Review: Philip Berrigan’s prophetic ire
Peace activist Philip Berrigan is pictured at the University of Washington in Seattle in the summer of 1977. (CNS file photo by Tom Salyer)In its starkest terms, A Ministry of Risk is a provocative anthology destined to leave most readers bewildered, challenged and perhaps even a little angry. This collection of the writings and speeches of the late Phil Berrigan (1923-2002), the controversial anti-war gadfly of the 1960s and ’70s, forces Christians from all ideological corners to examine their personal commitment to living the Gospel of peace, nonviolence and social justice.
Phil Berrigan, along with his Jesuit brother Daniel, assumed the leadership mantle of the “Catholic New Left” for their wide-scattered and highly publicized anti-war activities beginning in the late 1960s. Phil was a Josephite priest at the time. Both brothers wound up on the cover of Time on Jan. 25, 1971, with the accompanying cover story titled “The Berrigans: Conspiracy and Conscience.”
The pair also served prison terms for their public peace actions and suffered rejection and near-abandonment from all but a small minority of their clerical colleagues. Phil Berrigan in particular spent more than 11 years of his ministry behind bars.
Inspired by a desire to keep Phil Berrigan’s message alive for contemporary readers, editor Brad Wolf burrowed through voluminous Berrigan papers in putting A Ministry of Risk together. A former prosecutor in Pennsylvania and a longtime peace activist, Wolf was drawn to Berrigan’s story through contact with a number of his followers.
“I think he was definitely seen as subversive and critical of the church and the government,” Wolf told America in an interview. “Phil was an unabashed revolutionary. He did not think that the American system could be fixed. It needed to be reconstituted entirely. He loved the Catholic Church. He loved the intellectual history of the Catholic Church, the prophets, the saints, the doctors of the church. But he believed it was not calling its members, the parishioners, to do their duty.”
The book follows a chronological path in its presentation of Berrigan’s writings, beginning with his work in the early 1960s decrying nuclear annihilation stemming from the Cuban missile crisis, through to his anti-Vietnam War activities, and culminating in the early 1980s, when Berrigan took up the Plowshares movement.
“I was first attracted by Berrigan’s personality, and then his life, and then the power and the clarity of his writings,” Wolf said. “His writings are absolutely brilliant. I don’t know of anybody who writes more clearly about pulling the curtain back on America and exposing what’s really going on behind the power [structures]. Who has power, who doesn’t, who suffers.”
The prophetic cry to Catholics in particular to do more in the service of peace and social justice comes through loud and clear in A Ministry of Risk. Berrigan’s message of nonviolent resistance to war-making and militarism expanded over the years to an indictment of consumerist materialism and its quiet tolerance of racism—especially toward Black Americans—and even white supremacy.
While some of Berrigan’s writing quoted in the book may be strident and self-righteous, it continues to challenge readers—now as it did then—to an authentic examination of conscience.
And what might be infuriating to more traditional Catholics is that Berrigan focused much of his prophetic ire on fellow priests, bishops and religious for “surrendering to Caesar” in their failure to oppose the U.S. presence in Vietnam.
One of Berrigan’s letters reads:
[T]he Catholic priest in America, and in the West generally, is more of a cultural phenomenon than he is a Gospel man. He is nationalistic, white supremacist, and uncritical toward affluence and its source. His training reflects nuances of these cultural fixations, but beyond that, it schools him merely in neutrality toward life. By that I mean, he tends to take a purely institutional view of threats to life, whether they be its abuse or destruction. Indeed, if he is sensitive, he will go through immense pretensions to escape such brutalities. Or if he is hardened, he will advocate them or remain casual in the face of them.
Much of Berrigan’s prose can be difficult to swallow. Nonetheless, it succeeds in exhorting his readers to consider seriously the essential Gospel message of peacemaking and overcoming all forms of oppression and social injustice.
As to the relevance of Berrigan’s writing for contemporary audiences, Brad Wolf has a ready justification. “We really need it today,” he said, adding:
When you look out at the world today and you see the desperate situations, the war, the suffering that’s going on, we need Phil’s voice and we need to know and be inspired by his life. I think once people read about that life, they are going to see somebody that they like. Phil comes across as somebody very down to earth, very human, very complicated man. He’s assertive, he’s impatient, demanding, but he is also funny, kind, compassionate, brilliant, he is prophetic.
When you read all that, you are going to think that this is an amazing individual, who really understood what’s going on in the domination systems of the world, and was desperately trying to live out his faith the best way he could.
A key player in the publication of A Ministry of Risk is the Rev. John Dear, a diocesan priest and former Jesuit who has taken on a modern-day ministry of nonviolence. A one-time cellmate of Phil Berrigan, Dear composed the afterword in the new Berrigan book.
Like Wolf, Dear believes the life and teaching of Phil Berrigan need fresh adherents. Everything Phil and Dan Berrigan did flowed from their faith in the God of peace and love, Dear said. They were not just courageous activists, but “faith-filled disciples of the non-violent Jesus” and keepers and doers of the word of God.
“The Berrigans did not leave us with a feel-good, happy message,” Dear said. “They were like prophets of the Gospel, saying ‘love your enemies, don’t kill them, don’t build nuclear weapons to bomb us.’ And if you support war and nuclear weapons, you have nothing to do with Jesus or the Gospel. And their messy message continues to be rejected, because who wants to hear that all the time?”
A Ministry of Risk loses some of its steam or urgency in the sections where Berrigan discusses his views on priestly celibacy and the inspiration he drew from his supporter and later wife, Elizabeth McAlister. But it regains strength in its treatment of Berrigan’s steadfast commitment to the Gospel of peace. The book quotes Phil Berrigan late in life as saying, “After I was excommunicated in 1973 [for marrying McAlister, a former nun, without seeking dismissal from his religious vows or laicization from the church; the excommunication was later lifted], several other Christian bodies asked me to join them, and to minister under their aegis. I refused, because I have never considered myself anything but a Roman Catholic trying to become a Christian. My roots are in the Church, and in spite of all the prostitutions and betrayals of the institutional Church, these roots are lifegiving.”
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