Episode #30 with Michele Dunne, on Monday, July 28th

This week I speak with Michele Dunne, director of the Franciscan Action Network. Michele is a professed Secular Franciscan (there are over 200,000 in the world) who has had a long career as a diplomat in the Middle East and then a scholarly researcher focused on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy.

From 2006 until 2021, she headed programs focused on peace, human rights, and democracy in the Middle East at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Atlantic Council.

Over the years, she’s been a regular commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Before that, she served for nearly 20 years in the U.S. State Department, including assignments in Jerusalem and Cairo. She holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University and lives in Washington DC with her husband.

Michele shares with us what the Franciscan Action Network is, and does with its 17,000 members in the U.S., and why she is part of it.

“Today, we've got this broken relationship between humanity and creation." Michele tells how Franciscans have been celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Canticle of the Sun, St. Francis’ poem/prayer to ‘Brother Sun, Sister Moon' and how it inspires her today:

"St. Francis had an incredible kinship with all humanity, with all humans as brothers and sisters, and with all creation. We all need to find that kinship today."

She asks the questions that make a difference to followers of the nonviolent Jesus: "‘What is God's will for me? What is mine to do?’ We all need to show up and find what's ours to do and do it.”

Visit www.franciscanaction.org and www.beatitudescenter.org

This week I speak 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, ordained in Damascus, Syria. He is a co-founder of Pax Christi-USA, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and author of "The Nonviolent Eucharist", "Christian Just War Theory: The Logic of Deceit" and "The Stations of the Cross of Nonviolent Love".

He has been a Catholic priest for forty years with a Master's Degrees in English and Theology from Notre Dame, and a 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, Teresia Benedicta, was the official miracle for the canonization of Sr. Terese Benedicta, 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.

He describes how he defines nonviolence, and how that is modeled by Jesus in the Gospels and what our action taking looks like in the face of violence.

When asked how he defines “nonviolence,” he begins by saying, “Nonviolence is the nonviolent love of friends and enemies modeled by Jesus in the Gospels. Nonviolence asks, ‘Is this 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."

“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. When I thought of God, I thought of power, but God is something entirely different.

Find out more as we listen to Rev. Charles McCarthy and the revelation of God's love throught the most horrendous conditions, as modeled by the nonviolent Jesus.

Check it out, and read more at:

www.emmanuelcharlesmccarthy.org

www.beatitudescenter.org

This week I speak with Art Laffin, long-time peace activist, author, and Catholic Worker.

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.

Find out why he has been imprisoned for nonviolent actions with the plowshares movement. He is also the 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 tshares his experiences with his mentors and friends, Fr. Richard McSorley, Dan and Phil Berrigan and Henri Nouwen, and what they taught him how "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!

" People ask, 'What difference does it make?'"

We ask, “What happens if we're not there?"

Hear how the words of Jesus have inspired Art to renounce all forms of violence and killing, and how he has responded in his life as an activist and Catholic Worker.

Speaking about the upcoming 80th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6th and Nagasaki on August 9th, he also tells us why 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.”

What is the solution to standing for life where it is threatened and has activist and founder of the Catholic Worker Dorothy Day influenced him?

How does Jesus open up a new nonviolent history so we don't lose heart?

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!

beatitudescenter.org

catholicworker.org