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[Expositions 13.2 (2019) 7–26] Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747–5376 

Renewing Catholicism: Toward Recommitting to Gospel Nonviolence 

throughout the Roman Catholic Church  

 

KEN BUTIGAN  

DePaul University 

 

 

I grew up under the brutal dictatorship of Idi Amin. After my high school seminary 

education, I decided to join the “liberation war” to fight Idi Amin. It was only by 

God’s grace that I was saved from this lie of liberation through violence. The 

“liberation war” ended, but then the liberators soon became dictators and we needed 

another “liberation war” to get rid of the “liberators.” This is a story that is repeated 

all over Africa. It is a lie. Violence does not end violence—it only creates endless 

cycles of violence. Nonviolence is a calling, not simply because it “works” but 

because it is the way of God. 

  –Fr. Emmanuel Katongole, Uganda1 

 

Introduction 

Jesus proclaimed a universal ethic of nonviolence rejecting violence and killing, returning good 

for evil, healing divisions, and putting sacrificial love into action for a just, peaceful, and 

reconciled world.2  

In its first three centuries, the Roman Catholic Church publicly practiced the nonviolence that 

Jesus taught and lived, and since then the spirit of Gospel nonviolence has been kept alive by 

particular individuals, communities and movements within the Church. Too often, however, the 

institutional Church has perpetrated or failed to prevent egregious violence, reinforced by a 

theological, pastoral, and ecclesiastical culture that has often permitted and even sanctified 

violence.  

In our own time, though, the Church has begun to make a critical shift from this culture of 

justified violence. Over the past half century the Church has taken steps to re-affirm the 

foundational ethic of nonviolence in papal and episcopal statements, in an expanding body of 

theological research and biblical exegesis, and in the experience and commitment of Catholic 



Renewing Catholicism  8 
 

individuals and communities throughout the world who have been consciously living the 

nonviolent life as a spiritual journey and as a courageous witness for justice, peace, and 

reconciliation. In this spirit, Pope Francis has underscored nonviolence as a core value of the 

Church in many public statements and, most significantly, in his 2017 World Day of Peace 

message entitled, “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace.”3 

This growing reassertion of Gospel nonviolence is not an accident. In an era of global direct, 

cultural, and structural violence—and at a time when the Church itself is grappling with its own 

violence, including clergy sexual abuse—it is no wonder that the Church is actively rediscovering 

Jesus’s nonviolence. We are living in a time when the Church is being inspired to embrace the way 

of faithful nonviolence and, in turn, to urge the larger world to discover the power of nonviolent 

options to address the monumental crisis of violence and injustice it faces today. 

This renewed exploration of Gospel nonviolence was underscored by a landmark conference 

co-sponsored by the Holy See’s then-Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (now subsumed into 

the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development) and Pax Christi International in 

Rome in April 2016. The conference—attended by theologians, peace practitioners, and some 

Church leaders from around the world, including from places grappling with extreme violence—

concluded by calling on the Church to “recommit to the centrality of Gospel nonviolence.” It urged 

the Church to integrate Jesus’s nonviolence throughout the life of the Church, promote nonviolent 

practices and strategies, and to initiate a global conversation on the power of nonviolence. 

This paper offers a general framework for imagining how such a recommitment could take 

place and what integrating nonviolence at every level of the institution could entail. It does this, 

first, by defining nonviolence in general and then underlining how Gospel nonviolence, for 

Christians, deepens this general notion of nonviolence by rooting it in how God calls us to live; 

exploring how this nonviolent way of life calls us to renounce the theology of justified violence 

and to unleash creative and disciplined ways to challenge violence and to make peace; and 

presenting an overview of concrete steps that could be taken to re-embrace Jesus’s nonviolence 

throughout the life of the Church and as part of its mission in the world.  

 

What is Nonviolence? 

Although nonviolence has often been dismissed as passive, ineffective, and otherworldly, we are 

currently in the midst of a revolution in our understanding of this powerful reality.4 Definitions of 



9  Butigan 
 

  

nonviolence abound, including: the love that does justice (Martin Luther King, Jr.),5 transforming 

power (Alternatives to Violence),6 and cooperative power (Jonathan Schell).7 Nonviolence is a 

force for transformation, justice, and the well-being of all that is neither violent nor passive (Pace 

e Bene).8 It is a stand against violence without violence (Stellan Vinthagen).9 It is an active form 

of resistance to systems of privilege and domination, a philosophy for liberation, an approach to 

movement building, a tactic of non-cooperation, and a practice to transform the world (War 

Resisters League).10  

The following general framing of nonviolence synthesizes this spectrum of ideas: “Nonviolence 

is a constructive force, an active method, and a way of life that challenges violence without using 

violence, transforms and resolves conflict, and seeks justice, peace and reconciliation for all.”11 

 

Gospel Nonviolence 

This Sunday’s Gospel has one of the most typical, yet most difficult, teachings of 

Jesus: Love your enemies (Luke 6:27). Jesus delivered this address in Galilee, at 

the beginning of his public ministry: It was something of a “manifesto” presented 

to everyone, which Christ asked his disciples to accept, thus proposing to them in 

radical terms a model for their lives […]. This page of the Gospel is rightly 

considered the “magna carta” of Christian nonviolence; it does not consist in 

surrendering to evil—as claims a false interpretation of “turn the other cheek” 

(Luke 6:29)—but in responding to evil with good (Romans 12:17–21), and thus 

breaking the chain of injustice. It is thus understood that nonviolence, for 

Christians, is not mere tactical behavior but a person’s way of being, the attitude of 

one who is convinced of God’s love and power, who is not afraid to confront evil 

with the weapons of love and truth alone. Loving the enemy is the nucleus of the 

“Christian revolution.”  

 –Pope Benedict XVI12 

 

Gospel nonviolence shares many elements of general nonviolence. At the same time, for 

Christians, Jesus’s life and teaching deepens and radicalizes it. Gospel nonviolence begins, not 

with strategies or methods, but with a foundational understanding of God—and God’s vision for 

humanity. Jesus made visible the nonviolence of God, who created the universe not out of violence 



Renewing Catholicism  10 
 

but out of love. Creation is good, as the Book of Genesis tells us, and human beings are made in 

the image of the God who declares this goodness. Nonviolence is the nature of creation and points 

us toward the “new creation,” where all will be reconciled.13  

In his age rife with structural violence, Jesus proclaimed a nonviolent Reign of God rooted in 

the unconditional love of God. Jesus called on his disciples to love their enemies (Matthew 5:44); 

to offer no violent resistance to one who does evil (Matthew 5:39); to become peacemakers; to 

forgive and repent; and to be abundantly merciful (Matthew 5–7). Jesus embodied nonviolence by 

actively resisting systemic dehumanization, as when he defied the Sabbath laws to heal the man 

with the withered hand (Mark 3:1–6); when he confronted the powerful at the Temple and purified 

it (John 2:13–22); when he peacefully but persistently challenged the men accusing a woman of 

adultery (John 8:1–11); and when, on the night before he died, he commanded Peter to put down 

his sword (Matthew 26:52).  

In his preaching and his life, Jesus revealed that God calls us to the nonviolent life: to make 

peace with one another; to resist the violence and injustice that threaten or destroy this peace; and 

to foster a Church and world where the fullness of just peace is the birth right of all. As Pope 

Benedict XVI declared: 

 

[Jesus] came with only the strength of love, totally without violence, even to the 

point of going to the Cross. This is what shows us the true face of God, that 

violence never comes from God, never helps bring anything good, but is a 

destructive means and not the path to escape difficulties. He is thus a strong voice 

against every type of violence. He strongly invites all sides to renounce violence, 

even if they feel they are right. The only path is to renounce violence, to begin 

anew with dialogue, with the attempt to find peace together, with a new concern 

for one another, a new willingness to be open to one another. This is Jesus’s true 

message: seek peace with the means of peace and leave violence aside.14 

 

Christian nonviolence is a spiritual path rooted in the Gospels and a counter-intuitive strategy for 

the transformation of the world. 

 

 



11  Butigan 
 

  

From Just War to Just Peace 

War is the mother of ignorance, isolation, and poverty. Please tell the world there 

is no such thing as a just war. I say this as a daughter of war. We can’t respond to 

violence with worse violence. In order to kill five violent men, we have to create 

ten violent men to kill them.  

 –Sr. Nazik Matty, Iraq15 

 

In my Catholic country, our nuns and priests joined the guerrillas because of the 

just war paradigm. The Catholic paramilitaries pray to the Virgin before 

slaughtering people because of the just war paradigm.  

 –Fr. Francisco De Roux, S.J., Colombia16 

 

In its first three centuries, the Church wagered that Jesus was utterly serious when he said, “love 

your enemies” and “peace be with you,” and therefore consistently sought to incarnate the way 

and discipline of spiritually grounded nonviolence. The early Church offers us a critically 

important and timely lesson. In our contemporary age of global violence, searing injustice, and 

catastrophic climate change, the Catholic Church is called to be a global leader and model for 

powerful nonviolent alternatives. But it can only be this beacon for mainstreaming nonviolent 

options if it clearly hews to nonviolence itself and explicitly rejects what the late scripture scholar 

Walter Wink called the “myth of redemptive violence.”17 

This not only means making amends for its own violence, but also using the lens of Gospel 

nonviolence to renew vibrantly its life and mission, including its spirituality, formation, 

sacramental theology and practices, pastoral life, ministry, and Catholic social teaching. As one 

part of this renewal, the Church will be invited to renounce its adherence to and application of just 

war theories. Considering such a move will no doubt prompt debate, but this dialogue will likely 

generate the creative tension by which the glaring internal contradictions just war theories pose 

can become clearer; by which nonviolent options can be more seriously considered; and by which 

the Church’s commitment to living the way of Jesus can become more integrally coherent. It will 

also invite a more robust exploration of a qualitatively different framework: nonviolent “just 

peace.” 



Renewing Catholicism  12 
 

Such a shift—from just war to just peace—will be part of a larger call to concretely embrace 

Jesus’s nonviolence as a matter of faith, as a process of Church-wide conversion and healing, and 

as a way to imagine, educate, and activate the nonviolent life at every level of the Church. The 

“just war” tradition obscures and undermines the heart of Jesus’s message by legitimating violent 

combat (and, by implication, the infrastructure, training, resources, and spiritual dedication to 

making such combat a reality) and, by extension, by providing a foundation for legitimating 

violence in general.18 

Gospel nonviolence is broader than pacifism or only the refusal to do harm. An active force for 

peace, justice and reconciliation, nonviolence calls us to: 

 

 Renounce our belief in violence 

 Take a stand against violence 

 Break the cycles of retaliatory violence 

 Pursue nonviolent options 

 

Just War theories undermine each of these. By institutionalizing the admissibility of the violent 

option, it reinforces a general, if often unconscious, belief in the power of violence. This belief is 

at loggerheads with a foundational faith in the God of peace and nonviolence that Jesus proclaimed 

and that the early Church professed. Such a belief has consequences. It weakens our resolute stand 

against violence. It limits our resolve and capacity to interrupt the cycles of retaliation and 

escalation. And it too often inhibits our inclination to exhaustively explore nonviolent alternatives. 

Under just war theologies, the logic and emphasis are on both limiting violence and at times 

justifying violent means, even though some versions are more restrictive than others. In turn, it too 

often undermines accounting for one’s own violence; stopping the cycle of violence; and pursuing 

the full range of creative nonviolent options. 

Gospel nonviolence opens the space for life-giving alternatives; trains us for active love and 

healing rather than for fear and killing; and becomes a sign and channel of God’s nonviolent love 

for the Church and the world. By leaving open the possibility of justified violence, just war theories 

undermine these facets of Gospel nonviolence. Reliance on just war theories retards the 

development of nonviolent options; trains us to expect that Christian faith can accommodate 



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violence; and stands at cross-purposes to the key mission of the Church: being a sign and channel 

of God’s nonviolent love. 

We seek to live nonviolently because that is the way God calls us to live. At the same time, the 

way of nonviolence can often create possibilities for ending violence and for nurturing the seeds 

of peace and justice, as nonviolent engagement in contexts of enormous violence and injustice 

throughout the world has increasingly revealed. To reaffirm the centrality of Gospel nonviolence 

does not mean retreating from conflict, violence, or injustice. Indeed, it is often the most effective 

and robust response.19  

Were the Church to embrace Gospel nonviolence in a thoroughgoing way, it would prompt both 

spiritually-grounded and practical alternatives—within a growing culture of Jesus’s nonviolence 

within the global Catholic community—for standing against violence, including in circumstances 

for which just war theories are often invoked. 

In faithfulness to Jesus’s nonviolence and in response to the worldwide crisis of violence, we 

are called to nurture a new identity as nonviolent people in a nonviolent Church, with a clear and 

deliberate commitment to preaching, teaching, activating, and boldly proclaiming the dynamics of 

Jesus’s nonviolence at every level of our global communion. To return good for evil, to break the 

chains of escalatory violence and revenge, to stand up to systemic injustice not with violence but 

with determined love, and to fully trust the God of love and truth rather than the power of 

violence—were these dimensions of the theology and spirituality of Gospel nonviolence more 

deliberately integrated into the life of the Church we would more clearly recognize the sacred way 

and work of peace, reconciliation and nonviolent transformation in our time of monumental crisis 

and opportunity. 

It is in this spirit that the 2016 Nonviolence and Just Peace Conference urged the Church to no 

longer use or teach just war theories. As the conference document declares,  

 

The Word of God, the witness of Jesus, should never be used to justify violence, 

injustice or war. […] Too often the “just war theory” has been used to endorse 

rather than prevent or limit war. Suggesting that a “just war” is possible also 

undermines the moral imperative to develop tools and capacities for nonviolent 

transformation of conflict.20 

 



Renewing Catholicism  14 
 

When reflecting on the role of just war teachings, Cardinal Turkson, Prefect of the Vatican’s 

Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, said,  

 

In that case, Pope Francis would say: “You don’t stop an aggression by being an 

aggressor. You don’t stop a conflict by inciting another conflict. You don’t stop a 

war by starting another war.” Turkson continued, “It doesn’t stop. We’ve seen it all 

around us. Trying to stop the aggressor in Iraq has not stopped war. Trying to stop 

the aggressor in Libya has not stopped war. It’s not stopped the war in any place. 

We do not stop war by starting another war.”21 

  

As part of its work, the 2016 Rome conference directly challenged the implicit assumption that 

violence is justified because “there is no other way” and, instead, promoted, the new moral 

framework of “nonviolence and just peace.” Just peace includes building a culture of active 

nonviolence and using and spreading a wide range of nonviolent “best practices” now existing that 

can be deployed even in the midst of intractable conflicts, including third-party unarmed 

accompaniment, unarmed civilian protection, peacebuilding strategies, restorative justice 

processes, social-movement building, and solidarity work. As the conference document put it, “A 

Just Peace approach offers a vision and an ethic to build peace as well as to prevent, defuse, and 

to heal the damage of violent conflict. This ethic includes a commitment to human dignity and 

thriving relationships, with specific criteria, virtues, and practices to guide our actions. We 

recognize that peace requires justice and justice requires peacemaking.”22 

But a Church-wide recommitment to nonviolence will extend well beyond the question of just 

war. Nonviolence in general, and Gospel nonviolence in particular, are not limited to issues of war 

and peace, or even narrow issues of social change. Nonviolence is a paradigm of the fulness of life 

that challenges—and supersedes—the paradigm of violence. It is an orientation and power 

fundamentally deeper than the orientation and power of violence and invites us to live lives that 

challenge violence and build constructive, nonviolent options. In spite of the catastrophe of 

violence we face today, numerous facets of the nonviolent life are growing and deepening, 

including nonviolent communication, compassionate listening, restorative justice peace circles, 

peaceful parenting, trauma healing, anti-racism training, diplomacy and nonviolent community-

building for personal and interpersonal transformation. Nonviolence is the process of building the 



15  Butigan 
 

  

infrastructure for nonviolent lives, relationships, communities, and cultures. It includes education 

and training; violence prevention and intervention; restorative and distributive justice; just peace 

and just peace approaches, including nonviolent peacemaking and peacebuilding, unarmed civilian 

protection, and civilian-based defense; nonviolent action and social movement-building; and the 

long-term process of fostering just civil societies and cultures of peace and nonviolence.  

As the Church increasingly explores embracing the spirituality and practice of nonviolence, it 

is invited to reflect on how these and many other facets of the nonviolent life can be developed 

and deepened within its universal communion. 

 

Integrating Nonviolence Throughout the Church 

We need a clear message from the Church—from the pope to the grassroots—that 

the Church stands for nonviolence. […] The Church is a mother and has a strong 

weapon: Love for everybody. In South Sudan, the Church has been with all the 

people but never ever advocated for weapons. […] The Church has to be a place 

where there are no guns, and no fear. Whenever I am asked to turn over my weapons 

[at a checkpoint], I say: “My Lord has already come and taken them all away.” 

 –Bishop Paride Taban, South Sudan23 

 

Pope Francis is increasingly inviting the Church to re-commit itself to Jesus’s nonviolence. In a 

letter to Cardinal Blase Cupich of the Archdiocese of Chicago, Illinois (U.S.A.), Pope Francis 

wrote: “The consistent practice of nonviolence has broken barriers, bound wounds, and healed 

nations.”24 In his 2017 World Day of Peace on nonviolence, the Pope pointed out that nonviolence 

is what Jesus taught and modelled, saying, “To be true followers of Jesus today […] includes 

embracing his teaching about nonviolence.”25 And toward the end of this message, he committed 

the Church to translate this resolve into action when he declared, “I pledge the assistance of the 

Church in every effort to build peace through active and creative nonviolence.”26 

In commenting on this landmark text, Terrence Rynne writes, “The pope is signalling a true 

return to the sources for the Catholic Church: Sacred Scripture and the traditions of the early 

Church. Just as the return to the sources (ressourcement) by theologians such as Henri de Lubac, 

Yves Congar, and Karl Rahner fuelled the renaissance of Catholic theology and the magnificent 



Renewing Catholicism  16 
 

documents of the Second Vatican Council, so also today the Pope is returning in a fresh way to 

the sources.”27  

Indeed, the Vatican II documents were magnificent—but it took many steps and much effort to 

begin to translate the impulses toward reform embedded within these towering declarations into 

concrete changes within the Church, a transformation that in many ways is still ongoing. Similarly, 

a shift which would see the Church affirm the centrality of Jesus’s nonviolence—moving 

nonviolence from the periphery of Catholic thought to the center of its life of faith—will require 

much commitment, creativity, and labor. One effort in this direction for several years has been 

undertaken by the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, a project of Pax Christi International, which 

has been exploring the advancement of Gospel nonviolence in the Church.28  

Most importantly, this possibility will be rooted in our openness to the movement of the Holy 

Spirit, and our prayerful response to our God who calls humanity to the way of peace and 

nonviolence. As the 2016 Nonviolence and Just Peace Conference’s final statement put it, “In 

every age, the Holy Spirit graces the Church with the wisdom to respond to the challenges of its 

time. In response to what is a global epidemic of violence, which Pope Francis has labelled a 

‘world war in installments,’ we are being called to invoke, pray over, teach and take decisive 

action.”29 In this spirit, we invite the Church to: 

 

 Integrate Gospel nonviolence explicitly throughout the life and work of the Church, 

including in its preaching, education, formation, and ministries at every level of the 

institution: its dioceses, parishes, agencies, schools, universities, seminaries, religious 

orders, and voluntary associations; supporting these initiatives by establishing an office 

focused on nonviolence and just peace within the Vatican (for example, at the Dicastery 

for Promoting Integral Human Development) and in each diocese around the world; 

 Develop nonviolence educational programming in Catholic universities (including 

departments, majors, and institutes in nonviolence and peace studies), seminaries 

(training in nonviolence preaching, theology, ethics, and pastoral formation), high 

schools, and elementary schools throughout the world;  

 Encourage Catholics worldwide to study nonviolence and to engage energetically in 

the development of more effective nonviolent practices for protecting vulnerable 



17  Butigan 
 

  

communities, preventing violent conflict, transforming structures of violence, and 

promoting cultures of integral peace inside and outside the Church; 

 Research and spread the biblical foundations of nonviolence in the Hebrew Bible and 

the Christian Scriptures; 

 Recover and elucidate the contribution of nonviolence to classical themes of Christian 

theology, including Creation, Anthropology, Christology, Pneumatology, and 

Ecclesiology; 

 Articulate and promote a new moral framework based on active nonviolence and just 

peace (including in the Catechism) that will enable the language of the institutional 

Church as a moral authority to be more consistent with the nonviolent creativity of the 

Gospel and its transformative initiatives which break the vicious cycles of violence, 

including on the Church’s teaching on war and peace; 

 Advocate both inside and outside the Church for increased investment in key 

nonviolent practices, such as restorative justice, nonviolent communication, unarmed 

civilian protection, trauma-healing, nonviolent resistance, and nonviolent civilian-

based defense; 

 Call on the world to develop comprehensive nonviolent approaches to the monumental 

challenges of our time, including war, nuclear weapons, the arms trade, poverty, 

economic inequality, racism, sexism, climate change, and environmental destruction; 

and 

 Learn from and partner with the world’s religions to spread and activate nonviolence 

for peace and justice between religious communities and throughout the world. 

 

Here are four foundational elements that would advance Gospel nonviolence in the Church: (1) 

a major Church statement on nonviolence; (2) nonviolence and pastoral life; (3) methods of 

nonviolence; and (4) reflections on Church’s violence and nonviolence. 

 

Major Church Teaching: A Foundation for the Nonviolent Shift 

Building on papal and Church statements and teachings on nonviolence and peace promulgated 

over the past half-century,30 a new major Church teaching on nonviolence (for example, an 

encyclical or other authoritative document) could provide a comprehensive theological, pastoral, 



Renewing Catholicism  18 
 

and ecclesiastical framework for the universal Church at every level to renew its commitment to 

the nonviolent way of Jesus.  

While the process of affirming and embracing the centrality of nonviolence to the life of the 

Church could happen in various ways, an encyclical would boldly invite the Church, and the larger 

world, to focus clearly and thoughtfully on this foundational ethic. This document would: 

 

 Invite the Church to recover the paradigm shift of nonviolence to which Jesus called us 

two millennia ago and invite the larger world to mainstream nonviolence in response 

to the crisis of monumental violence and injustice facing our planet. 

 Call on the entire Church to embark on a spiritual journey of conversion, 

transformation, and healing rooted in a renewed commitment to the way of faithful 

nonviolence as lived out in so many facets of the Christian life.  

 Engender numerous initiatives within the Church, including, for example, language in 

the Catechism affirming the centrality of nonviolence; the proclamation of a Holy Year 

of Nonviolence; and a call for a global formation process rooted in Gospel nonviolence.  

 Provide a clear framework from which to address innumerable monumental challenges 

of our time, from the violence of rampant poverty to the catastrophe of war; from the 

destruction of the Amazon to the threat of nuclear weapons; from the systemic 

oppression of migrants to the unspeakable suffering caused by human trafficking; and 

many others. Nonviolence is a theological and practical framework that provides an 

integrating horizon or links these and many other forms of violence, and an encyclical 

could illuminate this.  

 Offer a clear moral compass for Christians and non-Christians alike in confronting the 

realities of direct, cultural, and structural violence around the world, supported by 

specific approaches for transforming and healing this violence.  

 

This major pronouncement would deepen and broaden the Church’s teaching on nonviolence 

and form the basis for accelerating its theological research, catechesis, formation, and pastoral 

engagement in this regard. It would offer a comprehensive vision, but also lay out practical steps 

forward for explicitly fostering Gospel nonviolence at every level of the Church.  

 



19  Butigan 
 

  

Gospel Nonviolence and Pastoral Life 

The nonviolent renewal being imagined by the Universal Church will come fully alive when it is 

deeply rooted in the local parish. Following in the footsteps of Jesus and the early Church, each 

local parish is called to be a nonviolent community, inspired and formed by the call—and 

challenge—to live Gospel nonviolence.  

The nonviolent parish is a space for worshipping the God of peace and nonviolence, learning 

the ways of nonviolence, supporting one another in living the nonviolent life, and being a resource 

for nonviolent transformation in one’s neighborhood, larger community, and world. The 

nonviolent parish is supported liturgically (worship services, preaching, sacraments, and 

paraliturgical practices illuminating Jesus’s nonviolence), pastorally (spirituality, formation, 

retreats, and trainings in the principles and methods of Gospel nonviolence, restorative justice, and 

conflict resolution), and ministerially (integration of nonviolence principles and methods in the 

parish’s spectrum of direct service programs or social justice projects). Developing theology, 

programming, preaching resources, and training curricula to support these and other components 

of the nonviolent parish will be key to advancing Gospel nonviolence in the Church.  

 

Promoting and Spreading the Methods of Nonviolence 

Imagine all Catholics being trained to transform conflict and prevent violence in their families, 

their neighborhoods, their workplaces, their cities, and even in their churches.31 Imagine strong 

Catholic participation in programs for unarmed civilian protection around the world. Imagine if 

Catholics everywhere were encouraged to study and consciously join or even organize strategic 

nonviolent campaigns to achieve the just and peaceful world and the healthy planet for which we 

all long. Imagine if Catholics advocated actively for less spending on military and for increased 

investment in diplomacy, unarmed civilian protection, early warning systems, trauma healing, 

trauma-informed programs, and training in conflict transformation, as well as on just and 

sustainable development, education, and environmental healing. Affirming the centrality of 

Gospel nonviolence to the life and mission of the Church would more fully open these and many 

other possibilities of living the faithful, nonviolent life of Jesus in this time of crisis and 

opportunity. 

 

 



Renewing Catholicism  20 
 

The Church’s Violence and Nonviolence 

To call on the Church to embrace Gospel nonviolence means also respectfully urging it to grapple 

with its own violence. As the final document from the Nonviolence and Just Peace Conference 

declared, “We confess that the people of God has betrayed this central message of the Gospel many 

times, participating in wars, persecution, oppression, exploitation, and discrimination.”32 To affirm 

Gospel nonviolence is to confess our own violence and to perennially open ourselves, as people 

and as Church, to conversion to the way of Jesus’s nonviolence. At the heart of Gospel nonviolence 

is a spiritual journey comprised of renouncing our belief in violence, of breaking the chains of 

retaliatory violence, and of integrating this spirituality of transformation and healing at every level 

of our lives and our Church. 

To urge the world to take up nonviolence requires the Church to humbly address its historical 

and contemporary violence. Bringing the spirit of the nonviolent Jesus to every level of the Church 

would include reckoning with clergy sexual violence and other patterns of violence and injustice 

by confessing this violence, acknowledging the harm, engaging in restorative justice, and opening 

to metanoia including personal and structural dimensions.  

It is Gospel nonviolence that calls us to this process of conversion, new life, and restored 

community. To live Gospel nonviolence includes acknowledging our violence, seeking 

forgiveness, making amends, praying for healing, and seeking to foster unity and reconciliation. 

 

Conclusion 

The final statement of the 2016 Nonviolence and Just Peace Conference in Rome declared,  

 

We live in a time of tremendous suffering, widespread trauma and fear linked to 

militarization, economic injustice, climate change, and a myriad of other specific 

forms of violence. In this context of normalized and systemic violence, those of us 

who stand in the Christian tradition are called to recognize the centrality of active 

nonviolence to the vision and message of Jesus; to the life and practice of the 

Catholic Church; and to our long-term vocation of healing and reconciling both 

people and the planet.33 

  



21  Butigan 
 

  

We stand at a crossroads. Were the Church to embrace nonviolence in a robust and thoroughgoing 

way, it would reclaim the nonviolence of Jesus and the early Church at the heart of its identity and 

spiritual journey in the Twenty-First Century. At the same time, it would likely contribute 

powerfully to a global shift mobilizing many nonviolent solutions to the monumental challenges 

of our time.  

By deliberately recommitting to the core Gospel value of nonviolence and taking concrete steps 

to bring it alive throughout the institution and the world, the Church could help the entire global 

community step back from the brink of catastrophic violence and begin to move more forthrightly 

toward building a culture of just peace and environmental healing.  

 

 

Notes 

1. Emmanuel Katongole, “The Challenge, Complexity and Failure of Violence,” a 

presentation at “Path of Nonviolence: Toward a Culture of Peace,” a seminar held at the 

Vatican April 4–5, 2019. Dr. Katongole is a professor of Theology and Peace Studies and 

the University of Notre Dame. 

2. This paper summarizes and excerpts the content of the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative’s 

unpublished research document, “Advancing Nonviolence and Just Peace in the Church and the 

World: Biblical, Theological, Ethical, Pastoral and Strategic Dimensions of Nonviolence” (July 

2019), including its “Executive Summary” and “Introduction” (authored by Marie Dennis, Rose 

Berger, and Ken Butigan) and the chapter entitled, “Integrating Nonviolence throughout the 

Catholic Church” (authored by Felix Mushobozi, Boniface Mendes, Marie Dennis, Rose Berger, 

and Ken Butigan). 

3. 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. 

4. The word “nonviolence,” while it has a long history in other traditions, is a relatively new 

term in Christianity. Increasingly, however, theologians, Church leadership, and Christians 

in many parts of the world have come to see that this word most effectively characterizes 

Jesus’s way—a way that combines both an unmistakable rejection of violence and the 

power of love and truth in action for justice, peace, and integrity of creation. Nonviolence 

is a paradigm of the fullness of life, which its etymological roots shine light on. 



Renewing Catholicism  22 
 

Nonviolence is the English translation of the Sanskrit term “ahimsa” (literally “non-

violence”). Gandhi drew on this ancient term to convey his powerful, active, and deeply 

grounded approach. As nonviolence scholar Michael Nagler writes in The Search for a 

Nonviolent Future (Novato, CA: Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004), 

 

In Sanskrit abstract nouns often name a fundamental positive quality 

indirectly, by negating its opposite. Thus, courage is conveyed by “abhaya,” 

which literally means “non-fear”; or we encounter “akrodha,” “non-anger,” 

for “kindness,” and the Buddha’s “avera,” “non-hatred,” meaning “love.” 

The reason ancient India’s great thinkers expressed themselves in this 

apparently oblique way is that phenomena such as love, absolute courage, 

and compassion are primordial things that cannot be fully expressed in 

fallible, conditioned human language. […] “Ahimsa” is not really a negative 

term […]. “Ahimsa” suggests something profoundly positive, which would 

not be possible to name directly. “Ahimsa,” a kind of double negative, 

actually stands for something so original that we cannot quite capture it with 

our weak words.  

5. Greg Moses, Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of 

Nonviolence (New York: The Guilford Press, 1997). 

6. “Transforming Power,” Alternatives to Violence Project International, 2019, 

https://avp.international/section/section-1-the-building-blocks-other-workshop-

content/transforming-power/.  

7. Jonathan Schell, The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and The Will of the 

People (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003).  

8. “Why Nonviolence?”, Campaign Nonviolence: A Project of Pace e Bene Nonviolence 

Service, https://paceebene.org/whynonviolence. 

9. Stellan Vinthagen, A Theory of Nonviolent Action: How Civil Resistance Works (London: 

Zed Books, 2015). 

10. “Nonviolence 101,” War Resisters League,  

https://www.warresisters.org/store/nonviolence-101. 



23  Butigan 
 

  

11. “The Power and Practice of Nonviolence,” a chapter in “Advancing Nonviolence and Just 

Peace in the Church and the World: Biblical, Theological, Ethical, Pastoral and Strategic 

Dimensions of Nonviolence” (July 2019). This same chapter offers this more detailed 

overview of some of the facets of nonviolence:  

Nonviolence has increasingly been unleashed to create powerful social 

change. As Gandhi said, “Nonviolence is as old as the hills.” Humanity has 

been exercising this power from its beginning and has therefore survived 

and transformed the destructiveness of escalating and retaliatory violence. 

Beginning in the Twentieth Century, this momentum accelerated with 

Gandhi’s application of nonviolence to win Indian independence and with 

the use of disciplined nonviolence by the U.S. civil rights movement. These 

and other pioneering campaigns have inspired countless nonviolent 

struggles. Some examples include successful pro-democracy movements in 

Spain and Portugal (1970s), the Philippines (1986), Chile (1980s), 

Argentina (1980s), Soviet bloc states including the Velvet Revolution in 

Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, etc. (1989); the thwarted coup in 

the U.S.S.R. (1991); South Africa (1980s–1990s); Indonesia (1998); East 

Timor (2000); Serbia (2000); Georgia (2003); Ukraine (2004); Liberia 

(2005); and Tunisia and Egypt (2011). These are not isolated cases. The 

Global Nonviolent Action Database has documented over 1,000 nonviolent 

campaigns, with many of them successfully achieving their objectives. But 

nonviolence is not limited to civil resistance or large-scale social change. It 

is a transformative process applicable to all dimensions of life. It is personal, 

interpersonal and social-structural. It mobilizes nonviolent approaches, 

nonviolent resistance and nonviolent action for social change—but also the 

everyday techniques and practices of nonviolence. 

12. Pope Benedict XVI, “Angelus,” The Holy See, February 18, 2007, 

http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/angelus/2007/documents/hf_ben-

xvi_ang_20070218.html. 



Renewing Catholicism  24 
 

13. For a fuller discussion of these formulations, see “Biblical Foundations of Nonviolence,” 

a chapter in “Advancing Nonviolence and Just Peace in the Church and the World: Biblical, 

Theological, Ethical, Pastoral and Strategic Dimensions of Nonviolence” (July 2019). 

14. Pope Benedict XVI, Interview, The Holy See, April 11, 2011,  

http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2011/april/documents/hf_ben-

xvi_spe_20110422_intervista.html. 

15. Dominican Sr. Nazik Matty, presentation, Nonviolence and Just Peace Conference, the 

Vatican, April 11–13, 2016. 

16. Francisco De Roux, SJ, presentation, Nonviolence and Just Peace Conference, the Vatican, 

April 11–13, 2016. 

17. Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of 

Domination (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1992). 

18. See David Carroll Cochran, Catholic Realism and the Abolition of War (Maryknoll, NY: 

Orbis, 2014) for a systematic critique of the Catholic Church’s just war theology. See also 

the case for just peace as a “new moral framework” replacing just war in two chapters of 

“Advancing Nonviolence and Just Peace in the Church and the World: Biblical, 

Theological, Ethical, Pastoral and Strategic Dimensions of Nonviolence” (July 2019): “A 

New Moral Framework for Catholic Theology” and “A New Moral Framework Applied.” 

19. Empirical research has demonstrated that nonviolent approaches are twice as effective as 

violent ones. See Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The 

Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). See 

also documented “just peace” case studies in Appendix 2, “Examples of the New Moral 

Framework Applies, in “Advancing Nonviolence and Just Peace in the Church and the 

World: Biblical, Theological, Ethical, Pastoral and Strategic Dimensions of Nonviolence” 

(July 2019). 

20. “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/. 

21. Joshua J. McElwee, “Cardinal Turkson: ‘We do not stop war by starting another war,’” 

National Catholic Reporter September 20, 2016,  



25  Butigan 
 

  

https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/cardinal-turkson-we-do-not-stop-war-starting-

another-war#.V-GI-C6WIRU.twitter. 

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

Nonviolence.” 

23. Bishop Paride Taban, presentation, Nonviolence and Just Peace Conference, the Vatican, 

April 11–13, 2016. 

24. Letter from Pope Francis to Cardinal Blase Cupich, April 4, 2017. 

25. Pope Francis, “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace.”  

26. Ibid. 

27. Terrence Rynne, “Why Pope Francis’ World Day of Peace Message is Such a 

Breakthrough,” Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, 2017, 

https://nonviolencejustpeace.net/2017/04/10/why-pope-francis-world-day-of-peace-

message-is-such-a-breakthrough/.   

28. The Vatican has co-sponsored two important gatherings advancing nonviolence. From 

April 11–13, 2016, the Holy See’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (now the 

Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development) and Pax Christi International co-

led a landmark conference at the Vatican entitled “Nonviolence and Just Peace.” From 

April 4–5, 2019, the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and Pax Christi 

International’s Catholic Nonviolence Initiative co-sponsored a follow-up gathering entitled 

“Path of Nonviolence: Towards a Culture of Peace.” The 2016 conference brought together 

participants from around the world who represented a broad spectrum of Church 

experience in creative nonviolence and peacebuilding to contribute to a renewed Catholic 

understanding of nonviolence. In the wake of this gathering, Pax Christi International 

launched the global Catholic Nonviolence Initiative (CNI), which has played an important 

role in moving these possibilities forward and has seen many developments over its first 

three years. Pope Francis’s 2017 World Day of Peace message was the first ever on 

nonviolence, a theme that was proposed by conference participants. Many regional and 

local conferences on nonviolence have been held around the world, including at a series of 

Catholic universities. Curricula and publications promoting the way and methods of 

nonviolence have been produced. And since the 2016 conference, Pope Francis has 

energetically called for nonviolence throughout the world in many statements and 



Renewing Catholicism  26 
 

interviews. Beginning in 2017 the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative organized an 

international popular process of discussion, discernment and research on key themes 

related to nonviolence and just peace, involving theologians, academics, peacemakers, and 

some Church leadership. The purpose of this process, encouraged by Vatican officials, was 

to gather and produce material that could be a resource for a potential encyclical or other 

major Church teaching. The April 2019 Rome consultation focused on these findings. 

29. “An Appeal to the Catholic Church to Recommit to the Centrality of Gospel Nonviolence.”  

30. For an overview of these documents, see “The Voice of the Church on Nonviolence—

Papal Statements and Church Documents,” a chapter in “Advancing Nonviolence and Just 

Peace in the Church and the World: Biblical, Theological, Ethical, Pastoral and Strategic 

Dimensions of Nonviolence” (July 2019). 

31. This section is from Marie Dennis, “Integrating Nonviolence Throughout the Catholic 

Church,” chapter in Catholic Nonviolence Initiative’s unpublished research document, 

“Advancing Nonviolence and Just Peace in the Church and the World: Biblical, 

Theological, Ethical, Pastoral and Strategic Dimensions of Nonviolence” (July 2019). 

32. “An Appeal to the Catholic Church to Recommit to the Centrality of Gospel Nonviolence.”  

33. Ibid. 

 


