The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast

Posted Every Monday

The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast is a free, weekly thirty-minute podcast, posted on every Monday, featuring Fr. John Dear and his reflections about Jesus, Gospel nonviolence, and peacemaking, and guests who teach, speak out, organize and work for a more just, most peaceful, more nonviolent world. Through these weekly reflections, we hope to inspire everyone to follow the nonviolent Jesus more faithfully and do our part to welcome God’s reign of peace with justice on earth!

Here is the schedule for the first five podcasts. The link we will provided on the day they are posted; the podcast APP will be available in early February. It will also be posted every Monday on the homepage of the National Catholic Reporter, HERE.

This week on “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” John Dear speaks with Rev. Charles McCarthy, one of the world’s great teachers of Christian nonviolence.

Rev. McCarthy is a priest of one of the Eastern Catholic Churches, Byzantine-Melkite, in communion with the Bishop of Rome. He has been a Catholic priest for forty years. He has Masters Degrees in English and in Theology from Notre Dame, and earned his Doctorate in Jurisprudence from Boston College Law School. He was married for 53 years to Mary Margaret McCarthy, and they have 13 children and 23 grandchildren. (The cure of their daughter, Teresa Benedicta, was the official miracle for the canonization of Sr. Teresa Benedicta, known as, St. Edith Stein.)

Charles McCarthy taught at the University of Notre Dame where he founded and was the original Director of The Program for the Study and Practice of Nonviolent Conflict Resolution. He served for many years at St. Gregory the Theologian Byzantine-Melkite Catholic Seminary. For over fifty years he directed retreats and spoke at conferences throughout the world on the Nonviolent Jesus.

John begins by asking him to define “nonviolence.” Charlie McCarthy said: “Nonviolence is nonviolent love of friends and enemies modeled by Jesus in the Gospels. Nonviolence asks, ‘Is the action that you are doing imbued with Christlike, nonviolent love?’ Any action without love is nothing at all. If our actions are not motivated by and imbued with Christlike love, they are not going to be effective in countering evil and death.

“Jesus is nonviolent because God is nonviolent,” he continues. “Jesus’ purpose is to reveal to us how to love as God loves us because God is Love. Jesus wants us to be at one with God. The words, deeds, and spirit of Jesus in the gospel reveal the love of God

“I’ve never been able to get beyond the fact that when the will of God is known, what follows immediately is an imperative to live it, embrace it, and follow it. Jesus comes and reveals the will of the Father, which is to love as God loves, even under the most horrendous conditions, as he shows as he undergoes his death.”

“It is important to nurture the capacity of empathy beyond our friends, family, nation, to every human being so that we learn to love the one that does not love you, that is hostile to you. Love your enemies is an authentic teaching of Jesus. That’s what he wants us to do. That’s nonviolence.” Check it out and be inspired! For further information, see: www.emmanuelcharlesmccarthy.org

Upcoming Podcasts

July 28th. #30. John Dear in conversation with Michele Dunne
August 4th. #31. John Dear on “Love Your Enemies”
August 11th. #32. John Dear in conversation with Terry Rynne
August 18th. #33. John Dear in conversation with Brad Wolf
August 25th. #34. John Dear in conversation with Ken Butigan
September 1st. #35. John Dear in conversation with Rivera Sun
September 8th. #36. John Dear in conversation with Stanley Hauerwas

The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast

Posted Every Monday

This week on “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” John Dear speaks with Art Laffin, long-time peace activist, author, and Catholic Worker.

When I was young, I asked the question: “What would Jesus have me do?” he says. I realized Jesus is commanding us to embrace his command of unconditional love, including our enemies, and to renounce all forms of violence and killing.

Art was a member of the Covenant Peace community in Connecticut in the 1970s, then joined the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker in Washington, D.C. in the late 1970s, where he still lives with his wife and son. He has been active in the faith-based nonviolent movements for peace, social justice, disarmament, and human rights. He has been imprisoned for his involvement in two plowshares-disarmament actions, as well as other nonviolent actions. He is author of a new edition of The Risk of the Cross: Living Gospel Nonviolence in the Nuclear Age, co-editor of Swords into Plowshares, and co-editor of Arise and Witness: Poems by Anne Montgomery, About Faith, Prison, War Zones, and Nonviolent Resistance.

He talks about his mentors and friends, Fr. Richard McSorley, Dan and Phil Berrigan and Henri Nouwen. “They were all doers of the Word that led by example; they kept their eyes on the prize. I learn from them that life is a long haul made up of a lot of short hauls, and everything makes a difference.”

He speaks about the Plowshares movement, his actions and time in prison, as well as keeping a peace vigil every Monday morning at the Pentagon—since 1990! We advocate for all victims of war and injustice. People ask, “What difference does it make?” We ask, “What happens if we’re not there? No one thinks about a nonviolent alternative. I view the weekly vigil at the Pentagon as a prayer of intercession. I believe miracles have occurred during our protest actions.

Speaking about the upcoming 80th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6th and Nagasaki on August 9th, he says, We need to heed the cry of the Hibakusha: “Humanity and weapons cannot co-exist. We need to heed Jesus’ gospel call to nonviolence. We need to hear Dr. King’s message just before he was killed: “The choice is no longer violence or nonviolence; it’s nonviolence or non-existence.”

“Genocide has become normalized,” he says, “so we have to stand for life wherever it is threatened. I keep coming back to the command that we have to love one another, including our enemies.” He quotes Dorothy Day: “The only solution is love.”

“On the cross Jesus is showing us how to live and die,” he concludes, “and opens up a new nonviolent history, so we don’t lost heart. Christ is risen!

All things are possible if we act with the belief that God can enact miracles through us.”

Listen in to Art Laffin, take heart, and be encouraged to be a doer of the Word, and to carry on the long haul of Gospel nonviolence and universal love!