Unusual for an East German socialist, Fuchs was convinced that the message of Jesus, if taken seriously, led to the establishment of an economically just social order and a world free of violence. He knew all too well the horror of warfare, having lived through both world wars as well as the crushing poverty that both caused and followed wars. He also knew about political persecution: he was imprisoned by the Nazis for helping refugees flee Germany, and he was always regarded with suspicion by the Stalinist leaders of the GDR. But through it all he never allowed his own misfortunes to blind him to the suffering of others. “Do not close your eyes before the sufferings of your neighbors,” he wrote. “Do not fear that it will destroy your happiness if you live in sympathy with them. No. Hold it [sympathy] fast; take it into your life.”
In fact, Fuchs believed that suffering for peace and justice is the challenge every Christian must face. Servility in the face of tyranny or oppression is never an option. “Let us hear the challenge of Christ. There may be hard disappointment and bitter suffering on the road he points to. He never promised quick or easy victory. Only by our suffering can we overcome prejudices bred in millions of people by the inability of Christians to speak to their times. Mahatma Gandhi led a great nation along his way of truth and came to a great creative success. When will the Christian conscience be strong enough to unite those who call themselves after Jesus in the building of a world of brotherhood? When will we be ashamed to call Christian those who trust in the sword?”
14 February
Valentine
Died ca. 269
The Power of Love
St. Valentine’s feast day has fallen on hard times. It’s become an annual occasion marked by mawkish verse, images of fat cupids shooting arrows into hearts, and binge spending (in 2011, U.S. consumers blew nearly $16 billion on Valentine cards, candy, flowers, and jewels). Even the Roman Catholic Church contributed to the day’s decline by taking if off the General Roman Calendar in 1969. But despite all the marketing hoopla that’s almost swallowed up the day, peacemakers ought to remember it, because at its best it’s a commemoration of the nonviolent power of love.
Not much is known about St. Valentine. He lived in the third century, was a priest in Rome, and was martyred in the final years of the Emperor Claudius II’s reign. Stories about Valentine have him ministering in various ways to persecuted Christians. But the story that best expresses what the saint stands for has it that he secretly married dozens of young Christian couples during a time when Claudius had forbidden male youths from marrying because he wanted them as unencumbered soldiers for his legions. Valentine was discovered officiating at one such wedding and was hauled in chains before Claudius. Once there, he tried to convert the emperor. Enraged at the priest’s presumption, Claudius had him beaten nearly to death and then beheaded.
At least two lessons may be taken from this story. The first is that Valentine is a figure who willingly risked his life for the sake of honoring love, concord, and union between couples. At a time when men of his class were concerned with fighting battles and defeating enemies, Valentine focused instead on blessing the love that binds people together. We still remember today, even if only vaguely and through consumerist lenses, Valentine’s sacrifice and why he made it.
The other lesson is this: love always trumps power. Claudius wound up executing Valentine. But the empire that Claudius ruled has long since crumbled into dust, as must all empires. What endures is the creative, ever-renewing act of love between human beings, which, as history has shown, is powerful enough to resist any kind of illegitimate authority. Love is seditiously defiant of attempts to curtail it or stifle it; it will always find a way to express itself.
The subversive and expressive power of love has begun of late to take back Valentine’s Day and reclaim it as the celebration of love it was intended to be. Environmental and human rights activists have used the holiday as an occasion to encourage lovers to forgo giving one another traditional gifts such as roses, chocolate, and diamonds because of the violence with which they’re produced or acquired. Commercially grown roses pollute soils and waterways with chemical fertilizers and insecticides, chocolates are linked to rainforest despoliation, and diamonds are often mined by Third World workers who for all practical purposes are slaves. Weaning ourselves from the sentimental love of a consumerist holiday restores Valentine’s Day as a celebration of the power of love.
15 February
Ben Salmon
1889—15 February 1932
In the Army of Peace
Coloradan Ben Salmon was a martyr for peace if ever there was one, persecuted by both state and religious powers for his refusal to serve in the military when the United States entered World War I. As he wrote his draft board, “Let those who believe in wholesale violation of the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ make a profession of faith by joining the army of war. I am in the army of Peace, and in this army I intend to live and die.”
Although Salmon was a deeply faithful Catholic, he rejected the just war doctrine endorsed by the Church since the fifth century. So when President Woodrow Wilson declared war against Germany in April 1917 and Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore shortly thereafter ordered American Catholics to support the war effort, Salmon knew he was in for trouble. He quickly wrote a letter to President Wilson explaining his religious opposition to participating in the war. “Regardless of nationality, all men are my brothers. God is ‘our father who art in heaven.’ The commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is unconditional and inexcusable. By both precept and example, the lowly Nazarene taught us the doctrine of nonresistance.”
If Wilson ever saw Salmon’s letter, he was unimpressed, for no response was forthcoming. In the meantime, Salmon began giving anti-war speeches in Colorado that eventually brought him national attention as a “shirker” and “subversive.” Secular as well as Catholic voices joined together in condemning his position. It was only a matter of time before authorities retaliated by drafting him. Salmon’s induction papers arrived on Christmas Day 1917. He sent them back the next day along with a note saying that he already served in the army of Peace.
Two weeks later Salmon was arrested and charged with sedition and desertion, even though he had never been formally inducted into the army. Condemned to death, his sentence was “mercifully” reduced to twenty-five years of hard labor at Fort Leavenworth. Once behind bars, Salmon was regularly beaten by guards, thrown into isolation, and refused the sacraments by the prison priest. In protest, he went on a hunger strike and was forcibly fed for six months before officials declared him mentally unstable and shipped him off to a Washington, DC, hospital for the criminally insane.
Thankfully, the American Civil Liberties Union eventually took up Salmon’s case. He was finally pardoned in 1920 and given a dishonorable discharge from the army—even though, once again, he had never been inducted. He returned to an unforgiving community in Colorado where he died twelve years later, his health prematurely broken by prison hardships and the poverty he endured after his release. But he went to his grave believing that “either Christ is a liar or war is never necessary”—and Christ is no liar.
16 February
Simone Weil
3 February 1909—24 August 1943
War Transforms Us into Things
Philosopher, political radical, classicist, factory worker, mystic, author: Simone Weil is hard, and perhaps impossible, to pin down. In her short lifetime, she journeyed from a youthful commitment to revolutionary Marxism to religious mysticism. But if there’s a unifying theme that runs throughout her activities and her writings, it’s her denunciation of the dehumanizing effects of violence.
Born into a solidly middle-class French family, Weil was a brilliant student who early on lived the double life of an intellectual and an activist. She taught school and wrote learned papers, but she also agitated for workers’ rights and offered free classes