From the Editor's Desk

Mafia and other threats to peace

While reading John Allen’s story, about Fr. Giuseppe “Pino” Puglisi and Cardinal Salvatore Pappalardo, the thought (hardly an original one) occurred that standing up for something can be a dangerous, even deadly, undertaking. Puglisi, now sometimes referred to as the Oscar Romero of Sicily -- a reference to the Salvadoran archbishop gunned down after condemning that country’s military and death squads -- was relentless in his battle to liberate his parishioners from the oppression of the Mafia’s death squads. ( See story)

Puglisi, of course, was gunned down himself.

Puglisi, in many respects, was more like Jesuit Fr. Rutilio Grande, the Salvadoran priest whose murder in 1977 was one of the events that pushed Romero to begin speaking out.

In Puglisi’s case, it was the cardinal who became inspired and spent the rest of his days speaking out and living under death threats. I find fascinating the parallels in these stories between the Mafia and state-sponsored thugs. In both cases, self-declared elites were protecting their turf, their access to resources, their power and prestige, their control over the lives of others.

They are easy examples to project into larger circumstances. Substitute any resource you’d like, and fill in “armies” for “death squads.” And wonder who speaks out against state-sponsored violence today.

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There are, of course, examples in our own era of people speaking out against war: Martin Luther King, whose final years were spent in eloquent and forceful renunciations of the United States’ ready resort to militarism; Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, who in this country wedded the Gospel to action for nonviolence; Frank Cordaro, of the Day tradition, if you will, whose notes from prison today fill my e-mail box; the brothers Berrigan, Philip, who died in 2002, and Jesuit Fr. Daniel Berrigan of New York, who continues to preach and write and inspire; Pax Christi USA; Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, whose sermons appear on our Web page, one of the extremely rare voices in the U.S. hierarchy who has consistently spoken out against America’s war; Jesuit John Dear, whose column appears at NCRcafe.org, who works and writes tirelessly about peacemaking and nonviolence; the SOA protesters doing time for civil disobedience.

These are but a few of the many in the Catholic tradition who have dared to think beyond the sanctuary walls about what we as Catholic Christians are being asked to assent to, about what we’re being asked to support. You know those in your own communities who gather groups to raise these same issues. Maybe they stand on a street corner regularly with their signs, maybe they pester legislators, maybe they show up with their signs at military recruiting stations, maybe they try now and then to get something into the parish bulletin that might raise a question.

Their lives may not be at stake, but most would tell you that even the slightest action will put their reputations -- and sometimes their careers -- at stake. It is easy to lose status, respectability, friends. It is easy to be branded unpatriotic. So these examples give us hope and show us that the good life really lies not in avoiding the issues but in engaging them.

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One of the modern voices for peace is Bishop Gabino Zavala, auxiliary of Los Angeles and the bishop president of Pax Christi USA. In a recent Advent homily ( see story) at The Catholic University of America, he denounced war with the words: “We believe that war -- the war in Iraq, all wars -- are contrary to the will of God for peace. Let us put behind us the language of war, the language of just war, the language of violence. Let us instead speak of peace, of just peace, of nonviolence.”

It is, indeed, time to move beyond the worn words and categories that strain to justify the obscenity of modern warfare. It’s worth more than the price of respectability.

-- Tom Roberts

National Catholic Reporter, December 29, 2006