John Whitehead's Commentary
Philip Berrigan: Peace Warrior to the End
My instinct is, if a person hotly objects to what his or her government is doing, then it's necessary to take a position against it--to resist. You have to say no. After that, the only question you have to put to yourself is: Is your action responsible? Is it just? Is it decent? Is it effective? For the ramifications of your actions are going to have an impact on other lives.--Philip Berrigan, 1987
So spoke the patriarch of the Roman Catholic antiwar movement, Philip Berrigan, whose conscience collided with American national policy for three decades. Although he succumbed to cancer on Dec. 6 at the age of 79, Berrigan's actions continue to impact a country plunging toward what he believed were incredibly destructive practices.
Like Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, Reverend Berrigan possessed a clarity of religious vision that is virtually absent today. And it furnished the foundation for an aggressive dissent.
An ordained priest, Berrigan was also a rebel. Although he was ordered by the Catholic Church to stop speaking out against the Vietnam War, his religious convictions forced him to become even more radical. In 1964, along with his brother Daniel, he helped establish the first Catholic antiwar organization in the United States.
Reverend Berrigan immersed himself in antiwar work. He organized teach-ins and suggested in public that the war in Vietnam was an expression of American racism. That particular speech earned him a transfer from the seminary in New York where he had been teaching to Baltimore.
From the beginning, Berrigan identified with the poor and oppressed. His first of numerous arrests came during the civil rights protests in Selma, Alabama, in the early '60s, but that did not deter him. In October 1967, with his brother Daniel in jail, Berrigan and three friends entered a draft office in downtown Baltimore and destroyed draft files by pouring blood on them. "There was a religious aspect to it," he explained, "in that the blood of Christ has been shed again, since people were doing this to people. You know, 'Whatever you do unto the least of my brothers and sisters, you do unto me.'"
Reverend Berrigan led the Catonsville Nine, who staged one of the most dramatic protests of the '60s. After removing some 600 files from a draft office in a suburb of Baltimore in May 1968, they carried them to the parking lot and in front of a group of reporters burned the files with homemade napalm. As Berrigan remarked, "Some property has no right to exist." This, of course, led to arrests and jail time for the protesters.
Being incarcerated never seemed to bother Berrigan. "We knew we might end up in a federal penitentiary, but we felt we ought to be doing more against the war, and we weren't particularly put off by the idea of going to jail." Berrigan, in fact, became quite adept at surviving in prison, where he led Bible classes and helped prisoners with educational and legal matters.
The Catonsville action made headlines across the country and inspired other peace groups. In September 1968, for example, a Milwaukee group burned 10,000 draft files with homemade napalm, a protest that went beyond symbolism since it effectively crippled the city's draft system.
The end of the Vietnam War did not end Berrigan's protests, which he saw as "prophetic acts" based on the biblical injunction to beat swords into plowshares. To that end, he helped found the Plowshares Movement, whose members have attacked federal military property in antiwar and antinuclear protests and have often been imprisoned. For instance, in 1994 Berrigan was sentenced to eight months in jail for breaking into an Air Force base and beating an attack jet with a hammer. And in December 1999, Reverend Berrigan and others banged on A-10 Warthog war planes in an antiwar protest at a National Guard base. For this, he was convicted of malicious destruction of government property and sentenced to thirty months.
Berrigan's main concern in his later years was nuclear weapons. "It's a weapon that God never gave us permission to make, and it's a lethal instrument against the human race. But the American people don't understand this, and consequently it has to be explained. And that's why we take part in these various actions against the nuclear establishment."
Berrigan spent some eleven years behind bars for committing acts of civil disobedience--all, he believed, in obedience to God. "People sometimes ask, 'Why are you doing these things, and what makes you do it?' And I say, 'God is using our eyes and our hands and our voices, and we're kind of like material in the hands of the potter.' We're doing it, but God is a silent partner and a very powerful partner."
Reverend Philip Berrigan kept his fervor until the very end. In a statement for a protest rally in New York City's Central Park as recently as Oct. 6, 2002, he said: "The American people are, more and more, making their voices heard against Bush and his warrior clones. The American people can stop Bush, can yank his feet closer to the fire, can banish the war makers from Washington, can turn this society around and restore it to faith and sanity." His final words were to keep the pledge of resistance "and put flesh on it. And please, please, please don't get tired."
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.
So spoke the patriarch of the Roman Catholic antiwar movement, Philip Berrigan, whose conscience collided with American national policy for three decades. Although he succumbed to cancer on Dec. 6 at the age of 79, Berrigan's actions continue to impact a country plunging toward what he believed were incredibly destructive practices.
Like Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, Reverend Berrigan possessed a clarity of religious vision that is virtually absent today. And it furnished the foundation for an aggressive dissent.
An ordained priest, Berrigan was also a rebel. Although he was ordered by the Catholic Church to stop speaking out against the Vietnam War, his religious convictions forced him to become even more radical. In 1964, along with his brother Daniel, he helped establish the first Catholic antiwar organization in the United States.
Reverend Berrigan immersed himself in antiwar work. He organized teach-ins and suggested in public that the war in Vietnam was an expression of American racism. That particular speech earned him a transfer from the seminary in New York where he had been teaching to Baltimore.
From the beginning, Berrigan identified with the poor and oppressed. His first of numerous arrests came during the civil rights protests in Selma, Alabama, in the early '60s, but that did not deter him. In October 1967, with his brother Daniel in jail, Berrigan and three friends entered a draft office in downtown Baltimore and destroyed draft files by pouring blood on them. "There was a religious aspect to it," he explained, "in that the blood of Christ has been shed again, since people were doing this to people. You know, 'Whatever you do unto the least of my brothers and sisters, you do unto me.'"
Reverend Berrigan led the Catonsville Nine, who staged one of the most dramatic protests of the '60s. After removing some 600 files from a draft office in a suburb of Baltimore in May 1968, they carried them to the parking lot and in front of a group of reporters burned the files with homemade napalm. As Berrigan remarked, "Some property has no right to exist." This, of course, led to arrests and jail time for the protesters.
Being incarcerated never seemed to bother Berrigan. "We knew we might end up in a federal penitentiary, but we felt we ought to be doing more against the war, and we weren't particularly put off by the idea of going to jail." Berrigan, in fact, became quite adept at surviving in prison, where he led Bible classes and helped prisoners with educational and legal matters.
The Catonsville action made headlines across the country and inspired other peace groups. In September 1968, for example, a Milwaukee group burned 10,000 draft files with homemade napalm, a protest that went beyond symbolism since it effectively crippled the city's draft system.
The end of the Vietnam War did not end Berrigan's protests, which he saw as "prophetic acts" based on the biblical injunction to beat swords into plowshares. To that end, he helped found the Plowshares Movement, whose members have attacked federal military property in antiwar and antinuclear protests and have often been imprisoned. For instance, in 1994 Berrigan was sentenced to eight months in jail for breaking into an Air Force base and beating an attack jet with a hammer. And in December 1999, Reverend Berrigan and others banged on A-10 Warthog war planes in an antiwar protest at a National Guard base. For this, he was convicted of malicious destruction of government property and sentenced to thirty months.
Berrigan's main concern in his later years was nuclear weapons. "It's a weapon that God never gave us permission to make, and it's a lethal instrument against the human race. But the American people don't understand this, and consequently it has to be explained. And that's why we take part in these various actions against the nuclear establishment."
Berrigan spent some eleven years behind bars for committing acts of civil disobedience--all, he believed, in obedience to God. "People sometimes ask, 'Why are you doing these things, and what makes you do it?' And I say, 'God is using our eyes and our hands and our voices, and we're kind of like material in the hands of the potter.' We're doing it, but God is a silent partner and a very powerful partner."
Reverend Philip Berrigan kept his fervor until the very end. In a statement for a protest rally in New York City's Central Park as recently as Oct. 6, 2002, he said: "The American people are, more and more, making their voices heard against Bush and his warrior clones. The American people can stop Bush, can yank his feet closer to the fire, can banish the war makers from Washington, can turn this society around and restore it to faith and sanity." His final words were to keep the pledge of resistance "and put flesh on it. And please, please, please don't get tired."
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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