The Berrigans - A Catholic Pacifist's View

...As a native Milwaukeean with continuing ties to that community I can testify to the strength of the opposition to the "Milwaukee 14" raid, including, I might add, expressions of indignant disapproval by individuals who had provided me with support and encouragement during the full period of my service as a conscientious objector to World War II...

...It has become far more difficult to defend the potency of conventional forms of protest when we consider a president unwilling to stir from his televised football game to note the presence of a half-million American citizens marching outside to protest his policies...

...The decision of four of them to "go underground" as fugitives after their Supreme Court appeal was denied should not be read as an attempt to evade the personal unpleasantness of spending several years in prison...

...How one answers the question will determine who is entitled to the peace radical designation...

...It is an extremely persuasive case, at least until we raise the next question: what if that doesn't work...

...In fact, they may already be there...

...indeed, the advocates of pacifism and nonviolence were ridiculed and repudiated, one speaker using his time to call upon the thousands ostensibly gathered there to express their desire for peace to "pick up the gun...

...When a Julius Hoffman displays a level of judicial temperament and decorum that would have won the admiration of Roland Freisler and his Volksgericht, is it really enough to send off a new flurry of telegrams to congressmen and senators...

...Whether so intended or not, the draft board raids contributed, on the one hand, to the new mood of radical dissent that takes it for granted that one is free to disregard and disobey any law with which he does not agree—and, on the other, to the conviction held by Mr...

...and, finally, he must so govern his behavior that nothing he may do will violate or contradict those principles he has set out to serve...

...Conformism can come in many shades and forms, and a truly radical activity is more than a matter of ego-gratification through exhibitionistic extravagance...

...Which is only to suggest that the Cross and neither the olive branch nor the fist still holds promise of being the most radical symbol of all...

...Does one move on to bombing the offices themselves, first with advance warning and then, if the war still goes on, without the warning...

...But if this is the situation, as I am prepared to say it is, it will require much more than the extravagant rhetoric and self-righteous posturings that pass for a revolutionary stance in some of our more activist circles...

...By this standard, the conscientious objector performing his alternate service is as much a "radical" as the federal prisoner whose conscience told him that this was not enough...

...If, as I for one am ready and happy to acknowledge, today's radicals are more likely to succeed in finally "turning the Church around" and bringing it back to full awareness of what was its original pacifist mission, it is perhaps important that we not overlook altogether the sometime radicals who brought them to their starting point...

...What finally results in all too many instances is a frankly unprincipled exploitation of any or every issue or grievance in the interest of creating as much civil disruption as possible...

...Nor have I encouraged others to do so...

...Through these mass celebrations, and the hundreds of smaller gatherings organized to meet and talk with the "criminals" while the legal proceedings against them lumbered along, it is a conservative estimate to say that tens of thousands were reached by the action and many of these were undoubtedly moved to more direct opposition to the war...

...The hundreds of supporters who rallied to the defendants' support, who traveled great distances to join the trial "celebrations" heard, understood, and accepted that message...

...or, if leaders heard, they did not heed...

...THIS FORMULATION I have offered allows all the room in the world for the courage and the creativity of the Berrigans and the other newbreed radicals who, quite rightly, have taken over the leadership of the Catholic peace movePran Chopra ment...

...They find it ever more difficult to distinguish the slogans of the New Left ("We want peace, and we will use any means to get it...

...In Dan Berrigan's words, the purpose is to "show them they can no longer lock people up on their order, any more than they can induct people into the military service on their order...

...And this would hold true even if it could be shown that the majority of the "good" Germans of the time did not understand or were offended by their action...

...Directed and disciplined civil disobedience will have less appeal as the logic of events takes hold...

...The difficulty is greatly magnified in my own case by the fact that some of my past writings have been cited in several of the trials as factors in the decision to turn to this new level of radical peace activity...

...One part of the Berrigan message did come through loud and clear to both the opponents and the supporters of their action...

...On the other hand, there are those who would insist—and at least with as much logic—that the draft board raids can be shown to have lost their original impact so that now they can be shrugged off as little more than inconsequential nuisances...

...from those of the ultra-hawks as they call for the total destruction of those they define as enemy...

...In this sense still, if in no other, it does all go together...

...he had signed petitions and written letters...

...As moral witness, I would challenge the right of anyone to fault the acts of these courageous men and women, lay and religious...

...One final point has to be made in this connection...

...I do not, be it noted, include the Berrigans and their raids under this description...

...time and added perspective may show that this is where the Berrigans and their fellow criminals are and where the rest of us should be...

...In weighing the relative importance of the dimensions of witness and communication, the former must be given unquestioned priority...

...Once again it is helpful to turn to the draft board raids to illustrate the point...

...THrs IS NOT TO SAY that their analysis of the situation must be accepted by everyone without question...

...Instead, the decision represents something of an ideological shift...

...In the face of such exciting evidence of success, it is difficult to criticize the Berrigan raids...

...In place of the surges of spontaneous and enthusiastic response, each speaker was greeted with scattered applause from those segments of the crowd already in his camp while the great majority listened in silence or ignored him altogether...

...Some may feel that such a formulation is too "open," that it includes too wide a range of COMMENTS AND OPINIONS individual witnesses under the rubric of radicalism...

...esses have reached a final and dead and takes on new validity...

...both the war and the draft go on...

...As for the speeches themselves, they seemed designed to affront those listeners who were not already part of the speaker's following...

...He has long been active in the peace movement...

...the October rally, for all its success as an event, had been singularly unsuccessful in affecting national policy and the great outpouring of people for the November rally in Washington had been studiously ignored...

...Which is only to say, in effect, that even the Berrigans may be in danger of slipping into my COMMENTS AND OPINIONS "sometime radical" category...

...A hypothetical parallel might be helpful here...

...We are inclined to be suspicious of what seems to be a growing willingness to accept violence as a tactic...

...But to understand does not necessarily mean to accept the new emphasis, and this is where the old-line pacifists, the peace radicals of yesterday, have been forced to question the wisdom and the usefulness of actions and rhetoric which introduce and exploit new animosities in the interests of what appears to be an intensified commitment to violence and destruction...

...Much more serious a negative effect, however, was the amount of adverse reaction on the part of others who had been hitherto uncommitted...

...third, he must do so in a spirit of charity toward those not yet aware of the pacifist implications of their faith...

...Thus, for instance, criticism has been voiced against the practice of waiting to be arrested after the "criminal" act is performed...

...I count them and several of their followers among my most valued personal friends, and even were this not the case, I would regard them and their commitment with awe and ad, miration...

...The series of raids upon offices of draft boards and prominent manufacturers of war material initiated by Rev...

...I do suggest, however, that the dramatic quality of the raids, together with the sometimes excessive emotional reactions they provoked on the part of many of the young admirers who trooped to the trial celebrations, contributed to the spread of the "anything goes, anytime" mood that is so widespread among many of the younger elements of the peace— or, to be more accurate, antiwar—movement...

...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS Philip Berrigan, S.S.J., and his fellow members of the "Baltimore Four" on October 27, 1967, and repeated by him and an expanded group, this time including his Jesuit brother Daniel (of the "Catonsville Nine"), on May 17, 1968, marked a dramatic new turn in radical peace action...

...As the center of peace activism continues to move more and more in the direction of aggressive, even disruptive and destructive activism, the prospects for further fragmentation within the peace movement become more certain...

...T T HE CATHOLIC PEACE RADICALS of my generation are increasingly troubled by the failure of Catholic peace radicals of this generation to reject violence...

...Certainly these included those who were already committed to support the war effort and who were only too ready to take this as one more evidence of the unreasonableness of any dissent in wartime...

...One thing must be made perfectly clear, however...

...It is the shift itself that interests me and the fact that it has been in the direction of what is generally taken to be a more radical stance...

...however, this too would have to be measured against others who may have been pushed or scared away...

...One must always act as his conscience demands, even at the price of alienating others...

...Underlying this rationale is the highly dubious assumption that a final and forced choice between revolutionaries and reactionaries will result in the victory of the former...

...The war and its casualties continued...

...Cue words ("pig") and slogans ("Right on...

...In the early raids, the governing rationale centered upon the principles of Christian nonviolent resistance including the crucial spiritual dimension of accepting the penalty because of the continued witness the penalty itself represents...

...Increasingly this standard is being abandoned in favor of highly indiscriminate and individualized rejection of all authority which is then justified in the name of a vaguely defined and romanticized revolutionary ideal...

...In order to make his point, to be the "public speaker" he had to be, it became necessary, he felt, to "raise the ante...

...Most had already drifted away, bored or offended by the speakers or, in the case of a sizable segment, on their way to the night of destructive rioting and "trashing" in Harvard Square that followed...

...It is easy enough to understand the reason...

...were de rigeur for any speaker who wanted his full share of the scattered applause...

...The latter distinction in terms is crucial as the two massive demonstrations held on the Boston Common in October 1969 and April 1970 revealed...

...As the "hit-and-run and be ready to hit-and-run again" mode of operation gains favor, it is entirely possible that the burners of draft files, like the burners of draft cards before them, may find their actions rejected as examples of ego-serving, bourgeois tokenism...

...Of at least equal importance were the "festivals" of support, which drew admirers and well-wishers from all over the country as the various cases came to trial...

...On the surface they seemed quite similar...

...They fear, and with good reason, that the tiger their young associates have chosen to ride is not heading down the paths of peace and fellowship among all men...

...The much-scorned liberal is frequently chided for his commitment to the illusion that it is still possible to use normal political processes to gain his socially desirable ends...

...Author of German Catholics and Hitler's War, Gordon Zahn teaches at the University of Massachusetts in Boston...

...Needless to say, it is not for the "guilty bystander" who would not be called upon to serve the sentence in any case, to decide which of the two formulations is the better or in which form the witness is more effective...

...At the same time it would be less than honest to ignore the fact that strongly dissenting views have been expressed within what is usually described as the peace movement and, though I certainly do not share the more condemnatory of these judgments, I do share some of their underlying misgivings...

...It is clear, too, that the very symbols employed— the pouring of blood at Baltimore, the use of home-made napalm at Catonsville and in the subsequent raids—testify to an overriding intent to make a point, to get a message across as effectively as possible...

...The October turnout of a hundred thousand people or so was almost matched by the April rally...

...I have been shocked and offended by the insensitive criticisms and thoroughly unjusti...

...Probably the most compelling rationale for these raids was that given to one of my classes at the university by Tony Mullaney, the Benedictine priest member of the "Milwaukee Fourteen...

...October's was a gloriously happy affair...

...Were this actually the case, however, there would have been little point in making all the elaborate arrangements to have the press—and, if possible, television cameras as well—on the scene to record the "crime...

...My own problem with it is at the level of communication, the level at which all the differences discussed earlier become relevant to the issue...

...There is some evidence that the Catonsville raiders are themselves split on this issue...

...Nevertheless, I would not be at all sure that there are not some peace radicals around who might be prepared to give such proposals their assent...

...However one may answer these troubling questions, it is clear (or should be) that the Berrigan-style peace activism presents no problem as personal witness and, as such, deserves the respect and the support of every committed Christian...

...who does recognize a moral obligation to violate the law but accepts alternate service instead could not be so designated, though his witness should not be written off completely...

...If, as I would guess, the balance was negative, they were at least a partial failure...

...second, a conviction that the Christian must always be prepared to act according to that commitment and as his conscience instructs, regardless of the consequences he may have to suffer...

...No one, he was forced to conclude, was listening...

...Both positions, it should be noted, represent a distorted understanding of a perfectly valid principle of civil disobedience, namely that an immoral or unjust law is no law and not only may be, but should be, disobeyed...

...Here, too, one cannot be sure of just how "hypothetical" this parallel may be...

...This, I submit, is communication and to that extent it can be judged as communication...

...Both represented a broad coalition of individuals and groups opposing the war in Vietnam...

...instead it is to be read as an affirmation, possibly overly optimistic., that something can still be accomplished within and through "the system" they have rejected...

...fed condemnations directed against them by so many Catholics, including fellow priests and bishops, who seem to have a far greater capacity for indignation over the napalming of draft files then they have been able to muster over the napalming of Vietnamese civilians...

...The elements of Catholic peace radicalism, as I see them, must include the following: first and most essential, a thoroughgoing commitment to the Gospel message of peace and love...

...Perhaps the most depressing note of the whole affair was the frequency with which the representatives of one group would be openly COMMENTS AND OPINIONS scornful of the objectives of another...

...In all fairness I must add that some of the participants in these raids with whom I have discussed my misgivings object to the distinction itself, insisting that the action must be judged only as witness...

...As he explained it, every Christian has an obligation to be what he called "a public speaker" in the sense of dedicating his life and his acts to the spread of the Christian message and to work for the removal of social evil and injustice...

...April was something else...

...For him that meant journeying to Milwaukee, invading the draft office there, and destroying as many of its records as he could...

...If this seems a rather inconclusive note on which to end this discussion, it is nonetheless crucial...

...Unfortunately, there is more to be taken into account...

...domestic needs grew more pressing while the nation's resources were being squandered on the battlefields of Southeast Asia...

...in fact, I have argued against the draft board raids with friends who were subsequently involved in this kind of action...

...If, on the other hand, we take the term to mean a firm conviction based on an informed interpretation of fundamental moral principle and a pattern of behavior that gives expression to that conviction, all is not lost...

...against Dow Chemical instead of the Selective Service System), Indianapolis, MinneapolisSt...

...History would seem to argue instead that in any such ultimate confrontation, the Right, rather than right, is more likely to win out...

...To this end, he had "gone the route" and tried everything: he had marched and he had preached...

...This does not alter the very significant fact, however, that it is quite a different rationale from the one originally set forth...

...Rational argumentation was replaced in many instances by reliance upon the rather limited stock of sexrelated expletives and ritual cliches...

...If we continue to speak and march and sign petitions, this is not to be taken as a prima facie confession of moral cowardice (though, in all honesty, we cannot exclude that possibility...

...Once convinced of this, they decided for themselves that the prison witness has now become the only appropriate witness for the Christian who wishes to dissociate himself completely from an unjust and immoral war and the deep-seated social injustices that war is designed to perpetuate...

...he had picketed and participated in mass demonstrations—and all to no avail...

...And the first judgment to be made is that as communication it was astonishingly successful...

...By the same token, the individual who is not personally convinced that it is right and necessary to violate the law but feels impelled to follow the raucous crowd which tells him that "this is where it's at," or who is swept into his activism by the appeal of greater drama and risk, should not be classified too readily as a radical either...

...Though it is possible to argue that the raised ante may have contributed to decisions to reform the draft and the proposals to abandon it altogether—and even, I suppose, to the decision to begin removing men from Vietnam—it would be difficult to establish that this was a major factor...

...Those of us who have not yet seen fit to join them generally do not agree that all other forms of protest and opposition have run their course...

...And obviously it has not worked...

...Returning to the personal framework I have employed here, I have not destroyed draft records or, for that matter, draft cards (though I have violated the law by accepting draft cards that were turned in at a resistance rally...

...Some of them accepted it to the point of going forth to do likewise...

...If one measures radicalism by the dramatic content of an act and the degree of illegality involved, I am not (nor, I fear have I ever been) much of a radical...

...It was written before the recent federal indictment of the Berrigan brothers...

...Whether it actually is more radical or not is the final question to be raised and discussed...

...The radicalism, in short, lies in the moral commitment, not in the manifestation alone...

...It is evident that tremendous numbers of people, including many already engaged in peace activities, were "turned off" by what seemed to them an altogether excessive form of protest...

...It is my recollection that some members of the Catonsville Nine, Dan Berrigan among them, were ambivalent about putting up any court defense at all lest the clarity of their witness be confused and lost...

...The difference between the two events reflects a change in mood that has its expression in the substitution of the symbol of the clenched red fist for that of the dove and the olive branch...

...On the contrary, they could serve as models of carefully calculated and disciplined civil disobedience...

...When an Agnew attacks the COMMENTS AND OPINIONS news media, how far are we from a Goebbels...

...The article below first appeared in the Catholic World and is reprinted with the permission of both that journal and the author...

...Since these misgivings reflect the differences between the two generations of peace radicals, it is perhaps in order to discuss them briefly...

...it would seem a far more dangerous illusion that a few strident slogans and random destructive outbursts will bring "the System" to a point of collapse...

...We have, first, the introduction of direct action tactics, which have gone beyond protest to actual attempts to disrupt the war effort or the operations of some agency or program related to the war effort...

...Nixon's "silent ma COMMENTS AND OPINIONS jority" that dissent as such is an invitation to anarchy...

...It would be a mistake to measure the impact of these raids only in terms of repeat performance ratios, the increasing numbers of persons involved, and the extent to which they succeeded in destroying draft files...

...Add to this display of callous indifference the incredibly stupid statements periodically issued by a vice-president and other highly placed officials, and the suggestion that democratic proe...

...and the speakers themselves reveled in their common purpose, playing down or avoiding altogether the ideological and tactical points of difference that separated them and their organizations...

...ONE NEED NOT DENY that this nation may have reached a critical point in its history where revolution, in the sense of a total and rapid restructuring of the social order, is the only way by which it can free itself for its own and the world's good from the chains of war, militarism, racism, and economic imperialism...

...The tone of the gathering was sullen, even bitter, as it was exposed to a seemingly endless parade of speakers who were intensely particularistic in their various separate appeals...

...The crucial difference between this formulation and that which is in the ascendancy today is that "classic" civil disobedience is specific: the offensive law or practice, or even authority, is identified and the faults are spelled out as part of the act of disobedience itself...

...Furthermore, as the raids proliferated throughout the country—in Milwaukee, Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C...

...Power to the people...

...Only at the very end of the rally when the-local "tribe" of Hair called upon the world to "let the sun shine in" did the crowd show any sign of catching fire, but by then it was too late...

...the crowd's enthusiasm was evidenced in the waves of applause that greeted each speaker and punctuated his remarks...

...In no sense are these comments to be taken as an "attack" upon the Berrigans or the others who have followed their inspiring leadership...

...but it does so without denying or rejecting the witness of my generation of peace radicals —or, for that matter, of men like Franziskus Stratmann of Germany and Paul Hanly Furfey and others in America who provided us with so great a measure of inspiration and support...

...What these are far more likely to accomplish is to convert subtle repression into overt repression and with the approval, or at least the silent acquiescence, of the dominant majority...

...This is, of course, a perfectly acceptable rationale, and one is free to hope (as I do) that the fugitives succeed in evading capture so that they may continue to work against the war...

...Had a similar group of Catholic priests and laymen invaded some offices in Nazi Germany to remove, deface, and destroy the lists of Jews scheduled for deportation to the extermination camps, few of us would be inclined to criticize them today for their "extremism...

...The resulting "polarization" is then interpreted as a value in its own right and as a means for promoting further revolutionary progress...

...Nevertheless, to the extent that it insists upon the primacy of the individual conscience and incorporates fundamental Christian ideals of all-inclusive and self-sacrificing love, it is radical in the fullest and truest sense of the word...

...In the sanctuary of their individual consciences they concluded that the traditional forms of opposition to the war no longer held promise of success, that only some dramatic act of resistance and obstruction could have any impact at all upon a continuing moral evil...

...Time may well prove the Berrigans are absolutely right...

...If this were the whole story, the operation would have to be voted a complete success...

...Sothey acted— as, indeed, any Christian who reaches such moral convictions would be obliged to act...

...To my knowledge these hypothetical next steps in the sequence have not been proposed by anyone involved in or sympathetic toward the Berrigan raids...

...That some lukewarm opponents of the war were fired up to the point that they assumed a more direct and active role is an argument in the Berrigans' favor...

...Of course, the C.O...

...The only real test of the raids as communication— whether more of the uncommitted were turned off or won over—is beyond our power to determine at this time...

...But here the similarity breaks down...

...Paul, Boston—it became evident that this was an almost exclusively Catholic operation...

...Today's Catholic antiwar agitators are apparently gravitating more and more in the direction of the New Left and forming alliances with groups like the Black Panthers, condoning if not actually en dorsing the often senselessly disruptive and destructive acts and rhetoric such groups tend to promote...

...IF SO, WHAT must the next step be...