We need to break our personal and national addiction to violence if we hope to ever see an end to war. 

To our modern ears the idea of heresy seems quaint and medieval-involving technical arguments about abstract matters. But I contend that heresy and its cousin apostasy are constructs of down-to-earth significance that we should keep in mind today. And for us Catholics, I submit, our chief heresy is violence.

We're all violent. We're violent to ourselves, our relatives, our neighbors, other Catholics and Christians-and most heretical of all, to our nation's enemies, beginning with the children of Iraq.

We pay taxes for war, tolerate executions, shrug at global warming, and regard corporate greed as the natural order of things. Some of us go to Mass in Los Alamos, New Mexico on Sundays and design and build nuclear weapons the rest of the week.

In short, our lives betray that violence is our true spirituality. Our deepest, unexamined thoughts are that violence saves us, that might makes right. We're at home with a few notions contrary to the gospel: War is justified, war is God's will-even that God's very self is violent. We think these things normal, natural, perhaps even holy.

 How to recover clarity? We do it by resurrecting what I regard as the most important Christian value-gospel nonviolence. That has been my own practice over the last 28 years. Jesus taught and demonstrated nonviolence, and in this world of unprecedented violence, I want to follow him into God's reign of peace, starting here and now, today.

"The chief difference between nonviolence and violence," Thomas Merton wrote in Blessed Are the Meek: The Roots of Christian Nonviolence (Catholic Peace Fellowship), "is that the latter depends entirely on its own calculations. The former depends entirely on God and on God's word."

Some raise their eyebrows to hear that nonviolence was Jesus' fundamental characteristic. But consider his revolutionary commandments: "Love your neighbor"; "Blessed are the peacemakers"; "Be as compassionate as God"; "Love your enemies"; and "Put down your sword."

Jesus' trek to Jerusalem was aimed at confronting violence. There he verbally jousted with the authorities, then entered the temple and committed civil disobedience, his way of resisting the empire. They seized him and turned him over to the Romans for execution, but even then he remained nonviolent, saying, "Forgive them; they know not what they do" (Luke 23:24).

He rose from the dead, as we know, a sign that God vindicated Jesus' way. Even then Jesus refused the road of vengeance, refused to unleash lightning bolts, refused to retaliate. On the disciples who had ignominiously fled the scene, he imposed no shame.

He offered instead the gift of peace and extended yet another invitation to follow his way. "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations," he invited them, "baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you" (Matt. 28:19-20).

 This is an invitation I try to take up daily. My practice as a Catholic begins with a daily prayer of peace. I sit in the presence of the God who loves me, an act of contemplative peace. There I let God disarm my heart of my own inner violence. I allow God to help me become more nonviolent. God sends me out to join the disarmament of the world. My day begins in contemplative nonviolence, as I call it.

As God disarms and heals me more and more, I find I can be nonviolent to myself. But more, I can better practice interpersonal nonviolence with those around me: my friends, colleagues, neighbors, family, even those who hotly oppose me. And more and more I can practice downward mobility into solidarity with the world's poor and marginalized.

Practicing gospel nonviolence requires, as St. Paul urged, putting on the mind of the nonviolent Jesus. As we spend time communing with God, we begin to think and see through the eyes of Jesus. We find the wherewithal to renounce violence and resist war. It dawns on us that everyone alive is our sister and brother, that our being reconciled with them-and all of creation-is the divine plan.

"When the practice of nonviolence becomes universal, God will reign on earth as God does in heaven," Mahatma Gandhi said.

This practice pushes us to pursue a new kind of world, one without war, poverty, nuclear weapons, or global warming. We learn how to carry on his mission by nonviolently resisting systemic injustice, what Jesus termed "taking up the cross." And though such a course may lead to suffering and persecution, it ultimately ends in resurrection peace.

We Catholics, whether right-leaning or left-leaning, have an easy capacity to be self-righteous and judgmental. I speak first of all for myself. But the point of the spiritual life, the reason for the sacraments, the purpose of prayer and scripture reading is to help us transcend surliness and violence and become our true selves-that is, God's beloved sons and daughters, peacemakers to a world of division and war.

 For the first three centuries after Christ, a Christian's vocation suffered none of the confusion and murkiness it suffers today. To be a Christian was to be nonviolent. In those days the church enjoined Christians from serving in the military. The church forbade killing for any reason. And not surprisingly, such steadfast nonviolence led many early companions to martyrdom.

After the Roman Emperor Constantine's conversion in the fourth century, the church organized itself along the lines of the imperial hierarchy and rejected the nonviolence of Jesus. Christians soon joined the military, and church thinkers developed a construct, based on the thinking of the pagan Cicero, to justify warfare.

Not all Christians were persuaded. Many fled to the desert to keep the gospel of peace alive. The Desert Fathers and Mothers, we call them. They kept the fire of peace burning.

Later those fires were stoked by the bright witness of Sts. Francis and Clare of Assisi, then the Quakers and abolitionists, right through to our own time in prophets like Thomas Merton, Oscar Romero, and Dorothy Day. Day once called nonviolence "the all-important problem or virtue to be nourished and studied and cultivated."

They are joined by Martin Luther King Jr., who told the Memphis crowd gathered to hear him speak the night before he was assassinated, "The choice before us is no longer between violence or nonviolence. It's nonviolence or nonexistence."

 But the work remains. We all need to return to that early Christianity, in which nonviolence was normative. That means we need to throw away the archaic and obsolete "just war" theory. We need to live according to the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount and spend our lives ending war, poverty, nuclear weapons, and global warming.

As we embark on this daily Catholic practice, we discover that our God is not a god of war or violence, but the living God of peace and nonviolence. That good news makes every effort worthwhile.

Feedback

What prevents me personally from being more nonviolent is . . .

The way that violence is glorified everywhere in our culture: the media, news, video games, movies, and so on.
Frank Butler
North Wales, Pa.

Our cultural assumption that nonviolence is weak-especially against the "evil" regimes that confront us.
Fred Heinzelmann
Vienna, Va.

My natural inclination to want to right wrongs.
John B. Pesce
West Hartford, Conn.

Common sense. We must defend what is necessary for the safety of our society and families. To think God doesn't want us to defend ourselves is ridiculous.
Name withheld
Guilderland, N.Y.

Frustration for the victims of violence.
Patricia B. Triggs
Springfield, Mass.

My self-centeredness makes me become the basic criterion of truth and goodness, not Jesus.
Name withheld
Lincroft, N.J.

The conviction that some good things are worth fighting for.
William F. Reilly, Jr.
Levittown, N.Y.

My underlying anger management issue.
Name withheld
Morristown, N.J.

One way I try to be nonviolent is . . .

By supporting political candidates who advocate nonviolence.
Name withheld
Broomall, Pa.

By praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy and reminding myself how merciful and compassionate God has been to me.
Tom Cloutier
Manchester, N.H.

By searching for the motives behind opponents' actions and trying to understand their side.
Mary P. Sanady
West Hartford, Conn.

By serving on a social justice committee.
Margaret Van Valkenburgh
Brooklyn, Ohio

By reading Thomas Merton's work. I am inspired by the nonviolent stand he took and am trying to imitate him.
Name withheld
Goldsboro, N.C.

By strategizing possible confrontations and planning my reaction.
Pat Keleher
Amherst, N.Y.

By solving small problems before they become big problems.
Kevin Wilkinson
Durham, N.C.

By trying to be a calming influence on the people around me.
Name withheld
Mount Laurel, N.J.

By walking away if things get too heated and letting go of my need to be right.
Name withheld
Bumpass, Va.

The most common form of violence I commit is . . .

Making unkind remarks about other drivers in my mind or out loud.
Name withheld
Simsbury, Conn.

Yelling at kids when they don't listen.
Debbie Johnson
Clarksburg, W.V.

Failing to speak out against injustice.
Name withheld
Black Mountain, N.C.

Actively and enthusiastically supporting a strong armed force to keep our country, its citizens, and our way of life safe.
Dennis Winkelsas
Norfolk, Va.

Not being consciously protective of the environment, and not doing anything tangible to help someone in harm's way.
Rosalie Smith
Pittsburgh, Pa.

Aggressive driving when I'm in a hurry.
Name withheld
Ligonier, Pa.

Losing my temper, especially when trying to defend our church and country.
Beverly Giuliano
Paxton, Mass.

Overeating is violence against my body.
Margaret Hayden
Vernon, Conn.

As a national policy, non-violence would . . .

Be difficult to implement internally. You can't legislate love of neighbor.
Muriel Poulin
Springvale, Maine

Have to start with a better and more fair justice system, especially law enforcement that uses excessive force.
Name withheld
Allentown, Pa.

Make us a weak nation easily taken advantage of.
Ronald Hebert
New Bedford, Mass.

Change the world if other nations would also accept a policy of nonviolence. There needs to be more work for peace in the United Nations.
Madeline Bauer
Flushing, N.Y.

Help to dispel the negative image of the United States around the world.
Sister Eileen Berton, D.W.
Sound Beach, N.Y.

Probably be doomed. Even Switzerland has an army.
Joe Iocco
Geneva, N.Y.

Encourage dialogue and understanding between countries, and cut military budgets so that we could feed our poor, improve our schools, and get everyone adequate health care.
Kitty Rodgers
Greensborough, N.C.

General Comments

If we cannot be peaceful within our own families, we cannot expect to have peace in our nation and our world.
Name withheld
Lancaster, Pa.

Nonviolent, yes. Passive, no. It does sometimes concern me that Christian nonviolence would allow us to be turned into doormats. Even Jesus used a little violence in the cleansing of the temple.
Paul Kirk
Warwick, R.I.

We are quick to campaign against abortion, but how often do we protest or hear sermons about capital punishment or the atrocities at Guantanamo Bay? Jesus and others faced death to speak the truth against power. Most of us wouldn't risk getting into trouble.
Rich and Arlene Sroczynski
Piscataway, N.J.

God is the creator of the the whole planet-not just humans. It's hard for me to see how we can think of God as being simply peace-loving when the animal world, which God also created, is so violent, too, according to God's design.
Michael Andersen
Monroe, N.Y.

During World War II, I was stationed in England. When the war came to an end, our plane was used to fly POWs from Austria to France, and we flew low enough to see all the destruction the war caused. We need to find a better way to settle international problems.
Name withheld
Martinsburg, W.V.