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December 7, 2023By Msgr. Thomas J. Sullivan
Adapted from Dec. 1 talk to the First Friday Club
Advent is now upon us. It’s a season of hope and it looks to our celebration of Christ’s birth. And it’s certainly a time to pray for peace.
In our Christmas hymns, we’ll hear of a peace sung by angels. On Christmas day we’ll rejoice in the Nativity of the Prince of Peace.
Well, in these very troubled times globally, with the terrible wars going on in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and in Africa, I want to recapture an important moment in modern history where the appeal for world peace had an impact - at least for a time. It happened in 1963.
Those of us of a certain age remember a dying pope, John XXIII, now a canonized saint, who wrote and published his last encyclical letter that year. The letter was Pacem in Terris - “Peace on Earth.”
“Encyclical” is a word that means “encircling the world.” It’s the most important kind of letter a pope can write. They’re written in Latin and then translated into all languages for a worldwide audience. Pacem in Terris was written for everyone.
2023 is this letter’s 60th anniversary. I encourage you to read it. It’s easy to access online. It’s long, of course. All encyclicals are. But these 15,000 words are worth re-reading in our time.
For one thing it was the first encyclical in history, of the 300, written to “all men of good will” – not just Catholics.
Mary Ann Glendon, the well-known Harvard Law School professor and devout Catholic, has written that Pope John “was insisting that the responsibility for setting conditions for peace does not just belong to the great and powerful of the world - it belongs to each and every one of us.”
She said it was more than an encyclical. It was “an event.”
It was the first encyclical to be published in its entirety in The New York Times.
The Washington Post said, “it was not just the voice of an old priest, nor just that of an ancient Church. It was the voice of the conscience of the world.”
Two years after Pacem, in 1965, the United Nations sponsored a major conference to implement its teachings. 2,000 heads of state and scholars participated.
The letter stresses the importance of human rights. It addresses the relationship between individuals and the state. It speaks of equality among nations. And it presents the need for greater relationships between all nations. It called for groups of states to assist other states, especially those in trouble. But most importantly, it called for an end to the nuclear arms race - for disarmament.
Two men were especially moved by the letter - President John F. Kennedy and, perhaps to your amazement, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
We know that the Vatican sent Khrushchev a personal copy, translated into Russian.
The pope’s letter was published in April 1963. On June 10, President Kennedy delivered a speech at American University in Washington that he hoped would change the course of history.
He had read Pacem in Terris and because of his reading called for a nuclear test ban treaty. The letter changed him.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, just a year before, was fresh in the memory of both the United States and the Soviet Union, and it haunted the rest of the world.
When I was a boy, the Cuban Missile Crisis kept us on the edge of our chairs.
Kennedy had the U.S. Navy blockade Cuba, as we remember from his very strong speech that night.
What we didn’t know then, but do now, is that he was also collaborating with Khrushchev, privately, through back channels, to draw the world back from the brink of nuclear war.
But there remained both in Washington and Moscow powerful members of the “war parties” of each country who actually thought a nuclear war was “winnable.”
Both leaders stared into that darkness and thought otherwise. But their government colleagues, on both sides, were tying their hands.
Kennedy was taking an enormous political gamble when he decided to call for an end to the nuclear arms race and the beginning of a new era of peace. Previously, he had been aggressive on defense issues.
He was changing that view precisely because of the spiritual leadership of Pope John XXIII.
In his speech at American University, Kennedy called for respect and understanding for the people of the Soviet Union, recalling many of their achievements.
We know his call for disarmament was not universally welcomed. Some still believe it was a factor in his assassination a few months later. And in less than a year Nikita Khrushchev was ousted.
But little-known at the time was the degree to which these two world leaders had a friend in the now dying pope. Pope John was actually the intermediary between the president and the premier.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the pope had sent a peace message to Khrushchev that was gratefully acknowledged by the Soviet leader.
In Pacem in Terris, disputes between nations, the Pope wrote, must be resolved by negotiation and agreement, not force of arms. And John XXIII, in his communication with both Kennedy and Khrushchev kept repeating words from the Gospel, “nothing is impossible.”
John XXIII died on June 3, eight weeks after his encyclical.
Pacem in Terris is widely regarded as having had a decisive influence on Kennedy’s speech at American University. That speech was called, “A Strategy of Peace.” At the heart of it was a commitment to a ban on nuclear testing - a treaty.
He said, “We all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
At times, in his speeches, Kennedy would even quote Khrushchev, who said, “In the next war the survivors will envy the dead.”
Regarding a ban on testing nuclear weapons, Kennedy knew that he would meet fierce opposition among our own military leaders and in the Senate where all treaties have to be passed.
Some Democrats and Republicans opposed it. But in the end, it was the hearts of the American people themselves who turned the hearts of those senators, who then found the need for disarmament so important that the treaty received 80 Senate votes in favor with only 19 opposed. 80 to 19 would never happen in today’s Senate on any subject.
As we contemplate the possible use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, which has been threatened by Vladimir Putin and see the nightmare going on in the Middle East and elsewhere, it behooves us to read Pacem in Terris and recall how a great pope brought two powerful world leaders together – a president and a premier.
We should certainly pray for peace each waking day.
We should work for peace, in our own way, each day, as the pope’s letter encourages. And we do that, of course, by working for justice for all people. It’s justice that leads to peace.
I especially hope that your personal Christmas will be filled with that very special peace which only the Prince of Peace gives.
