Cardinal McElroy: Pax Christi’s Nonviolence Institute will push to peripheries

By Francesca Merlo

Christian ethicists have been grappling with the concept of a “just war” ever since St. Augustine laid out its moral foundations in the 4th century.

Cardinal Robert McElroy, Bishop of San Diego, has clarified that the just war theory never fits with the message of the Gospel, no matter how technically “moral” the theory may be.

“In the life of the Church,” said Cardinal McElroy in an interview with Vatican News, “just war theories are a secondary element in Catholic teaching; the first is that we should not engage in warfare at all.”

Too often, he continued, people have employed the just war theory and the tradition behind it as a justification for war. This, according to Cardinal McElroy, is “a major problem.”

Violence always contrary to the Gospel

Pax Christi International, a Catholic peace movement, inaugurates the new Catholic Institute for Nonviolence in Rome on September 29, an event which Cardinal McElroy will attend.

Looking to the mission of the new institute, the American Cardinal explained that violence is a very tricky word, because there are different kinds of violence in the world, all of which, he added, “are contrary to the way of the Gospel at their core.”

He said the Institute for Nonviolence will seek to focus on the many conflicts, civil wars, and wars across national boundaries.

“It's ever more important that the Church be a witness to finding alternative ways to resolve these conflicts as they break out,” he said. “But, the building of peace is a much broader endeavor than ending conflicts.”

Peace, therefore, is not merely the absence of war, but its absence is a first step, and eliminating conflict brings into play a larger harmony with the elements of the Gospel, caring for the dignity of the human person, and solidarity among peoples.

“Those broader themes are necessary as part of peace building,” said the Cardinal, “but it is moving active nonviolence to the center of Catholic theology on war and peace” that will lay the foundations.

Beyond the Catholic faith

Cardinal McElroy noted that the results of nonviolence are clear and have been studied in depth, saying that peace established by active nonviolence is far more robust that anything achieved by “winning” a conflict.

The term “nonviolence” goes far beyond the Catholic Church, and was coined in English by Mahatma Gandhi, who translated the 5,000-year-old Sanskrit word ahimsa (meaning "non-tearing," "non-harming," "non-violence," and “the power unleashed by refusing to do harm”). Ghandi, like Martin Luther King, Jr., neither of whom were Catholic, were pioneers in the push for nonviolence.

Spreading nonviolence across the globe, said Cardinal McElroy, is “a conversation that is already occurring in a wide variety of institutional and cultural settings far beyond the Catholic world.”

But, he wonders, “how can we realistically move the discussion even further, so that international norms of nonviolence can occur and be nurtured?”

An Institute for the world

Pax Christi’s Catholic Institute for Nonviolence consists of representatives from across the globe, with members hailing from conflict-torn nations, such as South Sudan and Palestine, to the so-called “great powers”, like the United States.

Cardinal McElroy said he recalls sitting next to the South Sudanese Cardinal throughout the Synod in the Vatican last year.

“That is an excruciating conflict with much violence,” said the American Cardinal. “And yet, it seemed clear in our conversations that the only way to build real peace and help the society out was to avoid feeding the cycle of violence. That cannot be done just by tit for tat.”

Examples of violence and wars are never lacking, continued Cardinal McElroy, lamenting the internal conflicts in parts of the Global South, which people in the Northern Hemisphere often willfully overlook.

“The institute for nonviolence, by being so broad in its conversations and outreach, will help to keep all of the issues within our sight,” he said.

One scope of the new institute is precisely to understand what is happening in the world, in order to develop methods of addressing the various issues. As Pope Francis often counsels, the Church must stretch its care and attention to the peripheries.

“It’s the power of witness, the power of calling people to solidarity and thus defeating violence,” said Cardinal McElroy. “Though such efforts do not always achieve peace, it should be at the heart and the soul of what we do as Catholics, as people, and followers of Jesus Christ.”

Our indifference must end

Cardinal McElroy concluded by recalling the new horizons which the Catholic Institute for Nonviolence hopes to reach while remaining grounded in Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli tutti.

“The Pope is saying to us that we have to think in new terms,” he concluded. “We have blinders in our minds about the peripheries, and we think some regions are less important. That is a poison and it is certainly contrary to the Gospel.”