Pax Christi Quad Cities

Pax Christi Quad Cities, a chapter of Pax Christi USA, is a Catholic peace and justice movement dedicated to promoting Gospel nonviolence and merciful reconciliation. Its core mission is rooted in Catholic social teaching and focuses on fostering a culture of nonviolence and solidarity in support of human rights. We consider nonviolent conflict resolution, with the aim of reconciliation, through the expression of unconditional love (agape), as not only virtuous but also necessary in these times when cruelty and corruption are not only tolerated but celebrated.

At Pax Christi Quad Cities, we believe in a Beloved Community that welcomes and affirms the inherent worth and dignity of all people, excluding no one.  Pax Christi USA began in 1972, thanks to the initiative of a handful of Catholic lay people and religious.  We emerged from Pax Christi International, a Catholic peace and justice group founded in 1945 by French and German Catholics in Europe who prayed for forgiveness and reconciliation, for the peace of Christ, after the horrors of the Second World War.  We believe now, as we believed then, that the Sermon on the Mount of Our Lord Jesus Christ encapsulates the essence of Gospel nonviolence and agape, and we strive to live the personal and interpersonal nonviolence of Jesus, St. Francis of Assisi, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  

In affiliation with the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative and Institute, our QC chapter finds hope and encouragement in the 6 principles of Kingian nonviolence: that nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people who seek change in oppressive conditions by loving our enemies in order to produce a change of heart and conscience in their approach to oppression; that Dr. King’s idea of the Beloved Community is our framework for solidarity and reconciliation in an all-inclusive spirit; that we avoid conciliation toward oppressive and corrupt conditions but that we embrace the enemy we are trying to be reconciled to; that we embrace the possibility of suffering as redemptive, as we speak of accepting suffering, without retaliation, for the sake of the cause, to achieve the goal; that we avoid personal violence, not only behaviorally, but in thought and emotion as well; and finally, that the universe is on the side of justice, as God is on the side of justice, as the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, that we must seek what is fair as well as what is peaceful and loving.  

We truly hope and pray you will find common cause with us and join us in our pilgrimage of Gospel nonviolence and Agape!