Preemptive Strike for Peace
By Niall O'Brien SSC
Pre-emptive Strike for Peace by Niall O'Brien SSC
The
late Fr Niall has been a promoter of active non-violence.
In this article
he offered suggestions for those who ask
"What can I do in these days
of dread and fear of war?"
Africa is going down like the Titanic. In front of our very eyes. People are calling from the sinking ship, life boats are overloaded. Voices come from the waves. Hardly ever before in human history did we see so clearly and know so much about a tragedy beyond words. And yet we remain for the most part lost in our own world squabbling and complaining about our problems which to anyone in Africa must appear tiny compared with the gigantic blood-red waves which engulf them.
The world had about two hundred wars in the twentieth century. To us the First and Second World Wars come to mind but we easily forget about the rest of the world and those two hundred wars - not to mention - the famines, plagues, AIDS epidemics, floods, and totalitarian governments willing to do unspeakable things to various minorities in their own countries. When the little town of Guernica in Northern Spain was bombed by the Germans in 1937, Pablo Picasso produced his famous painting 'Guernica' and the whole world saw at a glance the horror of that attack. We need more Picassos who can in some way shock us into 'seeing' the sea of suffering which engulfs so much of our planet today. As long as these wars did not touch our shores they existed only as passing TV images - somewhere out there.
Throughout the ages Christians like Vincent De Paul, Don Bosco, Abbe Pierre, Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, responded to the human devastation around them with heroic initiatives. The teaching of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) that "the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties" of the human race were "the joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ..." helped give rise to a whole generation of carefully planned and funded Christian organizations to face this pain: I am thinking of Trocaire in Ireland, SCIAF in Scotland, Cafod in England... one can go on and on. These organizations were set up specifically to respond to the suffering in the Third World. They founded tens of thousands of individual hands-on social programs of every description all over the world. But now there are some disturbing facts. In spite of our increased wealth young people are giving less today to any of these organizations or even to their more secular counterparts -- and certainly are offering themselves less as unpaid volunteers for the work. This is precisely at a time when conditions in the Third World have deteriorated dramatically and wealth in the West has grown.
What will a future generation say of us who are so judgmental about the failures of previous generations? Today we know far more about what is going on in the Congo, Chechnya or the Middle East and have far greater possibilities of checking out the truth than our predecessors ever had. We have enormous financial and technical resources and still for instance nothing was done to stop the mass-destruction of half a million people in Rwanda or the slaughter of so many in Central America. War and more war War, often promoted by outside financial greed, is the main cause of suffering in many of these poverty stricken places. Someone described war as the ultimate poverty. In war you loose everything. We are paralyzed with horror by the abduction and murder of children here at home. Yet in the armed conflicts that are presently taking place two thousand children are killed or injured every single day.
The
Christian response
If a massive amount of the world's suffering stems from
war and the preparation for war - which devours a yearly budget of around 900,000
million euro - surely bringing peace should be our first priority in the search
for a solution.
Christ's words, "Blessed are the peacemakers" seem innocuous enough but if you examine the gospel you will find that bringing peace and working for peace is at its core. It is also at the heart of our own calling as Christians.
Committed Christians often ask, "Well, what can I do?" First I would like to emphasize that we need to be convinced as Christians that peacemaking really is at the core of our calling. St Paul speaks of the 'gospel of peace'. A central teaching of the Gospel, the one which makes it different from all of the other holy writings of ancient times is 'Love your enemy'. Yet Christians have been experts in finding ways around it and justifying war on one basis or another.
Peace
is more than the absence of war
Peace is not just the absence of war or tension.
Peacemaking involves scanning the horizon for those things that are the seeds
of war and then undertaking deliberate preemptive work to remove them. Peacemaking
means support for those unsung people who work at the various peace processes
throughout the world. It demands an awareness of what is going on in the world
around us and a commitment to confront the conditions and issues, which produce
war and oppression. It means taking time to study issues like the effect on children
of sanctions in Iraq (which according to a visiting group of Nobel Prize winners
cause p to 4,500 deaths every month); the reasons why Palestinians are prepared
to blow themselves up; or the involvement of multinational companies in Africa's
wars. Peacemaking means educating ourselves, taking stands on issues and continually
praying for peace.
Political
analysis
I have a friend in Italy who is a convinced Communist. Her husband
risked his life against Mussolini at a time when some devout Christians were cooperating
with him for all they were worth. We don't agree on some things but I am always
stirred by the way she analyses world conditions and political decisions from
the point of view of the underdog. She votes accordingly. I find that this political
awareness is frequently absent among some otherwise devout Christians. Yet, this
political awareness is an essential if we are to work for peace. This is not easy
because the issues are usually complex. On a peace issue we may find ourselves
standing beside someone with whom we do not agree on some other issue. But we
have to set priorities. Some things are more evil than others. War is the ultimate
evil. In war you can bomb a hospital of pregnant women and justify it as the collateral
damage of a just war. In war rape becomes an ordinary weapon as we saw only recently
in Chechnya and the Balkans. In war you poison the fields and the wells and in
future wars God only knows what. War is when you say anything goes. Sometimes
freedom fighters, in the most justified of uprisings, look back in horror at what
they did.
Active
non-violence
What is the alternative, you ask? The short answer is active
non-violence. As one who has studied and tried to promote non-violence over the
years I am sometimes daunted by the ignorance of ordinary Christians about the
possibility and effectiveness of non-violence as an alternative to war.
Let me just say this: ''Boy, do they prepare for war!'' All those weapons, technology and research, all that discipline and money. And we expect non-violence to work without preparation. God will provide! Not without our involvement!
Non-violence is not a magic wand, but a disciplined way of life. It is an art that demands much study and training. An example of what it can achieve was the fall of President Marcos in the Philippines (1986). Those of us who lived through his oppression were familiar with his death squads, with their massacres and 'disappearances'. A friend once said to me: "maybe non-violence would work in India with Gandhi and the British - who were sort of gentlemen - but certainly not here in the Philippines". Not long afterwards the Marcos supporters watched with amazement as his regime crumbled before crowds armed with flowers, sandwiches, statues and prayers.
And then there was the candlelight revolution in Leipzig and the velvet revolution in Prague which were certainly influenced by what happened in Manila. These led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union without the Armageddon scenario which many feared and some hoped for. These achievements are small compared with the huge possibilities which non-violence offers. In a sense active non-violence is a continent which we have only just discovered.
Where
to begin?
As I conclude this article you may be saying: "Great to hear about
these worldwide possibilities. But I am just little me." I mentioned above the
importance of beginning with an awareness of the issues. Secondly we can go nowhere
unless we have learned something about forgiveness. Pope John Paul made the remark
recently: no reconciliation without forgiveness. Yes there is need for justice
and there is need for closure, but the story is not complete without forgiveness.
Indeed, for a Christian forgiveness is a non-negotiable.
Forgive
and so disarm your heart
Some time ago I edited a prayer book and when I
came to the part on confession I put in at the beginning the question: Before
thinking of confession have you yourself forgiven? I suddenly realized that I
had never seen that as a requirement for confession before. Yet it is in every
line of the Gospel, it is the lifeblood of the Christian story. Start with your
own life. Learn to forgive, disarm your own heart. Then begin to think of ways
to bring the Gospel of Peace to your own house, to your neighbourhood and to the
wider world.
This article was written when he returned to Ireland as the build up to the invasion of Iraq was underway.
Fr
Niall O'Brien's, Island of Tears, Island of Hope, (Orbis Press)
a spirituality of non-violence was a winner of an annual Pax Christi Peace Award
in the USA.
Available from: Far East (Books), St Columban's, Navan, Ireland.
Price 10 euro, (£6.50) inc. p&p.