From Church to Radical Action
Lahr, Anthea
From Church to Radical Action Whose Heaven,, Whose Earth? by Thomas and Marjorie Melville. Alfred A. Knopf. 303 pp. $6.95. Reviewed by Anthea Lahr This book is a love story, not just the love...
...is active...
...is that it is too short and that the reader longs to know more, especially of the Melvilles' later experiences in the United States...
...It is a moving and wonderful story...
...Besides their revolutionary activity, the Melvilles had to wrestle with the problem of their marriage...
...The Melvilles are too impertinent with dogma not to question each step they take, and I hope that there is little chance that they will be too deeply involved in guerrilla warfare to forget Jesus' admonition to Peter: "Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword...
...There they found that they wanted to bear witness to the havoc that their Government was wreaking in Vietnam and, by more indirect means, in South America...
...I believe that these loves were crucial to the Melvilles' emergence as Christian revolutionaries...
...They admit frankly to their sexual attractions—Tom had a crush on a novice nun who worked in his parish, and Marjorie loved a young Jesuit with whom she worked...
...For Christian revolutionaries this poses a problem...
...But many atrocities can be committed in the name of freedom, and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor*' must also mean your landlord and your policemen...
...Do Christians have the right to ask that people die without fighting back...
...They were married in Mexico and continued their plans...
...After helping the Indians to obtain land, how could the Melvilles teach a doctrine that implied that the Indians must consent to being massacred when the government came to take it away from them...
...The Melvilles decided that the answer was armed self-defense...
...But nonviolence can seem quite impotent in the face of authority that has no conscience...
...She discovered the plight of the Guatemalan peasants and finally agreed, after meeting guerrilla leaders, that only through armed revolution would justice come to oppressed Guatemala...
...Whose Heaven, Whose Earth...
...My only criticism of Whose Heaven, Whose Earth...
...This is a question that can be answered only personally, each person for himself...
...But the question of the differences and the similarities between the Catholic symbols and superstitions and the "pagan" ones began to trouble him...
...It is the true Christian love (caritas) that the Melvilles, together with the Fathers Berrigan and five others, embodied in their action at Gatonsville, Maryland, when they burned the draft files with napalm...
...Reviewed by Anthea Lahr This book is a love story, not just the love between Marjorie and Tom Melville, but the love they both have for the people of Guatemala and all the oppressed people in the world...
...In India, Gandhi had decided it was nonviolence...
...I only hope that the repressive American penal system will allow them to write another volume, because there are few books that are as filled with the spirit of love as this one...
...But when its success seemed a small achievement, and perhaps a bromide, stopping social change, he too began to embrace the idea of revolution...
...Although it is inadequately dealt with in the book, they must have spent many hours of meditation and prayer before taking that step...
...If this love can be combined with the revolutionary fervor and perseverance of the radical and minority groups, perhaps the world can be saved from the power of the United States and America can be saved from herself...
...The "this-I-know-for-God-is-on-my-side" attitude could be as dangerous and as full of pride for the new radical Christians as for the judge in the Seattle conspiracy trial who called on the Almighty while sentencing the defendants for contempt of court...
...The love they felt was the stirring of protest against the Church bureaucracy that equated sex with sin and "rolled all Ten Commandments into one—'Thou shalt not commit adultery,' " which made it easy to overlook the sins of oppression and to forget the other nine Commandments, especially, "Thou shalt not kill...
...In sharing their transitions with us in book form, they make writing a form of action, not just a chronicling, and the love that pervades Whose Heaven, Whose Earth...
...When the two Maryknollers were expelled from Guatemala, they did not give up their hopes for helping in the revolution there...
...And throughout all this, their driving force was a love of God, or, more properly, of God through man...
...Hunted by the governments of Mexico, Guatemala, and the United States, they had to return to the United States...
...Tom was Father Thomas Melville, also a Maryknoller, who at first was fired with an orthodox zeal to rid the Indians of their pagan rites...
...Holy Crusades have seemed, for too long, to be the Catholic Church's rai-son d'etre...
...Revolution must not be yet another...
...Marjorie was Sister Marian Peter, assigned by the Maryknoll Catholic Foreign Mission Society to Guatemala City to teach the daughters of rich Guatemalans in what was known locally as the "Maryknoll Hilton...
...On a parallel route with Sister Marian Peter, he realized that the economic plight of the Indians was more serious than their spiritual one, and he started a cooperative...
...is their story up to that event, and what led them, on their different paths, to find Christ in revolution as well as revelation, and to discover that love had to be the dominant force in their lives...
...The Melvilles have the faith and hope that this will happen and the love to put their thoughts into deeds...
...The Melvilles think they have God on their side because they are working for social justice...
Vol. 35 • February 1971 • No. 2
