Welcome to the Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus!

Listen on Apple, Spotify, all major platforms,
and the National Catholic Reporter

July 28th, 2025

Episode #30, with Michele Dunne, on following St. Francis and Jesus on the path of Gospel nonviolence

This week on “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” John Dear speaks with Michele Dunne, director of the Franciscan Action Network, a national mobilization of lay Franciscans working for justice and peace. Michele is a professed Secular Franciscan (there are over 200,000 in the world) who has had a long career as a diplomat in the Middle East and then a scholarly researcher focused on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy.

From 2006 until 2021, she headed programs focused on peace, human rights, and democracy in the Middle East at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Atlantic Council. Over the years, she’s been a regular commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Before that, she served for nearly 20 years in the U.S. State Department, including assignments in Jerusalem and Cairo. She holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University and lives in Washington DC with her husband.

“At the Franciscan Action Network, we have 17,000 individual members, 50 Franciscan religious communities, and 30 Franciscan Justice Circles in the U.S. We deal with justice issues that are related to immigration, the treatment of migrants and refugees in the US, poverty, and economic injustice, as well as teach nonviolence and advocate for the U.S. to play a peaceful role in the world. The Franciscan Action Network helps me to express my Franciscanism on issues I care about.

“Today, we’ve got this broken relationship between humanity and creation.

But Franciscans have been celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Canticle of the Sun, St. Francis’ poem/prayer to ‘Brother Sun, Sister Moon.’ St. Francis had an incredible kinship with all humanity, with all humans as brothers and sisters, and with all creation. We all need to find that kinship today.

“A sense of purpose keeps me going,” she says. “I can’t take everything in all at once, so I stay focused on doing the next right thing, and ask ‘What is God’s will for me? What is mine to do?’ We all need to show up and find what’s ours to do and do it.” Check it out and be inspired. And visit www.franciscanaction.org

Next week…

The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast welcomes John Dear! For more information, visit here.

Listen on Apple, Spotify, all major platforms,
and the National Catholic Reporter

July 21, 2025

#29, Rev. Charles McCarthy on nonviolence and Christlike love

This week on “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” John Dear speaks with Rev. Charles McCarthy, one of the world’s great teachers of Christian nonviolence.

Rev. McCarthy is a priest of one of the Eastern Catholic Churches, Byzantine-Melkite, in communion with the Bishop of Rome. He has been a Catholic priest for forty years. He has Masters Degrees in English and in Theology from Notre Dame, and earned his Doctorate in Jurisprudence from Boston College Law School. He was married for 53 years to Mary Margaret McCarthy, and they have 13 children and 23 grandchildren. (The cure of their daughter, Teresa Benedicta, was the official miracle for the canonization of Sr. Teresa Benedicta, known as, St. Edith Stein.)

Charles McCarthy taught at the University of Notre Dame where he founded and was the original Director of The Program for the Study and Practice of Nonviolent Conflict Resolution. He served for many years at St. Gregory the Theologian Byzantine-Melkite Catholic Seminary. For over fifty years he directed retreats and spoke at conferences throughout the world on the Nonviolent Jesus.

John begins by asking him to define “nonviolence.” Charlie McCarthy said: “Nonviolence is nonviolent love of friends and enemies modeled by Jesus in the Gospels. Nonviolence asks, ‘Is the action that you are doing imbued with Christlike, nonviolent love?’ Any action without love is nothing at all. If our actions are not motivated by and imbued with Christlike love, they are not going to be effective in countering evil and death.

“Jesus is nonviolent because God is nonviolent,” he continues. “Jesus’ purpose is to reveal to us how to love as God loves us because God is Love. Jesus wants us to be at one with God. The words, deeds, and spirit of Jesus in the gospel reveal the love of God

“I’ve never been able to get beyond the fact that when the will of God is known, what follows immediately is an imperative to live it, embrace it, and follow it. Jesus comes and reveals the will of the Father, which is to love as God loves, even under the most horrendous conditions, as he shows as he undergoes his death.”

“It is important to nurture the capacity of empathy beyond our friends, family, nation, to every human being so that we learn to love the one that does not love you, that is hostile to you. Love your enemies is an authentic teaching of Jesus. That’s what he wants us to do. That’s nonviolence.” Check it out and be inspired! For further information, see: www.emmanuelcharlesmccarthy.org

Next week…

The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast welcomes Michele Dunne! For more information, visit here.

Upcoming Zoom Programs: