Daniel Berrigan

Daniel Berrigan

Template:TOCnestleft Daniel Berrigan was an activist priest active in anti-Vietnam war movement, as well as anti-nuclear movement. He was arrested "hundreds of times." He co-founded Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam with Rabbi Abraham Heschel. He traveled to North Vietnam with Howard Zinn.

"He was the fifth son born to Thomas Berrigan, radical socialist and labor organizer, and Frida Fromhardt."

He "wrote the best-selling play, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, which later opened in New York and Los Angeles, and became a film under the direction of actor Gregory Peck."

He was a contributing editor at Sojourners. Daniel Berrigan's brothers were Jerry Berrigan and Philip Berrigan. His niece is Frida Berrigan. His sister-in-law is Elizabeth McAlister.

Obituary at Sojourners

Daniel Berrigan's obituary from John Dear at Sojourners verbatim:

"Rev. Daniel Berrigan, the renown anti-war activist, award-winning poet, author and Jesuit priest, who inspired religious opposition to the Vietnam War and later the U.S. nuclear weapons industry, has died at age 94, just a week shy of his 95th birthday.

He died of natural causes at the Jesuit infirmary at Murray-Weigel Hall in the Bronx, New York. I had visited him just last week. He has long been in declining health.

Dan Berrigan published more than 50 books of poetry, essays, journals, and Scripture commentaries, as well as an award winning play, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, in his remarkable life, but he was most known for burning draft files with homemade napalm along with his brother Philip and eight others on May 17, 1968, in Catonsville, Md., igniting widespread national protest against the Vietnam War, including increased opposition from religious communities. He was the first U.S. priest ever arrested in protest of war, at the national mobilization against the Vietnam War at the Pentagon in October 1967. He was arrested hundreds of times since then in protests against war and nuclear weapons, spent two years of his life in prison, and was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Daniel Berrigan was born on May 9, 1921 in Virginia, Minn., the fifth of six boys to Thomas and Frieda Berrigan. His family subsequently moved to Syracuse, N.Y., where the boys grew up attending Catholic grade schools. After high school, Berrigan applied to the Society of Jesus, the Catholic religious order known as “The Jesuits.” He entered the Jesuit novitiate at St. Andrew-on-the-Hudson, near Poughkeepsie, N.Y., in August 1939.

With his classmates, he made the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, a 30-day silent retreat; spent two years studying philosophy; went on to teach at St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City, N.J., (from 1946-1949); and eventually, to study at Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass. (from 1949-1953).

Berrigan was ordained a priest on June 21, 1952 in Boston. In 1953, he traveled to France for the traditional Jesuit sabbatical year known as “tertianship.” There, his worldview expanded as he met the French “worker priests.” He returned to teach at Brooklyn Prep until 1957, when he moved on to LeMoyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., where he taught New Testament until 1962. There he founded “International House,” an intentional community of activist students who seek to live solidarity with the third world poor, a project that continues today.

In 1957, Berrigan published his first book of poetry, Time Without Number. The book won the Lamont Poetry Award and was nominated for the National Book Award. His poem “Credentials,” had first caught the attention of poet Marianne Moore who recommended his poetry to publishers and became a friend:

I would it were possible to state in so

Few words my errand in the world: quite simply

Forestalling all in quiry, the oak offers his leaves

Large handedly. And in winter his integral magnificent order

Decrees, says solemnly who he is

In the great thrusting limbs that are all finally one:

a return, a permanent riverandsea.

So the rose is its own credential, a certian

Unattainable effortless form: wearing its heart

Visibly, it gives us heart too: bud, fullness and fall.

[And the Risen Bread: Selected Poems of Daniel Berrigan, 1957-1997, edited by John Dear

After that first book, Berrigan began publishing one or two books of poetry and prose each year for the rest of his life. His early books include The Bride: Essays in the Church; Encounters; The Bow in the Clouds; The World for Wedding Ring; No One Walks Waters; They Call us Dead Men; Love, Love at the End; and False Gods, Real Men.

Denied permission to accompany his younger brother Philip Berrigan, a Josephite priest, on a Freedom Ride through the South, Berrigan went to Paris on sabbatical in 1963, and then on to Czechoslovakia, Hungar, and South Africa. On his return, he began to speak out against U.S. military involvement in Vietnam and co-founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship. In 1964, along with his brother Philip, A.J. Muste, Jim Forest, and other peacemakers, he attended a retreat hosted by Thomas Merton at the Abbey of Gethsemani. That retreat marked a turning point for Merton and the Berrigans as the committed themselves to write and speak out against war and nuclear weapons, and advocate Christian peacemaking.

Merton recorded his meeting with Berrigan in the early 1960s in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystand, calling Berrigan 'an altogether winning and warm intelligence and a man who, I think, has more than anyone I have ever met the true wide-ranging and simple heart of the Jesuit: zeal, compassion, understanding and uninhibited religious freedom. Just seeing him restores one’s hope in the church.'

In 1965, he marched in Selma, became assistant editor of Jesuit Missions, and co-founded Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam with Rabbi Abraham Heschel. He began a grueling weekly speaking schedule across the country that continued until about 10 years ago.

In November 1965, a young Catholic Worker named Roger LaPorte immolated himself in front of the United Nations. After speaking at a private liturgy for LaPorte, Berrigan was ordered to leave the country immediately by his Jesuit superiors. Berrigan began a six-month journey throughout Latin America. His expulsion cause a national stir throughout the media, and Berrigan returned to New York and, in 1967, became the first Catholic chaplain at Cornell University. His book, Consequences, Truth and ... chronicled his journeys to Selma, South Africa, and Latin America.

On October 22, 1967, Berrigan was arrested for the first time with hundreds of students protesting the war at the Pentagon. “For the first time,” he wrote in his journal in the D.C. jail, 'I put on the prison blue jeans and denim shirt; a clerical attire I highly recommend for a new church.' In February 1968, he traveled to North Vietnam with Howard Zinn to receive three U.S. Air Force personnel who were being released. While they awaited their meeting with the VietCong, they took cover in a Hanoi shelter as U.S. bombs fell around him. His diary of his trip to North Vietnam, Night Flight to Hanoi was published later that year.

On May 17th, 1968, along with his brother Philip and eight others, Berrigan burned 300 A-1 draft files in Catonsville, Md., in a protest against the Vietnam War. “Our apologies, good friends,” Dan wrote in the Catonsville Nine statement, “for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.” Their action attracted massive national and international press and led to hundreds of similar demonstrations. After an explosive three-day trial in October, he was found guilty of destruction of property.

In his autobiography, To Dwell in Peace, Berrigan reflected on the effect of the Catonsville protest:

The act was pitiful, a tiny flare amid the consuming fires of war. But Catonsville was like a firebreak, a small fire lit, to contain and conquer a greater. The time, the place, were weirdly right. They spoke for passion, symbol, reprisal. Catonsville seemed to light up the dark places of the heart, where courage and risk and hope were awaiting a signal, a dawn. For the remainder of our lives, the fires would burn and burn, in hearts and minds, in draft boards, in prisons and courts. A new fire, new as a Pentecost, flared up in eyes deadened and hopeless, the noble powers of soul given over to the “powers of the upper air.” “Nothing can be done!” How often we had heard that gasp: the last of the human, of soul, of freedom. Indeed, something could be done, and was. And would be.

The Catonsville Nine Protest was followed extensively around the world, in large part because of the shock of two Catholic priests facing prison for a peace protest.

In his 1969 bestseller, No Bars to Manhood, Berrigan wrote: 'We have assumed the name of peacemakers, but we have been, by and large, unwilling to pay any significant price. And because we want the peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war, of course, continues, because the waging of war, by its nature, is total — but the waging of peace, by our own cowardice, is partial ... There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war — at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.'

Back at Cornell, Berrigan wrote the best-selling play, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, which later opened in New York and Los Angeles, and became a film under the direction of actor Gregory Peck. The play has been performed hundreds of times around the world, and continues to be performed as a statement against war.

When Berrigan and his codefendants were to report to prison to begin their sentences in April 1970, both Berrigans went 'underground' instead of turning themselves in. For five months, Daniel Berrigan traveled through the Northeast, speaking to the media, writing articles against the war, and occasionally appearing in public, much to the anger and frustration of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, which eventually tracked him down and arrested him on August 11, 1970, at the home of theologian William Stringfellow on Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island. He was brought to the Danbury, Conn., federal prison, where he spent eighteen months. On June 9, 1971, while having his teeth examined, he suffered a massive allergic reaction to a misfired novacaine injection and nearly died. On February 24, 1972, he was released.

In The Dark Night of Resistance, a bestseller written during his months underground, Berrigan used St. John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul as a guide for anti-war resisters. Harvard professor Robert Coles recorded a series of conversations with Berrigan during his months in hiding in Boston, later published as The Geography of Faith. America is Hard to Find collected letters and articles from underground and prison, and was published along with Trial Poems and Prison Poems. His prison diary, Lights on in the House of the Dead, another bestseller, recorded his Danbury experience.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Berrigan attracted widespread media attention, was on the cover of Time magazine, and became the focus of intense national debate not only about the war, but how people of faith should oppose the war. He become one the most well-known priests in the world, and consistently called for the Catholic Church to abolish its just war theory and return to the nonviolence of Jesus as recorded in the gospel.

While he was underground, Berrigan wrote a widely circulated open letter, first published in the Village Voice, to the “Weathermen,” the underground group of violent revolutionaries who blew up buildings in opposition to U.S. wars. 'The death of a single human is too heavy a price to pay for the vindication of any principle, however sacred,' Berrigan wrote. Some credited his statement as a major reason for the break up of the Weather Underground.

In 1972, the U.S. filed indictments against the Berrigans and other activists charging them with threatening to kidnap Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The trial in Harrisburg, Penn., aimed mainly at Philip Berrigan, was the longest trial in U.S. history, at the time, and resulted in a mistrial and equivalent acquittal. Afterward, Berrigan spent six months in Paris living and studying with Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, collaborating on a book of conversations about peace, called The Raft is not the Shore.

In 1973, after teaching at Union Theological Seminary and Fordham University, Berrigan joined the New York West Side Jesuit Community on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where he lived with some 30 other Jesuits for the rest of his life.

After the indictments and mistrial in Harrisburg, the Berrigans turned their attention to the U.S. nuclear weapons industry and embarked on resistance as a way of life. On September 9, 1980, with Philip and six friends, Berrigan walked in to the General Electric headquarters in King of Prussia, Penn., and hammered on unarmed nuclear weapon nosecones. They were arrested, tried, convicted, and faced up to 10 years in prison for the felony charge of destruction of government property. Their 'Plowshares' action opened a new chapter in the history of nonviolent resistance and the anti-nuclear movement. Berrigan drew inspiration from the biblical prophet Isaiah who wrote that one day, 'They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again'(Isaiah 2:4).

During their 1981 trial in Philadelphia, which was later dramatized in the film, In the King of Prussia, starring Martin Sheen, Berrigan said:

The only message I have to the world is: We are not allowed to kill innocent people. We are not allowed to be complicit in murder. We are not allowed to be silent while preparations for mass murder proceed in our name, with our money, secretly...It’s terrible for me to live in a time where I have nothing to say to human beings except, 'Stop killing.' There are other beautiful things that I would love to be saying to people. There are other projects I could be very helpful at. And I can’t do them. I cannot. Because everything is endangered. Everything is up for grabs. Ours is a kind of primitive situation, even though we would call ourselves sophisticated. Our plight is very primitive from a Christian point of view. We are back where we started. Thou shalt not kill; we are not allowed to kill. Everything today comes down to that — everything.

More than 100 plowshares anti-nuclear demonstrations have occurred since 1980, including in England, Ireland, Germany, and Australia.

As he continued to speak each week around the country and publish books of poetry and essays, Berrigan also served as a hospital chaplain in Manhattan at St. Rose’s Home for the poor, and then at St. Vincent’s Hospital, with cancer patients and later with AIDS patients, which he chronicled in his books, We Die Before We Live and Sorrow Built a Bridge. In 1984, he traveled to El Salvador and Nicaragua to learn first hand from church leaders about the effects of the U.S. wars there and wrote about the journey in Steadfastness of the Saints.

In 1985, filmmaker Roland Joffe invited Berrigan to Paraguay, Argentina, and Colombia to serve as advisor to the film, The Mission. He also had a small part, alongside Robert DeNiro, Jeremy Irons, and Liam Neeson. Berrigan published an account about the making of the film, the Jesuit missions in Latin America of 1770s, and their relevance to contemporary efforts against war today, in his book The Mission. In 1988, he published his autobiography, To Dwell In Peace.

In the mid-1980s, Berrigan began to publish a series of 20 Scripture commentaries on the books of the Hebrew Bible. And the Risen Bread: Selected Poems of Daniel Berrigan, 1957-1997, was published in 1996.

Dan was my greatest friend and teacher, for more than 35 years. We traveled the nation and the world together; went to jail together; and I edited five books of his writings. But all along I considered him one of the most important religious figures of the last century, right alongside with Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, and his brother Philip. Dan and Phil inspired millions of people around the world to speak out against war and work for peace, and helped turn the Catholic Church back to its gospel roots of peace and nonviolence. I consider him not just a legendary peace activist but one of the greatest saints and prophets of modern times. For now, I celebrate his extraordinary life, and invite everyone to ponder his great witness and how we all might continue his peacework.

Thank you, Dan. May we all take heart from your astonishing peacemaking life, and carry on the work to abolish war, poverty, and nuclear weapons.

'Global Man and the Ecumenical Movement'

World Fellowship in New Hampshire

The World Fellowship advertised at the Guardian in 1966: "GREAT DAYS AHEAD AT WORLD FELLOWSHIP IN NEW HAMPSHIRE"

• July 2-3 Nonviolence and the Social Revolution. Dr. Gordon Christenson and Bradford Lyttle.

• July 4-8 Global Man and the Ecumenical Movement. The Rev. Daniel Berrigan, SJ.; The Rev. John Heidbrink, and The Rev. W. Christopher Schmauch.

• July 11-15 Let Us Talk About China. Or. Chang Hsin-hal and Sidney J. Gluck.

• July 18-23 Marxism and Education. Dr. Irving Adler. Dr. Herbert Aptheker. Prof. Robert S. Cohen. Celia S. Deschin. Prof. Harry N. Dubin. Prof. George H. Homsch. Mrs. Blanch Katz. Mrs. Helen Parsons, Dr. S. Stoyonovlc.

Write to World Fellowship, Conway, N.H, for full information about the remainder of the season.

People's Peace Treaty

The People's Peace Treaty (PPT) was a fraudulent document of "peace" between the leftist-led National Student Association (NSA) of the US and several North Vietnamese communist "student" fronts, as well as with the [[National Liberation Front/SV], the political wing of Hanoi's Lao Dong Party in South Vietnam and the Lao Dong Party of North Vietnamese itself.

The organization behind this "peace treaty" placed a nearly full page ad in the New York Times (NYT) of March 7, 1971, Sunday edition, Page 7, starting with a quote by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, August, 1959 which said "People want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it." [The quote was referring to the Captive Nations of the Soviet Bloc, North Korea and Red China (which had just invaded Tibet and conquerred it).

A list of "endorsers" of the PPT included:

• Rev. Daniel Berrigan, S.J.
• Rev. Philip Berrigan, S.J.
• Rennie Davis - May Day Collective
• David Dellinger - People's Coalition for Peace and Justice (PCPJ).

More on the People's Peace Treaty and its communist history can be found in several House Internal Security Committee hearings entitled "National Peace Action Coalition ((NPAC) and People's Coalition for Peace & Justice (written on the hearing volume as Peoples Coalition for Peace & Justice, (PCPJ), 92nd Congress, 1st Session, Parts 2 and 3, 1971.

Palestine Human Rights Campaign

A brochure came out in early 1978 announcing "A National Organizing Conference" sponsored by the Palestine Human Rights Campaign to be held on May 20-21, 1978, at American University, with the theme of "Palestinian Human Rights and Peace".

The list of "Sponsors" was a mix of a several groupings including the Communist Party USA and its sympathizers, the World Peace Council, the Hanoi Lobby, black extremists, mainly marxists, radical Christians, and Arab/Arab-American organizations, plus a few phone-booth sized pro-Palestinian Christian groups.

Individual sponsors of the event included Daniel Berrigan.

Colombia Support Network

As of 2009, the Colombia Support Network Advisory board consisted of ;

• Rev. Daniel Berrigan, S.J., Activist, Writer, Poet
• Larry Birns, Council on Hemishperic Affairs
• Blase Bonpane, Office of the Americas
• Fr. Roy Bourgeois, School of the Americas Watch
• Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Kristin Dawkins, Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policies
• Rev. John Dear, S.J. Activist and Writer
• Kathleen Falk, Dane County Executive
• Al Gedicks, University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse
• Daniel Gomez-Ibanez, The Peace Council
• Rev. Thomas Gumbleton, Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit
• Edward S. Herman, Activist and Writer
• Robert McChesney, University of Illinois
• Daniel Kovalik, United Steele Workers
• Mark Pocan, Wisconsin Legislature
• Mark Sherman, Lawyer
• Howard Zinn, Activist and Writer

External links

• Sojourners website

References

Template:Reflist