it's becoming clear that i'm not good with a daily endeavor as my week with merton is becoming more like 14 days of merton. day 1: day 2: day 3: day 4: day 5
[after going through some different theologians take]Yet it remains true that there is still all too general an apathy and passivity among the clergy and the faithful. Perhaps it is exact to say that they are afflicted with a kind of moral paralysis. Hypnotized by the mass media, wich tend to be aggressive and bellicose, baffled and intimidated by the general atmosphere of suspicion, bewildered by the silence or the ambiguity of their pastors and religious leaders, and remembering the failure of the peace movements that preceded World War II, people tend to withdraw into a state of passive and fatalistic desperation. There they have been literally run into earth by the shelter salesmen, and have set themselves despondently to digging holes in their back yards against the day when the missles begin to fly.
Pope John XXIII pointed out in his first encyclical, Ad Petri Cathedram, that Christians are obliged to strive "with all means at their disposal" for peace. Yet he warns that peace cannot compromise with error or make concessions to injustice. Passive acquiescence in injustice, submission to brute force, do not lead to genuine peace... Power can never be the keystone of a Christian policy. Yet our work for peace must be energetic, enlightened and fully purposeful... But we will not be able to do this without an interior revolution that abandons the quest for brute power and submits to the wisdom of love and of the Cross...It must however be stated quite clearly and without compromise that the duty of the Christian as a peacemaker is not to be confused with a kind of quietistic inertia that is indifferent to injustice, accepts any kind of disorder, compromises with error and with evil, and gives in to every pressure in order to maintain "peace at any price." The Christian knows well, or should know well, that peace is not possible on such terms. Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice.
i was recently in a conversation where i had to ponder this 'more heroic' action towards peace. what does this look like? i've never seen it in my life, maybe on film or read in books, but not with my own eyes. who are or can be those leaders to emerge from the pack to show us what heroism towards peace looks like? is it within us all? certainly we have examples, quick to mind comes the example of Ghandi. do we need to look back at the heroism of Martin Luther King Jr.?
