Another Part of the War

...s assigned there after the man of Cyrene who helped Jesus carry his cross, was the only CPS camp operated under Roman Catholic auspices, primarily for Catholic c.o.'s, and as such it was the first corporate expression of pacifism in American Catholicism...

...As an activist Zahn has been a strong voice in the movement's councils...

...It was forced to close after half a year...

...Moreover, in that experience can be found at least some roots or antecedents of what came to be called (with some media "hype") the "Great Catholic Peace Conspiracy" of the 1960s...

...had no business saving the British Empire...

...His profuse writings and lectures have stimulated the growth of the Catholic pacifist movement, grounded it in a clear perception of contemporary reality, and kept it in continuity with Catholic orthodoxy and social teaching...

...Some were convinced that World War II was unjust according to the scholastic just war theory, others that the U.S...

...The Catholic Peace Fellowship was organized through the C.W...

...they rather give it life, color and irony...

...Those connected with the Catholic Worker movement were most influential in the running of the camp...

...The Warner campers were to clear 1938 hurricane damage from a wilderness, for no pay...

...At last all the C. W. men left the program, many for military service...

...Zahn participated in the Camp Simon experiment during its whole six-month span, but he is too practiced a scholar to allow his personal experiences and biases to warp his presentation...

...The story of Camp Simon is not a happy one...

...He is a founder of both the Catholic Peace Fellowship and Pax Christi, USA...

...men...

...Zahn seems to appreciate Dorothy Day's attitude more today, but he is sympathetic toward the elders of the historic peace churches who fought for the establishment of the CPS and later administered it...

...There were non-Catholics, ex-Catholics, and not very fervent Catholics, as well as the "chapel group...

...Thomas Merton's writings on peace and those of the Berrigan brothers were first published in the Catholic Worker...

...Any attempts to refurbish such a program should be headed off as swiftly as possible...

...Nevertheless she gave the camp what support she could, through visits and through the Catholic Worker monthly paper, though with scant response from the readership...

...Some peace agencies, such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation, pulled out of the program before the war's end...

...Readers of German Catholics and Hitler's Wars and In Solitary Witness (once again available through The Liturgical Press), will be grateful for this addition to Zahn's works...

...Whatever their mistakes and however seriously compromised they became, their intentions were praiseworthy...

...The lack of mutuality and common understanding among the Catholic c.o.'s undermined potential camp unity of purpose...

...Dorothy Day, cofounder and still leader of the movement, never really approved of CPS or its camps...

...Some saw alliance with the Soviet Union as diabolical...

...It was common opinion that c.o.'s were material if not formal heretics, and that the Catholic Worker movement was at the (lunatic) fringe of the church...

...in 1964...

...Many of the early draft card burners were C.W...

...She always contended that the best response to the Selective Service System was complete non-cooperation...

...But Camp Simon, so named by the c.o...

...The fact that there was no identifiably useful purpose to most of the work projects of CPS and the remoteness of the camps made it unavoidably clear to most participants that they were not being given an opportunity to witness to their beliefs and to serve the common good in an exemplary and nonviolent manner...

...Its problems were rooted in the nature of the CPS program, in the immaturity and pettiness of the campers, in the disparity of rationales for the position they held in common, and in the lack of moral and financial support from the larger Catholic community...

...Those who are interested in a scholarly and extraordinarily well written and lively account of a minuscule but pregnant element of World War II history will find it invaluable...

...They were put out of the way...

...The links between the World War II experience of CPS and the "Great Catholic Peace Conspiracy" of the '60s are not made clear in this book...

...The experiences of some seventy-five conscientious objectors, and their later recollections and reflections upon them, at the ill-fated Camp Simon between October, 1942 and March 1943, would not on the surface seem to be of much consequence...

...They also seemed to suffer less from the physical privations of camp life, inured as they were from service in the C. W. houses of hospitality in urban skidrows...

...Tom Cornell THIS worthy contribution to the sociology of peace brings Gordon Zahn to the beginning of his own involvement in the cause, as a conscientious objector assigned to the Civilian Public Service (CPS) camp near Warner, N.H...

...Some were of a more evangelical pacifist bent...

...The most obvious is the Catholic Worker movement, with its demonstrations against Civil Defense in the 1950s and against the Vietnam war beginning in 1963...

...Now that plans for resuming military conscription are under way in Washington, with the registration of nineteen- and twenty-year-olds, it is important to take a fresh look at the history of protection of conscience in the U.S...

...Camp Simon was administered by the Association of Catholic Conscientious Objectors, a benign front for the Catholic Worker movement...

...They remembered vividly the barbaric treatment of c.o.'s during World War I, when there was no opportunity to declare conscientious objection until after military induction, so that c.o.'s were subject to military justice...

...Clearly the CPS was a fraud and an injustice, thus a very bad precedent...

...There was no financial support whatever from the bishops...

...One of them told 29 August 1980: 477 me years later that he found it easier to be a Christian in the army than in CPS camp...

...Commonweal: 478...

...Another link is Zahn himself...