Requiescat in Pace, Daniel Berrigan SJ

Father Daniel Berrigan, Jesuit, died on Saturday April 30, 2016 in the Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University in New York City. 

Berrigan was a pivotal figure in the history of American Catholicism as he epitomized the new phenomenon of the Activist Priest.  While the Catholic Clergy in the United States had a long history of providing intellectual and academic backing for social reform with figures like Monsignor John Ryan and Monsignor George Higgins and while  Bishop Frank Haas, Monsignor Geno Baroni, and Monsignor John Boland were priests who worked closely with politicians to effect change, all were priests who stayed well within the defined role of the clergy and the limits of the law.  With Daniel Berrigan we get the priest who is not afraid to step out in a prophetic model and demand attention for the Truth he burns to speak. 

To appreciate Berrigan’s significance, we need to go back to the placid days of Dwight Eisenhower and pre-Vatican II Catholicism.  The Church stood with the establishment, or at least did not bite the hand that was feeding it.  The civil turmoil that has marked our nation was just starting sixty years ago.  Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks were still young.  Catholics were not getting on bus of Civil Rights, we kept our nose out of other people’s issues.  Due to the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement of such powerful Catholic hierarchs as Archbishop Thomas Toolen of Mobile and Francis Cardinal McIntyre of Los Angles, Catholic clergy were long embarrassingly absent from the front lines of Dr. King’s protests.  Local Bishops and religious superiors prohibited their subjects from taking any direct action in Civil Disobedience though they were often more tolerant of their preaching on the subject.  It was seen that the role of the clergy and religious was preaching and teaching rather than social activism.   Some, like Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton, appealed to their audiences through their writing.  But when, on May 17^th 1968 Daniel Berrigan, his brother Phil (then a member of Josephite Fathers), Brother David Darst of the Christian Brothers, and six lay associates went into the Selective Service Office in Catonsville MD and removed about 600 Draft Files to the parking lot where they were burned with homemade napalm, it was a new day for the role of the clergy as social activists and not merely theoreticians and teachers.  (Actually this was Philip Berrigan’s second act of civil disobedience; he had the year before poured blood on Selective Service Records in Baltimore.  Daniel was not involved in that action.)   Even though there were others involved, and Daniel did not seek the spotlight, he was from the beginning the center of interest.  He had a certain charism that drew your attention.  Not everyone was happy with Daniel Berrigan of course.  Cardinal Spellman, who was also the Bishop for the US military, would not permit him in the Archdiocese of New York.  Most Catholic institutions were afraid to host him.  He was convicted for the Catonsville Action and fled into hiding.  Captured at the Block Island home of Episcopalian theologian William Stringfellow he served three years in prison.  But his prison term seemed only to enhance his standing.

I think Berrigan’s deeply thoughtful personality, sound Jesuit spirituality, and natural gentleness gave him a moral credibility that he was able to transfer over to the causes he was associated with.  In 1980 he was one of the founders of the Plowshares Movement, an anti-nuclear weapons group.  They broke into a General Electric facility in Pennsylvania where they hammered nuclear missile nose cones and poured blood on files.  Back to jail.  I think his willingness to take the punishment for his crimes also gave him a certain moral credibility. 

The story of the Plowshares Movement attack on the nuclear missile warheads was the subject of the 1983 film In the King of Prussia directed and written by Emile de Antonio starring Martin Sheen—and the Plowshares eight playing themselves.  Emile de Antonio was a maker of socio-political documentaries, perhaps the most significant director of social-political documentaries in the second half of the twentieth Century America, and the film made people stop and rethink the action of Plowshares activists from a moral perspective that gave it a  different nuance.  

Daniel Berrigan had a close friendship with and mutual admiration for Buddhist mystic Thich Nhat Hanh.  Both were committed deeply to the path of non-violence and Hanh writes of Berrigan’s influence on him in his book Living Buddha, Living Christ.  Berrigan seems not to have been too scrupulous about following some Catholic limitations on Inter-Religious Dialogue but Hanh writes a particularly surprising (and moving) description of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  Of course, that is the problem with Berrigan.  He was not a rules follower.  Even by Jesuit standards, he was a pretty free agent. 

Daniel Berrigan was also an outspoken opponent of abortion and of the death penalty, espousing a true pacifist’s commitment to the Seamless Garment theology. 

Below are three quotes from Daniel Berrigan: 

But how shall we educate men to goodness, to a sense of one another, to a love of the truth? And more urgently, how shall we do this in a bad time?

One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible.

Spirituality was the main issue. Connection with God was the main issue

The Eucharist: Where the East Meets West

Kennedy Roshi ordains

Trappist monk Kevin

Hunt as a Zen sensei

or teacher

Kennedy Roshi is a Zen Master in the White Plum Asanga lineage who teaches and guides students in Zen meditation.  As his name indicates he is not Asian by background, but American.  Moreover he is a Jesuit and an ordained Catholic priest in good standing with the Church.  He was sent for studies in Japan where he was ordained to the priesthood of the Catholic Church in 1965.  After ordination he studied Zen with Yamada Koun, a distinguished  Japanese Zen Master to whom many Christians came to learn meditation.  Among other Dharma heirs (students whose fidelity to the tradition passed on by the Master) of Yamada Koun was not only Kennedy Roshi but several Catholic Religious—Jesuits, Benedictine monks and Benedictine nuns.  As a Roshi Kennedy himself has the authority to pass on authentic Zen tradition and has ordained several disciples including Kevin Hunt Sensei, a monk of Saint Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer MA.   How can one be a Catholic and a Buddhist?  It is not as rare as one might think.     
      Several years ago I was hiking in Tuscany and struck up a conversation with some English Buddhists who were staying at the same small hotel.  They were there on a wine tour.  Buddhists on a wine tour is somewhat like monks on a brothel crawl.  Buddhists abstain from alcoholic beverages as a matter of ascetic discipline.  Buddhists, at least practitioners of Buddhism, are vegetarian and these jolly Englanders were downing cinghiali, prosciutto, lardo, pancetta, sausages of every description, and whatever other pieces of pork, wild or tame, they could get their hands on like the Taliban was coming to eliminate pigs from the face of the earth.  These “Buddhists” were dilettantes whose “sangha” was more a social club and where the “dharma” was no more than an Asian take on “Prosperity Gospel” religion.  It was to Buddhism what Joel Osteen or Norman Vincent Peale are to Christianity—the Happy Clappy “power of positive thinking” hogwash. 
       Real Buddhism involves discipline.  The Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha are taken seriously.  But real Buddhism argumentably isn’t a religion, not in the western sense.  Buddhism doesn’t posit the existence of a Deity.  I wouldn’t say that it is atheistic in the sense that it denies God; it is just non-theistic.  I think it is more precise to say that Buddhism is, what we in the west would call, a philosophy.  Now I am saying this as a non-Buddhist and I am open to correction, or at least conversation,  on this point—from an acknowledged Buddhist.  I have read extensively in Buddhism for forty years and have a good collection of Buddhist works on my shelves.  I am not an authority by any means, but let me explain what I mean.  And when I say that it is not a religion, in the western sense, I do not intend that to denigrate Buddhism in any way.  But Buddhism differs greatly in the questions it ponders from the question that Christian, Jewish, or Islamic thought—or western atheistic thought—raises.    Or perhaps I had better further refine that: Buddhism differs greatly in the questions it ponders than does Christian, Jewish, or Islamic thought, excepting the mystical strains of those religions.  The bridge of commonality between Buddhism and Christianity  is pretty much limited to the mystical tradition within Christianity.   That is why the official Catholic/Buddhist dialogue is conducted by a panel of Christian and Buddhist monastics.   The various meetings of Catholic and Buddhist monastic scholars which have taken place at the Trappist Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemane in Kentucky in 1996, 2002, and 2008 have been very productive for both sides as the rich heritage of contemplation in both religions has been shared.
        Granted in some forms of Buddhism, and I think in particular of Tibetan Buddhism, there is mention of various “gods” or “demons” but these do not correspond to what is meant by a deity or god in western thought.  Anthropologically they seem to be survivals from pre-Buddhist animism and are some sort of “spirits.”  They are not common to all forms of Buddhism and these micro-gods would be foreign to most Buddhists, particularly those in the Zen tradition.  Even in Tibetan Buddhism they comprise an element more of popular religion than official doctrine. 
       I have always been struck by how most Buddhists, including and perhaps especially the Dalai Lama, have spoken of the western concept of God.  The Asian mind is not binary as is the western mind.  To the west, if A is true then B must be false.  We use scientific medicine or traditional forms of medical practice—herbs, acupuncture, etc.  One is a scientist or a mystic, a Democrat or a Republican, a believer or an agnostic.  In the East this duality seems strange and the Eastern mind is given to living with paradox and contradiction.   In Japan it is not uncommon for a person to be Buddhist and Shinto; in China Confucian and Buddhist. 
      While Buddhism does not posit the existence of a Supreme Being, Buddhist leaders and Philosophers speak comfortably of God and of Jesus without seeming to find a contradiction to their convictions.  In his book, Living Buddha, Living Christ, Thich Nhat Hanh, perhaps, after the Dalai Lama,  the best known Buddhist author in the West, tells of receiving Holy Communion at a Mass celebrated by Daniel Berrigan.  (OK, I know that isn’t kosher, um, I mean canonically approved, but it happened and Berrigan is a Jesuit so what does one expect.)  The Buddhist Master gives a remarkably clear and vivid statement about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist that not only reveals his experience of the Risen Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar but chides those Christians for whom an encounter with the Eucharistic Christ has become so routine as to be no longer truly appreciated.  Western minds have a difficult time wrapping around this ability to reconcile diverse understandings within a single mind and heart but perhaps the problem is not with the Eastern ability to live with Paradox but the Western inability to accept the complexity of Truth.  
        So can one be a Buddhist and a Catholic?  Does being a Buddhist preclude one from being a Catholic?  Well, it depends on what one means by “being a Buddhist.”  It is not necessary to leave the Catholic Church or renounce its doctrines to practice Buddhism’s spiritual path.  When one uses the traditional Catholic distinction between latria (the adoration given to God alone) and dulia, the veneration given to saints or holy persons, one can say that there is no worship (latria)  given in Buddhism to the Buddha or other figures but only the veneration due to wise and noble figures.   
        When the Reverend Marcel Guarnizo refused Barbara Johnson Holy Communion at her mother’s funeral Mass, he did so because she is in a same-sex relationship.   He was unaware that she is a “Buddhist.”  That fact was unearthed by Guarnizo’s supporters only after the fact but it has been used as a secondary justification for the priest’s action.  Of course since he did not know it at the time and therefore it played no part in his decision, it can’t be used to justify it.  On the other hand, should her being a Buddhist have been reason for Ms. Johnson not to have come forward to Communion?  Well it depends.  What sort of Buddhist is Ms. Johnson?  Is she, like those English vinophiles I mentioned a dilettante, a sort of religious tourist to Buddhism, who plays at it weekends?  If she does not follow the disciplines, to some degree, of Buddhism she is not really a Buddhist.    Though even if she practices Buddhism seriously that does not mean she is still a Catholic either.  Has she officially renounced Catholicism through some formal act?  The Church says you don’t just sort of cease being a Catholic.  You have to either formally join some other religious community incompatible with one’s Catholicism or formally reject, not Church teaching, but your membership in the Church.  (I know of a case where a priest required a person who said they no longer were a Catholic to sign a document to that effect and have it notarized before the priest would hire the man as a non-Catholic employee.)   Apparently from the example of Kennedy Roshi and other Catholic clergy, religious, and practicing laity on can practice Buddhist spiritual disciplines and still be a Catholic.  Since Ms. Johnson claims to attend Mass (and receive Holy Communion) at least from time to time, she does not consider herself to have left the Church whatever her involvement with Buddhism may be.         

Lions 2: Christians 0

The L'Arche communities of Jean Vanier are examples
of Catholicism at it's best--an example of the teaching
of John Paul II on solidarity as interdependent
communities of the developmentally challenged and
those of us who have been able to achieve to full
potential learn from one another how to live the
Gospel

Well, I am not sure exactly how he managed to do it, but President Obama has slipped the trap on the contraceptive-for-Catholics issue and regained his political footing to move on.  I am not happy about how it has worked out, but I have to admire his political acumen.  His “compromise” is anything but—it doesn’t address the problem—but while the bishops are still out looking for a fight, the people in the pews, or at least those who were with the President before the kerfuffle, are pretty much back in the Obama camp.  And not just the battle, but the war, has been won and not by the Church.

First—why it is not a “compromise:” 

     It is not a compromise because the bishops were never involved in the solution.  A compromise requires that both sides sit down at the table and work out a solution that both sides can live with but with which usually neither side is completely happy.  Granted, the bishops are certainly not happy with this “solution” but not because it required them to give in in any way but because they were not involved in the process and their key principle was not addressed.  Granted Catholic institutions do not have to pay (directly) for services that are contrary to Catholic moral teaching, but the principle has not been resolved that Churches or religious groups should not have to conform to legislation that directly violates their moral code—that to force them to act contrary to their beliefs would, limit the practice of their religion in ways contrary to the First Amendment.  That is an important principle and they want to get it established as there are other battles yet to come. (See Below.)  Of course there are those among the purpled mitered majesties that want far more than is reasonable—those who do not want anyone to have coverage that includes sterilization or abortifacients and they would not be happy with anything less, but that is not realistic.  Moreover it is part of the much bigger problem for Catholics and that is that Church leadership has totally blown the Defense of Human Life mission right from day one.  (But more about that later.)

My second point:  

      Almost certainly the bishops have never had anything really to worry about.  The recent Supreme Court Hosanna-Tabor case bodes well for the Bishops’ plea that Church institutions should not be required to conform to federal law that violates their religious principles.  The case is not an exact parallel, of course, but in the dispute between a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church in Michigan and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission the Court decided unanimously that religious institutions have a certain immunity from federal legislation.  Given that it was a unanimous decision that federal guidelines did not apply in a dispute between a Church and an employee, it seems unlikely that the same court would side against a religious body when that body was striving to protect its moral or doctrinal integrity from government interference.  Nevertheless, the bishops were wise to sound the alarm before the matter even went to the courts as there is a very key principle of religious freedom here.  On the other hand, wise as they may have been to clarify the issue as one of freedom to be true to one’s religious principles, they have lost in the Court of Public Opinion as most Americans think that the President’s accommodation—it really isn’t a compromise for reasons stated above—is fair.  Pursuing this in the courts—which the bishops are bound to do to preserve the principle of religious autonomy—will only make them look obdurate and pigheaded.  A mitered pig is not a pretty sight; a herd of them (in this case, a Conference) is absolutely appalling.  So even if they win in the Supreme Court—and they probably will—the Church loses and President Obama has still won.  (Not that the President wanted a pissing contest with the Church for the sake of winning a pissing contest with the bishops.)    

And to be honest—while the bishops have already lost, the war is far from over. 

This brings me to the third point we need to consider: 

     This battle over insurance covering contraceptives is only prelude to the battle that will soon emerge over rights of partners in same-sex marriages.  What will happen when employees of Catholic institutions want coverage for their same-sex spouses?  There have already been a few minor skirmishes.  In 1997 then Archbishop William Levada (now Cardinal and head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome) ended up finding an “accommodation” with the City of San Francisco on the City’s requirement that domestic partners be given the same benefits as married spouses.  It saved face, and indeed provided a generous solution, but surrendered the principle that the Church should not have to comply with legislation that runs counter to its moral teachings. This is the issue that the bishops are now fighting the Obama administration on.  Various Catholic prelates, including Cardinal Dolan of New York, have led spirited but unsuccessful campaigns against legalizing same-sex marriages in their various states.  Some critics have claimed that the efforts were less than ardent and even have wanted the bishops to excommunicate or to deny sacraments to politicians who voted for or signed into law bills legalizing same-sex marriage.   Frankly, the bishops do their duty in upholding Catholic moral doctrine but they don’t seem very anxious to block the legality in civil law of same-sex marriages.  What will they do when they have to start providing spousal benefits? 

      I will tell you what they will have to do—they will have to ante up.  They will whine and complain but they lost this battle decades ago before gay marriage was even a question.  The Church in the United States treats civil marriage as a legal reality despite what the Church thinks of any particular union.  A Church employee who is divorced and remarried without a Church annulment is granted all the benefits and privileges of a married person.  A Catholic employee of the Church who is married outside the Church—and thus who, in the eyes of the Church, is not married at all—is still given the legal benefits and recognition owed to the legal status of the marriage in civil law.  It will have to be the same with same-sex marriages as they are legalized in state after state.  But wait and see:  the bishops will lead a fight—especially after they are bolstered by a Supreme Court decision upholding their right to refuse coverage for contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortifacients—to refuse benefits to same sex partners.  And here their hypocrisy will be exposed.  It will clearly be refusing benefits because the beneficiaries are gay and not because they are in what the Church believes to be an “invalid marriage.”  What a debacle that promises to become. 

This leads me to my final point for today: 

     We need to change our strategy as a Church on how we encounter the world in which we live if we hope to change it according to what we believe to be the values of the Gospel.  Today everyone knows what the Catholic Church is against but only a few know what it stands for.  We have become, at least in the perception of our society, a cantankerous old scold and cantankerous old scolds are not in a position to evangelize.  I am not saying that we have to bless everything that comes along, but we do need to stress what we—as a Church—believe in and not what we are against.  We would have much more credibility in our campaign to protect the unborn if we were to be known to be anxious to protect all human life against attack.  We would have more credibility in our campaign to end abortion if we were in respectful and honest dialogue with those who are concerned about the plight of women in today’s society.  We would have more credibility in our campaign to change the law if we made it our priority to change hearts first. 

      We can support marriage and sound family life without being anti-gay.  We don’t have to denigrate human relationships, gay or straight, to affirm our belief in heterosexual marriage.  We can accord each and every individual in our society respect and dignity—and equal access to social benefits and legal status—without giving our personal approval to the various relationships they may be in.   We might actually witness to the Gospel if we, like the Lord of the Gospels, encountered individuals in their particular circumstances rather than try to reduce people to categories and stereotypes. 

       The Catholic Church earned a moral reputation through the nineteenth and early twentieth century by building hospitals to care for the sick of any and all denominations, by opening schools and colleges that were as good as any in the land, by being the welcoming home for immigrants to our shores, by being the voice for the poor, by endorsing the corporate strength of the working classes against those who exploited them.  Today we are squandering that moral strength left and right and not even so much by the moral failures witnessed to in the sex-abuse crisis as much as by the pompous high-handedness of our prelates and the pharisaical hard-hearted self-righteousness of those who have allied themselves with the religious right in a political cause that hides behind the skirts of a pseudo-Christianity.  In a Dom Helder Camara, a Dorothy Day, a Mother Teresa, a Thomas Gumbleton, an Oscar Romero, a Daniel Berrigan, a Geno Baroni, a Horace McKenna, a Bernard Topel, I can see the apostles.  In a Catholic Worker House, a Jesuit Volunteer Corps, a Saint Luke’s Mission of Mercy, a Catholic Charities center, a Missionaries of Charity shelter for AIDS patients, a (Jesuit) Cristo Rey Prep School, a Little Sisters of the Poor home for the aged, an Jean Vanier L'Arche community, S.O.M.E. (So Others May Eat), a Saint Francis Breadline I see the Gospel becoming visible.  As a community of faith, our Catholic Church in the United States still has it—we only need to put our best food forward.  And it ain’t wearing a red stocking and a silver-buckled shoe.