“No justice, no peace.”

This is the protestor’s chant in the marches against systemic racism and police brutality. Some Catholics may be uncomfortable with the idea that the protestors are right: we cannot have peace without justice. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church says as much:

“Peace is the fruit of justice, . . . understood in the broad sense as the respect for the equilibrium of every dimension of the human person. Peace is threatened when man is not given all that is due him as a human person, when his dignity is not respected and when civil life is not directed to the common good. The defence and promotion of human rights is essential for the building up of a peaceful society and the integral development of individuals, peoples and nations.” (494)

The Compendium continues by adding that “Peace is also the fruit of love. True and lasting peace is more a matter of love than of justice, because the function of justice is merely to do away with obstacles to peace: the injury done or the damage caused. Peace itself, however, is an act and results only from love” (494). Peace begins with recognizing the dignity of all human persons and the basic rights that flow from that dignity. It begins with the recognition that all persons are made in God’s image and that we look at Christ when we look at our neighbor - any neighbor.

Peace begins with recognizing the dignity of all human persons and the basic rights that flow from that dignity.

Justice demands that each be given his due, and peace cannot be achieved until that demand is met. As Christians, what drives the fight for justice can and should only be love: the love of Christ. Jesus tells us that “whatever you did for these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). Loving Christ necessitates turning to the least of us in our society and loving them enough to remove the obstacles in the way of justice, the obstacles that obscure their dignity and threaten their rights, the obstacles that keep them from flourishing as a beloved child of God.

To do this work is to be a peacemaker, a task Pope St. John Paul II called on women in particular to live out in his 1995 Message for the 28th World Day of Peace. St. John Paul II calls on women to be “teachers of peace with their whole being and in all their actions” and asks us to “be witnesses, messengers and teachers of peace in relations between individuals and between generations, in the family, in the cultural, social and political life of nations, and particularly in situations of conflict and war” (2). We find ourselves in such a moment of conflict and, arguably, of war against the systemic injustices that plague our country.

Reflecting on John Paul II’s understanding of the feminine genius, it is no surprise that he calls on women in particular for this task of peacemaking, of fighting for justice through love.

“The woman’s soul is fashioned as a shelter in which other souls may unfold.” - St. Edith Stein

Women are particularly skilled for this work of peacemaking because of our inherent capacity to “see persons with [our] hearts . . . independently of various ideological or political systems. [Women] see others in their greatness and limitations; they try to go out to them and help them” (John Paul II, Letter to Women). Women were created to see into the depths of the other beyond any ideological or political systems. Sin blinds us to this part of our feminine identity and allows political loyalty to deafen us so that we don’t hear the cry coming from the hearts of the afflicted. The cry for racial justice is one that should be firmly rooted in our hearts as women because we see the hurt in others and we are made to help them.

Women were created to see into the depths of the other beyond any ideological or political systems.

For Edith Stein, this capacity is rooted in empathy. She writes in "The Ethos of Women’s Professions" that “[w]oman naturally seeks to embrace that which is living, personal, and whole. To cherish, guard, protect, nourish and advance growth is her natural, maternal yearning.” As women, we are especially inclined to be empathetic, to see the living and personal, and to recognize dignity in humanity. Stein argues that it is this capacity that allows women to focus on the person rather than on the material, to value human life over capital or property.

Building off of Stein’s work, John Paul II argues in Mulieris Dignitatem that “our time in particular awaits the manifestation of that ‘genius’ which belongs to women, and which can ensure sensitivity for human beings in every circumstance: because they are human” (30). It is in light of this genius that he calls upon women to be peacemakers, because God has entrusted the human being to her in a special way: the way of maternity.

“Mama.” - George Floyd

Social media posts have pointed out that we should hear George Floyd's call for his mother as a call for all mothers. As Catholics, we know that all women are mothers by virtue of their feminine genius, and so all women are called to respond to the cries of those who suffer from injustice.

Maternity, whether biological or spiritual, is the capacity to be moved in response to another person and to act in self-giving love to help and console them. It is the capacity to love another simply because they are human. It is a call to take responsibility for the other and to accompany them in their suffering.

John Paul II’s 1995 message on peace argues that working for peace “cannot be concerned merely with the external conditions of coexistence; rather, it must affect people’s hearts and appeal to a new awareness of human dignity” (1). By placing this idea within the context of his writings on women, it becomes clear that he sees the peacemaker role as being led by women because of our maternal hearts that are ready to love fiercely and to make the fight for justice truly personal.

Education in the ways of peace

By tapping into her maternity, woman is better prepared to be a teacher of peace. John Paul II sees this role primarily from the standpoint of raising a family, which stands as “the first and fundamental school of peace.” However, he calls women to bring this work into society: “When women are able fully to share their gifts with the whole community, the very way in which society understands and organizes itself is improved, and comes to reflect in a better way the substantial unity of the human family” (Message on Peace 9, emphasis added). To be a peacemaker is to be a unifier. This requires women to teach others how to look beyond differences and to redirect us towards the one principle - the image of God in all - that is the core of our unity as the Family of God.

Woman’s capacity for others helps her recognize the injustices in society that threaten the dignity of others. Margaret Harper McCarthy writes in her essay “The Feminine Genius” that “a woman is always a mother, whether physically or spiritually, and that all of her activity, private and public, ought to be pursued from the point of view of her motherhood, her ‘genius’” (Promise and Challenge 120). McCarthy points out that it is this maternity that serves to counterbalance “disturbing trends that are ultimately the expressions of a less human world” in order to “recall us to the essentially human” (Promise and Challenge 113).

In our capacity for relationship, women have a duty to reconcile those broken relationships in our society that result in a lack of justice and a lack of peace. When your child is hurting, you do all you can to comfort them. The Body of Christ is currently hurting in so many ways related to the deep wound of racism: police brutality, prison industrial complex, maternal/infant mortality rates, poor educational opportunities, redlining laws, and others. As women - as mothers - we must recognize this wound, care for those who are hurting, educate society, and lead the way to justice so there can be peace.

In our capacity for relationship, women have a duty to reconcile those broken relationships in our society that result in a lack of justice and a lack of peace.

John Paul II put this monumental task before women in 1995 and would continue to urge us towards it now. So how do we go about answering this call?

First, we must know that we are loved by God and desire to respond to His love. This requires a life of prayer and dedication to continuous growth in our relationship with God. In order to love others, we must first know that we are loved.

Second, we must embrace “truth, justice, love and freedom” (Message on Peace 2). We must first become educated in order to educate others. This compels us to learn what truth, justice, love, and freedom are, and to listen to those who suffer from a lack of truth, justice, love, and freedom.

Then, with a firm grounding in what we must work towards, we need to do the work. This will take different forms among women based on our various gifts, talents, and personalities. We ought to let the Holy Spirit guide us in recognizing the obstacles to justice and let Him fill us with the divine love we need to defeat them. This is hard work, requiring supernatural grace to sustain us. Pray, listen, then act:

“The hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of women is being acknowledged in its fullness, the hour in which women acquire in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at this moment when the human race is undergoing so deep a transformation, women imbued with a spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid humanity in not falling.” (Pope St. Paul VI, Address to Women)

Fellow peacemakers, let’s get to work.