Doug Grow: Minnesota-born Philip Berrigan, 'saint of our time'
Doug Grow
Star Tribune
 
Published Dec. 10, 2002
 
 

Astory about the simplicity of the Minnesota-born peace giant, Philip Berrigan:

A few weeks ago, Jerry Berrigan, who lives on a community farm near Luck, Wis., took his family to visit his dying father in Baltimore. Jerry walked in the door of the Jonah House, the communal home where Philip and his wife lived. The son was greeted with this: "Glad to see you, son. It's good you're a carpenter. I need you to build me a coffin."

So Jerry phoned family friend and peace activist Mike Miles back in Luck. Miles and his family were planning to spend Thanksgiving with the Berrigans in Baltimore and would they bring Jerry's plane and sander?

The tools arrived; the coffin was built and a family friend painted roses on it.

"He loved flowers," said Miles, who lived in Berrigan's communal home in Baltimore in the 1980s. "We always did painting work [as a source of revenue] and whenever we'd paint a place where somebody was growing flowers, he'd snitch a few to take back to Jonah House."

Funeral services were held Monday for Philip Berrigan, 79, World War II veteran, former Catholic priest, husband, father, major leader of opposition to the Vietnam War and a man who spent 11 years of his life in prison for his actions in the name of peace. He died Friday of cancer.

Philip Berrigan was born in 1923 in Two Harbors, Minn., the youngest of six sons, including Daniel, who joined his brother in opposition to the war in Vietnam. The dramatic protest actions of the Berrigan brothers were at the root of what became a national protest movement against the war. The fact that the famous Berrigan brothers spent part of their childhood in Two Harbors is noted nowhere in the community.

Over the years, Philip Berrigan frequently was in Minnesota to participate in peace and social justice causes.

"He never turned me down," said Marv Davidov, who for years headed a massive antiwar demonstration at Honeywell and was involved with Berrigan for nearly 40 years. "I'd ask him to come and give a talk. Then, I'd try to pay for his airplane ticket and give him a small honorarium. He wouldn't take it."

Philip Berrigan also often appeared at the University of Minnesota at the Newman Center, a campus Catholic center and peace movement center in the 1960s. The official church hierarchy wouldn't acknowledge his appearances, said Moira Moga, who with her husband, Dan, directed the Newman Center during the height of campus radicalism.

"But there were always priests and nuns who came to hear him," she said.

Does he have a place in history?

"He was the saint of our time," Moga said.

Miles shares Moga's biblical view of Philip Berrigan. "He was our Elijah, our John the Baptist," he said.

A couple of senior University of Minnesota historians have differing views as to what sort of place Berrigan has in history.

Hy Berman said that Berrigan is little different from other "well-meaning, left-of-center clergymen" who preceded him and who will follow him.

"Basically, their cause is and was world peace," Berman said. "I'm not disparaging the antiwar movement. We need it. But the people who advocate it never have seen a war they liked or a tyrant they weren't willing to at least defend if it meant stopping a war."

But David Noble, once a strong voice against the Vietnam War, believes Berrigan's influence runs deep. Noble said you can make a case that the Berrigan brothers were founders of a "radical Catholicism" that later became liberation theology in Central America and now is spreading to Africa and Asia. That social justice theology also has had an effect on some American Protestant churches, he said.

Philip Berrigan wouldn't care about his place in history, Miles said, for he seemed to have no ego. But he would care that his message was heard.

"He was hard on himself," Miles said. "He always thought he should be doing more."

But sometimes Berrigan could be just another crazy parent.

"One of my favorite memories about Phil goes back to 1981 or '82," Miles said. "We'd done a bunch of Holy Week actions -- an exorcism in [Secretary of State] Alexander Haig's office, blood at the White House -- and then we went for a picnic and Phil wanted to fly a kite with his son. Problem was, there wasn't much wind so he kept running and running. He kept getting closer and closer to this big hedge and we sat there wondering, 'What's he going to do?' He ran right through it."

The man never was afraid of tough obstacles.

-- Doug Grow is at dgrow@startribune.com.

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