He was the first Catholic priest to be arrested in the U.S. for leading protests against the Vietnam War and the nuclear weapons of the U.S. government.Later he was arrested hundreds of times in protests against war and nuclear weapons. He spent nearly two years of his life in prison. Time magazine featured him on its cover, and he was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel peace prize. A Jesuit priest, he was also an award-winning poet and a prolific writer who authored more than 50 books. Fr Daniel Berrigan, SJ, died in New York on 30 April this year. He was 94.
Dan, as his friends called him, was born on 09 May 1921 in Virginia, Minnesota, U.S. After his schooling, he joined the Jesuits, and after his formation, was ordained a priest in 1952. In 1953 he travelled to France for a training programme that Jesuits call ‘Tertianship’ and there he met ‘the worker priests’ who must have made him see a totally new dimension of priesthood. When he taught New Testament at Le Moyne College, Syracuse, he founded the ‘International House’ for students who wanted to show their solidarity with the poor of the ‘third world.’
His younger brother, Philip Berrigan, was an equally committed and courageous activist and anti-war protestor. Later Philip left priesthood and married, but continued to live the life of an activist till the end. When Dan wanted to join his brother in 1963, his Jesuit superiors did not permit him to do so. He went to France and other European countries and South Africa on a sabbatical.
When he returned he began to oppose the U.S. involvement in Vietnam War and co-founded Catholic Peace Fellowship. A retreat he made along with his brother and other friends in 1964 became a turning point. The retreat was directed by the renowned monk and spiritual writer, Thomas Merton in his Trappist monastery in Kentucky, called Abbey of Gethsemani. The Berrigans, as well as Merton, resolved to advocate Christian peacemaking and so launch a crusade, through writing and speaking, against war and the nuclear weapons. Writing in one of his books about meeting Dan Berrigan, Merton referred to him as “an altogether winning and warm intelligence and a man who, I think, has, more than anyone I have ever met, the true wide-ranging and simple heart of the Jesuit: zeal, compassion, understanding and uninhibited religious freedom. Just seeing him restores one’s hope in the church.”
In 1965, he co-founded ‘Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam’ with the well-known Jewish Rabbi Abraham Heschel. On 22 Oct1967, Berrigan was arrested for the first time with hundreds of students protesting the Vietnam War at the Pentagon, when the U.S. government was engaged in mobilizing the youth to fight in the war. What he did the next year made him known all over the world. On 17 May 1968, along with his brother and eight others, he burned draft files at Catonsville, Maryland. The media coverage of the event ignited anti war protests all over the country.
He and his friends called such protests ‘Plowshares actions.’ Why Plowshares? ‘Plowshares’ is the way Americans spell ‘Ploughshares.’ And the reference is to the Biblical prophecy that declares there will be no more war. Isaiah 2:4 says, “He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”
He published in 1957 his first book of poetry, Time without Number, which won Lamont poetry award. Since then he kept publishing one or two books of poetry or prose every year. From 1965 till about 10 years ago he was speaking against violence and war at least once a week somewhere in the U.S.
If we want to understand why Berrigan chose to live this way, it is enough to look at what he said during his trial in 1981: “The only message I have to the world is: We are not allowed to kill innocent people.We are not allowed to be complicit in murder. ‘Thou shalt not kill.’” When an underground group of revolutionaries who opposed wars that U.S. was responsible for began to blow up buildings and indulge in violence, Berrigan wrote: “The death of a single human is too heavy a price to pay for the vindication of any principle, however sacred.” Because of the inevitable loss of hundreds of innocent lives in a war, he held that no war can ever be just and so called the Church to abandon its ‘just war’ theory and return to the non-violence of Jesus.
John Dear, another well-known priest-activist, said in an obituary, “All along I considered him one of the most important religious figures of the last century, right alongside with Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day and his brother, Philip… I consider him not just a legendary peace activist, but one of the greatest saints and prophets of modern times.”
When Dan Berrigan’s funeral Mass began on 06 May, the audience sang,
“We’re gonna lay down our swords and shields, down by the riverside…We’re gonna study war no more!”
In the light of this Berrigan candle, we need to remind ourselves that if we are followers of Jesus, we ought to be peacemakers. If we are, we will be blessed, because we will be children of God(“Blessed are the peacemakers…”Mt 5:9). But in our homes or communities, how often do we indulge in violence – physical or verbal? In our parishes, dioceses and congregations how many of us keep creating conflicts and destroying unity and peace – for power or profit, exploiting language or caste, race or region?
-Fr M.A. Joe Antony, SJ is at present editor, Jivan, the magazine of South Asian Jesuits and the executive secretary of and advisor to the Provincial Superior of Jesuits in Tamil Nadu. For 20 years he edited the New Leader and gave it a new life and reputation.
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