Recent decades have seen a steady trend in Roman Catholic teaching toward a commitment to active nonviolence that could qualify the church as a “peace church.” As a moral theologian specializing in social ethics, Schlabach explores how this trend in Catholic social teaching will need to take shape if Catholics are to follow through. Globalization,…
Tag: Catholicism
A Pilgrim People:
The Mystery in Ordinary Churches
Bearings OnlineNovember 5, 2019 If only they would restore a sense of mystery to the Mass, Catholics could put God first and the Church could find its way back to vibrancy. So goes the argument from Catholic traditionalists. And so far so good. But mystery has its own mysterious ways. Unless we discern mystery amid…
Pacifism in action [an interview with Gerald Schlabach]
U.S. CatholicFebruary 2017 Gerald Schlabach first started thinking about peace and violence in the mid-1980s. He and his wife worked for the Mennonite Central Committee in Nicaragua during a time of ongoing civil revolution. A member of the Mennonite church at the time, he was tasked with figuring out how the historically pacifist church should…
Abortion & social justice:
“prolife progressive” is not an oxymoron
Commonweal 6 January 2017 It should be easy to be a prolife progressive. If we could somehow start from scratch and map out political alliances and coalitions according to the logic of people’s stated values, social-justice advocacy would coalesce with the defense of the unborn at any number of points: a preference for working at…
Pope Francis’s peacebuilding pedagogy:
A commentary on his 2017 World Day of Peace message
It is not too soon to anticipate the challenge of “reception.” All signs suggest that Pope Francis’s 2017 World Day of Peace (WDP) message represents only an initial response to the appeal for clearer teaching on gospel nonviolence issued at the historic conference co-sponsored by Pax Christi International and the Pontifical Council on Justice and…
The virtue of staying put:
What the “Benedict option” forgets about Benedictines
Commonweal 16 September 2016 In recent years the term “Benedict Option” has been circulating in certain sectors of the U.S. Catholic Church. For a Benedictine oblate such as myself, this should be a welcome development. After all, the charism of Benedictine monasticism, with its emphasis on faithfulness to flesh-and-blood local communities formed in prayer, liturgy, discernment,…
Mennonite-Catholic relations — Joetta tells our story
My wife Joetta, pastor of Faith Mennonite Church, recently spoke at the Third Way congregation here in Saint Paul about Mennonite-Catholic relationships. She told our story in a way that speaks for both of us. Click here or on screenshot below to listen or watch.
What if we win?
Nonviolence and the challenge of governance
Advance paper for Pax Christi International / Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace conference, Rome, April 2016: “Nonviolence and Just Peace: Contributing to the Catholic Understanding of and Commitment to Nonviolence” Gerald W. Schlabach And what if you win? As I have observed or participated in various social movements over four decades – reformist and revolutionary,…
Sed contra (a poem)
I suppose I will always be suspect to you,heir as I am to martyred dissent,beholden to untidy reality no catechism can tame,gripped by loyalty to bishops and creedthrough a second simplicity not simple at all,a good enough Catholic at best,in a time when the “best” of so many is enemy of the good. Still, can…
Remembering my friend, Ivan J. Kauffman (1938-2015)
“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.” – Reinhold Niebuhr Some men and women measure their hope by business plans, grant proposals, and bullet points. Ivan J. Kauffman measured his hope by oceans. Ivan died on July 15, 2015, as he neared the age…
Idea map for A Pilgrim People: Becoming a Catholic Peace Church
This is the “idea map” that got me started on the book project that has occupied my sabbatical this year. Inevitably the book has undergone some reshaping, and probably will until the end. But conceptually, this still makes the connections.
Meeting in exile
Historic peace churches and the emerging peace church catholic Journal of Religion, Conflict and Peace Volume 1. Issue 1, Fall 2007. First presented as a lecture for Presentation Sisters’ Peace Studies Forum, 23 January 2004, Fargo ND. For the three “historic peace church” colleges of Indiana to join together in the Plowshares Peace Studies Collaborative and its…
You converted to what?
One Mennonite’s journey Commonweal, June 1, 2007 At Pentecost 2004, I made a small yet formidable step in my life of Christian discipleship. Having considered myself a “Catholic Mennonite” for years, I entered into full communion with the Roman Church and became what I think of as a “Mennonite Catholic.” Catholic friends were gratified but puzzled. After all, this might not have seemed an…