Catholic Social Teaching:
Promoting Peace and Social Justice
Working for peace and social justice is not an optional commitment; it is a requirement of our Catholic faith. As Pope Paul VI taught, "If you want peace, work for justice." We are called to promote nonviolent approaches to resolving our conflicts whenever possible, and to contribute to the creation of a more just society and world.

An Ounce of Peace

Update: Since the Department of Peace legislation was introduced in the House (H.R. 3760) on September 14, 2005 and in the Senate (S. 1756) on September 22, 2005, the bill has been referred to the House Subcommittee on Education Reform, where it sits today. There is still time to contact your representative and speak up!

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, we spent all our U.S. healthcare dollars treating existing diseases and injuries. It was expensive, and the number of sick and injured just kept increasing. Then - somebody had a crazy idea. What if we spent some of our healthcare dollars on vaccines to keep people from getting sick, on education to teach people how to stay healthy, on tests that would catch diseases in the early stages, and on laws that forced people to wear seat belts, and forced manufacturers to be responsible for the safety of their products? The result - fewer people got sick, fewer people were injured, and more people survived their illnesses. Prevention! What a concept!

Today, we spend over half our discretionary budget in the U.S. ("Discretionary" is all budget items except for "mandatory" items like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) on preparing for war and acts of violence. The proposed budget for 2006 includes $419 billion for the Department of Defense and $32 billion for Homeland Security - 53% of total discretionary spending of $840 billion (From www.whitehouse.gov). These figures do not included any funds for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, because that money, $50 to $100 billion, is not included in the budget, but is requested separately as a "supplemental appropriation." As shocking as these figures are, they do not even come close to the total cost of violence in our lives. Add in prison costs, medical care for the victims of crime, costs of police protection and training, foster care for the victims of child abuse - and the list goes on. The cost of violence is astronomical - and most of us accept this fact without question, as if it could never change.

Here's another crazy idea. What if we spent some of that money that we allocate to dealing with violence - and instead used it to prevent violence? We have a cabinet level department called the U.S. Department of Defense. What if we developed a cabinet level department called the Department of Peace? This department would move way beyond the State Department's function of negotiating with foreign governments, and focus on international nonviolent conflict resolution, intervention and mediation, as well as ways to prevent violence here at home.

Actually, Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced legislation proposing a Department of Peace during the 107th and 108th Congress.

It was reintroduced in both the House and Senate in September 2005, and has now been referred to committee, awaiting further action. There are sixty co-sponsors of the House bill, and one sponsor of the Senate bill. You can read the details of the legislation by going to www.dopcampaign.org or www.kucinich.us/issues/departmentpeace.

According to The Peace Alliance, a national peace lobby,

"The Department of Peace will facilitate the most cutting edge ways to wage peace. From nonviolent communication skills, to conflict resolution techniques and cultural relationship building, the Department of Peace will employ proven and effective strategies for diminishing violence in our country and in our world. As a member of the President's cabinet, the Secretary of Peace will provide the President; the State Department; the Departments of Defense, education, and Justice with greatly expanded problem solving options. The Department of Peace will also provide support for state and local government to address issues of domestic violence."

If a department dedicated to preventing violence and war makes sense to you - speak out! It is crucial that more senators and congressional representatives sign on as sponsors of this bill. The bill has been introduced three times - but each time it has had more sponsors, and last month was the first time it was introduced in the senate. This is progress. Please contact your senators and representative and ask them to sponsor H.R. 3760 (the House version) and S. 1756 (the Senate version):

• Senator Carl Levin (www.levin.senate.gov or (202) 224-6221)
• Senator Debbie Stabenow (www.stabenow.senate.gov or (202) 224-4822)
• Representative Sander Levin (www.house.gov/levin or (202) 225-4961 or toll free (888) 810-3880.
• You may contact all other representatives at www.house.gov

When is war justified? Although this is not an easy question, Catholic Social Teaching does provide us with two very specific sets of criteria to help us determine the morality of war.

Just and Unjust War Tradition dates back to St. Augustine and St. Ambrose. In modern times, this tradition is outlined in The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response, the 1983 U.S. bishop's pastoral letter. The two sets of criteria cover the reason or purpose for the war (jus ad bellum), and how the war is fought (jus in bello.)

Under "Jus ad Bellum" (the reason for the war), we are asked to consider:

1. Just Cause - the war must confront a real danger, goal must be to protect life and basic human rights.
2. Competent Authority - private groups of individuals cannot declare war, only public authorities.
3. Comparative Justice - do the rights and values involved justify killing?
4. Right Intention - war must be for peace and reconciliation only, must not be for economic gain, power, or revenge.
5. Last Resort - must have exhausted all peaceful alternatives to war.
6. Probability of Success - the likelihood of a successful outcome must be great enough to justify the potential costs.
7. Proportionality - damage to be inflicted and costs expected must be proportionate to the good expected with victory.

Under "Jus in Bello" (how the war is fought) we are asked to consider:

1. Proportionality - the response to aggression should not be disproportionate to the
   original aggression.
2. Discrimination - aggression must NEVER target noncombatants (a life issue on a par with abortion and euthanasia.)

Using the criteria listed above, how do you feel about the Iraq war? Do you feel that it is a just war? In a future article, we will look specifically at the Church's response to the Iraq war, and how the U.S. bishops used just-war teaching to reach their conclusions.

To understand the Church's teachings on just-war, it is also important to realize that just- war teaching is still evolving. The technology available today to fight wars is vastly different from what was available when St. Augustine lived. We know that any war in the nuclear age could result in disaster for us all. Vatican II addresses the issue of weapons of mass destruction, in light of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World) when the pope and bishops declare:

"Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities, or of extensive areas along with their population, is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation."

In The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response, the US bishops explain the new rationale for just-war teaching:

"Just-war teaching has evolved, however, as an effort to prevent war; only if war cannot be rationally avoided, does the teaching then seek to restrict and reduce its horrors. It does this by establishing a set of rigorous conditions which must be met if the decision to go to war is to be morally permissible. Such a decision, especially today, requires extraordinarily strong reasons for overriding the presumption in favor of peace and against war."

Pope John Paul II expressed this sentiment in a 1982 homily at Coventry, Great Britain, when he stated:

"Today the scale and the horror of modern warfare - whether nuclear or not - makes it totally unacceptable as a means of settling differences between nations. War should belong to the tragic past, to history; it should find no place on humanity's agenda for the future."

In discussing the morality of war, we must point out that the Church's teachings on war have nothing to do with how the Church views military service. The Church has always strongly defended those who risk their lives in the military. In Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II states:

"Those who devote themselves to the military service of their country should regard themselves as the agents of security and freedom of peoples. As long as they fulfill this role properly, they are making a genuine contribution to the establishment of peace."

You can read "The Challenge of Peace" at www.americancatholic.org. For more information on Just War teachings, go to www.osjspm.org.

Coverage of the war in Iraq has dominated the headlines for over two years now. Every day brings more death and destruction: "Rebels Kill 39 Over Weekend", "Car Bombings Kill 15", "Bomb Attacks Leave 16 Dead", "Car Bomb Kills 8 at Mosque." After two years, the headlines no longer seem to represent bodies maimed, families destroyed, innocent lives lost - they become only words. Missing from the headlines, is what our popes and bishops have said about this war. In a world where every utterance about Michael Jackson's guilt or innocence is big news - major Church statements about the war rarely even merit a back-page reference. How does the Church view the war in Iraq? Is it a just war based on Church teaching?

In September of 2002, the US bishops wrote a letter to President Bush expressing their concerns about the looming war. On November 13, 2002, the bishops released a "Statement on Iraq" to share these same concerns with the world. In "Statement on Iraq" the bishops reference the letter to the president, and state: "This letter, which was authorized by the US Bishops' Administrative Committee, raised serious questions about the moral legitimacy of any preemptive, unilateral use of military force to overthrow the government of Iraq…..Based on the facts that are known to us, we continue to find it difficult to justify the resort to war against Iraq, lacking clear and adequate evidence of an imminent attack of a grave nature. With the Holy See and bishops from the Middle East and around the world, we fear that resort to war, under present circumstances and in light of current public information, would not meet the strict conditions in Catholic teaching for overriding the strong presumption against the use of military force."

The "Statement on Iraq" expands on these concerns based on the principles of just and unjust war. Under "Just Cause", the bishops state that preventive use of military force is not allowed. Under "Legitimate Authority" the bishops argue that the United Nations should be part of the authority needed for war. Under "Probability of Success and Proportionality" the bishops express their concern that war in Iraq could destabilize the entire region, increase terrorism, and lead to great civilian suffering. Under "Norms Governing the Conduct of War" (jus in bello) the bishops state that the lives of Iraqi civilians should be viewed with the same importance as the lives of Americans. Also, the bishops again stress their support for those who choose to serve in the military, as well as those whose conscience leads them to be conscientious objectors.

The US bishops' views on the war in Iraq are totally consistent with statements from the Vatican and from cardinals and bishops around the world. Pope Benedict XVI, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, was interviewed by Zenit, the international Catholic news agency, on May 2, 2003, and stated:

"There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a 'just war."

Pope John Paul II said, on January 13, 2003:

"No to war! War is not always inevitable…..And what are we to say to the people of Iraq, the land of the prophets, a people already tried by more than 12 years of embargo?… War is never just another means that one can choose to employ for settling differences between nations."

Clearly, the popes and the bishops have spoken out strongly against the war in Iraq from long before the first bomb was dropped. This protest has taken the form of private letters to President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, but it has also been evident in published documents and numerous interviews, speeches, and homilies. The Church does not view the war in Iraq as a just war.

Although the Church views the war in Iraq as unjust, everyone agrees that the fall of Saddam Hussein is a good thing for the Iraqi people and for the world. However, we must not fall victim to an "end justifies the means" mentality. In the "Statement on Iraq" the bishops worried, before the war began, that war would bring an increase in terrorist attacks, detract from our efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, and bring horrible suffering to the civilian population. Saddam Hussein may be gone, but, sadly, most of the bishop's concerns have come to pass. We must continue to pray for an end to this horrible conflict, for the safe return of our troops, and for an end to the suffering of our Iraqi brothers and sisters.

You can read the entire "Statement on Iraq" (two and a half pages long) at www.usccb.org/bishops/iraq.

Words of Wisdom on The Peace of Christ

Peace. What does it mean to you? To harried young parents, peace is that hour spent together watching television after the kids have been fed, bathed, read to, kissed goodnight
and finally, tucked into their beds. To children growing up in a family in crisis, peace is that rare time when Mom and Dad are not yelling at each other. To people struggling to find the means to get through each day, peace is a new job that will pay enough to put food on the table. To a soldier in Fallujah, peace is finally getting on the plane that will take him away from the constant terror of roadside bombs and sniper-fire.

As we celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, the St. Blase Justice and Peace Committee wishes you the peace that only Christ can bring — in our hearts and in our world. We would like to offer you words of peace from different voices — some famous, some not-so, some Christian, some of other faith traditions. What they all have in common is a desire to make us
really think about what peace means to us — and about what we need to do to reach that goal. Here then, are some of our favorite, timeless, words of wisdom:

• “Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled beggar and the beaten. And seeing them…he cried, “Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do
  nothing about them?”…God said, “I did do something, I made you”. ~ Sufi Teaching
  
  
• “If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.”
  ~ Moshe Dayan, Israeli military leader
  
  
• “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not
  clothed.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
  
  
• “Compromise does not mean cowardice.” ~ John F. Kennedy
  
  
• “I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” ~ Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize 1986
  
  
• “I don’t do great things. I do small things with great love.” ~ Mother Teresa
  
  
• “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” ~ Mother Teresa
  
  
• “We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know
  about peace, more about killing than we know about living.” ~ General Omar Bradley
  
  
• “To reach peace, teach peace.” ~ Pope John Paul II
  
  
• “When you’re finally up on the moon, looking back at the earth, all these differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend and you’re going to get a concept that
  maybe this is really one world and why …can’t we learn to live together like decent people?” ~ Astronaut Frank Borman
  
  
• “While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.”~ St. Francis of Assisi
  
  
• “You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.” ~ Indira Gandhi, Indian Prime Minister
  
  
• “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” ~ Albert Einstein, Physicist
  
  
• “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” ~ Matthew 5:9
  
  
• “Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it.” ~ George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright
  
  
• “You can no more win a war than win an earthquake.” ~ Jeanette Rankin, First Woman in Congress
  
  
• “The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?” ~ Pablo Casals, Cellist
  
  
• “If you want peace, work for justice.” ~ Pope Paul VI
  
  
• On a lighter note — “If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room” Anita Roddick
  
  
• “Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Peace & Justice Committee

“Peace Be With You” - Decalogue of Assisi for Peace

As we celebrate the resurrection of the Prince of Peace, the St. Blase Justice and Peace Committee would like to wish each one of you a joyful and peace-filled Easter. We hope that the special offerings on this year’s Fridays of Lent helped you to answer the question “How will this Lent change your life?” We hope that you heard or experienced something that moved you, informed you, made you think, or helped you to see things in a different light. Maybe it was Taizé prayer, or the Bread for the World presentation on Service Night, or Sr. Megan’s moving account of living among war in the Holy Land, or our teens leading us in the living Stations of the Cross. Maybe it was the wonderful concert by Fr. Cyprian Consiglio.

If you can’t think of any one thing that really stands out, we can help. Fr. Cyprian shared a very special statement with us during his concert. This document was written on January 24, 2002, in Assisi, Italy, when over 200 major religious leaders, including Pope John Paul II, gathered to declare their commitment to peace in our time. The St. Blase Justice and Peace Committee shares this commitment. We were so moved by this proclamation, that we have reprinted it below. After His resurrection, Jesus greeted the disciples with “Peace be with you”. Over two-thousand years later, peace is still elusive, peace is still our goal, and peace is still the gift that Jesus offers us. We invite you to join us and make this YOUR Easter commitment.

Decalogue of Assisi for Peace

1. We commit ourselves to proclaiming our firm conviction that violence and terrorism are incompatible with the authentic spirit of religion, and, as we condemn every recourse to violence and war in the name of God or of religion, we commit ourselves to doing everything possible to eliminate the root causes of terrorism.
   
   
2. We commit ourselves to educating people to mutual respect and esteem, in order to help bring about a peaceful and fraternal coexistence between people of different ethnic groups, cultures, and religions.
   
   
3. We commit ourselves to fostering the culture of dialogue, so that there will be an increase of understanding and mutual trust between individuals and among peoples, for these are the premises of authentic peace.
   
   
4. We commit ourselves to defending the right of everyone to live a decent life in accordance with their own cultural identity, and to form freely a family of their own.
   
   
5. We commit ourselves to frank and patient dialogue, refusing to consider our differences as an insurmountable barrier, but recognizing instead that to encounter the diversity of others can become an opportunity for greater reciprocal understanding.
   
   
6. We commit ourselves to forgiving one another for past and present errors and prejudices, and to supporting one another in a common effort both to overcome selfishness and arrogance, hatred and violence, and to learn from the past that peace without justice is no true peace.
   
   
7. We commit ourselves to taking the side of the poor and the helpless, to speaking out for those who have no voice and to working effectively to change these situations, out of the conviction that no one can be happy alone.
   
   
8. We commit ourselves to taking up the cry of those who refuse to be resigned to violence and evil, and we desire to make every effort possible to offer the men and women of our time real hope for justice and peace.
   
   
9. We commit ourselves to encouraging all efforts to promote friendship between peoples, for we are convinced that, in the absence of solidarity and understanding between
   peoples, technological progress exposes the world to a growing risk of destruction and death.
   
   
10. We commit ourselves to urging leaders of nations to make every effort to create and consolidate, on the national and international levels, a world of solidarity and peace based on justice.