The Words of the Kittrie Family
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The Words of the Kittrie Family |
It is with great pleasure and pride that I set down to write a few words which celebrate the exceptional peace mission -- consisting of many struggles and successes -- of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. I can add little, indeed, to the public record enumerating the accomplishments of the Founder of Unification and its many innovative, courageous, dazzling and globally impacting progenies.
I have known the IIFWP Founder, his wife, his children, his principal disciples, his supporters and many of the dedicated workers in his diverse vineyards for some two decades. I knew them when they first ventured forth to spread their unique and contagious beliefs in the central role of the family, individual responsibility, and the joys of human fraternity throughout the world. I also knew them when they emerged and like the Old and New Testament’s prophets and disciples came under attack and siege by narrow-minded and jealous adversaries. I have witnessed them in their many hardships, but also successes, and often during their hours of vindication.
Many times during my association with Reverend Moon’s worldwide projects, all dedicated to the pursuit of human well-being, tolerance, harmony and peace, I have been questioned and challenged by colleagues as well as adversaries. “Why is it that you,” they would ask, “with your sheltered and secure niche in the establishment -- a distinguished academic and prolific writer, a descendant of an ancient family, a lawyer and member of the most doubting and often most cynical of professions -- invested so much time, energy and goodwill in this relationship with a young movement and its exceptional leader?”
And my answer has always been plain and simple. As a youth, I met the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, I was later introduced to the Pope in Rome, and I became acquainted with the Chief Rabbi of Israel. But not one of them ever asked for my opinion, advice, assistance, or collaboration. They all were too deeply immersed in their own pasts, in their own institutions, their own missions, and own faiths.
It was in Reverend Moon that I found the broadest ecumenical spirit, a fierce commitment to the unity and fraternity of mankind, an unflinching love of all people, a total commitment to the institution of the family, a tolerance for the diversity of humankind and the need for its harmonization. I also found in him the wisdom to blend the Occident with the Orient, the North with the South, the ability to combine eternity with a sense of the contemporary reality, the insights to create a bridge between science and faith, the courage to wage warfare against escalating hedonism, and an abundance of the divine as well as the human gifts of humor and love of life.
“It is by its fruits that you shall know the tree,” the gospel teaches us. We have all indeed been witnesses to the rich fruits borne by Reverend Moon’s many and diverse trees and orchards. We count among these his contributions to the unity of sciences, to publishing, to his endowing Washington, D.C., the claimed capital of the free world, with its second daily paper. We recognize and applaud his stance on behalf of liberty and economic progress in the former Soviet Union and in Latin America, his quests for the unification of the two Koreas, his efforts to create a system of international universities, his building bridges between professors, scientists, political leaders, the media, economic innovators and social reformers worldwide. Most of all, we must note his constant inspiration for all those seeking to better the human condition -- through the elimination of deprivation, poverty, hunger and disease, and through the institution of a reign of peace.
Let me conclude with the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Institutions are, by and large, the lengthened shadow of singular men…and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.” Reverend Sun Myung Moon is certainly one of these persons. His place in human history is assured. We merely must make certain that the seeds he planted for true peace are nourished by all of us throughout the world
Dr. Nicholas N. Kittrie, KtSJ