Catholic Approaches to War and Peace: The View from Rome

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The Catholic Church boasts a rich tradition of reflection and action on war and peace. This course introduces students to Catholic teaching on war and peace and how it applies to a range of pressing international issues. It introduces students to the most well-known and well-developed part of the tradition: just war and pacifism (or principled nonviolence). But it goes further and considers how the just war-pacifism debate must be considered in the wider context of a theology, ethics and praxis of peacebuilding - i.e., the Church's approach to conflict prevention, conflict transformation, and post-conflict reconciliation. While lived Catholic peacebuilding is most evident in the midst of conflicts from Colombia and Congo to South Sudan and Ukraine, Rome offers a global perspective on the Church's teaching and action related to peace. This course introduces students to the peacebuilding role of the Holy See/Vatican - the source of official Church teaching, a respected diplomatic actor on a wide range of justice and peace issues, and a catalyst for a proliferation of Catholic peacebuilding activities around the world. It also introduces students to the peacebuilding work of other key Catholic actors, such as Caritas Internationalis, the Sant'Egidio Community, the Focolare Movement, and religious orders.