The Hope for Peace

In Our Time and Place

October 7, 2003 

British A. Robinson

Director, Social/International Ministries

The U.S. Jesuit Conference 

Your Excellencies, Secretary-General Kofi Annan, our Co-sponsors—the Holy See Mission, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the Path to Peace Foundation—Ladies and Gentleman: 

I cannot tell you how honored I am the Holy See has invited me to share my reflections on this occasion of the 40^th anniversary of Pope John XXIII’s encyclical, Pacem in Terris, and the Silver Jubilee of the Pontificate of Pope John Paul II.  

My perspective is as a servant of Christ’s mission—a Catholic, lay woman committed to the Church and its teaching that includes Pacem in Terris. It is most significant that Pope John XXIII addressed this Encyclical not only to the hierarchy of the Church but also to the clergy, the faithful, and all people of good will. 

When Pacem in Terris was issued in 1963 I wasn’t yet born. I was born in the late Sixties, when America’s involvement in Vietnam escalated, and the protests for civil rights increased in pitch. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King had launched his Poor People’s Campaign, and the women’s liberation movement was taking shape. 

Many of the people involved in these movements knew nothing of Pacem in Terris, but, collectively, they were acting on behalf of the human spirit, drawing on its collective conscience, and trying to set itself right with God.  

The encyclical is almost shocking in its simplicity, spellbinding in its truth. Its goal is to lay a path to help mankind find unity in an increasingly complex world. Simply put, it holds the key to establishing universal peace on earth. 

Pacem in Terris calls on all “people of good will” to observe the divinely established order if Peace on Earth is to prevail.  

As a member of the faithful and as a person of good will, I am reminded that peace in the world must come from within ourselves. Peace will come if we stay connected to God, our Creator. Peace in the world will only come if we find God in everything, in all things. 

If we want peace on earth, we first must be willing to reconcile ourselves with God. When we reconcile ourselves with God—that is, taking time out to pray and reflect on our own lives—we get connected to God. We hear God’s call and feel His love for us. A love that calls us to our purpose in life, and to the freedom we need from fear. The freedom we need to connect with our vocation of peacemaking in the world today—IN OUR TIME AND OUR PLACE. 

When we are free from fear, we can see that creating peace on earth can be realized only if we “extend [the] preferential option for the poor beyond relief and charity, beyond social and economic development, toward ‘reconciliation’… [and] the consolidation of constructive social relations between different groups of the population, including parties to the conflict” {America: The National Catholic Weekly, vol. 189, no. 6, September 8, 2003 by R. Scott Appleby} 

Pacem in Terris speaks to our heart, and what we know to be true, yet our fear often prevents us from putting it into practice. Our fear leads us to think, as the encyclical says, “that the relationships that bind men together could only be governed by force.”  

But the voice of peace continues to call to us. We don’t always hear it, or we dismiss it because others refuse to credit it. In the societies in which we live, peace is not a big news story. Instead, we study war like never before with “embedded journalists” reporting to us on its every detail.  

But where is equal time for peace? 

Peace is not just the resolution of conflict. Peace must become a way of life for us. Although Pope John XXIII said this at the height of the Cold War, this mandate is just as urgent today in this post-Cold War world.  

If peace is to become a way of life we must not forget the children; for it is they who shall inherit the earth. Today, too many of these young people, our most precious resource, are suffering because of a lack of basic health care and education. The ability to educate and to provide basic medical care falls within our capabilities. In this context, the role of women, especially mothers, must be appreciated. 

As individuals, we must join Church-based and other efforts to promote international development. We must investigate what leads some developing nations towards peace, while others remain embroiled in conflict.  

I find there are currently two conditions at the center of most civil conflicts around the globe. They are corporate trade in natural resources—oil, diamonds, timber, and coltran—and abject poverty which often leads local populations to engage in the trafficking of small arms and light weapons.  

The fact is, there is a clear link between corporate trade in natural resources—oil, diamonds, timber, and coltran—and the abject poverty and injustice that lead to civil conflict. Conflict is more prevalent in countries that depend heavily upon the extraction of natural resources for their earnings, in part because rebel groups can extort the gains from this trade to finance their operations. Moreover, natural resources fuel violence because people living in the localities where resources are found frequently feel compelled to secede, most often violently. 

Something can and must be done. 

To establish peace in these countries, we must reduce the market for civil conflict. 

The nations of Chad and Cameroon had every reason to fall prey to the kind of poverty, injustice, and violence that has befallen other African countries that are equally rich in natural resources. But they haven’t. Chad and Cameroon have emerging but stable democracies. Their citizens live in peace, and the revenues from their resources are being earmarked to build healthy and productive communities. How did peace take root here, and not elsewhere?

Various international players worked collaboratively with the governments of Chad and Cameroon to ensure that corporate trade served everyone justly. The parties involved in the Chad-Cameroon oil-pipeline project agreed to manage and share the wealth generated by the oil trade in a transparent and equitable manner, using the revenues to reduce poverty and improve the lives of the people of Chad and Cameroon.

As Pope Paul VI, successor to Pope John XXIII, in the final paragraph of his 1967 encyclical, Populorum Progressio, said, “The new name for peace is development. Efforts at building peace today are linked inextricably to efforts of economic development.” This is so true. 

These kinds of arrangements do not appear spontaneously. It takes will among individuals. And, just as the Pacem in Terris says, these individuals must act out of conscience—their innate understanding of what is right before God. 

We cannot underestimate the power of the individual. At its most basic level, peace will come when all of us, as individuals, take responsibility for the fate of others. In order to move toward global peace and lasting justice, we must engage in a spirituality that re-connects us to the “truth” of the inherent dignity of every person created in God’s image.  

For the last 40 years, international organizations and NGOs have done just that! On this 40th anniversary of Pacem in Terris, I specifically would like to praise and recognize NGOs for their diligence and commitment to global peace and justice. NGOs have demonstrated their importance in areas of the world where there is no peace, or peace has been a long time coming.

It is also important to mention the new, growing and maturing approach to Catholic peacebuilding. This new approach takes into account...“the experience of Catholic Relief Services and other Caritas member agencies working in settings of post-cold war conflict…Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sudan—[places where]…violence erupted within national borders among ethnic, religious and cultural groups.” “Places where relief and development efforts could no longer be undertaken in isolation from cultural and communal dynamics.” {Ibid} 

As a result of these experiences, key Catholic stakeholders have established the new Catholic Peacebuilding Network. This initiative is an attempt to be more intentional about integrating the tools of conflict resolution…it is the lens through which we view and promote human dignity… the “peacebuilding lens”. Institutions like CRS, CARITAS, and JRS play a vital role in bringing about global peace and justice. {Ibid} 

In fact, an example of this with which I am personally familiar with is the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), an international, primarily lay-run NGO which now enjoys consultative status within the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the UN.  

Every day, in 50 countries around the world, JRS workers accompany, serve, and advocate for refugees. JRS helps to bring about peace by touching and changing the hearts and minds of people living in conflict zones and amidst civil upheaval. Most recently, JRS has been working in West Africa, in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.

Along with giving displaced people practical skills for building new lives, these West African projects are teaching affected parties to see alternatives to oppressive power and violence. All of this is bringing about social and economic development, positive change, and ultimately, peace.  

Like the JRS workers and those who work at dozens of the agencies operated by the UN, who put themselves on the front lines, amidst danger, violence, and conflict, we, too, must embed ourselves in efforts designed to create peace. We must become “embedded peacemakers.” 

But not all of us can join relief or development missions. Still, as lay people we can get more involved in promoting peace by educating ourselves about the issues, donating money, raising consciousness in our communities, and holding our respective governments accountable. Concretely, we should ask and press governments, non-state actors, multi/trans-national corporations, NGOs, and the UN to prioritize and support efforts to reduce the market for civil conflict.  

We need to encourage models like the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline which forward and promote economic growth and development opportunities. 

We need to advocate for trade agreements that incorporate good policy and good governance. One example is the Kimberley Process certification scheme, which tracks diamonds and makes it harder for rebel groups to receive financing from such sales.  

We must also require that multinational corporations that benefit from extractive resources – oil companies, for instance – exhibit greater transparency in reporting their resource revenues.  

In fact, this last solution is part of a larger international campaign spearheaded by major NGOS and development groups—CRS, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam and Save the Children—calling on governments and oil companies to be more transparent in their operations and financial dealings. The Publish What You Pay campaign seeks to require multinational corporations to disclose to their host governments all the revenues they gain from extractive industries.  

Can such measures really make a difference? Will holding multinational corporations and host governments to account truly help foster Peace on Earth? 

YES. I believe in my heart and mind that PEACE IS POSSIBLE! 

Making peace happen is an incremental process, but a process that transforms every one of us and thereby shapes and transforms our world. 

It is among us that His Kingdom should arrive, and it is in the reality of our world that the vision of God for the good of our world might come true. As we get connected to God, we each—regardless of our personal religious beliefs—become the face of goodness, the reflection of God in the world today.  

As the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote: 

… THE JUST MAN JUSTICES;

KEEPS GRACE: THAT KEEPS ALL HIS GOINGS GRACES;

ACTS IN GOD’S EYE WHAT IN GOD’S EYE HE IS—CHRIST.  

 

FOR CHRIST PLAYS IN TEN THOUSAND PLACES,

LOVELY IN LIMBS, AND LOVELY IN EYES NOT HIS

TO THE FATHER THROUGH THE FEATURES OF MEN’S FACES. 
 

Thank you very much.