Parish Administrator’s Notes
By Phil Grant, Administrator and Safe Environment Coordinator
pgrant@st-matts.org or 651-224-9793
September 21, 2025
No to Violence
Phil Grant, Pastoral Administrator and Safe Environment Coordinator
I was greatly saddened with the recent killing of Charlie Kirk, a prominent political activist. Such violence betrays everything our faith stands for.
All too often, violence begets violence. Inflamed passions can readily lead to a horrible cycle of violence. It feels to me like we’re well into such a cycle.
What to do? For one thing, follow Christ’s teaching: be peaceful; turn the other cheek.
Hard as that is to do, it leads to better outcomes. It’s not just the Bible and church teaching that call us to peace. Modern political science has demonstrated that peaceful words and actions are far more effective than violence, when it comes to reaching political goals. (I’m referring to political goals that serve the common good, not the power hungry.) I’ve read many articles that support this thinking with strong evidence.
I’m now reading a book by Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation. Sharp recounts specific examples showing how non-violence has worked well. In addition, an appendix lists 198 “Methods of Nonviolent Action”.
For example, Sharp’s very first method is “public speeches”. I am gladdened when religious and political leaders decry violence. I encourage everyone to send letters or emails to our leaders. We have power to influence them to say and to do the right thing, to help make it easier for us to be good.
Closer to home, I’m reminded of something St. Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) wrote.
“I heard the Pope John Paul II speak about peace, and one thing he said was this: ‘No to violence and yes to peace.’ What is violence? In the first place, we think of weapons, knives, killings. We never think of connecting violence with our tongues. But the first weapon, the cruelest weapon, is the tongue. Examine what part your tongue has played in creating peace or violence. We can really wound a person, we can kill a person, with our tongue.”
May you have a peaceful week.
Parish Administrator’s Note, September 14, 2025
