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Justice: The Journey of a Lifetime
When I was teaching in the history department at University of Dayton, 1967-1971, I was also counseling aspiring conscientious objectors during the Vietnam War. Unknown to them, these young men were the agents of my seven year struggle to come to terms with my own position on war. On August 8, 1974, at the end of an eight day private retreat, I committed myself to active nonviolence as a way of life. To concretize this commitment, I joined the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, an organization committed to active nonviolence, founded in 1914. Later that year I joined Pax Christi, an international Catholic peace movement, founded in 1945, that was just then becoming organized in the United States.
What did these actions mean, since obviously I was not going to be a conscientious objector in the conventional sense? |