A Message From
Walter J. Burghardt, S.J.

Good Friends:

An issue of The Living Pulpit on conflict is, in a sense, overdue. We have dealt with a number of con-crete subjects that involve conflict: faith, evil, justice, earth, anger. But it is high time we focused on conflict itself.

The saddening fact is, conflict is everywhere. Not only in Bosnia and Rwanda, in the north of Ireland and South Africa, in Gaza and Jerusalem. It pervades our own dear land: within our families and our schools, within the Pentagon and the White House, within Con-gress and local governments, on our streets and in our churches. It is inflamed by color and economics, by religious beliefs and secular unbeliefs, by philosophies and theologies, by church organs and church guitars, by bad sermons and good, even by the so-called "kiss of peace."

Sadder still, it has always been thus. Eden-without- conflict did not survive the tree of good and evil. Nor was it long before fratricidal Cain would say to his God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gen. 4:9). The battles that bloody the text of the Hebrew Bible are matched by the internecine struggles in the Christian covenant that have transformed the Pentecost commu-nity into sects competing for souls, wondering how to realize the prayer of Jesus to his Father, "that they may be one as we are one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me" (Jn 17:22-23). And has anyone trig-gered more profound violent conflict than Jesus?

Sadder still, it will always be thus, as long as Sin stalks the earth. Meanwhile, the neuralgic question remains: How shall we Christians live with conflict? How can conflict be turned to our advantage? How, specifically, can conflict be made to serve community? Not only not destroy community, but be a vital force in strengthening community; helping to shape that one body of the living and the dead, all energized by the indwelling presence of Christ.

The pages that follow, please God, will provide information and inspiration. One final conviction of my own: We can live together creatively despite most of our intellectual differences; we cannot live together as Christians without love.

Faithfully,

Walter J. Burghardt, S.J.
President