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Justice, Peace and Dominicans 1216–1999: IX – STOP WAR PLEASE Dominicans and the Christian Peace Movement in England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Valerie Flessati
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Enablers was how, in last month’s New Blackfriars, Brian Wicker described the Dominicans who provided a forum—whether at Spode House or in the pages of New Blackfriars—where radical Christian debate could flourish. Companions is the word I would add to describe the role of Dominicans as they have accompanied Christian peace activists in the second half of the twentieth century. On that journey Dominicans have helped fellow pilgrims with their theological mapreading, and literally walked the same road, to Vézelay, Canterbury, Porton Down and Greenham Common.

PAX began in 1936 with the aim of ‘resistance to modem warfare on grounds of traditional morality and principle’. Its founders had come to the conclusion that modem methods of warfare, with air attacks on civilians, violated the conditions for a ‘just war’ and that Catholics had the right, and even the duty, to refuse participation in future wars. This immediately set PAX on a path to confrontation with the hierarchy, whose attitude was conveyed in a letter from the Diocese of Westminster:

‘The “conscientious objector” has an erroneous conscience.... He is entitled to respect and sympathy such as would be given to any misguided person... But error remains error... and no Catholic organisation may make it one of their purposes to support an attitude of conscientious objection which is at variance with Catholic teaching.”

As a result PAX could only continue its work by calling itself a society ‘of Catholics and others’ rather than a Catholic society.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 80 , Issue 945 , November 1999 , pp. 484 - 490
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Letter from Valentine Elwes, Archbishop Hinsley's Private Secretary, to Hon. Secretary of PAX, 12.10.36. PAX archives, London

2 Letter from Gerald Vann to E.I. Watkin, 23.9.36

3 Catholic Herald, 12.5.39

4 Yorkshire Evening News, 13.6.41

5 Note from Canon E.J. Mahoney to Cardinal Hinsley, 20.7.39. Westminster Diocesan Archives.

6 Gerald Vann, ‘Patriotism and the Life of the State’, Blackfriars vol.XXI no.238 January 1940 pp. 16–32

7 Conrad Pepler, ‘The Part of a Pacifist’, Blackfriars vol.XXV no.296 November 1944 pp.401–405

8 Pius XII, Address to the International Congress of Catholic Women's Leagues, April 1939

9 Correspondence between Vann and Bishop Parker of Northampton, January‐February 1944. Westminster Diocesan Archives.

10 Pilgrim Cross: an illustrated account of the Vézelay Peace Pilgrimage 1946 (Oxford, Blackfriars Publications, c.1946)Google Scholar

11 Brocard Sewell, ‘The Habit of a Lifetime’, unpublished autobiography, c. 1980.

12 PAX Bulletin no.83 May 1960

13 Letter from Henry St John to Charles Thompson, 25.4.59

14 llltud Evans to Charles Thompson, 15.11.60

15 Henry St John to Charles Thompson, 13.12.59

16 As reported in the Catholic Herald, 30.5.86