By CAROL GLATZ and MARNIE McALLISTER, Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY — Working to build dialogue, peace and justice in “our complex and violent world” is a huge and difficult task that requires seeking the common good, Pope Francis wrote to participants in a conference on non-violence and peace in Rome April 11 to 13.
Dialogue, he said, requires “being ready to give and also to receive, to begin not with the assumption that the other is wrong. Instead, accepting our differences and remaining true to our positions, we must seek the good of all; and, after having finally found agreement, we must firmly maintain it.”
The pope’s message was addressed to Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. The council, Pax Christi International and other Catholic organizations were hosting a conference to discuss the Catholic understanding of nonviolence and just peace. The cardinal read the pope’s message to participants April 11.
Cory Lockhart, a member of St. William Church in the Archdiocese of Louisville, was one of the 80 or so participants in the three-day conference. Lockhart, a former Trinity High School teacher, now develops programs for JustFaith Ministries, which is headquartered in Louisville, and serves on a Christian Peacemaker Team, working with Palestinians and Israelis to promote nonviolence in their ongoing conflict.
Lockhart said the conference inspired her and she felt encouraged by the work the church is doing to promote peace around the world.
“Cardinal Turkson, bishops, clergy, religious and lay people all are doing amazing work in peacebuilding — from the grassroots level to international policy. It really was affirming to see the work being done in the Catholic Church,” Lockhart said. “There’s horrible devastation in our world and work that needs to be done. Here are people who are doing it.”
Lockhart noted that a recurring theme during the conference, which was reiterated by people over and over, including a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was that dialogue for peace must engage everyone.
Someone asked during the conference if that notion extends to terror groups, such the so-called “Islamic State” organization (ISIS), Lockhart noted.
“A sister from Iraq, who was helping people there, said, ‘Yes, we have to also talk to ISIS.’ She said so many of them (the ISIS fighters) are ignorant and hungry and we need to talk to them.”
Lockhart said that while she primarily listened, she did tell the conference, “We need to recognize that all of us are more than the worst thing that we have done.”
“People want their humanity acknowledged,” she added. “We need to recognize the inherent dignity of all people and see in them the dignity of God — regardless of what they might be doing in that moment.”
Other peace-building experts, theologians and church leaders attending the conference also discussed the rejection of a “just war” mentality in favor of alternative conflict resolutions based on nonviolence and justice.
“The media, and public opinion influenced by the media, convey an incorrect interpretation of the religious concept of just war,” Cardinal Turkson said in his talk April 11.
The church’s stance has evolved over time, he said, achieving “a progressive transformation of consciences” with the aim of ultimately showing that violence is not the only way to end conflict.
St. Augustine and then St. Thomas Aquinas developed the concept of “just war,” he noted, adding, “its fuller treatment arose when Europe was governed by barbarian peoples for whom the only thing that counted was violence.”
The church at the time was seen as “a civilizing power because of its religious nature” and, therefore, it sought to influence leaders by continually restricting the conditions that would justify their use of force, he said.
However, with secularization, leaders in Western nations began to claim for themselves “the right to decide whether or not (a) recourse to war was just,” the cardinal said. He said Pope Francis offers a “nuanced” guide for distinguishing “just” versus “unjust” war.
In response to a reporter’s question in 2014 about terrorist threats from ISIS, the pope had said it was acceptable to stop an unjust aggressor. However, stopping aggression, he said, doesn’t mean “drop bombs, make war.”
“How many times, with this excuse of stopping an unjust aggressor, the powers have taken over peoples and carried on an actual war of conquest,” the pope said.
One nation must never determine by itself how to stop the aggressor, he said, as different sides should evaluate the best means to use.
The pope also asked those taking part in the conference to help support his appeal to world leaders during this Year of Mercy for a moratorium and end to the death penalty everywhere it is still in force.
He also called for “the cancellation or the sustainable management of the international debt of poorer nations.”
He encouraged the renewal “of the active witness of nonviolence as a ‘weapon’ to achieve peace.” Choosing the path of nonviolence, he said, is a “daunting” task as is “reaching people’s very souls” through compassion and dialogue, building bridges and fighting fear.
