Experience

All of us want peace. But we differ as to how to get there. Unwittingly our minds categorize, prioritize, dichotomize, and before we know it, we are in an arena where conflict is inevitable. How do we alter our inner landscape, formed as it is by our culture, and participate in the creation of a genuine culture of nonviolence?

At the August 2002 Assembly, LCWR endorsed the resolution committing “itself to work for peace by promoting a culture of nonviolence and building a sustainable global community founded on interdependence and the principles of human rights.” Perhaps the most extraordinary task embedded in this resolution is “change.” One need not look far for evidence that we live in a culture of violence, independence, and a pervasive insistence that others respect human rights while we build and use the most violent weapons the world has ever known, at the same time that we declare our impunity before the world court and immunity to the court of international opinion. Individually and corporately we need to change. Conversion, metanoia—call it what you will—we need to change.

Social Analysis

Our times are fraught with division and our hearts break with the consequences. In the year 2002, whether we look to the inner workings of our nation or our churches, we frequently find ourselves looking at camps. Often without knowing it, we ourselves contribute to division and discord, based in habits of gender, age, race, ethnic loyalty, class, culture, religion. Violence often ensues. Whether it is subtle, as in much disagreement in our church, or overt, as in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Colombia, and the Sudan, it occasions and sustains division and discord.

Rare but real are the exceptions we need to teach and emulate if we are to change the culture. “There Must Be Another Way” (www.dominicanfastforpeace.org) insist the Dominicans who initiated a fast for peace and nonviolence for the month of September, centered in New York City but extending across America. We can educate ourselves and others to the work of the Global Peace Force which is recruiting civilians from across the globe to create a peace force of 2,000 by 2010 (www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org ). We can learn more about Palestinian leaders, like Ghasson Andoni, executive director of the Center for Rapprochemont Between Peoples, who applies Gandhi’s ideas and techniques to the deadly tensions between the people of Israel and Palestine (www.pcr@p-ol.com ), and the 430 Israeli military reservists who have refused to serve in the Occupied Territories who are only some of the members of the Israeli peace movement (www.info@rhr.israel.net). 

Reflection

 Our faith is grounded in the call to change. Change begins with repentance. The very disarray of the early 21st century may be the morass from which a clear sense of the Gospel emerges, but only insofar as we who follow Christ grasp grace and live the Gospel call to nonviolent love. While so much that has been familiar and comfortable for Catholics in the United States is dismantled by principalities and powers, humble seeds for justice and peace can grow. We need only repent, band together, and move to the margins where Christ spent divine energy in response to human pain. With contemplation and compassion, we can choose to move into this realm of infinite and unconditional love that is at the heart of a culture of nonviolence.

Action

1. Commit ourselves to prayer and contemplation within public and private arenas to give witness to and promote a nonviolent resolution to conflict.
2. Call on the executive and legislative branches of our government to support and ratify the International Criminal Court.
3. Study and consider endorsing the Earth Charter as congregations. The Earth Charter provides a framework for a new sense of global interdependence and shared responsibility for the well being of the human family and the larger living world. Read the Earth Charter and endorse on line at www.earthcharterusa.org.
4. Sign the appeal by the Nobel Peace Laureates on the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World (2001-2010) on the web site www.decadeofnonviolence-houston.org.
5. Use every means to oppose military intervention in Iraq, including letters to President Bush, appropriate Cabinet members, and Members of Congress.
6. Participate in the LCWR Think Tank for Systemic Change, February 9-11, 2003 to deepen understanding of systems and cultures of nonviolence.
 

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) has approximately 1,000 members who are the elected leaders of their religious orders, representing 76,000 Catholic sisters in the United States. The Conference develops leadership, promotes collaboration within church and society, and serves as a voice for systemic change.