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From:
"Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@bellatlantic.net>
Date: Tue Dec 31, 2002 9:56
am
Subject: Phillip Berrigan -- Presente!
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Phillip Berrigan - Presenté!
by Joyce Katzberg
Published on Monday, December 30, 2002 by
CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1230-05.htm
When I was a young girl, my family had a saying that
grew out of hard experience seeking charity from
churches and neighbors. "God save us from good
Christians!" we often repeated as one door after
another closed in our homeless faces leaving us
spiritually hungry and physically wretched.
Lacking the appropriate affiliations and catechisms, we
were often left to struggle on our own. Those
humiliating experiences helped form my early distrust
of all things "religious" and institutional.
Were I not later fortuned to meet certain individuals
of true faithfulness, I would never have bothered to
explore further into the workings of spiritual
practice. Among those exemplary pilgrims for whom I am
most grateful is Philip Berrigan, a one-time priest and
tirelessly dedicated pacifist who recently passed from
this world onto his next assignment in God's big
universe. It is rare in our lives that we meet someone
who is completely dedicated to a cause. Rarer still do
we encounter people willing to suffer on someone else's
behalf. To Phil, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount was more
than a platitude filled picnic - it was a living code
to build an entire life, family, community and world
around.
Phil and his brother, Father Daniel Berrigan is best
known for radical pacifism and civilly disobedient
adherence to the commandment "Thou Shall Not Kill". The
Baltimore Four, the Catonsville Nine, the Plowshares
Eight to some are just obscure references to dissident
actions of years gone by.
To serious students and practitioners of non-violence,
the Berrigan brothers and their communities of
conscience have offered us a consistent course of
action through which we might forge a disarmed future.
War with all its attending degradation was no stranger
to Phil Berrigan. A World War Two infantry veteran of
Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, Phil knew very
well what it meant to kill or be killed. Like Saint
Francis of Assisi, Phil's experiences informed his
conscience and brought him to the point of total
resistance to the international machinery of war.
Later, his years of ministry in impoverished inner-city
parishes deepened his commitment to breaking the cycles
of economic, racist and institutional violence he saw
being fed by the ceaseless pursuit of military
domination.
Phil spent eleven of his seventy-nine years behind
prison bars paying his debts to a society that prefers
profits over prophets. To some, Phil was a saint, a man
of deep compassion and conviction - to others he was a
"commie dupe" pain in the you-know-what always in the
face of the powers and principalities. To me, he was a
friend; a non-perfect man staking his life on the
perfect message of love and reconciliation contained in
the Christian Bible he studied and practiced from.
It might sound strange to say that I do not grieve his
passing. It is precisely because of Phil's deep belief
and inspirational life that I am peaceful in the
knowledge that his spirit continues on in those of us
who hold fast to the vision of a world beyond poverty,
racism and war.
Phil Berrigan presenté!
Joyce Katzberg is a musician, writer and long-time
activist living in Warren, Rhode Island. Comments are
welcome at endwar@earthlink.net
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