By Rita McInerney

In Atlanta there are peacemakers working within the frame of Church teaching, trying to bring to other Catholics awareness of their personal capacities for peacemaking and their responsibility to be knowledgeable about the threat of nuclear destruction.

Pax Christi Atlanta is a small group with a wide focus. Its members share the belief that war kills too many people and resolves problems ineffectually. They grope for peace within themselves and try to help others in their individual peace journeys.

This Atlanta chapter is part of Pax Christi USA organized in 1972. It is linked with the international Pax Christi movement begun in France and Germany after World War II. Early priorities of Pax Christi USA were disarmament, finding alternatives to violence, peace education, the primary of conscience, and a just world order. Their pursuit of these objectives follows the statements on war and peace made by the Vatican and American bishops.

Members of the Atlanta chapter can take a vow which binds them for one year to practice the nonviolence of Jesus as voiced in the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons and daughters of God.

Self-styled “oldest member” of Pax Christi Atlanta, Richard Parry, a member of St. Thomas More parish in Decatur, is professor of philosophy at Agnes Scott College. He has been on the faculty since 1967. During that turbulent decade he was involved with peace and civil rights movements and later with George McGovern’s and Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaigns.

“About the time of the bishops’ peace pastor (1983) I began to feel the need to work within the Church,” he recalls. “The point of Pax Christi is to be leaven within the Church on peace issues.”

Now, he says of his Pax Christi work, “I think, outside of Mass, it’s my chief religious, spiritual activity. It’s given me a much deeper insight on the Gospels and the important part that peace and nonviolence play in the kingdom of God.”

“It’s such a peculiar view of reality that it’s nice to have people share it with you,” in Pax Christi fellowship, he said.

Pax Christi Atlanta has taken programs, beginning with one on the bishops’ pastoral on peace, to parishes for several years. These programs are usually presented at Sunday morning religious education sessions.

There was “a certain amount of negative reaction” when the group was presenting the peace pastoral, Parry acknowledged. It came mostly, he said, from proponents of the macho “John Wayne kind of foreign policy. But there were also people who were intrigued.”

Response came also, he said, from those dedicated to praying for peace as Our Lady had requested at Fatima, through the rosary. “We always end our meeting with prayer to Mary, Queen of Peace,” Parry revealed.

For the past year, the chapter’s program on personal peacemaking has been well received at a variety of parishes from “downtown to Griffin,” according to Jim Mungovan, who coordinates the program.

Presentations performed before groups which can range from ten to 50 or 60 people. “Group size has little bearing on the warmth of the reception,” according to Mungovan, a member of the Cathedral of Christ the King parish.

Mungovan describes the current Pax Christi “road show” as “very interactive.” In it, Pax Christi members act out everyday situations which lead to hostility and violence in families.

The presentation’s opening section has role players acting out a conflict – which could be as mundane as two sisters fighting over a sweater – in the worst possible manner, ending with the players shouting at each other.

In the second “act,” incorporating comments offered by the audience, the players practice patience in attempting to resolve the problem. For the third and unrehearsed round, presenters ask for audience suggestions on situations and then proceed to act one out. Sometimes a solution can be reached but not always.

Audience suggestions could include such emotions as jealousy of a person in parish ministry over space assigned to another; anger of a husband at tardy wife and children, and resentment of youths against parents who force them to go to church.

Patti Spellman was a junior at Agnes Scott when her philosophy professor, Parry, invited her to attend a Pax Christi meeting. It was at a time in her life, she says, when she realized she needed to become involved with her Church and her community. That was part of becoming an adult. She remembered her aunt, who was a nun, impressing this upon her while growing up.

She attended her first meeting in January, 1985, and has been active since then. At present she and Victor Salzer are facilitators for the chapter. They set the goals, plan the agendas and make arrangements as necessary.

There is a core group of about 12 or 16 people who attend meetings the second Sunday night of each month at the Catholic Center on the Emory University campus. They begin with prayer and reflection and end with prayer. After discussion of business a 15-minute meditation period is held, following by a sharing time.

When she joined, Ms. Spellman said, there would be four or five people coming together to read the bishops’ peace proposal. When they finished it, she felt depressed. “I was raised to believe adults had their act together,” was her reaction to the overall lack of concern about the nuclear threat.

Later she began to feel encouraged at what she saw as “a great opportunity for us as a small group to have a large influence on the archdiocese.” She is convinced some impact is coming from the “road shows.”

An important part of the monthly meeting for her is the sharing time when members trying to perfect peacemaking in their daily lives report on their pilgrimages.

“It has been one of the most influential things in my life,” she admits. “You start to see patterns developing within yourself. It has brought me peace. The more you get involved in peace the more you begin to treat all people with respect, whether it’s the person cleaning the floor or the boss.”

For Parry, the sharing is also an important part of the commitment, though some people might be frightened off by what he calls its “slightly confessional” aspect. “We reinforce each other, those of us who stayed around,” he claims.

He is working now on another dramatization based on the morality of nuclear deterrence which will be ready to “go on the road” early in 1990. His basic idea is to get people to discuss some major points of deterrence and the chance that this policy could lead to a nuclear attack on civilians, a morally unacceptable action.

Mungovan, who spent a year in Vietnam, helped collect names at the cathedral when the archdiocese sponsored an Advent petition drive in 1987 in support of a national treaty to ban nuclear testing.

“We got hundreds of signatures,” he was surprised to see. “Catholics are politically conservative. We didn’t act this way.” And just one complaint, from an “obviously hostile man.”

“I don’t think we’re taking a risk to say we have to try something different from war. Pax Christi doesn’t have all the answers. Neither do the generals. But we’re Catholics. We’ve got to go back and look at what the Teacher said: ‘Love your enemies.’”