Peacebuilding and Catholic Social Teaching

Theodora Hawksley

Description

The Roman Catholic Church, with its global reach, centralized organization, and more than 1.4 billion members, could be one of the world’s most significant forces in global peacemaking, and yet its robust tradition of social teaching on peace is not widely known. In Peacebuilding and Catholic Social Teaching, Theodora Hawksley aims to make that tradition better known and understood, and to encourage its continued development in light of the lived experience of Catholics engaged in peacebuilding and conflict transformation worldwide.

The first part of this book analyzes the development of Catholic social teaching on peace from the time of the early Church fathers to the present, drawing attention to points of tension and areas in need of development. The second part engages in constructive theological work, exploring how the existing tradition might develop in order to support the efforts of Catholic peacebuilders and respond to the distinctive challenges of contemporary conflict.

Peacebuilding and Catholic Social Teaching is one of the first scholarly monographs dedicated exclusively to theology, ethics, and peacebuilding. It will appeal to students and academics who specialize in Catholic social teaching and peacebuilding, to practitioners of Catholic peacebuilding, and to anyone with an interest in religion and peacebuilding more generally.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique
• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Theology
• Political
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Colegio Mayor Universitario Santo Tomás de Aquino
• Thomas Aquinas
• Liberation
• Vatican Council
• Theology
• Peace
• Politics
• Catholic
• Christianity
• Augustine of Hippo
• Augustine
• Paix

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 30 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268108472
• Langue: English

Extrait

PEACEBUILDING AND CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING
PEACEBUILDING
AND CATHOLIC
SOCIAL TEACHING
THEODORA HAWKSLEY
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2020 by the University of Notre Dame
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020945494
ISBN: 978-0-268-10845-8 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-10846-5 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-10848-9 (WebPDF)
ISBN: 978-0-268-10847-2 (Epub)
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
Let us then pursue what makes for peace and mutual upbuilding.
—Romans 14:19
CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction ONE The Early Church to Aquinas TWO The New World to the Present THREE Pastoral Accompaniment and Consolation FOUR Solidarity FIVE Social Sin SIX Reconciliation and Catholic Nonviolence SEVEN Desire for Peace Notes Bibliography Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book began life at the University of Edinburgh as part of the project Peacebuilding through Media Arts. That project would not have happened without the vision of Jolyon Mitchell, director of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues, whose encouragement led me to begin work in this field and thus to a task and a calling I might not otherwise have discovered. The project was made possible by the generous support of the Binks Trust and Alison and Jo Elliot.
The peacebuilding scholars and practitioners who attended the interdisciplinary workshops of the Peacebuilding through Media Arts project were inspiring, and their writing and conversation have shaped and sharpened my thinking. I owe warm thanks to my former colleagues at the Centre for Theology and Public Issues and the School of Divinity for their support, companionship, and good humor during my time in Edinburgh. I learned much from the team at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and Scott Appleby deserves special thanks here for his encouragement.
Jolyon Mitchell, Scott Appleby, Ashley Beck, Anna Rowlands, and Susanna Hawksley were kind enough to read parts of the manuscript at various stages, and I am grateful for the generous engagement of the anonymous reviewers for the University of Notre Dame Press. Thanks also to Georgetown University Press for permission to reuse material in chapter 5. My thinking and writing owe much to the wisdom, friendship, and conversation of Cecelia Clegg, John Knowles, and Nick Austin S.J. In a different and life-changing way, the Amerindian peoples of the Rupununi and Pakaraimas taught me much about power, peace, and the struggle for justice.

During the period I was finishing the book, the Congregation of Jesus was home, and I would like to thank Provincial Superior Frances Orchard C.J. for encouraging me to finish the book and the sisters of the English Province for all their mercies, great and small. This book is dedicated to them.
Introduction
In April 2019, the leaders of South Sudan met at the Vatican for a spiritual retreat led by the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and Pope Francis. Since 2013, South Sudan has been embroiled in a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions more. The peace deal, which was brokered in 2018 between the president, Salva Kiir, and his erstwhile deputy turned rebel leader, Riek Machar, remains fragile. Pope Francis’s remarks to the two leaders were uncompromising. Telling them that God’s gaze was on them, he added, “There is another gaze directed to you: it is the gaze of your people, and it expresses their ardent desire for justice, reconciliation, and peace.” The pope continued, “I urge you, then, to seek what unites you, beginning with the fact that you belong to one and the same people, and to overcome all that divides you. People are wearied, exhausted by past conflicts: Remember that with war, all is lost!” Then, kneeling with some difficulty, he kissed the feet of each of the leaders in turn, begging them, “I am asking you as a brother to stay in peace. I am asking you with my heart, let us go forward.” 1
After Islamic State forces had been driven out of the Nineveh Plains of Iraq in 2017, returning Christian communities were faced with scenes of destruction. Homes, churches, and schools had been badly damaged, and a major task of reconstruction lay ahead. No less important was the task of human and spiritual rebuilding. Fr. Araam Hanna, a Chaldean priest in Alqosh, noticed how profoundly people had been traumatized by their experience: they were irritable, deeply fearful, and disposed to violence. After years of insecurity, they lacked trust in political processes and hope for the possibility of a different future. In response, Hanna founded the New Hope Trauma Centre of Iraq, which offers mental health services for those suffering from trauma; courses on topics such as anger management, grief, coping skills, and communication; and education and arts workshops. 2 The Centre’s programs are open to all, and it serves the local Yazidi population as well as the Christian community. While acknowledging that the broader political situation is out of their control, and the future still very uncertain, Hanna reinforced the importance of building a more positive future on a local level: “We may not be able to give them hope in politicians, or hope in lasting security, but we can at least give hope in themselves and in each other, and that’s a start.” 3
In conflict zones around the world, from South Sudan to Colombia to the Philippines and the Nineveh Plains of Iraq, the Catholic Church is deeply embedded in the task of peacebuilding. 4 In these locations and hundreds more, local Catholic communities, including laypeople, priests, religious, and bishops, as well as Catholic aid agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), are engaged in courageous, difficult, and imaginative work in the service of peace: everything from facilitating national peace dialogues to negotiating for the release of hostages, caring for refugees, and overseeing demobilization. From the Vatican to the grassroots, the Catholic Church is making a significant contribution to the work of peacebuilding in the twenty-first century, in the face of what Pope Francis has repeatedly referred to as a “piecemeal World War III.” 5
The Catholic Church’s capacity to act as a force for peacebuilding is immense. The Church has a two-thousand-year history of teaching and theological and moral reflection, vibrant traditions of spirituality, and a global presence in a dizzying variety of cultural contexts. Among the biggest religious groups on the planet, it is unique in being organized under a single head, with a single centralized teaching authority that serves to unify, even if only sometimes loosely, its 1.4 billion members. Allied with this hierarchical structure is a huge and diverse range of institutions and networks through which the Church is present and active on a local level. All of these features make the Catholic Church a potentially world-changing force for justice and peace. So what would it take for the Catholic Church to realize fully its potential as a force for peacebuilding? What kind of transformation would it require? And what kind of growth and transformation might it require of the tradition of Catholic social teaching itself?
These questions are what drive this book, and they give me two major tasks to pursue in what follows. First, if the Church is to become a major force for peacebuilding, then its teaching on peace needs to become better known and embedded, as David O’Brien puts it, “Church wide and parish deep.” 6 Most Catholics are fairly well informed about what the Church teaches about high-profile life issues like abortion and euthanasia, and many non-Catholics would also be able to give a basic account of the Church’s teaching on these matters. Far fewer people, either within the Church itself or in society more widely, would be aware of what it teaches about workers’ rights or economic justice. The same is true of the Church’s teaching on peace. While just war reasoning is fairly common currency in society at large, few Catholics, and even fewer non-Catholics, would be able to articulate how the just war tradition fits into the Church’s teaching on peace more widely or what the Church teaches on key issues such as nuclear weapons and postconflict reconciliation. The Church’s teaching on peace is simply not well known and, partly because it is so little known, few Catholics would think of a commitment to peacebuilding as being central to the practice of their faith. So the first task is to reverse this tendency, by re-presenting the tradition of Catholic social teaching on peace and making the case that the “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:18) entrusted to us is a key dimension of our Christian vocation and an indispensable part of the Church’s mission and identity. 7
Second, if the Church is to become a major force for peacebuilding, then Church teaching on peace needs to continue to grow and develop. To borrow a phrase from John Courtney Murray, the Church’s teaching on peace represents a “growing edge” of the tradition, and this growth needs to be encouraged and nurtured. 8 The shape of violent conflict has changed significantly over the course of the past fifty years, and Church teaching needs to respond to these new signs of the times and the distinctive challenges that contemporary violent conflict poses for the task of peacebuilding. Church teaching also needs to grow and develop in light of the experience of Catholics who are already engaged in the task of peacebuilding in conflict situations around the world. This means exploring how Church teaching is illuminated and challenged by the