Fwd: Message from Art Laffin--Remembering Fr. Richard McSorley, SJ on the 21st Anniversary of his Death

[Catholic Worker]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Art Laffin <ArtL...@hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, Oct 17, 2023 at 5:38 PM
Subject: Message from Art Laffin--Remembering Fr. Richard McSorley, SJ on the 21st Anniversary of his Death
To:

Fr. McSorley standing on the Georgetown University campus where he taught for four decades, protesting its ROTC program.

Dear Friends,

Today marks the 21^st anniversary of Fr. McSorley, SJ, going home to God. He was an internationally renowned peacemaker and founder of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker in Washington, DC in 1981. 

Here are several quotes from Fr. McSorley which followers of Jesus need to take to heart and heed.

"The taproot of violence in our society today is our intention to use nuclear weapons. Once we have agreed to that, all other evil is minor in comparison. Until we squarely face the question of our consent to use nuclear weapons, any hope of large-scale improvement of public morality is doomed to failure."

-- From It's a Sin to Build A Nuclear Weapon. 

https://sojo.net/magazine/february-1977/its-sin-build-nuclear-weapon

"Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker said that there is no need of any special theology of peace. You just need to look at what the gospel asks and what war does. The gospel asks that we feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the homeless, visit the prisoner, and perform the works of mercy. War does the opposite. It makes my neighbor hungry, thirsty, homeless, a prisoner and sick...  

For the Christian, Christ is the peacemaker, the reconciler. His method is the cross—accepting suffering with love, not inflicting it onto others. The invitation of the gospel to love is entirely contradictory with the use of military force... Christ's way of life... was not the way of the military. It was a way of peacemaking. A way of making peace through the cross, through redemptive love." 

"We cannot seriously imagine Jesus pushing the button to launch a nuclear bomb, or registering for the draft, or wearing the uniform of any national state, or paying taxes for nuclear weapons, or working in a plant that manufactures weapons of death."

-- From New Testament Basis of Peacemaking. Herald Press, 1985.

To learn more about his extraordinary life of Gospel peacemaking, see the link for his autobiography, My Path to Peace:

https://wipfandstock.com/9781608990542/my-path-to-peace-and-justice/

Lastly, here is an interview that Fr. McSorley did with Bill O'Donnell. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3LoLqV8E60

In these perilous times, we need now more than ever, to follow Jesus' way of nonviolence.  

Fr. McSorley was exemplary in his Gospel witness of peacemaking. Let us strive as he did, to live and proclaim Gospel Nonviolence. 

With gratitude,
Art