As members of the Vincentian Family we have become accustomed to using terms such as Advocacy, Aporophobia, Homelessness, Collaboration, Systemic Change, etc., to describe either situations that we encounter in our work/ministry or actions that we carry out. To deepen our understanding of these concepts from the perspective of our charism, we have developed this series of posts, entitled a “Vincentian Dictionary”, with the aim of offering each week an explanation of the various words/phrases from a social, moral, Christian and Vincentian perspective. Inspired by the charism of St. Vincent de Paul, we hope to deepen our understanding and reflect on service, social justice and love of neighbor. At the end of each article you will find some ideas for personal reflection and/or group dialogue.

Follow the complete thread of this Vincentian dictionary at this link.

20. Implications for the Church Today: Formation, Mission, and Advocacy

“The promotion of truth, love, justice and peace are integral to the mission of the Church. In the presence of untruth, injustice, hatred and violence we cannot remain silent. We have an obligation to witness to the kingdom. We cannot be silent, nor can we be neutral.”
— Archbishop Stephen Brislin of Cape Town, addressing Palestinian Christians in the West Bank town of Zababdeh, Palestine, January 31, 2019.

The development of a Catholic theology of nonviolence carries significant implications for the Church’s life and mission in the 21st century. With a firm grounding in historical, theological, and moral foundations, the focus now turns to a pressing question: What must the Church do in response?

The Catholic Church—across all her dimensions, including institutional, pastoral, liturgical, educational, and prophetic—is called to embody and promote a culture of nonviolence through three key areas: formation, mission, and advocacy. These dimensions are not isolated but interwoven, shaping the Church’s evangelizing identity and witness to the world.

20.1 Formation: Shaping Disciples of Peace

a) Catechesis and Theological Education

Catholic formation must include systematic teaching on nonviolence as a constitutive element of the faith, not as an optional political view. This implies:

• Integrating Gospel nonviolence into catechisms, religious education curricula, and seminary programs.
• Teaching the history and development of just war and just peace traditions, critically and honestly.
• Highlighting the lives of peacemakers and martyrs for justice as models of Christian discipleship.

Formation in nonviolence cannot be relegated to niche groups; it must be mainstreamed into the whole life of the Church.

b) Spiritual and Pastoral Formation

Nonviolence is not only a doctrine but a spiritual discipline. Parishes, religious communities, and movements should foster:

• Prayer practices rooted in peace, forgiveness, and healing.
• Conflict resolution skills as part of sacramental preparation and pastoral counseling.
• Spiritual direction that helps people confront their own inner violence and grow in the virtue of mercy.

This is especially vital in contexts marked by domestic violence, gang activity, militarization, or war trauma.

c) Catholic Schools and Universities

Catholic educational institutions have a special role in shaping a new generation of Christian peacemakers. This involves:

• Embedding Catholic social teaching on peace, justice, and the dignity of life into all disciplines.
• Supporting student-led initiatives for nonviolence and social action.
• Promoting critical thinking and global solidarity in the face of nationalism and militarism.

As Pope Francis told youth: “You are not the future, you are the now of God.”—Closing Mass for the 34th World Youth Day in Panama.

20.2 Mission: Living the Gospel of Peace

a) Evangelization through Peace Witness

The Church’s mission is to proclaim Christ crucified and risen, and this proclamation must be inseparable from the way of peace. This means:

• Rejecting all forms of coercion, colonization, or violence in the name of the Gospel.
• Embracing dialogue with other faiths and cultures as a way to disarm fear and build trust.
• Allowing the Church’s very structures and language to reflect humility, openness, and non-domination.

In a world where religion is often manipulated to justify violence, the Church’s nonviolent witness is evangelical.

b) The Poor as Teachers of Peace

Those who suffer violence most acutely — the poor, refugees, victims of racism and exploitation — are often the Church’s best teachers of Gospel peace. Thus, the Church must:

• Stand with and among the poor, not merely for them.
• Learn from the resilience, resistance, and forgiveness of communities impacted by violence.
• Recognize that peace cannot exist without justice — and justice without participation is hollow.

This resonates deeply with the vicencian spirit: to see Christ in the face of the poor, and to serve with compassion and humility.

c) The Church as a Mediating Presence

In conflict zones, the Church is often one of the few trusted institutions. Her role must include:

• Facilitating dialogue between opposing groups.
• Hosting truth and reconciliation processes.
• Accompanying victims and perpetrators toward healing and restoration.

Such a mission demands priests, religious, and lay leaders formed in nonviolent conflict transformation and committed to peace as vocation.

20.3 Advocacy: Speaking Truth to Power

a) A Prophetic Voice Against Violence

The Church is called to be a prophet among the nations, denouncing structures and ideologies of violence. This includes:

• Speaking out against military aggression, arms production, and the global arms trade.
• Condemning violence against women, children, and minorities, both systemic and domestic.
• Opposing capital punishment, torture, and police brutality.

Prophetic advocacy must be courageous yet pastoral, grounded in truth and animated by love.

b) Promoting Disarmament and Just Peace Policies

In collaboration with civil society, the Church must actively promote:

• Nuclear disarmament and international peace treaties.
• Investment in peacebuilding, development, and reconciliation over military spending.
• Policies that welcome migrants and refugees, rather than criminalizing them.

This work is already advanced through organizations like Pax Christi, Caritas Internationalis, and the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development — but it must be amplified.

c) A Nonviolent Option for Catholic Institutions

Catholic universities, dioceses, and religious orders should consider adopting explicit nonviolence commitments, such as:

• Ethical investment and divestment from weapons manufacturers.
• Nonviolent training for clergy, educators, and ministers.
• Public stances against local and global injustices.

As institutions that claim the name of Christ, they must model coherence between word and witness.

20.4 Church that Builds Peace

The Church today stands at a moral and spiritual crossroads. Will she continue to tolerate theologies and structures that accommodate violence, or will she embrace the radical peace of the Gospel?

A Catholic theology of nonviolence invites the Church to:

• Form disciples of peace through catechesis, liturgy, and community.
• Live a missionary identity rooted in solidarity and mercy.
• Advocate for systemic change, even when it means opposing powerful interests.

Such a Church — poor, humble, courageous — can become, in the words of Gaudium et Spes, a “sign and safeguard of the dignity of the human person” in a violent age.

21. The Vincentian Charism as Prophetic Response to Violence

21.1 A Spirituality of Incarnated Charity

Vincentian spirituality teaches that to encounter Christ is to meet Him in the poor, the wounded, and the excluded. This incarnational view:

• Breaks down walls of indifference and class.
• Challenges the Church to go out to the peripheries, where violence is normalized.
• Embraces a theology of kenosis (self-emptying love) as the path to healing.

In the face of violence, Vincentians do not ask “Where is God?” but “Where is the poor person?”, because God is found there.

21.2 A Preferential Option for the Poor

Long before the term entered official Catholic social teaching, the Vincentian Family lived a preferential option for the poor. This preference is not just moral or emotional, but strategic and theological:

• The poor are not passive victims, but subjects of grace and history.
• Serving them means challenging the systems that marginalize them.
• Vincentians understand that systemic violence requires systemic change — in economics, politics, education, and religious practice.

21.3 Systemic Change as Nonviolent Resistance

St. Vincent was not a revolutionary with arms, but a revolutionary of structures. The modern Vincentian call to systemic change reflects this legacy:

• Go beyond acts of mercy to transform unjust systems.
• Address root causes of poverty: inequity, exclusion, corruption, violence.
• Empower the poor as co-creators of their future, not as objects of aid.

In this light, systemic change is a form of Gospel nonviolence — the peace that arises from justice.

21.4 Vincentian Virtues as Antidotes to Violence

The Vincentian tradition identifies five foundational virtues, which act as spiritual counterweights to violence:

a) Meekness (Gentleness)

Meekness is not weakness. It is the capacity to respond to hostility with patient strength, to resist evil without replicating it. For Vincentians:

• Meekness defuses the cycle of aggression.
• It creates safe spaces for dialogue, healing, and forgiveness.
• It is essential in working with those traumatized by violence.

In a culture of domination, meekness is a radical virtue.

b) Charity (Active Love)

Charity is the core of Vincentian life. But it is not mere almsgiving; it is active, strategic, and transforming love:

• It seeks personal contact with those who suffer.
• It dismantles barriers of fear and suspicion.
• It inspires service that is creative, faithful, and long-term.

In this view, charity is nonviolence in motion.

c) Humility

Violence is often born of pride, control, and superiority. Vincentian humility:

• Recognizes our own complicity in unjust systems.
• Opens the heart to listen and learn from the poor.
• Avoids messianic complexes and encourages co-responsibility.

Humility is the soil in which peaceful collaboration can grow.

d) Simplicity and Zeal

These twin virtues — truthful transparency and passionate commitment — reinforce the Vincentian response to violence. Simplicity guards against duplicity and manipulation; zeal ensures we do not grow complacent.

Together, they inspire a life that is both authentic and courageous in the face of systemic injustice.

21.5 Projects for Justice and Peace

Initiatives such as Vincentian Solidarity Office, Famvin Homeless Alliance, and Systemic Change Projects actively address:

• Structural violence through housing and urban inclusion.
• Economic injustice via microcredit and cooperative models.
• Peace education and training for nonviolence.

These efforts reflect a deep belief that charity without justice is incomplete — and that peace is built person by person, system by system.

21.6 Challenges and Opportunities

Vincentians today face several tensions:

• How to remain faithful to service while engaging in advocacy?
• How to dialogue with political powers without being co-opted?
• How to integrate interreligious and intercultural dimensions into their peacemaking work?

The Vincentian response must be creative, rooted in the Gospel, and always close to the poor.

21.7 A Vincentian Call to Action

At the heart of the Vincentian perspective on nonviolence is a call to faithful action:

• See: Identify the violence, visible and hidden, that scars human dignity.
• Judge: Reflect through the lens of the Gospel, Catholic Social Teaching, and Vincentian virtues.
• Act: Respond boldly, humbly, and systemically.

In this way, the Vincentian Family offers a unique, credible, and prophetic contribution to the Church’s mission of peace in our time.

22. Conclusion: Toward a Church of Nonviolence and Transforming Love

Violence, in all its forms — physical, psychological, structural, symbolic, and even religious — remains a deep wound in the body of humanity. It contradicts the essence of the Gospel and obscures the face of Christ, who came “not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45). This essay has explored the complex historical, theological, and ecclesial dimensions of violence through a Catholic and Vincentian lens. What emerges is a clear and compelling truth: the Christian vocation is one of radical nonviolence rooted in divine love and human dignity.

22.1 A Tradition That Condemns and Transcends Violence

From the early martyrs who suffered rather than kill, to the Fathers of the Church who proclaimed the sacredness of life, from the teachings of popes and councils to the lived witness of saints, the Catholic tradition offers a vision of humanity reconciled in Christ. While the Church has not always been consistent or blameless, her best voice has consistently echoed the call to peace, justice, and mercy.

Today, this voice must be renewed and sharpened. In the face of militarism, economic domination, systemic racism, and cultural dehumanization, the Church must boldly proclaim:

• That all human beings are created in the image of God.
• That every act of violence is a blasphemy against that image.
• That peace is not merely the absence of war, but the fruit of justice, forgiveness, and truth.

22.2 The Gospel of Peace as Mission Imperative

The Gospel is not neutral. Jesus was crucified as a threat to an unjust status quo. His message was, and remains, a challenge to the powerful, the violent, and the indifferent. Christian discipleship demands more than personal virtue; it requires public witness and structural engagement.

The Beatitudes, especially the blessing of peacemakers, are not sentimental idealism — they are a revolutionary program of active, courageous, and incarnational love.

The Church must therefore:

• Renounce all complicity with systems of oppression.
• Promote disarmament of the heart and of nations.
• Educate for peace in every school, parish, and family.
• Stand with those most affected by violence — the poor, the refugees, the victims of abuse and war.

22.3 The Vincentian Path: Charity that Transforms Systems

The Vincentian tradition, with its focus on loving action, structural change, and intimate solidarity with the poor, offers the Church a path of hope. It reminds us that:

• Violence is not inevitable. It is created — and can be uncreated.
• Holiness is not escape from the world’s pain, but engagement with it in the Spirit of Christ.
• True charity refuses to remain satisfied with relief: it demands justice, dignity, and transformation.

Vincentians — and all who follow their example — are called to be artisans of peace, agents of systemic change, and missionaries of nonviolent love in the most abandoned places.

22.4 A Call to Conscience, Conversion, and Communion

The Church must become what she proclaims: a community of peace, rooted in the Cross and Resurrection. This requires:

• A conversion of conscience: to reject vengeance and hatred.
• A conversion of structures: to dismantle systems that thrive on inequality and fear.
• A conversion of imagination: to believe in the possibility of a just and peaceful world.

Pope Francis has invited the Church to become a “field hospital” and a “culture of encounter.” This is not merely poetic language. It is a call to live the Gospel with wounds exposed, arms open, and hearts ready to forgive and rebuild.

23. Final Word: The Promise of the Crucified and Risen Christ

The ultimate answer to violence is not a strategy, a theory, or even a document. It is a Person: Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord. He reveals that love is stronger than death, that the wounds of violence can become the signs of new life, and that history is not doomed to repeat its cycles of oppression and bloodshed.

To follow Him is to walk the narrow path of mercy, the road of the cross, and the sunrise of resurrection.

Let the Church proclaim with courage:

No more war.
No more hatred.
No more exclusion.

Only love, only peace,
only the Kingdom of God —
made present, here and now, through us.

Amen.