By Elizabeth Tomlinson
Christ the King Parish, Missoula

When 9-year-old Marshall Rosenberg was living in Detroit with his parents in 1943, a race riot erupted in his neighborhood, and 34 people were killed. Rosenberg grew up wondering what motivates some people to violence, and what motivates other people to compassion.

It was an obsession that led him to compare different religious traditions, and the life stories of their peace-makers. He became convinced that there was no difference in the commitment to compassion in the traditions, and that the assumptions, images, attitudes and approaches people use when communicating lead to alienation and violence, or to peace.

Dr. Rosenberg earned a doctorate in clinical psychology, and in the 1960s began working with racial violence in the schools during desegregation. He then founded the Center for Nonviolent Communication. Its purpose is to create human connections that empower compassionate giving and receiving, and to create governmental and corporate structures that support compassionate giving and receiving.

Marshall Rosenberg has since traveled the world teaching his principles to groups of people and to governments, and mediating conflicts.

Sister Doris Faber, OP, pastoral associate of Christ the King Parish, was the key person in bringing a CNVC trainer to Missoula in June, with support from local ecumenical groups. Mary Kay Reinemann conducted the day-long training in the techniques of compassionate communication. The guiding assumption of these methods is that human beings are essentially compassionate, and that everything a human being does is for a good reason – to meet needs.

The focus of the techniques is on what we and others observe – not what we judge – and to connect what we think and feel to underlying human needs and values such as love, support and protection.

A language of criticism, blame and demand is in this way transformed into a language of human needs. This is the language where we meet the other person or government on common ground. We can then request what we want in a way that is not a demand based on coercion. The result is a relationship of cooperation and collaboration.

When the trainer, Mary Kay Reinemann, conducted the workshop in Missoula, she took individuals through a process of role-playing, and using “…compassion as the motivation for action rather than fear, guilt, shame, blame, coercion, threat or justification for punishment. NVC is NOT about getting people to do what we want. It is about creating a quality of connection that gets everyone’s needs met through compassionate giving.”

We are reminded of the truth of our humanity, even in extraordinary circumstances. Transparency and availability is the objective. Vulnerability is the result of revealing “…yourself nakedly and honestly …for no other purpose than as a gift of what’s alive in you. Not to blame, criticize or punish.” (www.cnvc.org) This supports Catholic teaching, that “All the faithful of Christ, of whatever rank or status, are called … to the perfection of charity.” (Dogmatic Constitution of the Catholic Church, #40)

In a San Diego Union-Tribune interview with Marshall Rosenberg (Oct. 14, 2004) he related how he helped to remove hatred and violence that had been bred into a culture for generations. He began by saying, to opposing Christian and Islamic chiefs: “I’m confident we can resolve this conflict if we can get everybody’s needs clear. All human beings have the same needs.” He then asked: “Who wants to start by saying what your needs are?”

The two sides began by screaming reminders to each other of the violence they had committed and suffered. After a while, Rosenberg asked the chief of one side, “Are you saying your need for safety has not been met?” When he was answered in the affirmative, he asked the other side to repeat what he had heard as the need of that chief, and then repeated the process from the other side.

“It was not easy,” he told the interviewer, “but at some point one of the chiefs finally said, ‘If we know how to communicate this way, we don’t have to kill each other.’ ”

Rosenberg went on to relate how, when working with families involved in the killing in Rwanda, he would “…bring together the person who did the killing and the family of the person killed, and you see in the beginning the hatred, the tension. But within an hour there is a radical transformation.”

“Clarifying what is being observed, felt, needed and wanted, rather than diagnosing and judging, it fosters respect, attentiveness and empathy, and engenders a mutual desire to give from the heart.” (http://www.cnvc.org).

The methods of nonviolent communication support the Catholic Church’s mission of love. “Listening and welcoming, the Church is a place of encounter, or racial dialogue and intercultural collaboration. In a context of universal mutual respect born of love, the Church offers the gifts that transform the world and bring salvation in this life and the next.” (Dwell in My Love, 2001, by Cardinal Francis E. George, OMI, archbishop of Chicago).

Ongoing practice sessions will begin at Christ the King in September, and it is not necessary to have attended the workshop to learn the process and to participate. Please call Sister Doris for details. (406) 728-3845.

Justice Voices articles are coordinated by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development Committee of the Diocese of Helena.


Published in The Montana Catholic, Vol. 24, No. 7, July 18, 2008.