Jesuit priest says his life is a journey to peace
SALT LAKE CITY — “For me life is a journey to peace,” said Jesuit Father John Dear, who spoke on peace and justice at Saint Ambrose Parish Sept. 20. “It is spiritual to be a human being, living and breathing in peace, and making peace with ourselves, with our spouse, our neighbor, our children, our community, our state, and the world.”
Dee Rowland, government liaison for the Diocese of Salt Lake City and a member of the Peace and Justice Commission, thanked the Open Book Book Store, the Peace and Justice Commission, and Telemachus Foundation, who sponsored Fr. John, as he prefers to be called. Fr. John jokingly said Fr. Dear just doesn’t work.
“This talk came about from the Tuesday Night Peace Prayer Group,” said Rowland. “For six and a half years, a small group has been meeting every Tuesday, now at CHRISTUS Saint Joseph Villa, to pray for an end to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for an end to all wars.
“We were studying the readings of Fr. John, and talking about how wonderful it would be to have him come and speak to us,” said Rowland. “Then Kathleen Kreuter, a member of the Peace and Justice group and a member of Saint Ambrose Parish, got his phone number and called him.
“And also tonight we know that Ed Braak and John Brockert, past participants in the Tuesday prayer group, are here with us in spirit,” said Rowland. “They were faithful members of our prayer group, who died this last year.”
John Dear is an internationally known voice for peace and nonviolence. A Jesuit priest, pastor, peacemaker, organizer, lecturer, and retreat leader, and he is the author/editor of 25 books, including his autobiography, “A Persistent Peace. In 2008, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
From 1998 until December 2000, he served as the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the largest interfaith peace organization in the United States.
After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, Fr. John served as a Red Cross chaplain, and became one of the coordinators of the chaplain program at the Family Assistance Center. He worked with some 1,500 family members who lost loved ones, as well as hundreds of firefighters and police officers, while at the same time, he spoke out against the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan.
“Fr. John has two master’s degrees in theology, and has traveled world wide speaking for peace and justice. His biography is a moving and loving tribute,” said Rowland. “To capsulate his 400 pages in one sentence would be, he has the ability, is seems, to remind us all of God’s love for all human beings in the world.”
“Thank you, thank you all for all you do for peace and justice, for all you do to promote the coming of the new world of nonviolence, for all you do for the churches and religious communities, and for people who work for the God of peace. I just want to encourage you to keep at it,” said Fr. John.
“You have heard of my notorious criminal record. I have been arrested 75 times protesting for peace and justice,” he said. “We are not walking the road to peace, we are barreling down the highway to violence. I think you could say we live now in a world of permanent war – permanent war on children, permanent war on the poor, permanent war on the earth and all creatures, permanent war on all people, and permanent war on the future.
Fr. John said Martin Luther King, Jr. said ‘I’ve been to the mountain top and I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the promised land….’
“But just before he said that, this great prophet of peace and justice said, ‘the choice is no longer violence or nonviolence, it is nonviolence or nonexistence. Unless we all become a people of nonviolence, we are doomed to our self-destructive violence,’” said Fr. John. “That is what I see playing out now.”
Fr. John told how he became involved in peace and justice. He grew up in North Carolina and went to a Jesuit high school, and then went to Duke University, a Methodist school, to get away from Catholic teaching. He decided he no longer believed in God and belonged to a wild fraternity.
“If there is not a God, then there is no meaning to life,” he thought. “Who cares about these poor people, forget them. There is no meaning to the universe, we are all going to die anyway, so what is the problem?”
Then he had a St. Paul experience and was knocked off his bar stool.
“I came to my senses, and said of course I believe in God. The universe is a universe of love. We are all supposed to love and serve one another. I’ve got to give my entire life to this God. I’ve got to become a Jesuit priest. Okay, God, I will if you show me a sign.
“Before I became a priest I went to Israel in 1982, just to go on a private pilgrimage to the Holy Land,” said Fr. John. “But when I left, Israel invaded Lebanon. During that summer, 60,000 people were killed. I was camping out at Galilee and reading the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes and I saw jets drop bombs and kill people at the place where Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the peace makers. So since 1982, I have decided to dedicate my life to working at ending wars and to re-teach that core fundamental teaching of Jesus.
“I hit the ground running and joined all the peace and justice groups. In the summer of 1985, as a young priest, I visited El Salvador. I was brought into the office of the university, bombs were falling outside, and the Jesuit priest said, “The purpose of the Jesuit university here in El Salvador is to promote the reign of God.” They were teaching young Catholic kids how to use machine guns and go out and kill people.
“The whole point of any Christian institution is the reign of God, but the next thing he said was, ‘However, in El Salvador we have learned that you can no longer say, ‘I am for the reign of God,’ unless you stand up publicly, actively against the anti-reign and against war.’ This shocked me.
“This is pure Ghandi,” said Fr. John. “Ghandi said we are in a whole new world; therefore, noncooperation of evil is as much as it is cooperation with good,” said Fr. John. “If you do not stand up and resist the evil your goodness becomes silent.
“Ghandi said there comes a point when you have to cross the line and break the laws which legalize mass murder in your name,” said Fr. John. “That is when I took up nonviolence and civil disobedience and now I have been arrested about 75 times, and I am an ex con, and I can no longer vote.”
Fr. John said everyone is our sister and brother. The deeper you can wake up to the reality we are all one, you will never be able to hurt another human being, much less be silent or passive about nonviolence. We must show active love.
For more information, visit Fr. John’s website at www.FatherJohnDear.org.
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