Peace activist Philip Berrigan dies

by Pat McCaughan

Philip Berrigan, a patriarch of the Roman Catholic anti-war movement whose conscience collided with national policy for more than three decades, died Dec. 6 of liver and kidney cancer. He was 79 and had lived at Jonah House, a communal residence of war resisters on the grounds of a West Baltimore cemetery, for much of the past decade. He led the Catonsville Nine, who staged one of the most dramatic protests of the 1960s. They lit a small bonfire of draft records doused with homemade napalm in a Catonsville parking lot and ignited a generation of anti-war dissent. More recently he helped found the Plowshares movement, whose members have attacked federal military property with hammers and were then often imprisoned.

In his most recent protest, in December 1999, Berrigan and others banged on A-10 Warthog warplanes at the Middle River Air National Guard base. He was convicted of malicious destruction of property and sentenced to 30 months. He was released Dec. 14, 2001.

A World War II army veteran who achieved the rank of second lieutenant in the infantry, he publicly criticized the Vietnam War and U.S. foreign and domestic policy. He gained national attention in the 14-year period during which he wore the Roman collar and clerical garb of a Josephite priest. He eventually served some 11 years in jail and prison for his actions challenging public authority and the military budget.

Philip Francis Berrigan was born Oct. 5, 1923, in Two Harbors, Minn., to Thomas and Frida Berrigan. His father was a trade unionist turned Socialist who lost his job as a railroad engineer. After graduating from high school in Syracuse, N.Y., Philip spent one semester at St. Michael’s College in Toronto before being drafted into the U.S. Army in January 1943.

He earned an English degree at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., in 1950 and then followed his brother Jerome into the Society of St. Joseph. The order, known as the Josephite Fathers, serves African-American communities. Ordained in 1955, he was assigned to New Orleans, where he earned a degree in secondary education at Loyola University of the South in 1957 and a master’s at Xavier University three years later.

He worked with a host of civil rights organizations, including CORE [Congress of Racial Equality], SNCC [Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee] and the Urban League, and took Freedom Rides. His first arrest was during a civil rights protest in Selma, Ala. His church superiors transferred him to the faculty of Epiphany Apostolic College, a Josephite seminary in Newburgh, N.Y., where he again led protests on behalf of the poor.

As the U.S. expanded its presence in Vietnam, he became more outspoken and visible. In 1964, he organized the Emergency Citizens Group Concerned About Vietnam in Newburgh and co-founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship in New York City. Frustrated by the church’s failure to speak out against the war, he compared its stance on Vietnam to "the German Church under Hitler." Not long afterward, his superiors transferred him again, to St. Peter Claver Church in West Baltimore. There, he started the Baltimore Interfaith Peace Mission, lobbied Congress and federal officials and led vigils and peace demonstrations.

On Oct. 27, 1967, Berrigan and three others dumped blood on Selective Service records in the Baltimore Customs House, "anointing" them, he said. They were convicted of defacing government property and impeding the Selective Service. While awaiting sentencing, Berrigan began recruiting brother Daniel and seven others for a second draft board raid. They earned the name the Catonsville Nine for setting fire to Selective Service Board records with homemade napalm in the parking lot. They were convicted of conspiracy and destruction of government property in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, and remained free on bail for 16 months until the U.S. Supreme Court declined to reconsider the verdict. The day they were to begin serving their sentences, the Berrigan brothers and two others went into hiding. Twelve days later, the FBI found Philip Berrigan at the Church of St. Gregory the Great in Manhattan and he was taken to the federal prison in Lewisburg.

He had secretly married Elizabeth McAlister, a former nun, a member of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, a year earlier. Later, they would face conspiracy charges together, accused of plots to kidnap presidential adviser Henry A. Kissinger and to blow up heating tunnels in Washington. Ultimately, those charges were dismissed.

Berrigan authored several books, including No More Strangers, Punishment for Peace, Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary and Widen the Prison Gates. In 1996, he wrote his autobiography, Fighting the Lamb’s War, and with his wife wrote The Times’ Discipline, a work on their life together at Jonah House.

In addition to his wife and brother Daniel, he is survived by three children and three other brothers. In a final statement released by his family, he said, "I die with the conviction, held since 1968 and Catonsville, that nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself."

Phil Berrigan's final words and other testimonies to his life