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[Expositions 13.2 (2019) 1–6] Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747–5376 

 

Introduction: The Future of Nonviolence in Catholic Social Teaching 

 

ELI S. McCARTHY 

Georgetown University 

 

 

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 

 –Jesus1 

 

To be true followers of Jesus today also includes embracing his teaching about 

nonviolence. 

 –Pope Francis2 

 

Surveying the signs of the times we can see the urgent need for engaging the theme of nonviolence 

more deeply. Nearly 66 million people are displaced by war and violence, which comes out to one 

in every 113 people, with children making up half of all refugees.3 The Yemen war has killed over 

100,000 civilians plus one person every hour dying from cholera,4 not to mention wars in South 

Sudan, Libya, DRC, Somalia, etc. The U.S. has spent over $6.4 trillion on war since September 

11, 2001.5 In addition, there are massive costs from war, such as indirect deaths, trauma, suicide, 

domestic violence, sexual assaults and rapes, environmental damage, blowback violence, and the 

drafting of child soldiers. Other related issues are the environmental crisis, rising economic 

inequality, poverty, military spending, sexual violence (including in the Church), gun ownership, 

racism, etc.  

So, we are compelled to ask, What is the future of nonviolence in Catholic Social Teaching, 

which also has implications for practice and advocacy? Over the last two years, the passion and 

dialogue around this issue has expanded across the globe and in the U.S. The 2016 Nonviolence 

and Just Peace conference in Rome was a key stimulus. That 85-person, multi-dimensional group 

of Catholics from around the world produced an appeal to the Catholic Church to re-commit to the 

centrality of gospel nonviolence.6  

Since then, thousands of others have been cultivating the ground for the harvest of nonviolence 

in the Catholic Church. Over 250 organizations and thousands of individuals have endorsed the 



The Future of Nonviolence in Catholic Social Teaching 2 
 

 

appeal, including the Catholic Conferences of Bishops in Japan and Belgium, the Justice and Peace 

Commission of the USG/USIG (international religious superiors), Pax Christi International, the 

U.S. Catholic Mission Association, the U.S. Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and the 

U.S. Conference of Major Superiors of Men. Cardinal Peter Turkson, who is the head of the 

Dicastery of Integral Human Development, has been a key leader at the Vatican supporting this 

effort and creatively moving it forward. Pope Francis expressed his solidarity in the 2017 World 

Day of Peace message “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace.”  

Over the last two years, the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative (CNI) has generated numerous 

dialogues in the Catholic community and beyond on these topics. There have been U.N. events, 

regional events around the world, and many events in the United States. For example, at the 

University of San Diego, Cardinal Turkson and Bishop Robert W. McElroy (among others) 

conducted a high-level dialogue with military representatives in 2019. There were other university 

and college events at Seton Hall with Cardinal Tobin, as well as at Georgetown, Santa Clara, San 

Francisco, Creighton, DePaul, St. Michael’s, and Marquette. There were presentations at academic 

conferences, such as the Society of Christian Ethics and Catholic Theological Ethics in the World 

Church, and at national advocacy conferences such as the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, 

Ecumenical Advocacy Days, Ignatian Family Teach-In, and Alliance for Peacebuilding. There 

have been numerous publications, journal articles, blogs, and books, such as Choosing Peace 

(Orbis, 2018) and A Just Peace Ethic Primer (Georgetown, 2020), which developed from this 

initiative. In 2017–2018, we completed five global roundtable dialogues on key topics, such as the 

Bible and Nonviolence, Theology of Nonviolence, New Moral Framework, Power of Nonviolence, 

and Integrating Nonviolence into the Life of the Church. They have collectively produced a large, 

synthesizing document which was presented to the Vatican in a spring 2019 conference, with the 

hope of forming a basis for an encyclical on nonviolence. 

Many educational resources and action guides have been developed and a global education 

committee has been formed to deepen the collection of these resources and stimulate more peace 

studies programs at Catholic educational institutions.7 Initiatives focused on nonviolence have 

been strengthened at seminaries as well as the Archdioceses of Chicago and Baltimore under the 

leadership of Cardinal Blase J. Cupich and Archbishop William E. Lori.8 Nonviolent direct action, 

including civil disobedience, has increased with more official support, such as Bishop John Stowe's 

presence and support for the 2018 Catholic Day of Action with Dreamers at the U.S. Senate, as 



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well as Cardinal Tobin's presence and support for the 2019 action in New Jersey with local activists 

and the Catholic Nonviolence Campaign for Immigrant Children.9 CNI participants have helped 

to increase the energy for scaling-up key nonviolent practices such as unarmed civilian protection 

at the U.S. State Department. 

Through this extensive dialogue and these initiatives, we have deepened our understanding and 

commitment to nonviolence: as the positive reverence for dignity and life; as the power of love in 

action; as the path to fuller truth; as a spirituality, way of life, and distinct virtue; and as an 

effective method and constructive force for social change, transforming conflict, challenging all 

forms of violence, protecting all people and the earth, and building sustainable peace. 

Our initiative on nonviolence and the question about the future of nonviolence in the Catholic 

Church is robust and broad. It is not merely or even primarily a question about war and just war 

theories. It is not merely about direct violence, but also structural and cultural violence. When we 

take this broader and deeper view, we believe we can see better not only these specific types of 

violence, but also we can better assess specific traditional responses such as just war approaches. 

A “re-centering” or a shift to nonviolence is a shift in imagination, practice, and commitment. A 

shift to nonviolence and just peace goes beyond re-stating the preference or priority of our way of 

being, and rather invites Catholics to an alternative path, field of play, type of harmony, or set of 

fresh wineskins (Matthew 9:16–17). 

This iteration of Expositions: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities will focus on this 

broader and deeper view of the future of nonviolence in Catholic Social Teaching. In this context, 

the authors will address some of the arguments raised about supporting just war, which has been 

an area of recent focus for some scholars in Expositions and elsewhere.10 Others, such as Cardinal 

Turkson, have argued that the development of understanding and practices of nonviolence may be 

distracted or obscured by the ongoing commitment to just war in the Catholic community, even 

when that is not the stated intention.11 There are also significant questions about the consistency 

of just war with Jesus’s way, how just war has primarily functioned to justify or enable war, how 

it has been an inadequate or ineffective constraint on war, how it still gets us stuck in vicious cycles 

of violence even when war appears just, and how it has failed to form us, particularly as 

peacemakers.12 For example, in 2017, Bishop McElroy said that the just war principles have 

“become only a little bit less than a green light” for war, and that the Church must “recognize the 



The Future of Nonviolence in Catholic Social Teaching 4 
 

 

increasing incapacity of the just war tradition to be an effective constraint on warfare in the modern 

age.”13 

Meanwhile, other scholars who support the elaboration and refinement of a just war ethic have 

made various arguments. Some claim that the Church simply needs to do a better job of formation 

in just war thinking, in part because it already in theory prioritizes nonviolence. Others claim that 

we need some ethic to guide questions about war and to offer to policymakers, and thus, just war 

theories are necessary for the Church. Some focus their support for just war in extreme situations 

which fall under the somewhat wavering international norm of a responsibility to protect. A 

smaller minority still make the claim that the scriptures either support a just war ethic or at least 

do not rule it out. 

Collectively, the authors in this forum will undertake to address many of these arguments. 

However, it will not only be an analytical exercise of doing so with a more robust and deeper 

understanding of nonviolence, but also with a vision to elaborate and expand on the future of 

nonviolence in Catholic Social Teaching. Thus, they elaborate on the following possibilities: a 

way of describing nonviolence and its multi-dimensional character for the Church; on the distinct 

role of the Church in relation to nonviolence and witnessing to a church of mercy; on nonviolence 

as a tradition of moral praxis; on nonviolence as truly living the works of mercy; on the consistency 

of nonviolence with scripture and for building gospel-based communities; on nonviolence and 

Pope Francis’s peacebuilding pedagogy; on developing Catholic Teaching and nonviolence; on 

the potential and effectiveness of nonviolence for activists and policymakers; on how nonviolence 

and a just peace ethic could transform the military institution, such as nonviolent civilian-based 

defense and in dire situations of a “responsibility to protect”; and on other issues. 

 

 

Notes 

1. John 13:34. 

2. Pope Francis, “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace,” The Holy See, January 1, 2017, 

https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/peace/documents/papa-

francesco_20161208_messaggio-l-giornata-mondiale-pace-2017.html. 

3. “War, Violence, Persecution Push Displacement to New Unprecedented High,” United 

Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), June 19, 2017,  



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https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/press/2017/6/5943ec594/war-violence-persecution-

push-displacement-new-unprecedented-high.html. 

4. Hollie McKay, “Nearly 100,000 Have Been Killed in Ongoing Yemen War, Report Finds,” 

Fox News June 19, 2019, https://www.foxnews.com/world/100000-civilians-killed-

yemen-war; Bethan McKernan, “Yemen: Almost One Death per Hour as Cholera Epidemic 

Spreads like Wildfire,” Independent June 9, 2017,  

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yemen-war-deaths-cholera-

epidemic-dying-every-hour-a7782341.html. 

5. Neta Crawford, “United States Budgetary Costs and Obligations of Post 9/11 Wars 

through FY2020: $6.4 Trillion,” Costs of War, Watson Institute for International and 

Public Affairs, Brown University, November 13, 2019, 

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/US%20Budgetary%20

Costs%20of%20Wars%20November%202019.pdf. 

6. “An Appeal to the Catholic Church to Re-Commit to the Centrality of Gospel 

Nonviolence,” Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, 2016, 

https://nonviolencejustpeace.net/final-statement-an-appeal-to-the-catholic-church-to-re-

commit-to-the-centrality-of-gospel-nonviolence/. 

7. “Resources on Nonviolence and Just Peace,” Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, 2019, 

https://nonviolencejustpeace.net/resources/. 

8. Cardinal Cupich launched an Anti-Violence Initiative and created a diocesan Office for 

Violence Prevention. Archbishop Lori wrote a pastoral letter, “The Enduring Power of Dr. 

Martin Luther King’s Principles of Nonviolence,” Archdiocese of Baltimore, February 14, 

2018, https://www. archbalt.org/kingpastoral/.  

9. Eli McCarthy, “Cardinal Tobin Emboldens Catholic Nonviolent Risk-Taking,” Ignatian 

Solidarity Network, September 16, 2019,  

https://ignatiansolidarity.net/blog/2019/09/17/cardinal-tobin-catholic-nonviolent-risk-

taking/. 

10. “Ethics in Focus: Special Issue on the Future of Just War in Catholic Social Teaching on 

War and Peace,” Expositions: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities 12.1 (2018), 

https://expositions.journals.villanova.edu/issue/view/159. 



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11. Cardinal Turkson said “It [just war theory] can undermine efforts to develop alternative 

capacities and tools for conflict to be overcome and transformed,” quoted in Christopher 

Lamb, “Pope Urged to Abolish Creed of a ‘Just war,’” The Sunday Times April 24, 2016, 

https:// www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pope-urged-to-abolish-creed-of-a-just-war-spm5jzjg8.  

12. Eli S. McCarthy, “The Gospels Draw Us Further: A Just Peace Ethic,” in Expositions 12.1 

(2018): 80–102, https://expositions.journals.villanova.edu/article/view/2322. 

13. Joshua J. McElwee, “Pope Condemns Possession of Nuclear Weapons in Shift from 

Church’s Acceptance of Deterrence,” National Catholic Reporter November 10, 2017, 

https://ncronline.org/news/vatican/pope-condemns-possession-nuclear-weapons-shift-

churchs-acceptance-deterrence. 


