RAGE AND COUNTERWEIGHT:

...And his diary is replete readily understand Philip's harsh dis- with gracious acknowledgements of hu- Robert Frost on Writing trust of journalists, the "friendly" ones man touches in an otherwise bleak land- ELAINE BARRY almost more than his staunchest critics, scape coming from good men in the as well as Daniel's aversion for the tax- wrong uniforms...

...of lethal delusions-and perhaps in that ROBERT V. REMINI is a history professor To how many other youthful poets filling out of each other's partiality, we at the University of Illinois at Chicago did Frost say the imperishable Frost...

...More, I its way serves as an antidote to the pab- Daniel's counterweight to Philip's rage, ask that by your gracious gift, he may ulum hagiography served up in the dual detecting that "the most insidious and be father to me, and I son to him, biography of the brothers by Richard pervasive form of destruction" lies in through all the years that remain to me...

...Having "arrived," question in mind...

...Curtis...

...Finally, I invite the reader who What Curtis cannot comprehend in JOHN FANDEL wishes to understand the wrestling his cheesecake celebration of these "un- match these two men carry on with If Frost had told me to write an orthodox" priests is how deeply their their God, their Church, their country, account of what he was going to say roots are planted in the rich soil of an to read closely Daniel's entries reflect- as I sat at his feet to listen to him immensely complex tradition, how gra- ing on his relationship to the tyrannical talk three hours of a late summer phically they express all the best and father-both contained in a letter to afternoon away, in 1950, "just the worst of that tradition...

...and decency into active principles of But I, like Frost, "never could take The many-sided man reveals one-side conduct...

...Gotten not only by heart, and check, without which, alone, he JAN B. GORDON teaches in the English by rote, but by note, lodged in the Department at the State University of finds himself incomplete and the prey New York at Buffalo...

...It had staying power...

...I said it tis and many another idol-worshipper about, ignore...

...Score vised to read the American (and a dignity amid shrinking natural re- that a triumph for the individualistic fortiori, the American Catholic) pulse sources...

...David J. O'Brien, The Renewal of recorded in these journals, in Daniel's or a revival of James Agee...

...The Berrigan brothers, whose palm could not be expected to succeed is more than a twinge of nostalgia here, penitentiary diaries we now review, as an acceptable liturgical innovation...

...may find a model for that honing to Circle...

...editor...

...His latest book of poems is Body be capable of renouncing it...

...After reading both diaries, one can gested if but dimly recollected, not DANIEL MORRISSEY is the personal clerk understand why each brother finds in of a federal judge in Chicago...

...Did our democratiza- merican heresy...

...No one American Catholicism, Paulist Press, case with the poet's eye for significant disputes the fact that our scene has paper, $2.95), the Berrigan brothers, detail and its impact upon inner life and changed radically, nor that as a group still so identifiably "sons of the scarlet death, in Philip's case, with all the fruswe haven't geared into either onrush- woman," were experimenting with our tration of the man of action at baying Armageddon or Utopia...

...Each in solitary confinement...

...In other words, did success spell ironic incapable of being touched by the equalYes, we have arrived-into the the- defeat, the melting pot erode our moral ly real wounds of the Vietnamese...

...This unsettling places sectarian Catholic problems, and knowledge the unsettling reality of a suspicion may be premature autopsy, that means, of course, a strain on our government no longer by and for the the product of a jaded New York per- individualistic self-interest to retool our people...

...Could the talking Frost be fully diof Earth (Roth...

...features of good old-fashioned Catholic anger, his despotism, became a kind of I should have written the very words rigorism and moralism, anathematizing virtue in us-for he forced us to go down when I got there...

...matized we had become to some of the Philip Berrigan At this peak of success or Untergang, less suspicious dimensions of the AmerRICHARD CURTIS depending on your point of view, the ican way, in fact, how divorced we were scarlet woman, the Church, is invited from the substance and import of our Hawthorn Books, $6.95 to preside at White House prayer break- own sacraments...

...head because literally written down...

...a sense of priceless loss...

...Rushing home to do before he spoke to them, in 1918, in a letter to J.C., as the "outrageous" his dying father's bedside, the loyal I could add to his recorded sayings Daniel does...

...The unvarnished truth twice over as I walked from the hilldo not...

...For there is peace on his old bones...

...Prior to ancient truth put to this new test...

...Many, in both cases, but so very distinctively, Commonweal: 525 wrestling matches with Jacob's angel, integrity that none of us can find in erous and hard-working . . . I ask You full of blessing and wounding...

...of Americans, Catholics included, were in search of a plot...

...The wounds of Christ the ground is uncertain...

...What even Cardinal Ottaviani, will under- to seize on weakness . . . the skill, even he said about the heart and the mind stand the connection between this rich at ninety-one, to keep his family on and poetry, in his inimitable way, I piety and militant resistance, but Cur- edge, to deride, show contempt, order thought, was unforgettable...

...BOOKS RAGE AND COUNTERWEIGHT DAVID S. TOOLAN Lights On In the House of Vatican II, the best wit and intelligence not least among them their fellow-Caththe Dead: A Prison Diary of American Catholic liberals were di- olics, found the novel turn in this exDANIEL BERRIGAN rected at proving the compatibility be- periment impossible to understand, and tween being fully American and Catho- for them I recommend these diaries as Doubleday, $7.95 lic-and the project succeeded...

...What typical Christ...

...through the more complex recordings demicians got a handle on this challenge The fiery liturgy's prison sequel is of a Studs Terkel or a Robert Coles- (cf...

...Coming in seven and fasts, signal of respectability-and many only seven varieties neatly compartmen"We were outrageous," writes Wilfrid of the faithful find the old whore up- talized from the rest of life, the burnSheed of the ghetto Catholicism era, ping the ante of prostitution, or simply ing of draft files with home-made na"sons of the scarlet woman...

...The symbolic imagispective where apocalypses come fast life style and our technology to the nation in which we were supposedly and heavy-and we might be well ad- shared claims of our global village for nurtured had effectively perished...

...it would out of shape and hence defiantly invit- REVIEWERS never let go: it needed no note to ing despair...

...And who will say that Philip by all reports-and yet, "I am going to side cabin on the old Homer Noble does not exhibit the most intolerable say thank you for him . . . even his farm in Ripton, back to Bread Loaf...

...He was honest and gen- notes while a man was talking," and here, and that prey to a Gnostic imagi- I felt sure I had his saying by heart nation, all but his intimates gigantized 00000 0000 forever-rather, it had me...

...And there boring...

...Here is a violent man, keep faith...

...Rutgers U. Press, $7.50 ations of notoriety...

...my desk...

...Were they, too, charmed by the 27 September 1974: 526...

...Though I must add that since Widen the Prison Gates Decree on Religious Liberty symbolized I find Philip's generates more heat than PHILIP BERRIGAN the high tide of the liberal program- light, his journal may simply deepen and then came the bitter disillusion- the misunderstanding...

...scripturally memorized, not recorded the other an irreplaceable complement verbatim...

...I had, so I thought, already that only those capable of violence shall JOHN FANDEL is Commonweal's poetry sufficiently digested Frost...

...Revelation...

...Simon & Schuster, $2.95 ment of civil rights exposures, Vietnam The incomprehension itself was perThe Berrigan Brothers: The and now Watergate-and the end of haps a mark of how thoroughly accliStory of Daniel and innocence...

...That ater of the absurd...

...Immigrant must be seen against this shifting his- Rather, it was blasphemy, the destrucCatholicism knew where it stood and torical scene, and with the following tion of sacred property, and hence Awhere it was headed...

...JFK's a way of understanding what makes election and John Courtney Murray's them tick...

...I also recommend these medita- mere, honest, straightforward report of left-winger today meditates on, and tions to Jewish readers who were re- what I say to you," what he told the draws inspiration from, the hypostatic cently deeply offended at Daniel's criti- schoolboys of Browne and Nichols to union, or pours out his agony of soul cism of Israeli policy...

...With Curtis' partisan and sensa- "hatred of the persecutors . . . (who...

...for seem an infantile fixation indeed...

...Frieda Berrigan and Dor- son judges him: "pertinacious, self-cen- one I have seen nowhere in print, one othy Day, both tolling their beads, and tered, generally joyless . . . acid, fierce I never heard him say again...

...was something for which faceless bution of being "simply American" show Having made it, the American en- reaucrats who presumably knew better signs of cracking open-to reveal ergy crisis (material and psychic) dis- were responsible-which was to acNietzsche's "last man...

...It hopefully flushing out his own great FATHER DAVID S. TOOLAN, s.J., teaches was too good to be false...

...As Nietzsche remarked, all love tionalistic account of Berrigan origins stand in need of our compassion and is creative, and all true lovers are hard and happenings before you, you can our courtesy...

...I went to demons as all of us must, and perhaps in the Department of Religious Studies dinner when I should have gone to it is well to remember Gandhi's paradox at Canisius College in Buffalo...

...Does the satisfac- substance...

...Considerably before our aca- ethos and consequent numbing of soul...

...the old barri- tion, as de Tocqueville prophesied, make were real, even after the resurrection, cades down, our institutions designed us forget our ancestors, hide us from and Thomas, doubting that, put his for a different fray drift, perhaps to- our descendants and separate us from hands inside them and was touched to ward economic extinction, bishops and our contemporaries, confining us to the the quick, but embarrassing numbers clergy and faithful so many characters solitude of our own hardened hearts...

...There are wrong-thinkers left and right and thus beyond himself, not to settle our lives two ways of taking notes: when a man defacing the army of his adversaries on his terms, to find in ourselves the is speaking to you and after he has and making the community he quests virtue that would make love and truth spoken to you," Frost told the boys...