At Play in the Lions' Den: A Biography and Memoir of Daniel Berrigan by Jim Forest
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

That Troublesome Priest

There was a time when Catholic priests were controversial for courageously fighting injustice rather than for child molestation and the single issue politics of abortion. Dan Berrigan was one of the most controversial, most inspiring, and therefore most feared priests of my generation. Arguably he and his brother Phil, more than any others, changed the collective mind of a country, at least for a time, about the absurdity of warfare.

Neither Christianity, nor any other religion whatever its ethical teaching, makes better people. The American leaders who prosecuted the war in Vietnam almost all professed religious faith. Yet they lied, schemed and conspired to wreak sustained havoc on the world the consequences of which we are still living through. The classified documents which are known collectively as the Pentagon Papers show the depth and breadth of political corruption that caused and sustained that conflict. Daniel Berrigan was one of those who blew the whistle on the institutional mendacity and international thuggery of senior members of the United States government. “One of those rare priests asking questions few wanted to hear.”

The governmental tactics employed then have since become standard for promoting an acceptance of violence and the inevitable economic and social consequences of war: promote fear; provide a theory of necessary national interest; and misrepresent actions. Vietnam was the public relations testing ground for subsequent adventures in Central America, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Vietnam exploded the myth of American exceptionalism.

And religion was and remains implicated in all of this: “The powers of the state show a mysterious concern for the integrity of the word of God” when it is useful for propaganda. And then, as now with Trumpist evangelicals, “A universal Love has narrowed itself to accept hate and to command hate.” Still today, it is difficult to find a mention much less public protest by senior church leaders on topics like extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay, deportation, racial hatred, and the mis-use of religion to oppress one’s fellow citizens. Christianity has shown itself to be no more exceptional than America.

Berrigan‘s ‘No,’ therefore, was most notably, but not solely, to civil society. Injustice is where one finds it. And Berrigan found it inside his Jesuit order and in his Church. Their tolerance of racism, their clericalism and ecclesiastical nationalism, their bland acceptance of the morality of nuclear warfare, their contradictory doctrines regarding human life were also on his agenda. Having undergone 15 years of intensely disciplined Jesuit formation, Berrigan could hardly be considered a congenital rebel, someone who merely likes to express dissatisfaction with the status quo. He was a confirmed member of the insider establishment. His gripe was with behavioral injustice not with any existing firm of social organization.

The reason this is important is that the heated criticism of his own order and church demonstrated that his resistance, although it had political consequences, was moral not political. He didn’t join any secular political group, nor did he lobby politicians. He never sought, or received, political support from the institutions of which he was a member. Nor did he join others which were involved in merely political protest. His resistance was a matter of personal conscience not politics. He defied the law; he didn’t advocate how it should be changed. In short, Berrigan was a front line soldier who put himself not others in jeopardy. He was a model of moral behavior not a director of how to behave. He acted to fulfill the social activist’s, Dorothy Day’s, urging to protestors to “fill the jails” With their own bodies in order to stop the war.

Dan Berrigan’s brother, Phil, in fact insisted on the principle of challenging the law publicly. “Those who violate the law should be prosecuted,” he said. Imprisonment was part of the protest. And both brothers did pay the price for their part in the disclosure of the details of the mendacity and violence perpetrated by his government. Dan was convicted of various felonies associated with his protests and sentenced to 3 years in federal prison. For a time he was, incredibly, on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list of criminals. Phil spent a total 0f 11 years inside.

The brothers’ only defense was that as Christians it was necessary for them to say ‘No’ to the legal and moral standards of the society in which they had been raised. They did not protest either the conviction or the sentence. In a sense these were part of the point - to suffer the civil consequences of one’s convictions is as important as the act of disclosive protest. Comparison with the whinging martyrs of later years - one thinks of a Julian Assange - is instructive.

I find it interesting that the sexual scandals of the Catholic Church were eerily anticipated by its persistent (and persisting) moral callousness on so many other issues. Berrigan threatened not the doctrine of the church but its authority, its credibility, and above all its power. The technique for dealing with deviation for the party line is the same for those who blew the whistle on injustice by and within the church as it was for those sexual abusers: move the offender elsewhere: “The Roman Catholic manner of dealing with such a priest is not to debate him, not to offer alternative arguments, but simply to silence him and send him to another country where his attempt to give Christian witness will not offend.” Clearly there is something inherently amiss in an institution which treats a moral hero with the same punishment as a moral degenerate.

Where Christian witness is not offending, and especially offending those in power, it is vacuous piety or tribal cant. If there is a lesson to be learned from Berrigan’s life, I think it is exactly that. The primary reason for the decline in both the membership of the church and its credibility, is its perennial reluctance to cause offense to those in charge of worldly affairs, and the affairs of the church itself. It has demonstrated repeatedly that its primary concern is self-preservation. Perhaps with more troublesome priests like Dan Berrigan, some sort of renewal is possible. But I’m not holding my breath.

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