Vatican conference to review Catholic teaching on peacemaking

Apr 6th, 2016

The Holy See's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and Pax Christi International will convene an unprecedented conference next week to review Catholic teaching on peacemaking. Entitled "Nonviolence and Just Peace: Contributing to the Catholic Understanding of and Commitment to Nonviolence", it will be held 11-13 April 2016.

In recognition of the Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis, this Catholic conference will involve 80 participants who represent a broad spectrum of experiences in peacebuilding and active nonviolence in the face of violence and war. They are from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Australia and the Americas. The conference will initiate a process to review Catholic teaching on war and peace, including explicit rejection of "just war" language in favour of an alternative ethical framework for engaging acute conflict and atrocities. This will include developing the themes and practices of nonviolent conflict transformation and just peace. It will develop clearer Scripture-based Catholic teaching and an action plan to promote such teachings in seminaries, Catholic educational institutions, Catholic media, Catholic dioceses and parishes.

"We live in a complex world where armed conflicts are pervasive and where violence has become the first (and many times the only) way used to address those conflicts," says José Henríquez, a member of the planning committee and a former Secretary General of Pax Christi International. "We need to go back to the sources of our faith and to rediscover the nonviolence which is at the heart of the Gospel" he adds; "as a global community, we need to foster the creative imagination to build merciful societies where nonviolence is the norm and not the exception".

The conference is being organised around four sessions exploring the themes of: Experiences of Nonviolence, Jesus' Way of Nonviolence, Nonviolence and Just Peace, and Moving Beyond Unending War. Each of the sessions is being led by experts in the separate topic areas, including: Rose Marie Berger, an editor at Sojourners magazine and social justice activist and Fr. John Dear, a former Jesuit known internationally for his writings on nonviolence and civil disobedience actions. A talk will be given by Cardinal Peter Turkson, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Pat Gaffney, General Secretary of Pax Christi UK, is one of the organisers, and the British contingent will include Valerie Flessati and Chris Cole. "The process aims to engage all of us in working out what we need to do to develop a culture of peacemaking in the Church" said Pat Gaffney.

Prayerful support before and during this unique conference is requested. Following is a prayer written especially for the conference by Austrian nonviolence activist and theologian Hildegard Goss-Mayr:

Holy Spirit, our source of light and strength, we thank you for having inspired the call to peace-makers from all over the world to meet in the dramatic situation of humanity to reconsider our responsibility, to deepen and promote the liberating and healing nonviolence of Jesus.

Merciful God, our Father and Mother, you sent your Son Jesus, our Brother, to reveal through his life and teaching your divine, self-giving Love and so incarnate in our world the power of nonviolence, able to overcome ALL forms of violence and to reconcile humanity in justice and peace.

You have asked us, who are baptised in Jesus' name, to let ourselves be transformed by this force of truth and self-giving love and to apply it courageously in our violence-stricken world.

We confess that for centuries our Church, people of God, has betrayed this central message of the Gospel many times and participated in wars, persecution, oppression, exploitation and discrimination. This fills us with deep sadness and we humbly ask to be pardoned.

Holy Spirit, as we meet as peacemakers, we count on your light and your strength to help revive in the Theology of Peace the nonviolent message of Jesus in which there is no place for violence and to offer to all Christians the arms of peacemaking, pardon and reconciliation.

Holy Spirit, we trust in your light and strength that this Conference may mark a new step for our Church, people of God, on its way to becoming a Church of Peace, in the spirit of our Brother Jesus and so respond to the cry of humanity for life in dignity and peace.

Link:

Pax Christi International