Catholic universities and nonviolence

In light of the situation that has unfolded in Baltimore in recent days, we who work in the contexts of Catholic colleges and universities must ask, once again, about how our work contributes to a more just, and therefore more peaceful, world.

Last December, I and many colleagues who teach Catholic theology signed a statement of racial justice in response to what unfolded in Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere. That statement cited Pope Francis’s words in Evangelii Gaudium:

until exclusion and inequality in society and between peoples are reversed, it will be impossible to eliminate violence. The poor and the poorer peoples are accused of violence, yet without equal opportunities the different forms of aggression and conflict will find a fertile terrain for growth and eventually explode.

One of the signers of that document is William Werpehowski, the Robert L. McDevitt, K.S.G., K.C.H.S. and Catherine H. McDevitt L.C.H.S. Chair in Catholic Theology at Georgetown University. Bill was a member of the first Boston College Roundtable, and has written in Integritas a thought-provoking essay on the task of Catholic universities to be places that iterate and teach nonviolence.

He traces the history of Catholic reflection on nonviolence, beginning with the history of just war theory but moving to contemporary critiques of that theory by Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In the latter’s Angelus address of February 18, 2007, for example, he writes the following:

nonviolence for Christians is not mere tactical behavior but a person’s way of being, the attitude of one who is convinced of God’s love and power, who is not afraid to confront evil with the weapons of love and truth alone. Loving the enemy is the nucleus of the “Christian revolution,” a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political, or media power.

Werpehowski highlights Daniel Berrigan’s description of the ethic of Dorothy Day:

 It implies resistance against the “filthy rotten system” (her words) that makes of us drudges and cowards and war tax-paying chattels, that adroitly adjusts our will and conscience, like the sinister clockwork of a time bomb—adjusts us to a world of injustice and cruelty and death.

In light of injustice in the world– the fact that it is a “filthy rotten system,” Werpehowski points to a piece by my colleague (and former teacher) Stephen Pope, arguing for the ways that Catholic universities can make a difference. Catholic universities, he writes,

cannot simply be places where well-to-do students receive a good education in order to assume their place in the next generation of corporate and professional elites. How does education of the relatively affluent…relate to concern for those on the other end of the social and economic spectrum?

Pope points to works by John Henry Newman and theologian Jon Sobrino, who argue, respectively, for enlargement of mind and enlargement of heart: to see the world in its integrity and at the same time to develop compassion for “crucified people.” Werpehowski points out that this enlargement demands virtues of patience, humility, and kenosis, self-emptying in imitation of Christ. The university thus becomes not only a place that teaches peace, but in fact becomes a place where peace is practiced.

Werpehowski has written a deeply thoughtful and challenging essay. Read the whole thing.