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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Maybe the key to teaching, learning and practicing peace is in a spot that is itself full of peace.
“I live in an incredible place right along the Pacific Ocean” near Cambria, California, along the state’s central coast near Big Sur, “which some friends found for me,” said Father John Dear, for whom peacemaking has been the core of his vocation.
“They have this big wedding barn right out on the ocean,” he added. “I’m surrounded by seals and otters and cows and dolphins and pelicans and seagulls.”
Sounds peaceful indeed. But, due to the coronavirus pandemic, Father Dear’s Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus won’t open for in-person peace education until 2022. However, that doesn’t stop him from offering online courses right now.
The center, at beatitudescenter.org, starts in earnest with an Advent series on nonviolence in December, and programs are scheduled into May.
“Right now, the greatest need in the church is to return to Jesus and his nonviolence. I’ve been thinking of that, especially this last year,” said Dear, who is now a priest of the Diocese of Monterey, California, after spending 32 years as a Jesuit.
“Divisions in the church and the anger and the hatred in the election, and then of course, the racism and nuclear weapons and climate change and the pandemic, we Catholics seem to be meaner than ever, and it seems in some ways we’re more like the religious authorities in the Gospel than the nonviolent Jesus,” Dear said in a Nov. 18 phone interview with Catholic News Service. “And it seems in my lifetime we’re getting worse, not better.”
Continued below.
New 'Beatitudes Center' to teach peace online first, then in person
“I live in an incredible place right along the Pacific Ocean” near Cambria, California, along the state’s central coast near Big Sur, “which some friends found for me,” said Father John Dear, for whom peacemaking has been the core of his vocation.
“They have this big wedding barn right out on the ocean,” he added. “I’m surrounded by seals and otters and cows and dolphins and pelicans and seagulls.”
Sounds peaceful indeed. But, due to the coronavirus pandemic, Father Dear’s Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus won’t open for in-person peace education until 2022. However, that doesn’t stop him from offering online courses right now.
The center, at beatitudescenter.org, starts in earnest with an Advent series on nonviolence in December, and programs are scheduled into May.
“Right now, the greatest need in the church is to return to Jesus and his nonviolence. I’ve been thinking of that, especially this last year,” said Dear, who is now a priest of the Diocese of Monterey, California, after spending 32 years as a Jesuit.
“Divisions in the church and the anger and the hatred in the election, and then of course, the racism and nuclear weapons and climate change and the pandemic, we Catholics seem to be meaner than ever, and it seems in some ways we’re more like the religious authorities in the Gospel than the nonviolent Jesus,” Dear said in a Nov. 18 phone interview with Catholic News Service. “And it seems in my lifetime we’re getting worse, not better.”
Continued below.
New 'Beatitudes Center' to teach peace online first, then in person
