PRESENTATION FOR PAX CHRISTI CONFERENCE June 14, 2013

Antonia (Tonie) Malone, responding to Bishop

REMEMBERING THE PAST WITH GRATITUDE

When Johnny contacted me and asked me to respond (for about 20 minutes) to Bishop Gumbleton’s remarks, I immediately thought, well what’s to say except, “yes, yes”. And I haven’t changed my mind… Isn’t he wonderful?

But when I called Tom to ask him what he was going to speak about, he suggested that I share some of the details of our history that might encourage those of you who come after us to keep doing something about abolishing war and those drones and all those nuclear weapons which still pose such a suicidal risk to humanity, and, of course, to address those issues of justice that would help us work for a more peaceful world.

So since many of you don’t know me, I’d like to begin with a little background of where I’m coming from.

One weekend in the early 1980s four of us from New Jersey went to the NY apartment of Eileen Egan for a day long conversation, just the four of us, about Christian Non-violence, its roots and its call to us..

Eileen Egan as you may know was one of the founders of PCUSA….After WWII she worked for Catholic Relief Services in refugee camps in and . She was, also, for many years the right hand of at CWH in NY and along the way wrote the authorized biography of her friend Mother Theresa, plus many other books and articles on peacemaking. But it was her dedication and believe in Christian Non-violence and the need to end war that led her to concentrate her efforts till the end of her life on PCUSA and The Peace Movement ……She is one of our Pax Christi angels… (raise hand)

Well anyway this day in NY City with Eileen was transformational for the four of us and on July 15, 1982, we founded Monmouth County Pax Christi.

At that time there were only two other Pax Christi groups in NJ. (in Mercer County and Union County), and the main issues animating all of our groups was Christian

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Non-violence, nuclear disarmament and the situation of oppression in Central American, especially El Salvador.. Within a year, we had organized a monthly vigil in front of the Earle Naval Weapons Base- the port, very near my house actually, where nuclear weapons were stored. (the famous white train, which Shelley and Jim Douglas spent so many years of their lives protesting was said to have come in there.) I never saw it, so I can’t document that… maybe they painted it another color by the time it got to NJ, but if you haven’t read Jim Douglass’ book, The Nonviolent Coming of God, you’ve missed a treat.. We persisted with the vigil for at least 10 years, until they finally removed the missiles to the mid- west..

A few years, later I solicited from Pax Christi USA the names of all of its members living in NJ and started to visit them and help them organize into PC local action groups. Then we planned our first annual NJPC Conference to which we invited George Zabelka, the Catholic Chaplin to the crews which dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Gerry Vanderhaar, one of the founders of PCUSA, Gordon Zahn, the biographer of Franz Jaegerstetter, and Robert Moore, the head of New Jersey Sane/Freeze today called the Coalition for Peace Action, whose focus is still nuclear disarmament……. and on May 3, 1986, shortly after the conference we met in Princeton and formed New Jersey Pax Christi.. We now had 8 groups, plus a couple of college groups.

In the following years we had the honor of having Tom Gumbleton, Dan Berrigan, Joan Chittester, Bishop Walter Sullivan, Dick McSorley, and many more of our legendary peacemakers, for our annual conferences and retreats and our movement and enthusiasm grew… So why am I telling you this….and the answer is simply that its good to bring in inspirational speakers and activists to keep the movement vibrant and connected to its base.

Finally in 1992, our country’s quincentennary year, NJPC volunteered to host PCUSA’s annual conference at Seton Hall University in New Jersey with and the saintly Dom Helder Camara from Brazil as our keynoters.

That was a landmark year for PCUSA… It was both a celebration of our 20th Anniversary and the inauguration of a new chapter in the history of PCUSA because at our National Council meetings that weekend at Seton Hall, we began the process of formulating for our movement a new Statement of Purpose and set of priorities.

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The process would take us a year. Then in November 1993, the full council, including the regional reps met in Erie, hammered out a new statement of purpose and identified the four priorities which you will recognize as they are still our priorities today.. It took us three days….

As you know the priorities are….

 The Spirituality of Nonviolence and Peacemaking

 Disarmament, Demilitarization and Reconciliation with Justice

 Economic and Interracial Justice in the United States

 Human Rights and Global Restoration

These priorities encompassed Pax Christi USA’s response to a changed world. The wall had fallen and the North/South paradigm was giving way. These new priorities would guide Pax Christi as it sought ways to deal nonviolently with the rise of ethnic conflicts, the negative effects of economic globalization on impoverished countries, the problem of racism that so often underlies these conflicts (think Haiti), the ongoing unrest in the Middle East, and the continuing danger of new forms of nuclear weapons and a growing military budget. All the major projects of the next twenty years would address these issues.

The 1992 assembly also marked the inauguration of The Ambassadors of Peace program to honor distinguished leaders, including founders, of our Pax Christi community. At this time Eileen Egan, Gordon Zahn, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Richard McSorley SJ, Joe Fahey, Mary Evelyn Jegen SND, and Gerard Vanderhaar were commissioned ambassadors and embraced by the community for their vision, dedication and leadership in action and spirit. The presence at the assembly of saintly Dom Helder Camara of Bishop of Recife, Brazil and Cesar Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers, both of whom were to pass on in the next two years, were an added grace to all present.

During this Quincentenary year, Pax Christi members around the country could be found remembering the violence against the first Native Americans and decrying the ongoing violence in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia-Herzegovinia, Haiti, the , Israel and the Occupied Territories of the Palestinians. Members continued to stand besides the courageous men and women imprisoned for refusing to fight in the Gulf War, by adopting jailed conscientious objectors and writing 3

letters to demand their release. In connection with the support of the COs, Pax Christi commemorated the 50th anniversary of the execution of Franz Jaegerstaetter, the Austrian farmer who refused to serve in Hitler’s army and many PC members, young and old, crossed the line in Georgia at the annual SOA protest of the School of Americas, the training ground for Latin American oppressors. HAITI By 1992 PCUSA was developing a deep relationship with Haiti, then suffering from the 1991 military coup against democratically elected President Aristide. Delegations were sent to document human rights abuses, a Boat People Prayer Card was produced, a Vote for Democracy postcard campaign was initiated, a Haiti Worker Fund established and thousands of petitions were forwarded to President Bush and congressional leaders protesting the repatriation of the boat people and asking for support for President Aristide. The military dictatorship’s violence in Haiti against its own farmers and students rose to such heights in 1993 that in October of that Year the United Nations withdrew its human rights observers. In response, under the leadership of National Coordinator, Anne McCarthy OSB, PCUSA was instrumental in forming Cry For Justice, a joint peace presence in Haiti with Christian Peacemakers and International Peace Brigades. Sixty-six participants spent from two weeks to two months in the Haitian countryside monitoring human rights abuses, accompanying people in danger and reporting back to the UN. To this day, leaders of the “ti eglise” and the peasant movement in Haiti still remember and speak of the presence of these small delegations and the hope Cry for Justice brought to them. I was on the national council at that time and represented the council on one of the Cry for Justice delegations…It was a moving experience and eventually led to my church sponsoring a twinning program with a church on the Grand Plateau in Haiti which is still going strong today.

1993 also marked the 10th anniversary of the US Bishops’ historic peace pastoral, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response. A signed ad in the NewYork Times was published and letters sent to all the bishops recommending they revisit deterrence and change their “strictly conditioned moral acceptance” to a very clear moral condemnation. PCUSA also joined with Pax Christi International in the first ever Pax Christi International action to stop the arms sales to the Middle East.

Importantly, these years saw a growth in Pax Christi’s youth forum. A newsletter, “The Flame”, a student brochure and a campus organizer packet were produced. Youth Forum retreats were held in January and in August, a practice that would continue for the next decade and see a substantial growth in the participation of

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young adults in Pax Christi activities, such as the School of America watches, election monitoring in El Salvador and Nicaragua and the monitoring of human rights abuses in Guatemala and Negros in the Philippines, and keeping an eye on Chiapas where Bishop was experiencing danger. It was very inspiring.. I went to Nicaragua as an election monitor the year that the Sandinistas lost, and was saddened by the fact that apparently people voted for the right simply because they thought it would end the USA sponsored violence, and they were tired of seeing their sons killed.. And that was told to me by a taxi driver whom I interviewed, and had already lost 2 sons.

In 1995, PCUSA switched from a quarterly magazine to a newspaper format. From then on, we received the newspapers bundled and were able to place them in churches and …….It was a good evangelizing tool for PCUSA, almost as good as Johnny Zokovitch’s “ On the Line”. Thank you Johnny….you’re terrific…

These years also saw the growth of the regions… Sometime in the late 80’s we had had our first meeting of regional leaders in NYC hosted by Janet Abels… I attended this as did Joan Tirak of Michigan and probably others of you.. From then on the regional leaders would meet once a year at the same time as the council… and as I said the regional leaders were part of the group that developed our new set of priorities, contributed columns to the Catholic Peace Voice and networked with our parent organization in Erie..

So what about the regions…Are we in decline? Or are we growing in new ways? Rosemarie Pace is going to speak to you a little about the development of the regions.. where she and others see them going..

The only one I am familiar with in recent years is New Jersey where Kathy O’Leary is now the coordinator, and we are in transition…

What Kathy sees in New Jersey is a Pax Christi movement struggling in the suburbs, but growing in urban areas and among ethnic groups.. (We have a very active Spanish speaking PC group at St. Lucy’s in Newark where we also have our NJPC office.) This movement, naturally, tends to deal more with urban issues in particular housing, gun violence, immigration and other justice issues.

Unfortunately, this has brought NJ Pax Christi in conflict with the church in particular the archbishop of Newark.. Social Justice it seems is fine, but not if it is to extend to the priests… So… we’re sorry about the conflict, but wouldn’t mind if

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he would move on, and we could get Tom Gumbleton as our bishop. After all, now that we have a Pope Francis anything is possible.. Right?

So thank you for listening.. History can be inspirational, and if I’ve inspired anyone, even a little bit, it would make me very happy. If you want to know more about our PC history, much of what I just shared is part of something I wrote for PCUSA in 2003 called The Last Ten Years.. Maybe Johnny will put it on the website.. We also have available the history of the first 20 years written by Gerry Vanderhaar.. Now all we need is someone to write the Last Ten Years 2003- 2013,…

So may God bless us all, and remember what Dan Berrigan said in response to a question from a young man depressed with the state of the world, “If you want to have hope, you have to do hopeful things.”

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