Pax Christi Metro DC Baltimore

Monthly Reflection

Selective Outrage Is Not Justice: A Call to Moral Courage and Compassionate Truth

2025-05-31 01:00:00

If we are serious about peace, we must be serious about truth. If we are serious about justice, we must reject narratives that distort and divide. If we are serious about compassion, then it must extend beyond borders, beyond politics, and beyond selective comfort. This is the heart of contemplative nonviolence work: not just prayerful reflection, but honest reckoning. Not just mourning, but movement. Not just empathy, but courageous action. Only then can we hope to live in a world where all lives are held sacred—and where no death is used to eclipse another.

Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore

Work for Peace

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Pilgrims of Hope: A Retreat for Peacemakers
Date: Saturday, May 17, 2025
Place: St. Anselm's Abbey School, 4501 South Dakota Ave NE, DC
Time: 9:15 - 1:00 Eastern (St. Anselm's Abbey has a daily Mass at 8:30 on Saturdays in the Abbey Chapel. You are welcome to attend before the retreat.)
Click here to register online. Registration is free but donations welcome.
Registration deadline is May 13 so we can assign small groups. Event is limited to 80 people

Join us for a morning of reflection, prayer, and a call to action as we embrace the call to be Pilgrims of Hope in a world longing for peace.

Drawing from Pope Francis’ Jubilee message, we will explore how faith sustains hope amid trials and how we can be signs of hope for young people, migrants, and those seeking peace.

Guiding our retreat will be Abbot James Wiseman, OSB, of St. Anselm's Abbey. Abbot James is a former professor of CUA’s theology department where he focused primarily on Christian spirituality. He has chaired the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, a collection of monks and nuns interested in questions of interfaith relations. For 12 years, Abbot James edited the Bulletin of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue and has participated in such dialogue in many parts of the world, including India, Japan, and the three Buddhist-Christian encounters held at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.

Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore is a region of Pax Christi USA, a national section of Pax Christi International. Rooted in the Gospel and Catholic Social Teaching, we witness to Jesus’ teaching and example of nonviolence, rejecting war and affirming the sacredness of human life and the dignity of the human person.

Priorities

Nuclear Weapons

This article reviews several notable developments relating to nuclear weapons, including the status of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons; the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo (organization of Japanese atomic bomb survivors); “Living in the Light of Christ's Peace: A Conversation Toward Nuclear Disarmament,” a pastoral letter by Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe; and the "Back from the Brink" Campaign. Links to additional resources are provided.

Human Dignity

The Catholic Church proclaims that human life is sacred. Our passion for peace is rooted in respect for life. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops summarizes the proud tradition of Catholic Social Teaching under seven themes. Life and Dignity of the Human Person is listed first, as the foundation of all succeeding principles and “the foundation of a moral vision for society.” Abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, and war are cited together as violations of our God-given dignity.

Just Peace

“No one has greater love,” Jesus said, than “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13), not “to kill others for one’s friends.”