Paths to
Peace Becoming a true peace church
By MICHAEL BAXTER
Twenty years ago, as the U.S. Catholic bishops were preparing to
issue The Challenge of Peace, their pastoral letter on war and
peace, there was much talk about the Catholic church becoming a genuine
peace church.
This title had customarily been reserved for the so-called
historic peace churches -- the Amish, Mennonites, Church of the
Brethren and Quakers -- but the bishops with their new pastoral seemed to be
answering the Second Vatican Councils call to undertake an
evaluation of war with an entirely new attitude (Gaudium et Spes).
For many Catholics, especially those associated with the peace movement, the
change signaled a new era of peacemaking in the church, an era in which all
Catholics would begin to work and pray tirelessly for peace, leavening society
and witnessing the peace of Christ to the nations. At least, on good days, this
was the hope harbored by many -- including myself.
But in subsequent years the Catholic church in the United States
has not (to put it mildly) distinguished itself in its peacemaking task. Church
docility was evident during the Gulf War (or, as it might better be called, the
Great Petroleum War of 1991 to the present), and is conspicuous in the present
war against -- well, Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, all terrorists everywhere or
whatever it is. The hope that the Catholic church would become a peace church
is a forlorn hope.
Why? Because, as Thomas à Kempis observed, We desire
peace, but not the things that make for peace.
À Kempis adage from The Imitation of Christ
articulates a problem not about ends but about means. We desire peace as an
end, but do not desire the means necessary to attain that end. In other words,
we lack prudence, which Aquinas defined as practical reasoning or
right reason applied to action. Blessed with good intentions but
beset by fuzzy thinking, we look in the wrong direction for the necessary means
to achieve peace.
We think that the things that make for peace are to be found in
the mechanisms of the modern nation-state, in our case, in the government of
the United States: The United States is a nation-state; nation-states make war;
so to alter the behavior of the United States against making war is to increase
the likelihood of making peace. Such reasoning drives most peacemaking efforts
of the U.S. Catholic church. Thus the bulk of the bishops pastoral letter
on war and peace explains technical aspects of the Reagan administrations
nuclear weapons policy and analyzes the morality of preemptive strikes,
retaliatory strikes, hard-target-kill strategy, deterrence strategy and so
on.
All too worldly
Most church-sponsored peacemaking efforts during the Gulf War
sought to change the way George H. Bush (the father) and his staff conducted
the war, or the way Bill Clinton administered the subsequent economic embargo.
Today, similar attention is given to the Bush administrations prosecution
of the war in Afghanistan. In each of these circumstances, church peacemaking
efforts seek to influence national policy, assuming that the things that make
for peace are to be found within the politics inside the beltway.
But the policies of nation states are not the things that make for
peace -- not true peace, at any rate, not the peace of Christ. For we have it
on reliable authority that the peace of Christ, which flows from the bond of
love between the Father and the Son, is a peace the world cannot give (John
14:27). Peace among nation-states, forged by a balance of power and secured by
violence, is all too worldly, not really peace at all but a truce among
mutually suspicious parties. It is at best a pale reflection of the peace given
by Christ to the apostles in the upper room.
When the apostles were sent forth by Christ to bring his peace to
the nations, they were greeted with resistance, rejection and in many cases
that most glorious of rewards: martyrdom. When successors to the apostles bring
Christs peace to the nations of this day and age, they meet with similar
greetings: Consider the lives of Ben Salmon, Edith Stein, Franz Jagerstatter,
Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day and many others.
We declare our readiness to follow in their footsteps whenever we
gather in Christs name, break open his word, eat his body and drink his
blood, and then go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
There is a dramatic tension, even an antagonism between the peace
of Christ and the peace of empires, ancient and modern. The role of Christians
is to live out the peace of Christ, which means that the church in general, and
the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in particular, should expend its
limited energy and resources first and foremost on forming Catholics into a
people capable of resisting the claims of the state and embodying their prior
allegiance to the Prince of Peace. Please note: This is a task of formation,
essentially a pastoral task, aimed at serving ordinary Catholics, people in the
pews who do not have much pull in Washington, but who do, nevertheless, have
important decisions to make when it comes to making peace.
This pastoral task entails instructing Catholics about civilian
and military conscientious objection. For almost 40 years now, ever since John
XXIII issued Pacem in Terris (1963), the Catholic church has commended
those who renounce the use of force in defending their rights and has called
upon governments to release them from the obligations of military service and
provide suitable noncombatant alternatives. During the Vietnam War, educating
draft-age young people about the morality of war and peace was a major concern
among pastoral leaders. This concern has all but evaporated. Now, very few
Catholic teenagers and young adults know anything about why someone would want
to be a conscientious objector and nothing about the legal procedures for
becoming one.
Of course, it could be noted that there is no military draft at
present, but, in fact, draft watchers agree that its reinstatement is more
likely now than at any time since its discontinuation in the mid-1970s. An
updated and streamlined conscription process could mobilize a generation in a
matter of weeks. Are draft-eligible young people, that is, males between the
ages of 19 and 26, prepared? Are youth ministers and high school teachers
informed about the situation? Are pastors and principals attending to this
aspect of their apostolic responsibilities?
Conscientious military service
Among the soldiers, sailors and airmen who have moral misgivings
about participating in combat, few realize that military regulations allow them
to apply for classification as conscientious objectors. The church should
provide Catholic military personnel the information and assistance they need to
examine their consciences and their options. Have the bishops ensured that
church teaching on conscientious military service -- including the imperative
to disobey immoral orders -- is available to them? Do military chaplains
encourage those in their pastoral charge to engage in critical reflection on
such matters?
These are just two of the pastoral concerns to be addressed if the
church is to be a sign of Christs peace. There are others including: the
absence of church teaching on war in ROTC curricula taught on Catholic
campuses, the presence of military recruiters in Catholic high schools, the
moral responsibilities of Catholic scientists who design weapons of mass
destruction, and the financing of unjust wars by Catholic taxpayers.
Attending to these concerns will not magically bring peace to the
nations, but it will show the nations a church that desires not only peace but
the things that make for peace, a church that is a genuine peace church, one
that embodies Christ, in whom lies the only true hope for peace.
Holy Cross Fr. Michael J. Baxter is a member of the theology
department at the University of Notre Dame and the national secretary of the
newly revived Catholic Peace Fellowship.
Peace in history
- 1986: Nonviolent People Power in the Philippines brings down
the oppressive Marcos dictatorship.
- 1991: 80,000 Russian demonstrators surround the Moscow White
House to protect President Boris Yeltsin from a coup that fails despite 4
million soldiers and thousands of tanks and aircraft.
Resources
The following documents are available on the Vatican Web site
(www.vatican.va):
Gaudium et
Spes www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council
Pacem in
Terris www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/encyclicals
National Catholic Reporter, April 26,
2002
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