Monthly Archive for March, 2018

Photo by Paul Sheldon

LOCKHEED MARTIN, PENNSYLVANIA

Thanks to Paul Sheldon for this report:

The Brandywine Peace Community held its annual Good Friday action at Lockheed Martin in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania on March 30. Seven of the activists attempted to carry a message of peace and understanding onto Lockheed Martin property, in order to speak with those building world-destroying weapons. They were arrested, cited for disorderly conduct (praying in the driveway), and released. Paul Sheldon writes, “I view these actions as faithfulness to a continuing campaign at Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest war profiteer and nuclear weapons’ contractor.”

Christian Nonviolence: Theory and Practice

by Tom Cornell

[Tom Cornell is a longtime editor of The Catholic Worker and former co-founder of the Catholic Peace Fellowship. In a slightly different form his essay was published in the December 2017 issue of The Catholic Worker. With Jim Forest and Robert Ellsberg, he co-edited A Penny a Copy, an anthology of writings from The Catholic Worker.]

“To me nonviolence is the all-important problem or virtue to be nourished and studied and cultivated” (Dorothy Day, Diaries, Oct. 1968). And Thomas Merton agreed: “You are right going along the lines of satyagraha [Gandhi’s term for nonviolent action; literally the power of truth]. I see no other way….”  Merton held nonviolence to be essential. Nonviolent action embodies a moral truth in response to a serious moral crisis by way of protest and acts of resistance, including civil disobedience, that do no harm, conducted in openness and truth with willingness to pay the legal penalties. Nonviolent action may be acts of witness only, but they may also lead to mass mobilization and real change.