Maria is going to say more about,
I'm sure about the event in Rome in 2016,
so I'll just jump over that.
I think the state of
the question is probably
what many of us think
was kind of a response
to that meeting by Francis in his 2017
World Day of Peace message.
Corning, peace building
to active nonviolence
is a natural and necessary
complement to the church's
continuing efforts to
limit the use of force
by the application of moral norms.
She does so by her
participation in the work
of international institutions
and through the competent
contribution made by many
Christians into the drafting
of legislation at all levels.
Jesus himself offered a
manual for this strategy
of peacemaking in the Sermon on the Mount,
and then goes on to hold up
especially the B attitudes.
I'm suggesting that these
sentences kind of give us
the state of the question.
Just War Theory is not explicitly name.
I think the Pope is being,
you know, savvy diplomatic.
The space that the Just War tradition
has traditionally taken up is named,
as a set, as a more
framework for being engaged
in international diplomacy,
legislation and so on,
and it complementary
to active nonviolence.
The challenge to moral theologians is to,
I think, to figure out that
complementary, complementarity.
The challenge for Just War Christians,
is to give the attention to the formation
of active nonviolence,
that arguably the Just War
tradition itself requires.
If you're going to keep
war as a last resort,
you'd better be informing people to do
a lot of other things first.
But then also a challenge to both of us
who are advocates of nonviolence,
I think suggesting, you're gonna have to
help fill this space,
that Just War tradition
has traditionally taken up,
if you want to displace the Just War.
I was gonna say more about,
back to the comparison
with capital punishment,
Why it hasn't been eliminated entirely,
come back to this issue of
humanitarian intervention,
but maybe that'll come up
in the conversations so.
I've used my time.
- Thank you.
(group clapping)
Well, the status question
has continues to develop
and three years ago Pax
Christi held a meeting in Rome
under the sponsorship of the Dicastery
for Integral Human Development,
looking at Just Peace,
and that begin to move the goalpost again
and to discuss how that took
place, we have the copresident
of Pax Christi International.
Marie Dennis is going to talk about
the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative.
- Thank you Drew.
It's very nice to be here.
It was a very interesting day so far.
I just want to start with
a couple of definitions
if you will, Elise will explain
how where using the terms.
Violence, in the conversation
that we've been having
as Pax Christi and the Catholic
Nonviolence Initiative,
which is, although it's
a project of Pax Christi
it involves a many religious congregations
and other Catholic organizations,
number of universities and so on.
We're trying to talk about violence,
not only as direct violence,
not only as the violence of war,
but as structural systemic
violence, cultural violence
as a violence described broadly,
because that's the reality of the world
that we're living in.
We are not always in the context of facing
the possibility of war,
and yet we are in context
of the constant array
of violence that is often not
so visible, often irregular.
In much the same way when
we talk about nonviolence
as in the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative,
we're somewhat deliberately using
the expression nonviolence,
although we've had thousands
of hours of conversation about nonviolence
is a negative terms, et cetera, et cetera.
Mostly, we continue to
use it because we believe
that the concept of nonviolence
does set clear boundaries
around the kind of activities
and actions and directions
in which we will move as we
try to build a Just Peace.
It certainly includes the
movement towards Just Peace.
It is not negative.
It's not passive
It's not the same as pacifism.
But it is we believe a very broad set
of potential strategies and tools
from diplomacy to trauma informed healing
to restorative justice
to nonviolent resistance.
It is not only chain yourself to the fence
or crossing a line,
although that, sometimes
is the strategy used,
but it's a much broader reality than that.
Part of what the Catholic
Nonviolence Initiative
has been doing, is to try to
stir the creative imagination
of people around the world working
in very different contexts,
to both be observant
of the non-violent strategies,
that they are already using
in order to transform conflict
before it becomes violent
and to then look at ways
to share that experience
with each other, to give us all more tools
that are practically applicable
in different contexts
of growing, of conflict
that is becoming violent.
For Pax Christi members around the world,
nonviolence is a
spirituality, a way of life,
a deep commitment to live the
values that we believe shaped
the early Christian community,
in the first century context
of occupied Palestine where
violence was a way of life.
For us the so-called hard sayings
of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount are central,
but the challenge is how
to interpret that message
in the context of a 21st century world,
immersed in extremely complex
situations of violence,
in context of fear, as we were
talking about this morning,
a fear that is too often orchestrated.
We are told, be afraid.
Be very afraid.
How can we break into that reality?
What is security?
How do we create another way of resolving,
of transforming conflict
when part of the challenge
is to overcome a route
reality in which violence
and conflict and war
are very big business,
not only in our country,
but around the world.
The challenge is huge, and
so from our perspective
to stimulate the creative imagination
of people around the world,
who are dealing already in nonviolent ways
in very violent situations,
is a worthy endeavor.
For the past 1400 years,
Catholic teaching on war and peace
as articulated in the Just War tradition
has had a significant
impact on the public,
on political decision-makers
and on international humanitarian law.
The intention, as has
been said many times,
was to limit or deter war,
but too often that's not what happened.
In the last century, as Gerald said,
clearly Catholic teaching on war and peace
has begun to shift,
giving much more attention
to the potential and the effectiveness
of nonviolent alternatives
as civil resistance campaigns
around the world, in the end of the 1980s
were amazingly successful,
But at the same time very few of the what,
1.2, 1.3 billion Catholics in the world
learn anything about nonviolence
as a positive and powerful
force for social change,
as a process for ending violence
without resort to lethal force,
for transforming conflict
and for protecting vulnerable people,
or about the broader
understanding of nonviolence
as essential to our Catholic
Christian faith tradition.
In recent years, as
I'm sure you know well,
groundbreaking empirical
research has demonstrated
the effectiveness of active nonviolence
and the importance of increased
investment in understanding,
developing, teaching and
scaling up nonviolent approaches
two addressing major national
or international crisis.
A good part of some of the
empirical research that has been
has gotten a great deal
of international attention
was written up in Maria Stephan
and Erica Chenoweth's book,
Why Civil Resistance Works.
But their case is focused
on civil resistance
as one expression of a nonviolent strategy
that has been shown to be effective.
Much of the research is being
done on other expressions
of nonviolent, of active
nonviolence in order to ascertain
where and in what circumstances
this or another strategy
might be effectively used.
In April 2016 as Drew said,
the Pontifical Council
for Justice and Peace,
now the new Dicastery For
Promoting Integral Human
Development and Pax Christi international,
invited 85 people from
around the world to Rome
for what has been called
a landmark conference
on nonviolence and Just Peace.
Participants came together,
to try to imagine a new
framework for Catholic teaching
on war and peace, that could
help the world move beyond
repeated cycles of violence and war.
Central to our conversation
where voices of people
promoting active nonviolence themselves
in the mists of horrific violence.
Many conference participants
came from countries
that have been at war or dealing
with extreme violence were decades,
Iraq, Sri Lanka, Columbia,
South Sudan, the DR Congo,
Mexico, Afghanistan, Palestine,
El Salvador, Croatia,
the Philippines, Northern
Ireland, Lebanon, Barundi,
Guatemala, Uganda, South Africa and more.
Their testimony about
the power of nonviolence
and the urgent need to end
war was extremely powerful.
Iraq Dominican sister Nazek Matty,
whose community was
expelled from Mosul by ISIS
not too long before
our conference in Rome,
said war is the mother of
ignorance, isolation and poverty.
Please tell the world,
there is no such thing as a Just War.
I say that, she said,
as a daughter of war.
We can't respond to violence
with force violence.
Jesuits Francisco de Roux from Columbia,
and we heard much about
Columbia this morning,
talked about the use of
the Just War tradition
by all sides in the war in Columbia,
to justify their entry into the violence.
We believe we can do better than that.
During the conference we wrote an appeal
to the Catholic Church.
I have some were right there.
I got some here.
(speaking faintly)
Thank you.
Gathered in Rome, we
heard many similar stories
from conference participants.
Courageous people in
local communities living
with what was unimaginable danger.
People who had tried nonviolent strategies
and found them to be both
powerful and effective.
During the conference, we wrote an appeal
to the Catholic Church, to
recommit to the centrality
of gospel nonviolence,
urging the church to quote,
integrate gospel nonviolence
explicitly into the life,
including the sacramental
life, and work of the church
through diocese, parishes,
agencies, schools, universities,
seminaries, religious orders,
voluntary associations
and others, and to consider
adopting the concept
of Just Integral Peace as one
example of a new nonviolent
framework for Catholic teaching.
We asked Pope Francis
specifically to write
a World Day of Peace message
and someday in the
encyclical on nonviolence.
Obviously we were really
delighted, when Pope Francis
wrote the 2017 World Day of Peace message
on Nonviolence: a style
of politics for peace.
In asking the church to
adopt a new moral framework
based on nonviolent practice,
for its teaching on nonviolence and war,
we're in fact building on
a tradition that is already
moving in that direction.
Given what we now know
about the consequences
of horrific violence and
war, the cost in human life,
psychological trauma, moral
injury, environmental damage,
climate disruption,
and on, and on, and on,
and given the vast resources spent
on preparations for war, resources,
as has been said so many times,
are desperately needed for
integral human development.
The church has repeatedly insisted,
that a Just War is practically impossible,
and has called for an end to
war as a human institution,
meant in many instances.
Clearly ethical norms, to
guide political decision-makers
in a violent world are necessary.
Many such norms are well ensconced
in international humanitarian law
and would also be included
in a new moral framework
with a focus on nonviolent approaches.
In fact, any use of force
including for example, sanctions
or nonviolent civil
resistance should be subject
to a rigorous ethical evaluation.
At the November 2017 Vatican conference
on nuclear disarmament,
Bishop McElroy from San Diego
said quote, the church is in the midst
of a fundamental reappraisal
of how to balance
the Christian obligation to nonviolence
with the need to resist evil in the world.
The traditional norms of the Just War,
particularly in jus ad bellum,
increasingly appear incapable
of effectively constraining violence
in the modern world, he said.
The power of nonviolence,
once relegated to the category
of romantic idealism, has
emerged as a potent force
for social transformation,
and the building of lasting peace.
Bishop McElroy continued,
the church must be a voice in the world
constantly pointing humanity
toward the path of nonviolence
and the logic of peace.
This radically positive approach, he said,
demands that we change
the default position
in our reasoning about
war from acquiescence
in the patterns and structures of violence
two an active and persistent engagement
with strategies of peace.
The Catholic Nonviolence Initiative,
that grew out of the 2016 Rome conference
on nonviolence and Just Peace,
as a project of Pax Christi International,
believes that the church,
the Catholic Church
can play a major positive
role in making this happen.
The Catholic Church, with
its diplomatic presence
in almost every country
and at all major
multilateral organizations,
has a well-developed network
of universities, seminaries,
religious communities,
parishes, publications
and media outlets, a membership
of over a billion people
and rich spiritual and
theological resources
that could make a tremendous contribution
to the development and acceptance
of nonviolent approaches
to a more peaceful world.
What if Catholics reformed
from the beginning of life
to understand and appreciate
the power of active nonviolence
in the connection of nonviolence
to the heart of the gospel.
What if the Catholic community
understood as vocation
the call to be builders of peace,
promoters of a nonviolent approach
to our personal and our
political relationships
with each other and with
the rest of creation.
What if the Catholic church
committed its vast spiritual,
intellectual and financial
resources to developing
a new moral framework and
language for discerning ways
to prevent atrocities, to protect people
and to protect the planet
in a dangerous world.
In the past two years, Pax Christi
and the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative
engage in a very serious
conversation with the Vatican
and with the local church around the world
including in many war zones,
about the breath and potential
of active nonviolence to
further sustaining peace,
an ambitious, carefully
organized international process
of discussion and discernment involving
a number of the people here, theologians,
peace practitioners,
activists and academics,
with significant differences
of opinion among them
has recently concluded.
We have been exploring a
systematic theology of nonviolence
And a careful scriptural
exegesis of nonviolence.
We've been trying to articulate
a new moral framework
that would include some
or all of the norms
but developed as part of
the Just War tradition
but are hoping that we,
perhaps can leave the language
of Just War behind.
We've been reflecting on
women and nonviolence,
on ecology and nonviolence,
on nonviolence in other faith traditions.
We've been gathering excellent
examples of nonviolent action
in different circumstances
around the world
and are developing specific proposals
for how the institutional could integrate
nonviolence into its very fabric.
We hope that this process
will make a contribution
to Catholic teaching,
possibly an encyclical
on active nonviolence
and Just Integral Peace
next year in 2019, we will
organize a second conference
on nonviolence and Just Peace,
to share with the Vatican
the outcome of this extensive process.
Many additional events and
encounters are energizing
the conversation about active nonviolence
and Just Peace in different contexts.
Religious congregations and
universities in particular
involve, there's a long list
of Catholic universities,
that have already held by
the conferences or seminars
or conversations that picked
up on a particular piece
of this large topic in
which that university
was particularly well versed.
We're working to identify
and support more and clearer
public policy proposals
at the United Nations
with the European Union,
in Washington and elsewhere
that promote peace building
and nonviolent approaches
to national and international conflicts,
so that the world will
actually have alternatives
well articulated to military action
when crisis occur in the future.
We're also listening
very carefully to people
from different contexts,
believing that nonviolence
in the context of occupation in Palestine.
Nonviolence in the context of poverty
or street violence in Haiti.
Nonviolence from the perspective
of liberation theologians
in Latin America.
Nonviolence in Europe
facing an uncertain future.
Nonviolence intersecting with structural
racism in the United States.
Nonviolence in postcolonial Africa.
None violence in Asia and the Pacific,
for the nuclear threat is all too real,
mailing very different,
one from the other.
And finally, Pax Christi International
has initiated a pretty
simple global campaign
#ThisIsNonviolence, using
social media and a variety
of other formats to just help
people imagine and invest
in developing more
robust, nonviolent tools.
In many ways Pope
Francis has already begun
to do what we are asking
the Catholic Church to do.
And we know that's true in
many universities as well.
But he, by talking often
about the power of nonviolence
and by stirring the imaginations of people
including political decision-makers
who should be desperate
to prevent war and
protect vulnerable people
without resort to arms.
Just one last thought.
In the last few months,
as once again the crisis
of the sexual abuse
has come to the fore
in the Catholic Church
and in the media around the world,
we have come to believe even more deeply
that the Catholic Church
could make a significant
contribution in response
to that crisis if,
both in church and society,
by nurturing nonviolent
relationships within the church
by transforming what are
actually violent power
over relationships within
the church and beyond
and by transforming the
structures of the church
in the direction of nonviolence.
So, thank you.
(audience clapping)
- Sometimes you get glimpses
of how things are changing.
The Mennonite, the
Catholic Mennonite dialogue
in the inner-echelon was something
of a revelation to me that way.
But particularly after
we had written a report
which is called,
called, Be Peacemakers Together,
we met two years later to prepare
another statement, a
common statement for the
World Council of Churches, dialogue
to end their decade against violence.
As we wrote it, Helmut
Harder who is the head
of the Mennonite section,
suggested that we include
the sermon on the Mount as the charter
of the Christian faith.
I was serving as it turned out,
as a theologian for both sides.
Doesn't often happen but,
by that time I knew was
much Mennonite theology
as I did Catholic, I think.
But I remember Gerald kind of,
his work to end Just War
as a church dividing issue,
and Gerald would've
been very happy that day
because I said, pointed out
Catholics have to realize
that what we're saying here,
is that non-retaliation
is the foundation of the Christian faith.
There were representatives
from four Vatican offices there
and they all agreed.
And they were from several countries.
So the sense about nonviolence
had penetrated the church
not only across continents,
but even to the Vatican bureaucracy,
which was much to my surprise.
As Gerald and Marie have said,
the Just War has contained
an contingents to prevent,
and to limit violence in
wartime and to talk about
the specific direction
and uses as Just War
David Hollenbach is here to instruct us.
- So I have a PowerPoint
which I hope I can get to work here.
It's great to be with
you, and I'm very grateful
for the presentations of
Gerald and Marie, both,
and I agree with 98%
of what they have said
but not 100%, so we will
find some interesting,
this points of discussion, I think.
I'm going to talk about nonviolence,
justice and reconciliation.
And the point at which I will
probably diverge from them
is in the stress on justice,
that I am going to try to bring
to the fore in our conversation.
One point I think that's
really crucial is,
and I think both Gerald and
Marie have mentioned this,
is that the Catholic tradition here
is both complex and developing.
I always like a phrase used
once by Jaroslav Pelikan,
who was a very distinguished
historian of doctrine
at Yale University, who once said that
a living tradition, is the
living thoughts of the dead,
whereas traditionalism, is the
dead thoughts of the living.
(group laughing)
So what we need, I think,
are living thoughts
drawn from the past
about this as they apply
to our contemporary situation,
and that's where the developing situation
comes to the fore.
Now we've seen as both of
our previous two speakers
have emphasized, a really important,
and this is the point at which
I will agree very strongly
with both of our previous speakers,
about the importance of nonviolence.
The commitment to taking
action for the preservation
of people, their dignity,
their worth as a persons
in nonviolent ways, and that
Pope Francis stressed this
in his 2017 World Day of Peace message,
namely that nonviolent
should become the hallmark
of our decisions, our
relationship and our actions
and indeed a political life in all forms.
So there's a strong emphasis on the need
four approaches to nonviolence.
There are biblical basis for this,
coming from the sermon on the mount,
judges highlighted there,
a couple of phrases there.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Offer no resistance.
By the way, that offer no resistance,
does not mean, offer
no resistance to evil.
It means don't resist it violently.
It certainly calls for a
strong resistance to evil,
but the Greek is, (speaking
foreign language),
which doesn't mean sort of
lie down and let it happen,
and love your enemies and so forth.
Now given that, there's also
though a strong emphasis
in the Catholic tradition,
continuing today
as Gerald has highlighted,
about the possibility
of some legitimate resort
to the use of armed force
for legitimate defense,
if every peaceful means
to settlement has been exhausted.
And this is where we get notions
like last resort, and so forth.
This is the second Vatican
Council, Gaudium et spes.
That should say, not Gaudium et 55,
but it's a mistake in the typing there.
Now the way in which I conceive of this,
of this diagram, I like to think of
the goal that we're seeking
from a Christian point of view
as the goal of shalom.
Hebrew word can be translated as peace,
can be translated as wholeness,
can be translated as reconciliation.
But it means a society marked by shalom
as a society in which all
persons are living together
with each other in mutual respect
and in genuine mutual
support for each other
and therefore, this notion
of shalom clearly includes
the avoidance of war, the
avoidance of conflict.
But the key point from my point of view
is that it also includes justice,
that respect for the
dignity of each person
as a demand of justice,
and this I think was what
Marie was highlighting
when she was saying, we're
not just dealing here
with the avoidance of war,
we're also dealing with a variety of ways
in which human beings can be oppressed,
denied their dignity,
put down in various ways
and that's the point that is highlighted
in my way of thinking
by noting that shalom
includes the notion of justice
and not only nonviolence,
especially if nonviolence is interpreted
as simply avoiding war, which
is not what we want to do,
but it just is highlighting
the fact that justice
is a key part of shalom.
Now, the question that
emerges if we go back
to this dialogue is, what
do we do about the issue
about nonviolence and justice
if there is tension between them?
And there are several possible paths.
A.J. Muste, a famous Mennonite thinker
we also had some Quaker roots,
a former statement of his,
There is no way to peace.
Peace is the way,
and therefore, I find
that a very important
kind of commitment, towards
saying if you're going to pursue
the fullness of shalom,
it has to be done through
peaceful and nonviolent means.
But Paul VI at his famous
speech at the United Nations
also said, if you want
peace, work for justice.
These two statements
do not have to conflict
with each other.
They can in fact be fully
harmonious with each other,
but where I suspect I diverge
a bit from Marie and Gerald
is in saying, there are some circumstances
in which they may conflict
with each other in extreme cases.
And that's where the question
of what happens when
they do and if they do.
Now, the US bishops back in 2001,
in a document that commemorated the 1983
pastoral letter that the issue
on the challenge of peace
but in 2001 they issued-
- [Man] It was actually 1993,
this was when it was reprinted.
- Oh, okay it's '93.
I've got the wrong date there.
I knew it was a 10 year anniversary.
But The Harvest of
Justice is Sown in Peace.
Tokdeby says that our constant commitment,
ought to be as far as possible,
to strive for justice
through nonviolent means.
But then they make the statement,
when sustained attempts
at nonviolent action
failed to protect the innocent,
legitimate political
authorities are permitted
as a last resort to employ limited force
to rescue the innocent
and establish justice.
That's where we move over
toward the possible legitimation
of the just use of armed force.
Now, that's clearly last
resort, limited force
as far as possible
through nonviolent means,
a whole host of things like that.
Now, this points to the fact
that in the bishop's past,
in the bishops document of '93,
that there's a strong
presupposition against
the use of violent force.
And if any use of force is ever justified
it is by way of exception
to the use, to nonviolence,
and that means that, what
we're talking about here
is at least, many, I would want to argue
that if there is any Just War
theory it should be called
the Unjust and Just War theory,
because it probably means
that most of the violent
force that has taken place
in our world is unjust,
because any violent departure
from nonviolence, is by way of exception
and by way of last resort.
Now that's highlighted if you
go back to Thomas Aquinas.
I'm one of these moral
theologians who likes to go back
and read some of these classic documents.
But in Aquinas, in his questions on war
in the treatise on war, is
very interesting if you go back
and look at everything in
Aquinas and the Summa Theologiae,
is formulated in terms of a question.
He asked the question and
he give a series of opinions
from various people about them
and then he gives his own position on it
and the question that he deals
with, in dealing with war is,
is it always sinful to fight in war?
In Latin, (speaking foreign language).
Is it always a sin to fight in war?
What I would highlight there is,
that means the presupposition
of Aquinas' Just War theory,
is that it is, it is
sinful to fight in war.
He's just asking whether
it's always sinful.
And his answer is, not always.
And that gives you a series of criteria
where the limitations of the use of force
might be justifiable.
Now,
I would highlight, we could
go into long discussion
about the jus ad bellum and
the jus in bello criteria
and what they mean.
But I would like to highlight
the fact, that today
in fact where I think the real development
about exceptions to the use of nonviolence
as the key way of pursuing
justice, may come to the fore,
is in these cases of the
responsibility to protect people
against grave atrocities.
I bring this to the fore
because I've had some
experience of visiting Rwanda,
I was in Rwanda not
long after the genocide.
And I'll never forget seeing piles
of dead bodies still unburied
and knowing, that United States, France
and the United Kingdom,
took action to prevent
general Romeo Dallaire who
was the Canadian commander
of the peacemaking force
in Rwanda at that time,
to prevent him from
taking action, to prevent,
to stop the genocide.
In my judgment, that was
the wrong thing to do.
I think in the Rwanda genocide,
Romeo Dallaire the general from Canada
who's still very much
active in these issues,
Romeo Dallaire has said,
that if he had, had
5000 more troops you
could've saved 300,000 lives.
That's where I think a question
of justice comes to the fore.
Not because I think we
want to encourage violence
and war and so forth.
It's just that I think that
in a circumstance like that,
we may be facing an
extraordinary exception
to the commitment of nonviolence.
And that's where I don't
want to see us abandon
the possibility of
taking action to prevent
that kind of thing from happening.
I also had the experience this summer
of being in Sarajevo in Bosnia.
Talking to the people who lived through
what happened in Bosnia, during
the breakup of Yugoslavia,
and what happened at Srebrenica in Bosnia
was another case where the United Nations
said they were providing
a safe haven for people
to come and be safe,
to be protected against
Serbian attacks that were
coming from the hills
and from Serbian attacks
coming from the ground.
The UN failed to take sufficient
action to protect them
and almost all the men in
Srebrenica were killed.
The women were raped and
the children were taken away
and ethnically cleansed.
That was in my judgment a
serious violation of justice
that the United Nations,
military forces in Srebrenica
should have been in ordered
to take action to prevent.
Now, I'm not trying to say,
therefore let's have lots of wars.
I'm trying to say, let's
not abandon the possibility
of in extreme circumstances,
of taking that kind of action.
Let me conclude then by saying,
that we wanna move ultimately though
toward reconciliation and peace building.
That's the direction in which
I think we need to move.
One of the things that's
crucial about the document
produced about the
responsibility to protect
is that it calls for prevention
of conflict very severely.
This is from the US bishops though,
that justice demands establishing
at least basic conditions
of participation from people
in the human community
and the ultimate injustice
is for a person to be treated
actively or abandon passively
as if they were non-human,
nonmembers of the human race,
and we have to prevent
those kinds of injustices
and that's going to call for preventing
the kind of social
division of society by war,
that one way of seeing
that lightning bolt there
is a way of destroying justice in society
as well as bringing conflict.
It breaks the social unity of peace.
It breaks the social
unity of a just society
dividing it by war and by oppression.
And that's what we need to avoid.
We wanna avoid that by
establishing what might be called
restorative justice after conflict
or this morning it was
raised a question about
whether you don't wanna go back
to where things were, and restore it.
I would also wanna sometimes
call this creative justice.
How do we create a society
where there is social unity
and peaceful coexistence.
And that's a form of justice,
that I think is absolutely crucial.
So, justice combined with
forgiveness is the way to peace.
Forgiveness can break the cycle
that leads to more violence.
It avoids the reversal of roles
of oppressor and oppressed
and that means that we
have a responsibility
it seems to me to take the kind of action
that heals society and
puts society back together.
That's where I would argue,
that reconciliation both,
there are a couple of criteria
that could be used here
which I could've included in
my slideshow but forgot to.
We can talk about Jus ad
bellum and jus in bello
as the classic criteria for Just War.
But I would like also to
include several new criteria
that some others have highlighted.
(speaking foreign language)
Justice before and against war.
So this would be a way of bringing justice
into the prevention and overcoming of war
not simply justice of using criteria
for when war might be justified.
That's part of the ideal of prevention
and that would bring
justice and nonviolence
into more harmony with each other
but I would still stand for saying
that there may be some
exceptions in the extreme case
where I don't want to say that nonviolence
is always the only solution to situations
and grave danger to human beings.
Thank you.
- Thank you David
(audience clapping)
I think all of you can be very concrete
about the steps that can
be taken, whether it's in,
(speaking foreign language)
or whether it's making a parish
aware and active in nonviolence.
But let me just go back and
say, the time that bishops
wrote the 1993 pastoral statement,
Harvest of Justice is Sown in Peace,
it was an effervescence
of new developments
and institutions to try to prevent war.
There was kind of affirmative diplomacy,
there was contact between
military officials,
there were regular threat
reduction kind of activities.
A lot of them as we discovered
is relations to the,
Russia have been breaking down,
no longer exists or not use.
What kind of institutions do we need
to make justice, make peace
and nonviolence effective?
- I'd like to,
(speaking faintly)
Well I think we need, and
here's where the church,
churches generally, Catholic churches,
in one of the largest
transborder institutions
in the world can take a roll,
I think, the example of Rwanda,
the issue of humanitarian
military intervention
to me actually illustrates
the problem David,
to marshal military forces,
you need political
support in places where,
and to do that you need,
national self-interest.
The fact that the US, European nations
not only intervened
against an intervention
illustrates the fact
that you're gonna have
a lot of problems in any,
even before this sort of
resurgence of nationalism
that we have right now, you know the,
conservative national
security realists argument is,
you're not gonna intervene
where there isn't
national self-interest in
some places in the world
where this is most needed,
there isn't an not obvious
national self-interest.
Now on the other side for
more progressive lefty folks,
even if you would, then
you have a recipe for,
going around and intervening in any place
that there is human rights violations,
it's a recipe for building an empire.
So, I'm not sure we have,
If that's the limit
case in which, you know,
you can make the strongest
argument as you've done,
for continuing to imagine Just Wars.
Well, the Just War tradition
also claims that it is
more politically realistic
than nonviolence.
Well, is it really realistic to expect
nations to marshal support
to intervene in places
that they don't have any self-interest.
So I think we're only at
the beginning of scaling up
active nonviolence, their pilot projects,
in terms of intervening in
hot wars, in serious places,
in places of serious conflict.
There are some NGOs that
are trying to do that
offering pilot projects.
You got a long ways to go,
but I think that's as realistic
as expecting nations states
to protect people, that
their own constituencies
don't really care about.
So, globalization for all its problems
is creating new networks, new
technologies that allow people
to band together in coalitions of,
nonviolent coalitions of
the willing in order to
find ways to do the whole
range, from sending in mediators
to active the placing bodies
in the way of conflict and so on.
- Just to add to that, what
I'm really interested in is,
perhaps not trying to get to that last
most extreme case when, maybe
there isn't anything else
that can be done.
But because I'm not,
I don't know that we'll ever
reach an agreement on that.
I think that there is just
a very deep difference
in terms of whether,
there is a last resort
for the use of armed force.
But what does seem to be
important is that we recognize
that we can't forever claim
that there is another option,
another nonviolent option
if we haven't seriously invested in that.
So, as you were saying
Drew, I think unfortunately
there's been a tendency for
the world to move away from
an effort to invest in diplomacy,
or I should say our own country,
to invest in diplomacy,
to invest in what we know makes for peace.
I was very interested in
some of the recent work
that has come out of the review
of the UN peacekeeping, peace
operations that are lifted up,
above a long list of those
societal commitments,
and a lot of them have to do is justice,
that we know ultimately contribute
to a more peaceful society,
to a more peaceful world
and that, so to talk
about sustaining peace
as the work of every
country around the world
all the time, because it's about
it's about strengthening
our capacity to build peace.
I think that the very specific
programs, institutions,
strategies that are nonviolent
that can be effective are,
I think they're contextually specific,
and that although there are some,
there is a need to invest
I think in institutions
that help foster that development
of those sorts of programs.
I think in reality what's
perhaps more important is that,
we from the local level all the way
to the multilateral international level,
we are looking all the time
at all of the possibilities.
We're investing financial
resources, person power,
research time, training,
educational capacity
in asking, what nonviolent responses
in this situation will work.
So, sometimes I think it actually is,
we know that, somebody was
saying this morning that,
a traumatized community,
a traumatized person,
is not able to be, to pursue
the kind of Just Peace,
when the woundedness is never attended to.
And so, some of the
work that we need to do
has to do with how we,
what we teach our children.
It has to do with how we heal
in the wake of terrible violence and war.
But it also has to do with how
much we invest in diplomacy.
What's the first thing we
do in a situation of crisis?
So, I think that what
we're saying is not so much
that there is not ever
going to be an occasion
when intervention that is armed
intervention is necessary,
but that if we don't
learn to both function
in a way ourselves and promote sort of,
the development of nonviolent tools,
we will always repeatedly be in situations
where we don't have an alternative.
So, I think that,
I think we're not so far
apart in what we're saying.
And I don't think there's a magic answer.
I don't believe that,
Yes, the responsibility to protect
is an extremely important principle.
But how do we protect?
What does that look like?
That's the question that I
think we need to be asking.
- David can you talk about
some of those means of,
exercising (speaking foreign language)
- Yeah.
I mean more talking about a
whole series of initiatives
globally about creating a
rural-based world order,
a set of criteria that govern
our economic life
internationally about ways
in which we look at the expectations
about the way we mutually commit ourselves
to supporting one another
in international affairs,
the way in which we deal with trade.
There's a whole range of issues
and Gerald mentions about the rise
of contemporary nationalism.
Well that's very much
opposed to the direction
in which these institutions, that I think
are really needed, should be going.
I mean, after World War II
a lot of people realized
they needed the European Union
in order to achieve peace.
And now they want to take it apart,
and the UK is pulling out of it.
There's a bunch of
people in Germany called,
(speaking foreign language)
who wants to get,
and so, I think that's a huge mistake
and that's the sort of thing
that I would want to argue about justice,
that this is a way in which
these are big mistakes,
and there are forms of
nonviolence for sure,
but there are forms of diplomacy
and forms of international
institution building
and we have to sustain those things and,
I was just lecturing for
a little bit earlier,
I had to teach this afternoon.
I've been just working on the
refugee issue very extensively
and the attitude that the
United States is developing
towards refugees around the world,
especially towards Muslims,
is a good way to stimulate
anger from the Muslim world
that's gonna cause further terrorism
and what's happening in France
with the banning of the veil
on the part of Islamic women
and a number of other things
the treating Muslims as people
that are not welcome in France.
That's the sort of thing
that generates conflict.
And that's the the kind of injustice
that I think is really, very
much opposed to the direction
in which I would want to go.
So I don't wanna be
interpreted as somehow being
here in favor of let's figure out
how we can use force against people,
'cause that's not what I'm
saying, it's absolutely
nonviolent means are the preferred way
of approaching through these institutions.
All I'm saying is, I don't
agree with the statement
that was me to your conference
that there is no such thing as a Just War.
And I want to say, that's not true.
That's all I'm saying.
So I'm not a warmonger.
I'm just somebody who wants to-
- [Man] We know that David.
- I know.
But every time I say this
sort of thing, people say,
oh, you're not against war enough.
I don't think that's true.
- Gerald,
- Anyway.
- You had a famous maxim
about making nonviolence
churchwide and parish deep.
I again wanna get to metrics.
I wanna get to the various
kinds techniques and practices
that are used in this kind
of nonviolent peacemaking.
What would make a parish,
What would make a parish nonviolent?
What kind of steps?
What kind of exercise?
What kind of practices do you need there?
- I wannna respond.
I'm gonna circle back.
- No you did that once.
I want you to answer my question
- But it's related to this.
Just in general response,
if the 2% difference
that you described us as
having, really we're stayed 2%.
I don't think there would be a difference.
In other words,
and I say that probably because,
as I start to imagine what
could happen in my parish
I would actually wanna include
teaching the Just War criteria,
which we're not even
doing in our parishes and,
challenging young
people, that if you want,
the kind of, sense of adventure
and seeing the world and
contribute to the common good
that leads people to
sign up for the military,
here's a whole bunch of other ways
to at least look at,
next to military service,
so that if the presumption
against violence, against war,
really is operative in our
parishes, we're going to give
our young people a whole lot of challenges
of ways to serve the common good,
and then those that
really feel a vocation to,
enter the military,
as an active service, then we'll make it,
we'll set up a processes for discernment,
accountability about that so
that it's really location.
But we'll be challenging our young people
to other ways of service.
Just with voluntary service for example.
You know, my model would,
In a way I'm,
The one way that I'm
jealous of the Mormons,
is their two or three year expectation
for their young people to do
some kind of mission work.
You know, why can't we
mobilize our young people
with that kind of sense of vocation.
If we do that, then we start to lay out,
Yeah, I mean I'm realistic
that the Just War tradition
isn't going to go away, probably in my,
Well I don't wanna speculate.
So I'm asking people, who would identify
with what David is saying,
at least take the Just War
tradition really serious, as limitation,
but lay that up against whole other,
starts to create institutions for service
and community engagement that then,
and along with that comes a
training in active nonviolence
as part of a general
lifestyle of Christian service
in the community, on and on, so.
- Marie.
- I would agree.
I guess I would add a few other pieces,
in talking about a parish.
One would be a serious
scriptural reflection
on what can we learn from the Scriptures
about violence and nonviolence.
What was the way that Jesus engaged
in the struggle for justice,
for example against the
occupiers in his experience?
So I think the preaching and
the scriptural reflection
should be digging deeply
into these questions.
I think just learning
nonviolent communication
at a parish level is, a very
important skill to have.
I think our children
at an elementary level
should be understanding
nonviolent communication,
should be understanding
how to deal with conflict,
which is, as was said
earlier, a part of life.
How do you engage with conflict,
without perpetuating
or initiating violence?
I think that I would agree
with what Gerald said.
Then I think just learning
about those experiments
in nonviolent engagement,
in the public arena,
that some of which are, for
example, in the city of Chicago
Cardinal Cupich has a major
commitment to nonviolence
and to dealing with the
violence in the city of Chicago
in a way that gets at
the root causes of that,
of the violence and deals with it in a way
that doesn't exacerbate violence.
To understand that efforts
like Christian peacemaker teams
and nonviolent force
and others are engaging
in creative ways, and
many different conflicts
in the world, but they're
doing it without any real
financial support from anywhere.
It's all NGOs on a shoestring.
So then we begin to look
at, what are the priorities
in our national budgets
or our local budgets.
How do our police forces work?
Can we imagine that we
might learn something
from the police force
in England, in the UK,
that actually is not
always armed with a firearm
but armed with the bat,
and only special forces with a firearm.
So, it seems to me that
engagement in local community,
a look at who we are as people of faith
following a tradition in which
Jesus had a lot to say about
violence and nonviolence and
a lot, and his way of living
speaks very loudly to us in these times.
Could go on and on.
- David.
Let me, I'm gonna show you.
This may seem that left
field, but has to do with R2P.
Which we both spend a lot
of time thinking about.
How would you, I mean,
The international law caused
the Just War precaution on principles
in part of deciding whether
to intervene with force,
involves having to use
precautionary principles.
How would you have applied
the Just War principles
intervening in Syria?
- I would say, don't intervene.
- Okay.
Explain.
- Well I mean, there a
whole series of reasons why,
I mean if you're talking
about intervening by military.
- Yeah.
- I mean, you've gotta find a way,
that there's a reasonable hope of success.
That's a standard Just War criterion.
Sending military forces
into Syria doesn't seem
to me to have a reasonable
hope of being able to achieve
either justice or peace,
and I think that there
are a whole host of things
that should've been done,
and should still be done
about bringing international
dialogue to bear
and putting other forms of heavy
duty international pressure
to bear not only on the
Syrians, but also on Iraq,
Iran, the Russians, a whole
series of initiatives there,
which we're not doing, and
that's where I would say,
so the responsibility to protect,
is not an automatic answer
that says, intervene.
As a matter of fact, it says
it's the absolutely last thing to do,
to use military force as an intervention
and you find ways of
prevention and of alternatives.
On Rwanda, one of the issues
that's really interesting,
of course, is that there
were a whole host of things
going on in Rwanda for
many years, decades,
that divided Tutsi and Hutu,
and the kind of action
that came to the fore
between Hutu and Tutsi in
Rwanda, should have been,
I mean the Catholic Relief Service
was deeply involved in
Rwanda for many decades
before the genocide took place
and there's a very
important piece written.
It was a speech given at
Fordham by the man who was one
of the key players on the
Catholic Relief Service
and their role in Rwanda,
and he said that the Rwanda genocide
produced an enormous crisis
for the Catholic Relief Service
because they said, we
were 25 years in Rwanda
and we didn't see this coming.
Why didn't we?
We were doing something wrong
on the ground in Rwanda,
that wasn't paying attention to the way
the Tutsis and the Hutus
were exploiting each other,
and they should have been
doing something to prevent that
and I think that was a big,
The man wrote this, his
name slips my mind now,
but he was dean of the
Fletcher school at Tufts
for a number of years.
His name will come to me in a few minutes.
But that's the sort of thing
that in Rwanda I would've seen
but once he got to the point
where they were out there
using machetes chop people to bits,
that's where I think there
should've been something
that should've been done to stop.
But it shouldn't have
been the first thing,
it should've been the last thing,
and there were a whole
host of other things
that should've happened previously.
Just like Syria.
There is a whole host of things other than
a military intervention that
should be happening in Syria.
- You asked,
we're still responding
to the practical question
and I would say one more thing
back at the parish level,
and that is, preaching matters.
In the Rwanda case,
I'm not an expert in it, but
from everything I've read
Rwanda was the most Christian country
in Africa by some accounts.
- [Man] They had more baptized Christians.
- Yeah.
- But they were Christians.
- Yeah well, of course.
(group laughing)
But umm,
(speaking faintly)
I'm gonna get there too.
You know but, the great
scandal is that of course,
tribal for most people,
tribal identity trumps Christian identity.
What had not been done in the basic
proclamation of the gospel,
and then I think we had
the same problem in the US.
Being American trumps being Christian,
there really gets down
to the way most people,
may evaluate whether they're gonna support
or participate in war.
So basic preaching matters.
- Isaiah, you wanna have the last word?
- [Isaiah] Well, not the last word,
but basically ways that
it would cease dissent.
I mean they could relieve
you of our critical elites,
(speaking faintly)
So unless, as you point out,
the church is able to show
that it can transform
its own unjust structures
within the church, and address seriously
the institutionalized
critical sexual violence
and all forms of critical violence
that are institutionalized
within the church.
Unless this doesn't happen,
nothing can be done.
But the problem is that,
it loses the credibility
of those who are not
fully within the church,
but then those who are
fully within the church,
the faithful, of course
they also don't believe
that capital punishment may
be evil or may be a sin.
Right?
So, and they believe that the
Pope is wrong on these issues
and that you guys are wrong.
You are naïve.
This what our Catholic
faithful in Europe today
support against the Pope
and supporting nationalism
and our Catholic faithful
supporting Trump today.
So it's simply a very serious question
and unless the Catholic
church is reformed, then
- We have one question there in the back.
- [Man] Marie, coming from Argentina
and my experience of the
military in Argentina.
So, have you had an intervention,
have you talked to military chaplains,
or are they part of the conversation?
Because there we have
this kind of tiny part
in the Catholic Church,
but they are very vocal,
they are still there.
They're not international,
they are very national
and we have nationalism in there,
kind of interesting crowd there.
- But that's a great question.
Individually we have a little bit,
but San Diego University
did a host, thank you.
San Diego University
did host a conversation
between the Catholic
Nonviolence Initiative,
a small conversation, and the ethicists
from the military academies across the US,
and a few other military officers,
which was very interesting.
That is absolutely a direction
in which this conversation has to go.
You're totally right.
- I wanna thank you all
very much for your attention
and please thank our speakers.
(audience clapping)
