Back to Exponent Menu Printer Friendly Page   LOCAL FEATURES Friday, December 15, 2006 Peace advocate/priest’s message: ‘America is very sick’ Jesuit says country needs to return to Jesus’ forgotten message of non-violence EDITOR’S NOTE: Jesuit Father John Dear, 47, a peace activist, speaker and author of more than 25 books on non-violence, gave an Advent Peace Workshop Dec. 2 at Villa Maria Community Center, Villa Maria, Pa. Following the retreat, Catholic Exponent Editor/General Manager Lou Jacquet conducted an interview, which has been edited for length. Catholic Exponent: Tell us about your ministry and how you became involved with it. Father Dear: I have been active in the peace movement for 25 years. I am currently living and working in New Mexico, where I founded Pax Christi New Mexico, as part of the national Catholic peace movement. New Mexico is the poorest state in the country, number one in nuclear weapons and number one in military spending. I had a campaign there to close Los Alamos, where they build the bomb. But meanwhile, I write books on peace and nonviolence, and I travel the country full-time giving talks. I had been a pastor of five parishes [at the same time…four small poor parishes and one wealthy parish] up until about a year and half ago. Now I speak to about 30,000 to 40,000 people a year about nonviolence in the tradition of Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi. That’s what I am talking about here [at Villa Maria] this weekend: that Jesus was nonviolent and we have to be nonviolent. We have to be against war, poverty, nuclear weapons, and every form of violence, the whole thing. I grew up in North Carolina. When I was 10, we moved to Washington, D.C. I went to Duke University, trying to get away from the Catholic Church. It’s a long story. But then in one fell swoop I came back with a vengeance and entered the Jesuits 25 years ago. Before I entered the order, in the summer of 1982, I decided to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land by myself. However, the week I left, Israel invaded Lebanon. Remember the summer war of 1982? I walked through Israel for three months by myself, trying to have a pious pilgrimage. I ended up witnessing warfare at the Sea of Galilee. I saw the jets swoop down over the Sea of Galilee and drop bombs on the border of Lebanon at the place where Jesus told us to love our enemies. I made the decision there that I would spend the rest of my life teaching the Sermon on the Mount. That’s why I got involved in peace and justice work. I entered the Jesuits right after that experience. I was not planning to be involved working for peace and justice, but seeing warfare at the Sea of Galilee was such a shock and revelation of the reality of the world. Catholic Exponent: When you come to give a workshop or retreat at a place like this, what is the nutshell of what you do? Time for prayer, witness talks, that sort of thing? Father Dear: The people here today are all good people doing good works all over your area. The theme is “Jesus and Nonviolence.” So I have talks, they have quiet time, we have small group conversation and large group discussion; we are looking at texts in the Gospels. We are asking, “What does it mean to follow Jesus in a culture of war and violence, in a world of war and violence? Was Jesus violent or nonviolent? What would he be doing now?” There is a lot of conversation about this. It’s the only thing you can say for sure, that Jesus was nonviolent. All his teachings were about loving your neighbor and loving your enemies. At his death, he practices perfect nonviolence. The last words of Jesus to the Church, the last time he had his community around him, what did he say? Put down the sword. Which means to my mind there is no such thing as a just war theory, and that we Christians, especially we Catholics, have got to begin to re-think and re-learn the nonviolence of Jesus. If we are going to follow him, we have to be people of nonviolence. So that is what we are talking about here today: being nonviolent toward ourselves, nonviolent in our families, in our communities, and teaching nonviolence, but then also helping to create a grass-roots movement of nonviolence in the world. To stop the war in Iraq; to stop nuclear weapons. To stop violence and poverty, which are killing so many people. This is the work of the Church, like Ghandi and Dr. King taught us. Catholic Exponent: Not that this would bother you, but that is quite an uphill struggle in this culture. How do people react to you when you bring this message? Father Dear: Well, on a retreat such as this they are here to learn. But by and large, yes, most people in this country, most people in the Church, have long ago renounced the nonviolence of Jesus. We think we can go to church and do our duty and then go on supporting war and killing around the world. I think we are participating in the crucifixion of Christ all over again. Yes, it’s really, really hard. But Jesus had a hard time, too. They were mad at him and they killed him. So, do I think I’m going to have an easier time of it? “Sorry, Jesus, you couldn’t do it, but I can figure this out.” No! This is the story. We just did the Beatitudes this morning. It goes from “blessed are the peacemakers” to “blessed are you when they persecute you.” The minute you start talking about peace and living out this gospel of justice of nonviolence, people start freaking out. You get into trouble. And Jesus says, no, that is your chance to be like the prophets.” Catholic Exponent: Is it even possible to get into a discussion about peace in this country anymore without getting political? Father Dear: I don’t know. The country is so divided. It’s so violent. I think we are very sick. Everybody, all of us. Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, whether you are talking about [President] Bush or America or being a patriot – that’s why I’m talking about Jesus. He is the only measure of our lives, if you are going to be a Catholic, a Christian. What was Jesus really like? How seriously do we want to follow him? I am arguing that he was about active non-violent love in a world of total violence and war. Even when they killed him, he responded non-violently. He doesn’t fight back. He forgives us. We are supposed to be like that. So what are the politics of Jesus? The politics of Jesus [involve] siding with the poor, loving your enemies, being merciful even when you should not be, working for justice, practicing non-violence. Those are all political things in the sense of involving people – not political parties, but involving community and the world. And it’s messy. Instead of uniting people, Jesus brings division. That’s the way I see it. He gets killed. This is his story. In this country, that is what is going to happen. Martin Luther King tried this and he got killed. But, I think to follow Jesus means to practice non-violence and to stand up publicly as Jesus did and to say some hard things with a lot of love: No more killing, no to the death penalty, no to racism, no to corporate greed, no to nuclear weapons, no to abortion, [yes to] the whole consistent life ethic. We are beginning to welcome God’s reign. That’s going to be divisive. But in the end that is the only way we [America] can begin to heal. We need to grow up and start taking Jesus seriously. If that is political…. You know I am an activist, so I have been arrested many times. I have spent almost a year in prison, so I can never vote. I can’t vote again for the rest of my life. I have been arrested for anti-nuclear demonstrations. I don’t see myself as political the way most Americans do, but everybody else sees me as very political. But I am just trying to be a Christian, and I think that this [being non-violent] is what it means. Catholic Exponent: Do you think it is harder for Americans to buy this message of Jesus’ non-violence than it might be for some others, since we have come through more than 200 years of a history that has been very violent at times, very ‘pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps’ self-oriented? What with ‘conquering’ the frontier and all, we have been a violent culture from the beginning. Father Dear: Yes and no, I would say. One the one hand, we are a huge success. We are the last superpower in the world, the biggest empire in history. We are bigger than the Roman Empire, in the sense that we have the power to destroy the whole planet. And we may do it. We are king of the hill. We’ve made it, and have killed a lot of people to get here. We are killing people now to steal oil and resources from Iraq and Afghanistan, Colombia and Haiti, turning our back on Darfur, making a whole new generation of nuclear weapons. People do not want to hear about the non-violence of Jesus because they are comfortable and we are a success. Jesus is siding with the poor and the victims and the enemies. On the other hand, America has a very unusual history. We have a history of active non-violence, in some ways greater than most other countries. The abolitionists were amazing heroes of Christian non-violence, if you really study them. They come along and say, “We are here to announce the abolition of slavery.” People said, “What, are you crazy?” They said, “No, a new world of equality is coming.” They mainly did it through nonviolence. That history continues through the suffragettes, the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the environmental movement – all were predominantly active, creative non-violence through small handfuls of people who really tried to take Jesus seriously…that’s our story. Those are our ancestors. If we can reclaim them as the best of our American tradition, we will find new strength to stand up and be new abolitionists; [we can say] “we are announcing the coming of a new world without war, poverty, the death penalty, violence or nuclear weapons.” People are saying we are crazy, but that is our future. The Church should be leading the way on that, because we are the ones who should be following the non-violent Jesus. Catholic Exponent: Are you hopeful that this can be achieved, despite the reality that we see around us in the world today? Father Dear: That is a big question. I have been at this a long time. The more you get involved with this, the bleaker it looks. I am not optimistic. I am pessimistic about the reality. I think we are very sick, and that this country is moving toward fascism. The Bush administration is totally ignoring what is going on with global warming; they want to build an entire new generation of nuclear weapons. This country seems to be allowing our government to do that. So I am pessimistic, but biblical. I am hopeful. Hope is a biblical word; that is different from optimism. It’s the long-haul view of salvation, that God is alive and well and a God of peace, a God who wants us to disarm and live in peace with the whole human race. God can do anything; we have to be willing to be part of this disarmament of the world. So I am trying not to despair, but to be hopeful in Jesus, the hope of Jesus on the cross, which seemed a total failure, and yet he believed in God and believed in resurrection. I may not live to see these things happen, but I am part of the whole Church’s movement toward disarming the world. I believe I am sowing seeds. My hope is in God. Catholic Exponent: How are Catholics, in comparison with other Christians, doing in terms of understanding nonviolence? Are we a leader in this regard, or are we lagging behind others? Father Dear: We are really behind where we should be. We have so much of this great Catholic social teaching, as well as great and amazing people in our history and in our own time: John XXIII, Dorothy Day (who to my mind is on a level with St. Francis), Oscar Romero and the four church women killed in El Salvador. So we have all these great resources and teachings. But, yes, Catholics are very narrow-minded in this country, by and large, I believe. We are supporting the culture’s wars; we are stuck on claiming to be pro-life people, but we are not. I think that is a serious problem. We have not made the leap yet to the complete consistent ethic of nonviolence that the Gospel calls us to. You have to be against abortion, and the death penalty, and war, and nuclear weapons, and be nonviolent in every attitude toward life. Most Catholics are not. Most priests are not teaching this. Neither are the bishops. So we have our work to do. I think all of us Catholics are called to become people of Gospel nonviolence. It will be difficult. But we will all have to start growing up and placing our allegiance in Jesus and the Gospel, accepting the social and political implications of really living the Gospel. We are not there yet. But we have these great figures like John XXIII who are calling us to do so. Catholic Exponent: It is interesting that, at our diocesan newspaper, we get flack from both sides. Readers get upset with us for believing that we espouse the Republican or the Democratic policies when we espouse the Gospel. Don’t you find that Catholics are totally polarized right now? They cannot seem to respect the other side. The letters to the editor we do not print are totally vicious to one another. Father Dear: Catholics are totally polarized. It’s amazing that Catholics are vicious to one another. This is all part of not understanding nonviolence. Whether we are a Catholic of the left or the right, often we are so mean and nasty. Jesus says to love one another; that would be a sign of following him. We are so divided and mean and nasty. That is exactly what the culture of war wants. I think we are going right along with the war-making culture and being people of violence. We are divided, and fighting one another, and mean; we are passive and silent instead of going deeply into the nonviolent love of Jesus and listening to one another and trusting one another, and keeping our eyes on Jesus. That is the bottom line. It is not me or any particular priest or any particular [political party’s] politics; it is really, “What was Jesus like, what did he say? How are we going to start applying what he said?” Jesus talked about things that we do not talk about anymore: love your enemies is the center of his gospel. It’s the measure of our Catholicism if we are really going to be people of universal, nonviolent love. I hope everyone can really begin to reflect why we are so divided and angry. We need to look at the violence within us and try to start becoming people of inner nonviolence. This is what prayer and the Eucharist should be doing. They should help us have disarmed hearts, so that we can forgive one another, and begin practicing the nonviolence and mercy and compassion of Jesus – toward everybody, on every side, within the Church, to people in Iraq, to people on death row. To really start following Jesus. Catholic Exponent: Are there elements within the Catholic Church that are not happy with you for speaking out on these issues? Father Dear: Oh, sure. The Catholic Church is very divided; I am in a lot of trouble in a lot of places. I have been kicked out of a lot of places. But to my mind, that is the Jesuit history. I have been kicked out by bishops, dioceses, Jesuits. Up until recently, I had five parishes in the high desert of New Mexico, four of them very poor and one filled with upper class, retired, Republican military families from Texas. I was their pastor. During the Iraq War, I was speaking out against the war; I was saying to them what I am saying to you: “Jesus says love our enemies; treat people with love.” The whole church exploded and they all went to the archbishop of New Mexico and asked to have me removed. I was removed for preaching the Gospel. The other four parishes kept me. But again, when I read the life of Jesus, I see that they wanted to kill him from day one. Eventually they succeeded. This is my job description. I am supposed to follow this guy. The first sermon that he ever gave, in his hometown, the whole synagogue rushed him out of town to throw him off the cliff. He is constantly getting death threats and assassination attempts. I am supposed to be his follower. You know the Jesuits who were killed in El Salvador in 1989? I had lived and worked with them. So I have known great martyrs of the Church who stood up and were getting constant death threats. Those who were killed were friends of mine. That affected me greatly. I figure that this is what I have to do, too, only I have to do it here in the United States. So I get a great deal of hate mail, and I have had death threats here. I have been in and out of jail. But I am trying to follow Jesus. I am trying to invite people to be converted to the wisdom of nonviolence. It is only natural that people are upset about it, because all they have known is violence. Catholic Exponent: How is this related to our level of affluence in America? It would seem that this is a hard message to get across to people who have everything they could possibly want. Father Dear: The affluence in this country is a great problem. It is right there in the Gospel: “It is harder for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.” It is impossible to be part of the reign of God and to have wealth. We are so comfortable. We have everything we need, so we do not need God. But the flip side is in the Gospel: “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.” When you are really poor – and most people around the world are, except in the United States – you have nothing and no one, and you turn to God. But here, people have it made. They have a nice comfortable life, money, they can go to Wal-Mart, they have all the food that they need. All of this is connected. St. Francis said the key is nonviolence and voluntary poverty. We have to simplify our lives, get rid of our possessions, sell them and give the money to the poor. We have to try to stop being consumers; withdraw from the consumer culture and go deep into nonviolence, learn our need for God all over again. The thing is, our country steals resources from the world’s poor. We are 4.7 percent of the world’s population; we have stolen up to 60 percent of the world’s resources. St. Francis said, “You will need a lot of weapons to protect the hoard you have stolen.” So he said, “We don’t own anything, so we don’t need any weapons to protect anything. We are friends and at peace with everyone.” Nonviolence is connected to the way we live; the more simply we live, the more nonviolent we can become. This is a very hard journey that all Catholics and Christians have to be making. The thing that I have never understood is this: I don’t know what we think is going to happen. We are all going to die sooner or later. We will meet Jesus, who will tell us that he told us all about this and ask us why we didn’t do it. I am just basically saying that we should get on with the work. Simplify your life. Be nonviolent. Forgive everybody. Love everybody. Get ready for heaven now. Start making these connections. This country needs to start making reparations around the world, returning the world’s resources rather than stealing them. We need to feed the world’s poor and learn to live at peace with the whole world. Catholic Exponent: Do you think it will take some kind of cataclysmic event to make the United States view world events this way? Father Dear: I hope not. I am reading a new book of Thomas Merton’s writings and he was saying the same thing in the 1960s. But look: we just went through September 11 and this country did not wake up to the nonviolence of Jesus and the call that we are all one human race. Instead, we went along with our government, calling for massive retaliation and war, which is totally against Jesus. Meanwhile, Hurricane Katrina comes in and destroys New Orleans. Our government did nothing. This historic city is gone. I have been all over the world and I have never seen anything like this. Mile after mile of houses totally abandoned. Most Americans are just going on with their lives. I think we could nuke Iran tomorrow and people would go on with their lives. We already vaporized 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we don’t even deal with that. So I don’t think God is just going to intervene and we are all going to wake up. God has given us the freedom to choose total destruction or the wisdom of nonviolence. If we choose to destroy ourselves, God is going to let us do that, I think. We have to wake up. But it does not look like a cataclysmic event is going to do it. Catholic Exponent: How do you remain hope-filled in the midst of the realities around us? Father Dear: It’s very hard. All the evidence is stacked up against us. One of the strange things is that, besides being a culture of war, bringing so much violence to the world, not helping the poor of the world, by and large, we are the most depressed and despairing people on the planet. We are so rich. How do you be hopeful? I would say three things: First, you have to be a person of serious prayer. By prayer, I mean, all of us to have to take serious quality time in silence and solitude with God every day – the Jesuits [say] 30 minutes a day. Everyone has to start doing this, to get to know God and be in a loving relationship with a God who loves you. Once you begin to have an experience of God on a day-to-day basis, then the God who loves you becomes your focus, and you feel hopeful. Second, you need a community. That’s why I’m a big believer in Pax Christi, a small, local peace group. Every parish should have a Pax Christi group, where you meet with five or ten people, like they have learned in the base communities in Latin America and Africa. They can sit around and pray together and study things together and do something publicly together. Then you feel less hopeless, because you are with friends. You are not alone. You will never be hopeful or stand up publicly for peace on your own. Eventually you will give in to despair. But if you have a community, you will be OK. Jesus needed a community. We need that, too. I hope everybody will join Pax Christi; start a group in your parish. It’s the official movement within the Catholic Church for peace and justice. The wisdom of it is community. Third, you need action. If you want to be hopeful, you have to do hopeful things. Join your local peace vigil, or start one, where you stand on the corner and hold signs against the war in Iraq once a week. Or get involved in the movement to abolish the death penalty. Or, in my case, work in the campaign against [the bomb at] Los Alamos. It seems ridiculous, but I have spent my life involved in actual concrete public actions, and that has given me a lot of hope. So you have to stand up publicly and do one or two things for peace and justice with a lot of love. Do something to help bring about a hopeful world. None of us has to do everything, but everyone has to do something. If everyone pitches in and does their two cents worth, we will start moving somewhere, because we need a grassroots church community calling for a new world of peace and justice. That’s what gives me hope. Catholic Exponent: What is the one thing you want every reader of this newspaper to know? Father Dear: I would invite every reader to think about the nonviolence of Jesus and what that means for them. I have become convinced that Jesus was nonviolent, and that he wants each of us to be nonviolent. So my hope is that every Catholic home in this diocese could begin to practice nonviolence – that the readers can be nonviolent to themselves, nonviolent to their spouses and children and parents, and nonviolent to their neighbors. Also to begin to teach nonviolence in their communities and parishes. Then, that together, we can begin to promote nonviolent policies for our government, and nonviolent solutions to the world’s problems, like Ghandi and Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King did. That each one of us start doing this on our own. I think this is doable, and hopeful, and in fact the only hopeful way out of the mess we are in. This will be a long haul, a lot of work for our personal lives, for our Church, and for our country. But it’s the most exciting and hopeful and serious spiritual alternative there is. I think this is at the heart of the Gospel; it’s what the Church is supposed to be about, creating a community of people who love one another, love their neighbors, and love their enemies. I want us to begin to do what Jesus wants, to really begin to become people of nonviolence and peace. When I was part of a small group of people from Pax Christi around the world who met with Pope John Paul II, he said that he wished every Catholic could be a member of Pax Christi. He said that this movement is so precious to the Church, if only more people knew about it. For more information on Father Dear and his ministry, see his website: [www.johndear.org]. He also writes a weekly column for the National Catholic Reporter on its website. Father Dear is currently facing six months in prison for a demonstration in the Federal Building in Santa Fe, N.M., where he was arrested after attempting to meet with Sen. Pete Domenici about signing a declaration to end the war in Iraq.   Back to Exponent Menu Printer Friendly Page   Other Articles of 2006   Czech Republic priest visits diocese, shares story of Church there   Canton parishes help New Orleans parish to recover from Katrina   Death of Bp. Benedict C. Franzetta, ordination of Fr. Conoboy top news in ’06   Canton St. Paul kicks off 100th anniversary year   HighSchool Football   Peace advocate/priest’s message: ‘America is very sick’   Ecumenical Television Channel releases Christmas program slate   Guy has a birthday: A father’s Christmas reflection at ‘HoHo time’   National survey results mirror local need in Diocese of Youngstown   Stop! 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