<\/p>\n
By Katie Karalis<\/strong><\/p>\n In light of the \u201cmother of all bombs\u201d dropped on an ISIS target in Afghanistan last Thursday, academics and nonviolence strategists alike are in agreement with Pope Francis\u2019 call to the international community to adopt forward-looking strategies to promote the goal of peace and stability, questioning not only the existence of nuclear weapons but also the doctrine of deterrence.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat Francis is doing is continuing a drift in recent Catholic moral thinking toward peace, which started with John XXIII, said Father John T. Pawlikowski, professor of social ethics and director of the Catholic-Jewish studies program at Catholic Theological Union. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say that it\u2019s an advocacy of total passivism, but it\u2019s certainly moving away from not only nuclear weapons but just war as an instrument of security and survival.\u201d<\/p>\n Mel Duncan, former executive director of Nonviolent Peaceforce, an organization that provides direct non-violent protection to civilians under threat of violent conflict and war, said there are more people displaced for longer periods of time because of violent conflict now than at any time since World War II\u2014and that number is growing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a team right now that is right between Erbil and Mosul, and they were reporting Wednesday morning that 250,000 people are expected to flee Mosul in the next two weeks,\u201d said Duncan, senior professional lecturer of peace, justice and conflict studies at DePaul University. \u201cIf we engage by dropping \u2018the mother of all bombs\u2019 on a country [Afghanistan] that we have not declared war in the name of fighting ISIS, we are going to have a lot more war and a lot more blowback.\u201d<\/p>\n At\u00a0 the United Nations\u00a0 conference in late March,\u00a0\u00a0 Pope Francis said peace cannot be established on the threat of mutual destruction or total annihilation, adding that nuclear weapons offer only a “false sense of security.”<\/p>\n Ken Butigan, co-founder of Campaign Nonviolence, a long-term movement for peace and nonviolence free from war, poverty, racism, and the climate crisis, emphasized that the Vatican is more fervently rejecting deterrence allowing for the continuation of nuclear stockpiles by the nuclear nations.<\/p>\n \u201cThe nuclear signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty of 1970 are obligated in good faith to disarm their nuclear weapons,\u201d said Butigan, professional lecturer of peace, justice and conflict studies at DePaul University. \u201cHere it is, 47 years later, and that hasn\u2019t happened.\u201d<\/p>\n Butigan was a part of a global team working with the Vatican to organize the \u201cNonviolence and Just Peace Conference,\u201d receiving a warm response from Pope Francis after taking place April 2016 in Rome.<\/p>\n William Cavanaugh, professor of Catholic studies and director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University, said he believes violence is diminished when we not only try to make ourselves more secure but when we make our enemies more secure.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were told that the last war, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was going to usher in an era of peace and democracy and prosperity for the Middle East,\u201d Cavanaugh said, adding that instead the invasion unleashed chaos and established the conditions for the creation of ISIS. \u201cWar did not work last time, but we are constantly being told that the next war is going to fix what the last war broke.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Katie Karalis In light of the \u201cmother of all bombs\u201d dropped on an ISIS target in Afghanistan last Thursday, academics and nonviolence strategists alike are in agreement with Pope Francis\u2019 call to the international community to adopt forward-looking strategies to promote the goal of peace and stability, questioning not only the existence of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":57216,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3516],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-winter-2017"],"yoast_head":"\n