Pope Francis: 'Nonviolence: a Style of Politics for Peace'

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE FIFTIETH WORLD DAY OF PEACE - Nonviolence: a Style of Politics for Peace

Clearly influenced by the conference on nonviolence held in Rome in March 2016, organised by the Pontifical Council for Justice & Peace and Pax Christi International.

A presentation by Bishop Kevin Dowling, one of the leading actors in the campaign for active nonviolence:

Nonviolence: The Witness of Oscar Romero and the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative

And an interesting message from Cathoic religious - priests, sisters, brothers - currently involved in one of the world's active conflicts:

ACTIVE NONVIOLENCE: A WAY TO BUILD LASTING PEACE IN SOUTH SUDAN

Francis 'rewriting Italian church history' with visit to priests' tombs in June

Pope Francis will be making an unusually brief visit to two Italian cities in June in order to pray at the tombs of a pair of 20th century priests who were ostracized by church leaders partly due to their support for pacifism and conscientious objection...

From Richard Rohr's daily medtation, reflecting on another Francis:

Francis, following Jesus, was also non-exclusionary and a bridge-builder. In 1219, Francis tried to stop the crusaders from attacking Muslims in Damietta. After being captured by Egyptian soldiers, Francis met with Sultan Malik al-Kamil, who also sought peace. Together they talked about prayer, faith, and mystical spirituality. Francis honored and respected the Islamic religion, even before his encounter with the Sultan. In his original Rule, Francis instructed friars who traveled to Muslim lands not to engage in argument or disputes, and to accept local authority, even if it meant making themselves vulnerable. He wanted them to carry the Gospel, not take up crusaders’ weapons. We need such a message today.

Imagine, brothers and sisters, how different Western history and religion could have been if we had walked so tenderly and lovingly upon the earth, as Francis and Jesus did...

Catholic clergy seen to be physically MIA in Charlottesville.

I remember when KKK marched in Ann Arbor, MI, Catholic laity were conspicuously PRESENT as trained peacemakers putting themselves between KKK and counter-protesters, I believe in concert with people of other faiths via the Interfaith Council for Peace & Justice.

A Wake-Up Call for the Catholic Church
What Changes After Charlottesville?
John Gehring | August 16, 2017

If there was ever a time to remember Pope Francis’s call for a bold “church in the streets,” the ugly events in Charlottesville this past weekend serve as that moment. The Catholic responses to the white supremacists who showed up to intimidate and inflict violence were a mix of encouraging, problematic, and inadequate.

...Clergy are good at issuing written condemnations, but often fail to show up in a physical way that concretely demonstrates what Pope Francis calls “accompaniment.” Sadly, this seemed to be the case as violence broke out in Charlottesville. While a sizable contingent of clergy from varied denominations walked into a dangerous situation and gave witness to bloodshed and spoke prophetically, Catholic clergy were missing in action...

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/wake-call-catholic-church

Richard Rohr's meditation for today struck me:

The three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) teach that one Creator formed all things. There is thus a radical unity at the heart of the universe’s pluriformity, resolving any conflict between diversity and the shared “divine DNA” found in creation. This theo-logic allows us to see “the hidden wholeness” in all things and to confidently assert that “everything belongs.” The distinction between natural and supernatural, sacred and profane, exists only as a mental construct.

You may be asking, as so many have over the years, “Richard, how can you make such naïve blanket statements like ‘Everything is sacred. Everything belongs?’ What about Hitler, nuclear bombings, ISIS, Westboro Baptists, and the United States’ epidemic of mass shooters?” I agree that we can and should name evil as evil. But unless we first name the underlying goodness and coherence of reality, along with our own imperfection, we will attack evil with methods and self-righteousness that will only deepen the problem. This is Nonviolence 101. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that the importance of nonviolence became widely acknowledged.

Further, Christianity has far too easily called individual, private behaviors sins while usually ignoring or even supporting structural and systemic evils such as war, colonization, corporate greed, slavery, and abuse of the Earth. All of the seven capital sins were admired at the corporate level and shamed at the individual level. 1 This left us utterly split in our morality, dealing with symptoms instead of causes, shaming people while glorifying systems that were themselves selfish, greedy, lustful, ambitious, lazy, prideful, and deceitful. We can’t have it both ways. Evil lurks powerfully in the shadows, in our unconscious complicity with systems that serve us at others’ expense. It has created worldviews of entitlement and privilege that were largely unrecognized until rather recently.