Father Jerzy Popiełuszko

Andrzej Iwański CC BY-SA 3.0 downloaded from Wikimedia

At a recent Bible Study, I found out about the late Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko who was murdered during the Communist regime in Poland. He was a chaplain to Solidarity. It's a coincidence that at the same time I'm conversing with several people about the moral licitness of violence. It's not a question if violence can be licit, but rather when and in what circumstances. And so I've collected a few quotes related to the topic.

From JPRS (Joint Publications Research Service) dated 1 March 1985, it has these excerpts from devotional meditations, 19 October 1984. This is the day Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko was killed.

To preserve dignity in order to increase good and over come evil is to be guided in life by a sense of justice. Justice flows from truth and love. The more truth and love there is in a man, the more justice there is as well. Justice must go hand in hand with love, for without love one cannot be totally just. Where love and goodness are lacking, hatred and violence come to take their place, and if one is guided by hatred and violence, one cannot speak of justice.

To overcome evil with goodness is to remain faithful to truth. Truth is a very fragile possession of our reason. It was God himself who planted the will for truth in man; that is why man has a natural striving for truth and an aversion to falsehood. True, like justice it is linked to love, and love has a price. True love is self-sacrificing; therefore truth too must have a price. Truth always unites people and brings them together.

In order to over come evil with good, one must care about the virtue of courage. The virtue of courage is the overcoming of human weakness, especially fear and dread. A Christian must remember that he should only be afraid of betraying Christ for a couple silver pieces of sterile peace. To merely condemn evil, falsehood, cowardice, coercion, hatred and violence cannot suffice for the Christian; rather he himself must be a true witness, advocate, and defender of justice, goodness, truth, freedom, and love. He must boldly claim these values for himself and for others.

The following comes from "Fr. Popielusko and Communist Poland" by Robert Royal, Arlington Catholic Herald (2000).

Do not struggle with violence. Violence is a sign of weakness. All those who cannot win through the heart try to conquer through violence. The most wonderful and durable struggles in history have been carried on by human thought. The most ignoble fights and most ephemeral successes are those of violence. An idea which needs rifles to survive dies of its own accord. An idea which is imposed by violence collapses under it. An idea capable of life wins without effort and is then followed by millions of people.