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Still Waging Peace

By Steve Twomey

Thursday, May 28, 1998; Page D01

BALTIMORE—Not anymore, but from time to time a Japanese soldier, well up in years by then, would emerge from his place of hiding in the jungles of the South Pacific to be told that World War II wrapped up decades earlier, your side lost and where you been, old man?

The news blurb buried in the paper the other day was akin to that. It said that on Sunday, May 17, five "peace activists" were arrested at the annual military air show at Andrews Air Force Base after hammering a B-52 and spraying it with blood. It was as if the five hadn't heard Vietnam's over and the Cold War's over and Hanoi Jane's married to the biggest mogul in America and the nation has peace, prosperity, short hair, 401(k)s and a Pentagon well respected in the afterglow of the Gulf War.

Peace activists?

Crank up the Hendrix. Reach for your headband. Have another hit.

Yes, Father Larry said, "we haven't gotten with the program."

"Thanks be to God," Sister Ardeth added.

The Rev. Lawrence A. Morlan, 38, and Sister Ardeth Platte, 62, are two of the five. The others are the Rev. Frank J. Cordaro, 47; Sister Carol Sue Gilbert, 50; and the group's only lay member, Kathleen Shields Boylan, 54.

They were gathered around a table in one of the two modest buildings at Jonah House, which sits on the grounds of an old cemetery, hard by a tire recycling plant here, and which they described as a "nonviolent civil resistance community." It's Phil Berrigan's home when he's not in prison, which he currently is, for actions similar to what the five allegedly committed.

Color photographs, beautiful ones, were spread on the table, depicting what happened at Andrews that morning. It's not your typical criminal defendant who displays evidence against self-interest, but the quintet concedes its likely culpability, at least as man's law defines it. They, of course, have another Boss, whose book says you shall beat swords into plowshares.

"All we know," Sister Carol said, "is we had to speak truth to power. . . . And now we're ready to accept the consequences."

They are not a revival act, a protest equivalent of The Temptations or The Four Tops reassembled from The Sixties. They are not cute. This is what they do. As the country has moved on -- basking in "USA! USA! USA!" -- the five dwell on rhetoric and links rarely heard. About how military spending sucks money from the needs of the poor. About how the United States consumes resources all out of proportion to its slice of life on Earth to feed an economy geared to war-making. About the immorality of nuclear weapons. About nonviolence, disarmament and faithfulness to the spirit of Christ.

They concede nothing.

Don't we need a military?

"We believe in world disarmament," Sister Ardeth said.

Didn't armed strength win the Cold War? Free Eastern Europe and Russia?

We never tried means other than armed standoff, she said.

The arms-free world they seek has never existed, never will. Yet you wind up admiring even as you disagree. You wind up envious of the selflessness, of the faith, and even unable to argue some things.

"I don't know how we can look at the struggling in America or Africa and not weep," Sister Ardeth said.

I don't either, Sister.

An action on May 17 was an easy choice. Thirty years ago to the day, the Berrigan brothers, Philip and Daniel, and seven others burst into a draft office in Catonsville, Md., dumped napalm on the files and burned them in one of the most legendary acts of resistance to the Vietnam War. And a military air show seemed the right place to commemorate that act.

"The idolatry that goes on at those air shows, it's just unbelievable," Sister Carol said.

They would answer the liturgy of war with one of peace. They could have picked an F-117, an F-15, an F-16, but a B-52 seemed right. It had "carpet-bombed the people of Iraq," Sister Ardeth said.

Each brought a hammer. Each brought a plastic baby bottle with his or her own blood. "We always use our own blood," Sister Ardeth said. They had a banner and a statement to read. As hundreds of oblivious civilians waited in line on the tarmac for a peak at the old Air Force One or the other aircraft, the five walked up to the B-52, its bomb bay doors open for inspection by all. Father Frank said: "Brothers and sisters, let us begin to disarm these gods of metal."

They splattered their blood. Each of the five pounded the massive bomber six times, 30 hits all told, to mark the three decades since the Catonsville Nine. They proclaimed that they had come "to celebrate God as True Security, rather than accept weapons and violence as restorers or maintainers of peace."

Then they were arrested, as they knew they would be.

They intend to plead not guilty, but "we know we're going to be found guilty," Sister Carol said. Their actions didn't disable the bomber; it left the next day for its home base in Louisiana. Their actions won't weaken the national resolve or cause a rethink of the defense budget.

No matter, they said.

"If no one at all listened," Sister Ardeth said, "we'd still be doing it."

To reach me on the Internet: twomeys@washpost.com

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

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