Catholic Peace Fellowship makes timely revival

Social justice news
April 2002

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Catholic Peace Fellowship makes timely revival
The Catholic Peace Fellowship, originally founded "during a time of wars and rumors of wars, is being reborn in such a time." So writes the staff of the revived Catholic Peace Fellowship, who are carrying on in the tradition of the original, which for 20 years, beginning in 1964, worked to support Catholic conscientious objectors, draft resisters, antiwar activists, and other peacemakers.

Now, the CPF intends to support Catholics who are to committed to the work of peace Christ called his followers to do, the work "made possible by the peace he gave to his apostles and continues to give to us each time we gather at Mass," the current staff says. Specifically, such support will take the form of:

* providing counseling and legal advice to military conscientious objectors-those who, after enlisting, undergo a change of conscience that forbids them to engage in combat or service in the military;
* reminding military chaplains of their obligation to inform Catholics and others in the armed forces about their rights to conscientious objection as set forth in military regulations;
* challenging the free access to Catholic high schools enjoyed by military recruiters and challenging Catholic high school students to consider the profound moral issues military service entails;
* addressing all issues arising from the participation of Catholic colleges, universities, and high schools in Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) programs;
* and informing all young Catholics about laws on draft registration and the process by which a civilian may obtain legal recognition as a conscientious objector should Selective Service resume the draft.

The CPF plans to work with other peace groups, as did the original CPF, which emerged out of the Catholic Worker and the organizational structure of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. And the new CPF maintains a living link with its predecessor—which included among some its cofounders, advisors, and directors Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Father Daniel Berrigan, Jim Forest, Tom Cornell, and Bill Ofenloch—in the persons of Forest, Ofenloch, and longtime Catholic Worker Cornell, who serve on the adivisory board. Under the leadership of ethicist and activist Father Michael Baxter, C.S.C. of the University of Notre Dame theology department, the current CPF staff also includes Shawn Storer of the Red Cloud Indian Mission's Holy Rosary Mission in Pine Ridge, South Dakota and Kyle Smith of Notre Dame's classics department. Among its other activities, the CPF has also begun publishing a journal, The Sign of Peace.

Just as the nascent Catholic peace movement, beginning in the 1940s and picking up steam through the '60s, had to counter the assumption, as Tom Cornell wrote on the tenth anniversary of the first CPF, "that Catholic pacifists were in fact material heretics," nonviolent Catholics these days find themselves on the defensive again in the midst of the war on terrorism. The Second Vatican Council praised "those who renounce the use of violence in the vindication of their rights" and called for the legal protection of conscientious objectors, and in their 1983 pastoral statement The Challenge of Peace the U.S. bishops recognized their responsibility to stress the "significance of this support for a pacifist option for individuals." But Catholic pacifists, as much as ever, are challenged to defend the viability of their position both inside and outside the church, a position the CPF hopes to support, communicate, and organize people around.

For information on the CPF, visit www.catholicpeacefellowship.org or contact them at The Catholic Peace Fellowship, P.O. Box 41, Notre Dame, IN, 46556-0041, 574-631-7666, Fax 574-631-4268; catholicpeacefellowship@yahoo.com.—Joel Schorn

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