NEWS Peace Activist, Author Philip Berrigan Dies
Peggy
Peace Activist, Author Philip Berrigan Dies
By Colman McCarthy
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, December 8, 2002; Page C11
Philip Berrigan, 79, a pacifist, writer and iron-willed advocate for peace
whose nonviolent protests against militarism led to repeated imprisonments,
died of cancer Dec. 6 at his home in Baltimore.
For nearly four decades, Mr. Berrigan, a former Roman Catholic priest, was a
major figure in the American peace movement, with his stature bolstered by
his willingness to endure long prison stretches in county, state and federal
cells.
Believing, as did Martin Luther King Jr., that "war is our government's
number one business," Mr. Berrigan began his dissent against military
violence in 1967, when he and three others destroyed draft records in a
government office in Baltimore. In 1968, he and another group struck again
at a Catonsville, Md., selective service facility, where hundreds of draft
records were burned with homemade napalm.
Arrested and convicted, he was the first American Catholic priest to be
jailed for political dissent, according to one biographer. He later
escalated his high-stakes protests by furtively entering military bases to
do symbolic damage to warplanes, bombs and other weapons of mass
destruction.
What juries and judges perceived as lawbreaking -- being "a danger to the
community" said a North Carolina judge in 1993 -- Mr. Berrigan saw as
allegiance to international treaties forbidding nations to prepare for wars
of annihilation.
In time, large numbers of pacifists, modeling themselves after Philip
Berrigan, would engage in similar antiwar actions. Collectively, they became
known as the Plowshares Movement, a loosely organized coalition credited
with more than 80 separate actions that almost always resulted in jail
terms. Nuns and priests were among those locked up.
Whether by himself or with legal help from such human rights lawyers as
Ramsey Clark and William M. Kunstler, Mr. Berrigan argued to judges "the
necessity defense."
In "Fighting the Lamb's War: Skirmishes with the American Empire," his 1996
autobiography, Mr. Berrigan writes: "If a house full of children is burning,
it is necessary to break the door down to rescue them. [In our trials] the
government refused to allow the necessity defense, arguing that we could not
prove that nuclear war was imminent. We explained that nuclear war could
happen at any time. It was imminent because the government was designing,
building and deploying nuclear weapons. It was imminent because our air,
water and food supply were being poisoned with radioactive isotopes. All
weapons, nuclear and conventional, reflect the spirit of murder, rather than
of hope."
At a Pennsylvania trial in 1981, the judge snapped: "Nuclear warfare is not
on trial here. You are."
Through the late 1990s, Mr. Berrigan, a sturdily-built, gregarious man,
accumulated more than a dozen years of prison time, including federal stints
in Danbury, Conn., and Lewisburg, Pa.
His methods of resistance often drew criticism. From the right, he was
ridiculed as a professional prisoner whose actions had no effect on public
policy. Some on the left said that his destroying of property -- damaging
weapons, burning draft records -- was itself a form of violence.
"It is a curious argument," Mr. Berrigan wrote, "one I've heard many times.
Warheads whose sole purpose is to vaporize cities are hardly to be thought
legitimate property. Bombs that indiscriminately murder millions of men,
women and children are not 'property.' "
The youngest of six brothers in a Syracuse, N.Y., Irish, Catholic household,
Mr. Berrigan enthusiastically joined the Army during World War II. As an
infantry officer, "I was a highly skilled young killer. I thought that's
what patriots do. God may tell us not to kill, but when the state calls, we
must obey. We must become remorseless killers, willing to use any means to
defend against the enemy."
His conversion to nonviolence was years ahead.
After the war, and a degree from Holy Cross College, Mr. Berrigan studied
for the priesthood in the Josephite order. Following his ordination in
Washington in 1955, he served for a year in an impoverished parish in
Anacostia.
In 1957, he was sent to New Orleans, where he taught theology for seven
years in an all-black parish high school. It proved to be a radicalizing
experience: "I set out to discover why my black parishioners lived in
ghettos, why their children attended all-black schools, why hospitals
refused black patients, why the police routinely beat and even killed black
citizens. And the quest always returned to the same poisonous tree [of
racism], the roots of which were strangling our nation's soul."
By the mid-1960s, and now serving in a Josephite parish in Newburgh, N.Y.,
he was ordered by his superiors to stop speaking out against injustice: "I
was told, quite literally, to shut my mouth."
He declined.
In 1970, at 43, he married Elizabeth McAlister, a member of the Religious
Order of the Sacred Heart. Because he was a priest and she a nun, the couple
at first did not make their union known publicly. When they did, in 1973,
both were immediately excommunicated by the Catholic church. Eventually Mr.
Berrigan, gifted with Irish wit, would describe himself as "a Catholic
trying to become a Christian."
The couple settled in a Baltimore working-class neighborhood. They called
their home Jonah House, one that soon became a communal haven for prayer
meetings, antiwar strategizing and students looking for guidance in simple
living. Mr. Berrigan earned a modest income from house painting, lecturing
and writing.
Among the regular visitors to Jonah House was the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, a
Jesuit priest and Philip's older brother. The two were soul mates and, often
enough, cellmates. Linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky called the
two brothers "heroic individuals, willing to do what many realize should be
done, regardless of the personal cost, with a simplicity of manner. There
are not too many people of whom this can be said."
Away from the barricades, Philip Berrigan was known less as a resolute
defier of state and church power than as a person of deep compassion, faith
and generosity.
Actor Martin Sheen, a friend, described Mr. Berrigan as "a Christian who
truly walks the radical way of the cross. [He] overturns the tables of
injustice and summons us to love our enemies and worship the God of peace.
Like Thoreau, Gandhi, King and [activist and journalist] Dorothy Day, Phil
Berrigan exemplifies courage. He is both an inspiration and a challenge to
me and countless others."
Books by Philip Berrigan include "The Catholic Church and the Negro" (1962),
"No More Strangers" (1966), "A Punishment for Peace" (1969), "Prison
Journals of a Priest Revolutionary" (1970), "Widen the Prison Gates:
Writings from Jails, April 1970-December 1972" (1973), "Whereupon to Stand:
the Acts of the Apostles and Ourselves" (1993) and, with Elizabeth
McAlister, "The Time's Discipline: the Beatitudes and Nuclear Resistance"
(1993).
In addition to his wife and brother Daniel, survivors include three children
and three other brothers.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
By Colman McCarthy
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, December 8, 2002; Page C11
Philip Berrigan, 79, a pacifist, writer and iron-willed advocate for peace
whose nonviolent protests against militarism led to repeated imprisonments,
died of cancer Dec. 6 at his home in Baltimore.
For nearly four decades, Mr. Berrigan, a former Roman Catholic priest, was a
major figure in the American peace movement, with his stature bolstered by
his willingness to endure long prison stretches in county, state and federal
cells.
Believing, as did Martin Luther King Jr., that "war is our government's
number one business," Mr. Berrigan began his dissent against military
violence in 1967, when he and three others destroyed draft records in a
government office in Baltimore. In 1968, he and another group struck again
at a Catonsville, Md., selective service facility, where hundreds of draft
records were burned with homemade napalm.
Arrested and convicted, he was the first American Catholic priest to be
jailed for political dissent, according to one biographer. He later
escalated his high-stakes protests by furtively entering military bases to
do symbolic damage to warplanes, bombs and other weapons of mass
destruction.
What juries and judges perceived as lawbreaking -- being "a danger to the
community" said a North Carolina judge in 1993 -- Mr. Berrigan saw as
allegiance to international treaties forbidding nations to prepare for wars
of annihilation.
In time, large numbers of pacifists, modeling themselves after Philip
Berrigan, would engage in similar antiwar actions. Collectively, they became
known as the Plowshares Movement, a loosely organized coalition credited
with more than 80 separate actions that almost always resulted in jail
terms. Nuns and priests were among those locked up.
Whether by himself or with legal help from such human rights lawyers as
Ramsey Clark and William M. Kunstler, Mr. Berrigan argued to judges "the
necessity defense."
In "Fighting the Lamb's War: Skirmishes with the American Empire," his 1996
autobiography, Mr. Berrigan writes: "If a house full of children is burning,
it is necessary to break the door down to rescue them. [In our trials] the
government refused to allow the necessity defense, arguing that we could not
prove that nuclear war was imminent. We explained that nuclear war could
happen at any time. It was imminent because the government was designing,
building and deploying nuclear weapons. It was imminent because our air,
water and food supply were being poisoned with radioactive isotopes. All
weapons, nuclear and conventional, reflect the spirit of murder, rather than
of hope."
At a Pennsylvania trial in 1981, the judge snapped: "Nuclear warfare is not
on trial here. You are."
Through the late 1990s, Mr. Berrigan, a sturdily-built, gregarious man,
accumulated more than a dozen years of prison time, including federal stints
in Danbury, Conn., and Lewisburg, Pa.
His methods of resistance often drew criticism. From the right, he was
ridiculed as a professional prisoner whose actions had no effect on public
policy. Some on the left said that his destroying of property -- damaging
weapons, burning draft records -- was itself a form of violence.
"It is a curious argument," Mr. Berrigan wrote, "one I've heard many times.
Warheads whose sole purpose is to vaporize cities are hardly to be thought
legitimate property. Bombs that indiscriminately murder millions of men,
women and children are not 'property.' "
The youngest of six brothers in a Syracuse, N.Y., Irish, Catholic household,
Mr. Berrigan enthusiastically joined the Army during World War II. As an
infantry officer, "I was a highly skilled young killer. I thought that's
what patriots do. God may tell us not to kill, but when the state calls, we
must obey. We must become remorseless killers, willing to use any means to
defend against the enemy."
His conversion to nonviolence was years ahead.
After the war, and a degree from Holy Cross College, Mr. Berrigan studied
for the priesthood in the Josephite order. Following his ordination in
Washington in 1955, he served for a year in an impoverished parish in
Anacostia.
In 1957, he was sent to New Orleans, where he taught theology for seven
years in an all-black parish high school. It proved to be a radicalizing
experience: "I set out to discover why my black parishioners lived in
ghettos, why their children attended all-black schools, why hospitals
refused black patients, why the police routinely beat and even killed black
citizens. And the quest always returned to the same poisonous tree [of
racism], the roots of which were strangling our nation's soul."
By the mid-1960s, and now serving in a Josephite parish in Newburgh, N.Y.,
he was ordered by his superiors to stop speaking out against injustice: "I
was told, quite literally, to shut my mouth."
He declined.
In 1970, at 43, he married Elizabeth McAlister, a member of the Religious
Order of the Sacred Heart. Because he was a priest and she a nun, the couple
at first did not make their union known publicly. When they did, in 1973,
both were immediately excommunicated by the Catholic church. Eventually Mr.
Berrigan, gifted with Irish wit, would describe himself as "a Catholic
trying to become a Christian."
The couple settled in a Baltimore working-class neighborhood. They called
their home Jonah House, one that soon became a communal haven for prayer
meetings, antiwar strategizing and students looking for guidance in simple
living. Mr. Berrigan earned a modest income from house painting, lecturing
and writing.
Among the regular visitors to Jonah House was the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, a
Jesuit priest and Philip's older brother. The two were soul mates and, often
enough, cellmates. Linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky called the
two brothers "heroic individuals, willing to do what many realize should be
done, regardless of the personal cost, with a simplicity of manner. There
are not too many people of whom this can be said."
Away from the barricades, Philip Berrigan was known less as a resolute
defier of state and church power than as a person of deep compassion, faith
and generosity.
Actor Martin Sheen, a friend, described Mr. Berrigan as "a Christian who
truly walks the radical way of the cross. [He] overturns the tables of
injustice and summons us to love our enemies and worship the God of peace.
Like Thoreau, Gandhi, King and [activist and journalist] Dorothy Day, Phil
Berrigan exemplifies courage. He is both an inspiration and a challenge to
me and countless others."
Books by Philip Berrigan include "The Catholic Church and the Negro" (1962),
"No More Strangers" (1966), "A Punishment for Peace" (1969), "Prison
Journals of a Priest Revolutionary" (1970), "Widen the Prison Gates:
Writings from Jails, April 1970-December 1972" (1973), "Whereupon to Stand:
the Acts of the Apostles and Ourselves" (1993) and, with Elizabeth
McAlister, "The Time's Discipline: the Beatitudes and Nuclear Resistance"
(1993).
In addition to his wife and brother Daniel, survivors include three children
and three other brothers.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company