Terminus
Building a Peaceful world.
If a pacifist is one who believes that all war is always morally wrong and always has been wrong, then I am not a pacifist. Nevertheless I see war as an avoidable tragedy and I believe that the problem of solving international conflict without massive violence has become the number one problem of our time.
As President Kennedy said, "If we do not end war, war is going to end us". Pope John 23, Pope Paul 6, have said this with all the solemn authority of their position. The task of man and of the church is to end all wars, to provide a satisfactory international power to police the world and subdue violence while conflicts are settled by reason and negotiation. Therefore the entire human race has a most serious obligation to face this problem and to do something about it. Each one of us has to resist an ingrained tendency to violence and to destructive thinking. But every time we renounce reason and patience in order to solve a conflict by violence we are side-stepping this great obligation and putting it off. How long can we continue to do this? Our time is limited, and we are not taking advantage of our opportunities.
The human race today is like an alcoholic who knows that drink will destroy him and yet has "good reasons" why he must continue drinking. Such is man in his fatal addiction to war. He is not really capable of seeing a constructive alternative to war. If this task of building a peaceful world is the most important task of our time, it is also the most difficult. It will, in fact, require far more discipline, more sacrifice, more planning, more thought, more co-operation and more heroism than war ever demanded.
Thomas Merton. 1962
Whom shall we blame for the folly of war?
Whom shall we tell these stories for?
Who will believe the sadness of death,
The terror, the fear, and the emptiness.
What can they know of the vacant eyes
The sorrow too deep in the heart that dies.
Barbara C Edwards
Yet the rose has one powerful virtue to boast above all the flowers of
the field. When its leaves are all dead and the fine colors are lost.
Still how sweet a perfume it will yield.
