This is an excerpt from a speech given by Bishop Thomas Gumbleton the summer before the Iraq War began to the Pax Christi USA 2002 National Assembly.
And in our church, even though there’s no way we could begin to even pretend that we are a so-called peace church: If we look at what is happening within the tradition, taking us back to the original tradition, how the first Christians understood the message of Jesus and lived it for about 300 years, we find that in our tradition, we’re moving back, although many of us in the Church ignore this.
But you go back to 1963. Pope John XXIII made one of the most extraordinary statements, I think, about non-violence and the rejection of war, that we find anywhere in Catholic teaching. He wrote that encyclical Pacem in Terris. It will be the 40th anniversary of this most important encyclical next year. And in that encyclical, which is really a pattern of how to build peace in the world, a real pax Christi, he makes the statement:
“In our atomic era it is irrational any longer to think of war as an apt means to vindicate violated rights”
In this era of total war, which includes nuclear weapons, it’s irrational, immoral, goes against our humanness, goes against God, even to think of war as an apt means to vindicate violated rights. The just war theology disappears with that one sentence. We need to listen to that.
Pope Paul VI 1976 Peace Day statement deplored what had happened at Hiroshima August 6, 1945. For the first time the most clear statement about what an evil that was. He called it a butchery of untold magnitude. And he went on to say, who is the model for our times, this time in which we live? When the reality is so grim, who is the model? He says the poor, weak man, Gandhi, the Hindu who understood better than most of us Christians what Jesus really taught, pax Christi. He justified us. That’s the model for our time.
John Paul II in 1980 in a Peace Day statement urges us: “I invite all Christians to bring to the common task of building peace the specific contribution of the gospel, the specific contribution of Jesus.” And in light of that gospel, he says, “I now repeat, violence is a lie for it goes against the truth of our faith, the truth of our humanity. Do not believe in violence. Do not support violence. It is not the Christian way. It is not the way of the Catholic Church. Believe in peace, forgiveness and love. For only these are of Christ.”
It’s hard to be any clearer that our tradition is reaching back to where we started. And we must begin to make that tradition our own once more.
Again, Pope John Paul II, in 1991 condemned war in the most clear words possible. He wrote, “I, myself, on the occasion of the recent tragic gulf war in the Persian Gulf repeated the cry, ‘Never again war! No, never again war!’”
And he gives some reasons why the just war theology, any theology that justifies violence is wrong: because it destroys innocent lives. Every war does. And it teaches how to kill, depriving those who kill of their humanness by learning to hate and to kill. And it throws into upheaval even the lives of those who do the killing. And then always, it leaves behind a trail of hatred and resentment, making it all the more difficult to find a just solution of the very problems which provoked the war. Our tradition is calling us always to reject war. Pax Christi says no to violence, no to war, no to killing, for any reason whatsoever. (extended applause, 16 seconds)
Thank you. That’s important, because I’m just getting to the point where I’m going to ask us to do something. (laughter). So I’m glad you agree so far.
Last November just before the bishops’ meeting when we were going to discuss the U.S. Catholic bishops’ response to 9-11 and to October 7: Just before that meeting I got a letter from a young woman in New York whose brother had been killed in the World Trade Center. It’s a powerful letter.
She says, “I’m writing to you today to offer support and encouragement for what I hope will be an ongoing discussion among the bishops. My brother, William Kelly, was killed on Sept. 11th at the World Trade Center. There is no scale on which my family can begin to measure our loss. Nor are there any words adequately to express our sorrow. My family is quite clear, however, that we would never want another family, whether Afghani or American, to feel the way we do now.”
Then she goes on. But further on she says:
“I adamantly oppose the bombing. I have no other argument than it is not Christ-like. I do not know what Jesus would do in current times, but I am certain he would not advocate the bombing of anyone. The deepest, truest part of our collective heart knows this truth. You and I and my family live in a very human world, however; so how can we reach this true place?”
She says, “One stumbling block seems to be the lack of choices given the American public concerning our response to September 11th. Our country seems to see no other way, because we have been presented with no other way. So this is my urgent request of the bishops. Can you begin the discussion of the other way — Christ’s way? Could you help provide moral guidance to a majority that is voicing support for a bombing campaign?”
On her behalf I made that plea to the bishops last November, and it was rejected. We did not present another way. We supported the bombing. The Catholic bishops of the United States supported the bombing, the war. And I’m very sorry to say it continues that way.
I was utterly appalled on January 29th when President Bush was giving his State of the Union message outlining our plans to attack the “axis of evil” and continue to glorify our response, violent response to September 11th, two Catholic cardinals sitting in the audience jumping up to clap with everyone else.
Another cardinal after September 11th and after October 7th wrote a letter to President Bush. I won’t take the time to read it, but it’s a letter congratulating him on how well he has responded in this just use of violence.
Just a couple of weeks ago another cardinal was present with President Bush when some protesters were in the audience, and they were booed down. And President Bush repeated his cry to use violence; and everybody in that audience except those few protesters applauded. The cardinal was sitting there. I don’t know if he applauded or not, but certainly he was endorsing what the President was saying.
I tell you all of this only because it becomes very clear to me that Colleen Kelly’s request is not going to happen soon, but that the U.S. bishops are not going to show us the alternative way. It’s going to be up to you, and anyone in this country, who really understands pax Christi, who really is ready to reject pax Americana
So we must be the ones that will begin to show the new way. And so at this point, I ask you, — and I want you to respond:
Will you reject the claims of evil pax Americana, no matter how sensible and attractive they may seem? (Crowd shouts, Yes)
And will you believe what Jesus says, and follow him, now matter how strange it may seem? (Crowd shouts, Yes).
Then we have a job before us. There are various ways we can carry this out. One of the first things we can do, and I hope everyone of us will: sign the pledge of resistance. Dave mentioned it last night; it’s being circulated. Sign it. The war in the Persian Gulf in 1991 was an unjust war, condemned by Pope John Paul II. Any new war against Iraq will be an unjust war. We must say, No (20 seconds of applause)
But there’s more. Signing a pledge is one thing. But of course, when you sign that pledge you really are saying, “I am ready to get out in the streets and do civil disobedience if they attack.” (10 seconds of more applause).
There are about 600 of us here, and if every one of us signs the pledge, that would be very significant. But what would be even better if every one of us goes home and gets 10 more people to sign the pledge, or 20 more people to sign the pledge. We’ll have thousands and thousands; and other groups are doing the same thing. So, we must do this.
But I also suggest, we need to do something like the School of the Americas Watch does. They have identified a place, Fort Benning, Georgia, where the School of the America takes place. Every November they are getting thousands and thousands of people to come and protest that very evil institution that has trained people to do some of the most gruesome and evil killing that has gone on, especially in Latin America and Central America. And they get these thousands of people because they focus on that one place.
My hope is that we might determine a place like Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for example — where Dave and I were last summer on August 6th — and that we might begin to invite Pax Christi groups to come there every year around that weekend of August 6th, and that we make a larger and larger presence protesting the development. There’s where they are making the new nuclear weapons that we will be preparing to use. We must go there, have our bodies there, do civil disobedience there, say no to nuclear weapons in a very dramatic way. (15 more seconds of applause)
And I thought that maybe next summer — it’s too late for this summer, but it gives us a year to prepare — we could start on July 16th. That’s the date when we exploded the first nuclear device: July 16, 1945, in the desert in Nevada. I don’t know if you’re aware of it — how these people that make these things always give it a code name. They called that one “Trinity.” That was the code name for the first explosion of a nuclear weapon.
And another way of looking at the choice that I’m asking us to make today was something that Archbishop (Fulton J.) Sheen said a long time ago in a talk he gave against nuclear weapons. He said it all comes down to a choice: Which
Trinity will you believe in? The Trinity of mass, energy, and velocity? Or the Trinity of a loving God — father and mother, a son who gives his life for us, and a spirit who lives in our midst.
July 16th I think is an important date. The date in which people make their choice of which Trinity will you put your faith in. So I suggest we might start a fast on July 16th and go until August 6th — 22 days of fasting. Then on August the sixth, try to have a large gathering of Pax Christi people from all over our country to protest, and to demand the end of the development of nuclear weapons.
I believe that if we really committed ourselves to this kind of action, we could be the ones that would lead our Church and our nation away from pax Americana and to pax Christi, the only peace that really is peace. (15 seconds of applause).
I thank you for that response, and I leave you now with some very sober words, that will perhaps linger in our consciousness and help to continue to motivate us. The words were written, again by that Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, who is leading the way of India protesting against their nuclear weapons development. And at the end of the article which she writes deploring and protesting these weapons, she says this:
“The nuclear bomb is the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that human kind has ever made.” and then she says, “If you are religious, believe in God, then remember, this is our challenge to God.” It is worded quite simply: “We, we, God’s creatures, have the power to destroy everything You have created.”
A very evil challenge that a religious person would make to God. It’s blasphemy:
“We can destroy everything You, God, have made — the God who made everything out of love, we can destroy out of our hate.”
But then she goes on to say, "If you’re not religious, then look at it this way: This world of ours is 4,600 million years old. It could end in an afternoon."
Let that thought: if you are religious, that we do not want to offend God with that blasphemy. Or, if your faith doesn’t move you, the thought that we can destroy our world in an afternoon, let that move us to try with all that we can bring to it to reject pax Americana and to embrace pax Christi. Thank you.
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