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So,
Phil Berrigan is dead. Who would have thought there'd
come the day. Once he strode these streets like a
colossus. He was a mighty man, totally fearless. One
friend likened him to "bloody St. Paul."
I don't know about the "bloody." For Father
Phil was a pacifist above everything else. But if
you were to employ the word in its old Irish form
as obdurate, stubborn - well, that would have summed
up some of the man's characteristics. (Oddly enough,
when I once asked a relative of James Connolly how
his family saw him, the answer was: "oh, he was
a total pain in the arse, always getting you to do
things that you weren't really up for.") Perhaps,
all visionaries who want to change the world behave
so.
Father
Berrigan was an exemplary man. He could also be a
frustrating one. A Christian and a Catholic, he totally
believed in Jesus Christ's Sermon on the Mount. Many
people do, I suppose, but he refused to just pay lip
service and acted out this wonderful, but trying,
philosophy in his life. He was a child of the Depression.
His Father was a radical union organizer, a harsh
man who demanded much from his children (too much,
some would say). Phil became an artilleryman and an
officer in World War Two. Sickened by the carnage
he witnessed, he resolved to offer up his life for
peace and justice. He followed his brother, Dan, into
the priesthood. He was never a popular man with the
Catholic Hierarchy. He expected others to put their
Christian beliefs into practice, and not just keep
them locked up within pietistic words. He may have
known of the word "pragmatism" but he certainly
never practiced it. In the 50's, he spoke out fearlessly
against segregation to congregations unused to hearing
such radicalism. He worked amongst the poor Black
communities both in the South and the North. In the
early 60's, he became a towering figure in the movement
to end the the Vietnam War. (A non-Catholic friend
once told me that at Antiwar rallies in Baltimore,
he would always search for Father Phil, and march
a couple of steps behind, reassured by his height
and conviction, and certain that no one would dare
do violence to this mighty man.) The truth was Father
Phil shunned all violence and made that a pillar of
his beliefs.
After
the Vietnam War ended and McDonald's began its slow
but inexorable journey to Ho Chi Minh City, Father
Phil and his brother, Father Dan, a fine poet, turned
their attention to the protest against the proliferation
of nuclear weapons. Heeding the biblical injunction
to turn swords into plowshares, they undertook Plowshare
Actions - pouring blood on and taking hammers to missile
parts. With time and a change in fashion, he began
to seem like a crank. It never seemed to bother him.
He was a Christian and, to his mind, was following
Jesus Christ's teachings and example. He spent eleven
of his last thirty-one years in prison.
Although
the Catholic Church gave up on him, he never gave
up on the Church. "Where else am I to go? My
roots are in Catholicism." Like the great majority
of Catholic priests, he was a very decent, charitable
and idealistic man. One has to wonder just what he
was thinking in his last painful months, when scandal
after scandal was being exposed - predatory priests
protected by their bishops - while he, for marrying
the woman he loved, had been pushed outside the fold.
One wonders too, what were his thoughts regarding
the proposed invasion of Iraq. I can only imagine
that he was despondent at lacking the strength and
health to make his voice heard one more time, his
towering presence felt on some protest line or other.
I
hadn't seen the man for a long, long time. I never
spoke to him. Never confessed my admiration for him
and his brother, my pride in the fact that they were
Irish and stood up for their beliefs no matter how
unpopular. But he is one of those characters who stays
with you, prickles even. Phil Berrigan was like a
conscience to many people, not necessarily a comfortable
one either. He had a way of making you measure yourself,
and your commitment to any kind of ideals, against
his own massive, unflagging faith. Regrettably, you
were always found wanting. Though his towering physique
has been laid to dust, I have a feeling that the strength
of his spirit will continue to grow through the years,
still prickly, forever demanding, and always reminding
us that we can be better than we are.
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