Last Friday evening at Holy Family Church in South Pasadena, two nationally-known peace activists called on local Catholics to commit to a "Declaration of Peace" to end the Iraq War.
Father Louie Vitale, provincial of the California Franciscan Friars from 1979 to 1988 and co-founder of the Nevada Desert Experience to end nuclear testing, told the 100-plus audience that humankind must find a spiritual solution to resolving conflicts between nations and peoples, unleashing an energy that's as powerful as Einstein's E = MC2.
"There is a spiritual solution, and that comes from letting the spirit lead us," said Father Vitale. He recently spent six-months in a Georgia prison for a nonviolent action at Fort Benning to draw attention to the former School of the Americas, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. "If we could get the Congress to spend an hour of meditation every day before they did their work, the world would change," he added. "Because that's a spiritual energy."
The priest said there was a kind of "deepening" needed today, where people returned to the source of creation. But that energy must then be transformed into concrete acts of compassion.
Moreover, these deep compassionate acts, Father Vitale pointed out, must go beyond ordinary parish ministries to the homeless and needy. They must reach out to the people of nations we're currently fighting, specifically our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Peacemaking starts with that," he said. "It begins with a deepening of ourselves. And that creates a spiritual energy that will bring about the transformation of the world.
"You don't have to blow up the world and start over like some people believe God is going to do. You can create it with spiritual power, which was the way of both Jesus and St. Francis. And the best practical way to start is with a 'Declaration of Peace.'"
Ken Butigan is the chief author of the "Declaration of Peace" being circulated nationally by the peace organization, Pace e Bene, which Father Vitale co-founded.
It calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and all coalition forces from Iraq, closure of U.S. military bases, support for an Iraqi-led peace process, return of Iraqi control over its oil resources, reparation and reconstruction, a "peace dividend," increased support for U.S. veterans of the Iraq war and no more so-called "preventive" wars.
"Some of us are grieved over the fact that our nation is getting more and more stuck in the violence of that country," he said. "It's time to say enough is enough. We're good at declaring war. I'm good at declaring war in my relationships with my coworkers, with the people down the street. It's easy to declare war."
Declaring peace is a lot harder, Butigan explained, and involves risks - risks like Jesus took in curing the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath, which was forbidden by Jewish law. But if Christ took that simply nonviolent act of defiance, he mused, shouldn't Catholic Christians today be taking even greater risks to stop the killing of some 100,000 Iraqis?
"The fact is that God is love and that is deeper than any violence and injustice," the Pace e Bene worker stressed. "With this love, there is always the possibility for peace that goes way beyond the act of war."
The June 23 presentation was sponsored by Holy Family Church's Social Concerns Ministry and endorsed by the Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace as well as the American Friends Service Committee. Editor's note: See the Declaration of Peace pledge online at www.declarationofpeace.org. For more information on the initiative, e-mail info@declarationofpeace.org or phone (773) 777-7858.
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