The Synod centers nonviolence, an “emerging” issue for the Church

By Johnny Zokovitch

Earlier this week, the General Secretariat of the Synod published the final report of Study Group #9 which proposes to address some of the more difficult questions that the Synod tackled, including the issue of active nonviolence. The authors of the final report made a conscious decision to employ a different terminology than was previously used during the synodal process. Instead of referring to difficult doctrinal, pastoral and ethical questions – specifically here the experiences of LGBTQ+ people of faith and the experience of active nonviolence – as “controversial” issues, they chose to reframe them as “emerging” issues, stating that “the aim is not merely to resolve problems but to build the common good through relational conversion, shared learning and transparency.”

The inclusion of active nonviolence and its treatment as an “emerging” issue is another step along the way that began in earnest in 2016 with a first-of-its-kind conference on nonviolence and just peace, co-sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (now the Dicastery for Integral Human Development) and Pax Christi International. 

Pope Francis addressed the participants at that conference – clergy, women religious, academics and peace practitioners from around the world who had lived through and studied situations of violent conflict – encouraging them that their “thoughts on revitalizing the tools of nonviolence, and of active nonviolence in particular, will be a needed and positive contribution.”

Those contributions have blossomed in hundreds of significant ways over the past 10 years and continuing development of the Church’s understanding and practice of nonviolence led by the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative and the Catholic Institute for Nonviolence is evident again in this latest synodal report on “Theological criteria and synodal methodologies for shared discernment of emerging doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues.”

It is in the third part of the report that active nonviolence is most explicitly treated, but the themes and tools of nonviolence are brought to bear throughout. Most importantly, the study group sought to embrace the characteristics of the synodal process itself in treating emerging issues like active nonviolence, suggesting that the way forward for the Church on difficult questions is not to adopt a “problem-solving approach,” but to engage in the “dialogue necessary for the ‘relational conversion’ that the entire People of God is called to embrace on its synodal journey.”

To that end, the report doesn’t propose a definitive answer as to the place of nonviolence within the teaching and practices of the Church, but rather invites the Church to engage a series of questions rooted in the lived experiences of her members, especially those who have lived out the mission of the gospel amidst war and conflict. As an example, testimony that the final report draws from comes from one such experience, that of an activist with OTPOR, a youth-led nonviolent resistance movement in Serbia in the 1990s that drew on the witness of the early Church and contributed to the peaceful fall of Milošević. 

There is much to unpack in the final report, but I think the natural place to start is with the questions that the report’s authors highlight as prompts for further engagement and dialogue within the Church at every level. Those questions are:

• How do we interpret the practices of active nonviolence and forgiveness exemplified here (in the testimony of the OTPOR activist) – realized by people of goodwill, believers of different Christian denominations and religions, and non-believers alike – which took place in a specific context of conflict but have proven fruitful in other situations as well? Can we relegate them to the realm of naive and irrelevant initiatives, separating prophecy from real life?
  
• What are our reactions to the biblical passages that show Jesus’ attitudes toward unjust aggression and violence? Pope Francis recalled several of these passages to indicate that evil is to be faced neither with violence nor with passivity, but with the force of good. Quoting Benedict XVI, Francis reminded us that Jesus’ command to love our enemies “does not consist in succumbing to evil…, but in responding to evil with good (cf. Rom. 12:17-21), and thereby breaking the chain of injustice.” Francis likewise declared that: “Faced with too much violence spreading throughout the world, we are called to a greater nonviolence, which does not mean passivity, but active promotion of the good.” In a powerful text which has also been cited by Leo XIV, Francis reflected on Jesus’ call to nonviolence: “‘Put your sword back into its sheath.’ […] In Luke’s version of the Gospel, Jesus says to his disciples: ‘No more of this!’ Jesus’ painful and powerful ‘no more’ echoes through the centuries and reaches us. It is a commandment we cannot avoid. No more swords, weapons, violence, and war!”
  
• Are we aware that the process of forgiveness is not about forgetting, remaining silent, or succumbing to the violence of injustice, but rather involves an act of remembrance that leads to a new relationship with the memory, as a liberating exodus from the snares of the past?
  
• Are we aware of situations – in personal, social, national, and international relations – where the effectiveness of alternative methods to the use of (armed) force in addressing situations of injustice and violence has been demonstrated?
  
• The Church’s history of holiness often bears witness to the Gospel way of navigating conflict, yet it also painfully reveals the community’s resistance to the Lord’s call. In light of this, what proposals can we imagine within our own contexts to root out violence and its underlying causes, so that we may face conflicts with attitudes that are more closely aligned with the Gospel? Are there actions or omissions through which we contribute to perpetuating situations of injustice or violence in the context where we live?
  
• OTPOR’s way of proceeding is rich with possibilities that could inspire actions to be undertaken in a synodal Church: which steps could be intentionally adopted to consolidate, in our specific context, practices capable of integrating different skills and perspectives in a collaborative way? 

At the end of the 2016 conference on nonviolence and just peace, participants issued an appeal challenging the broader Church to explore a “new framework that is consistent with Gospel nonviolence … a vision and an ethic to build peace as well as to prevent, defuse, and to heal the damage of violent conflict.” 

This synodal report offers further evidence for how imperative it is that the Church deepens this dialogue, even providing some of the questions to fuel our discussion. And we should take the centering of active nonviolence in the report as encouragement, evidence for how far those conversations begun a decade ago have already resounded.

Johnny Zokovitch is the former executive director of Pax Christi USA. He currently serves on the board of thePax Christi International Fund for Peace and is in pastoral leadership atSt. Cronan Catholic Church in St. Louis. Read more from Johnny at https://johnnyzokovitch.substack.com/and sign up there to receive his articles directly to your email inbox.