Discipleship of Nonviolence

Introduction

• In 1997, a total of 4,205 children and teens were killed by gunfire in the United States, which is equivalent to one child every two hours, nearly twelve children a day, or a classroom full every two days. [1]
  
• A typical American child spends nearly five and a half hours a day exposed to violent images on television and media outside of school. The more children witness this violence, the more they become desensitized to it. [2]
  
• Our homes are the most violent places in America. Street violence is constantly overshadowed by the fact that husbands, partners, or ex-partners commit over half the murders of women in the United States. [3]
  

Violence walks our cities and suburbs, villages and towns. Its presence can be seen, felt, and experienced. Locally, it shows its face in road rage, hate crimes, children killing children, a loss of civility and graciousness, and growing attitudes of exclusion. Globally, it appears in large-scale acts of aggression, territorial disputes, mass genocide, and regional conflicts. It touches all our lives in ways both obvious and subtle.

We can all name the violence that permeates our world. We worry over its effect on our day-to-day living, on our relationships, on the future of our children. But how do we move beyond naming the culture of death, the culture of violence, and move toward creating a culture of life and nonviolence?

“Discipleship of Nonviolence” provides a first step. Echoing the U.S. Catholic Bishops who urge the Church to foster communities where peaceable virtues can take root and be nourished, this topic invites us to move more deeply into that continual conversion of heart—nonviolence—called for in the reign of God. On this journey, we will name the culture of violence; imagine a peaceable world; study the roots of Christian nonviolence; look to Catholic social teaching for insight; and examine creative ways to bring about a culture of nonviolence here and now.