Attitudes to Pacifism

Rejecting violence without accepting injustice

Pacifism is the belief that war, or more broadly violence, is wrong and should be rejected. It is more than wishing that people would live peacefully: a pacifist rejects violence as the means of settling conflict. Christian pacifists connect this commitment with following Jesus and recognising the worth of every person, including an enemy.

Passive resistance means opposing injustice without using violence. The word ‘passive’ can be misleading: resistance may require courage, persistence and a willingness to suffer rather than retaliate. Peaceful protest, refusing to cooperate with wrongdoing and entering difficult dialogue can all be forms of non-violent resistance. Someone may use these methods without believing that every possible use of force is wrong.

Catholic attitudes therefore involve an important distinction. Catholics can strongly support non-violent action without rejecting every possibility of armed defence. The Catholic tradition allows the possibility of a just war, while Catholic advocates of non-violence argue that Christians should put much greater trust in peaceful ways of confronting injustice.

How Christian attitudes developed

The history of Christian attitudes to violence has not followed one simple pattern. An important turning point came when Christianity’s relationship with political power changed. In 313, Constantine’s Edict of Milan allowed Christianity to exist without persecution alongside other religions. In 380, Theodosius I made Nicene Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

As Christianity became closely connected with the state, some Christians accepted the use of state violence to defend religious teaching or oppose other religions. Others resisted it. In later centuries, coercion and persecution sometimes accompanied attempts to create a Christian society. Modern Catholic teaching rejects forcing people into faith: the Second Vatican Council, held in 1962–1965, affirmed religious freedom and opposed religious coercion.

However, violence is not the whole history. Medieval Christian peace movements tried to restrict violence and protect innocent, weak and defenceless people, although their success was limited. These efforts show that the commitment to peace continued even when Christians disagreed about whether force could ever be justified. Quakers have maintained a peace testimony since their beginnings in the seventeenth century. In the twentieth century, Thomas Merton developed a particularly influential Catholic argument for non-violence in an age when nuclear weapons made warfare potentially catastrophic.

John 14:22–31: love, obedience and peace

In John 14:22–31, Jesus prepares his disciples for his departure. Judas—not Judas Iscariot—asks why Jesus will reveal himself to them rather than to the world. Jesus replies that those who love him will keep his word, and that the Father and Son will make their home with them. He also promises the Holy Spirit, who will teach the disciples and remind them of his teaching.

The central statement about peace comes in verse 27: ‘Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you’. Jesus describes this as a peace that the world cannot give and tells the disciples not to be troubled or afraid. At the end of the passage, he emphasises that he acts as the Father commands.

For Catholics practising passive resistance, these ideas connect peace with faithful action. Loving Jesus means following his teaching, not merely expressing peaceful feelings. Trust in his peace can help a person resist injustice without being controlled by fear or hatred.

The passage does not directly set out rules about warfare. A pacifist can interpret Christ’s gift of peace as a reason to reject violence, while another Catholic can value the same teaching without concluding that defensive force is always forbidden.

Thomas Merton: resisting hostility through writing and dialogue

Thomas Merton was a Catholic writer who argued that Christian non-violence must change relationships, not simply defeat an opponent without weapons. In ‘The Root of War is Fear’, he explained how people minimise their own faults while exaggerating those of others. This allows them to treat an enemy as wholly evil and justify eliminating that enemy in the name of peace.

Merton’s response drew on the Incarnation, the belief that God the Son became human in Jesus. For Merton, this meant that every person had immense dignity and the possibility of transformation. An opponent must still be recognised as a fellow human being, not reduced to a threat or an obstacle.

His writing and correspondence put this approach into practice. In a letter to the Catholic peace activist Dorothy Day, he challenged the way people justify harming someone once they stop seeing that person as a brother and see only an adversary. In ‘Blessed are the Meek’, he argued that non-violence rests on humanity’s basic unity rather than a division between righteous protesters and evil opponents.

Merton therefore insisted on genuine dialogue: listening to an opponent, admitting one’s own need to change and seeking a truth shared by both sides. His resistance was active, but its purpose was reconciliation rather than humiliation. He accepted the Church’s traditional just-war teaching, yet believed that opportunities for a just use of violence had become almost non-existent in the modern age.

Quakers: putting peace testimony into action

Quakers, also called the Religious Society of Friends, regard war and armed conflict as contrary to the spirit and teachings of Christ. Their peace testimony is a commitment expressed through action, not simply a statement of belief. Christian Quaker arguments connect Jesus’ teaching with recognising ‘that of God’ in others: even an opponent should be approached as someone capable of responding to goodness, rather than someone to destroy.

This does not mean ignoring evil or assuming that every aggressor will change. Quaker Kathleen Lonsdale acknowledged in 1953 that an appeal to a dictator might not prevent aggression. Her argument was that non-violent resistance avoids the hatred, devastation and bitterness left by warfare. For such pacifists, faithfulness to Christ is not measured only by immediate success.

Quakers use peaceful protest, mediation, reconciliation, relief work and conscientious objection. Conscientious objection means refusing an activity because it conflicts with deeply held moral or religious convictions. During the First World War, Corder Catchpool served with the Friends Ambulance Unit from October 1914 to May 1916, helping wounded people without fighting. After conscription was introduced, he returned to England to witness as a conscientious objector and was imprisoned for more than two years. His example shows that refusing military service need not mean refusing to help those suffering from war.

Passive resistance can also involve deliberately breaking a law without using violence. In 1984, Quaker Helen Steven explained in court why she had entered the protected Faslane submarine base without permission. She opposed nuclear weapons because she believed that a gospel of love could not be defended by threatening to annihilate millions of innocent people. She pleaded guilty to the charge while defending her action on grounds of Christian conscience. This was active opposition to what she considered wrong, with a willingness to face its legal consequences.

Catholic responses to Quaker pacifism

Catholics share much of the reasoning behind Quaker peace testimony: love of enemies, respect for human dignity and the pursuit of reconciliation. The Catechism, paragraph 2306, praises those who renounce violence and use non-violent means to safeguard human rights. It qualifies this support: their action must not harm the rights and obligations of other people and societies. Non-violent resistance must therefore consider its effects on others, not only the protester’s conscience.

Catholic teaching also supports provision for people who refuse to bear arms for reasons of conscience. Paragraph 2311 adds that they must still serve the human community in another way. Quaker relief work illustrates how refusing to fight can be combined with practical service rather than withdrawal from responsibility.

Pope Francis’ 2017 World Day of Peace message urged active non-violence as a way of life. He explained that it does not mean surrender or passivity: Christians should respond to evil with good and break the chain of injustice. He praised Martin Luther King Jr’s non-violent struggle against racial discrimination as an example of what peaceful resistance can achieve.

The main disagreement concerns whether armed defence can ever be justified. Quaker peace testimony rejects war, whereas Catholic teaching allows lawful defence once peace efforts have failed, subject to strict moral limits. Catholics can therefore affirm Quaker courage and peacebuilding without accepting an absolute rejection of every war. Francis presented active non-violence as a complement to the Church’s efforts to limit force through moral rules, not as the abolition of those rules.

Evaluating Catholic support for pacifism

A strong argument for pacifism is that violence can produce hatred, retaliation and further violence. Non-violent resistance avoids deliberately harming an opponent and leaves open the possibility of reconciliation. Merton also argued that nuclear warfare could destroy the very human life that a war claimed to protect. Quaker protest and relief work show that pacifism offers ways to confront injustice rather than simply accept it.

A contrasting Catholic argument is that protecting people from aggression is a serious moral responsibility. If peaceful action cannot stop an attacker, refusing every use of force may leave innocent people exposed to harm. Accepting the possibility of justified defence does not mean approving war generally; it means arguing that peace and protection may sometimes require limited force.

Pacifists can reply that military victory does not necessarily create a just or lasting peace, and that violent methods may undermine the dignity they claim to defend. However, this still leaves the difficult question of how to protect people facing immediate attack. Neither a promise that dialogue always works nor an assumption that force always protects is enough.

A justified conclusion should address both concerns. One might defend pacifism because respecting human dignity should shape the means as well as the goal of resistance. Alternatively, one might prioritise non-violent methods while allowing defensive force in exceptional circumstances. The key disagreement is not whether peace matters, but whether violence can ever be an acceptable way to protect it.