Catonsville Nine

Subversive Christianity had a post up on Thursday, May 17th, commemorating the thirty-ninth anniversary of the Catonsville Nine’s famous act of civil disobedience during the Vietnam War. How appropriate to the times we live in. I post it in its entirety -

... for the fracture of good order." - Dan Berrigan

Thirty-nine years ago today, in the midst of the Vietnam War, Dan and Phil Berrigan, Marjorie and Tom Melville, Dave Darst, John Hogan, George Mische, Tom Lewis, and Mary Moylan, Roman Catholics all, entered a draft board office in Catonsville, MD, carried nearly 400 draft files out to an adjoining parking lot, and set them on fire with homemade napalm. As Dan Berrigan said, the Catonsville 9, as they came to be known, burned "paper instead of children."
This act of holy obedience/civil disobedience was, I firmly believe, one of those kairos moments in which the Eternal breaks into the temporal and human history pauses in astonishment, bestirs itself, and recommences its journey on a realigned angle. The Catonsville 9 showed the entire country, and indeed the entire world, that there were at least some North American Christians who believed that fidelity to God should trump the demands of the State. In following Jesus' way of nonviolent resistance to injustice, at great cost to themselves, these nine witnesses for peace brought the Beloved Community a bit closer to us all. Speaking personally, their prophetic action was a turning point in my life.
God grant all of us the courage and compassion to follow their example of fracturing the "good" order of our own day and our latest war.
Here are some passages from Dan Berrigan's blank-versed The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, based on the actual court transcripts.


Phil Berrigan:
We have been accused of arrogance
But what of the fantastic arrogance of our leaders
What of their crimes against the people, the poor and powerless
Still no court will try them; no jail will receive them
They live in righteousness. They will die in honor
For them we have one message, for those
in whose manicured hands the power of the land lies
We say to them
Lead us. Lead us in justice
and there will be no need to break the law...
To our bishops and superiors we say
Learn something about the gospel
and something about illegitimate power
When you do, you will liquidate your investments
take a house in the slums or even
join us in jail.

David Darst:
We felt it was fitting that this agent [napalm]
which had burned human flesh
in the war in Vietnam and in many other places
should now be poured on the records
which gave war and violence
their cruel legitimacy...
The government has chosen
to see our cry
as anarchy and arrogance
Perhaps real anarchy lies
in the acts of those
who loose this plague of war
upon a proud people

George Mische (after being chided by the prosecutor for "not sticking" to the issues):
I am trying to speak
as a human being to the jury
who I hope are human beings
and can understand us
Will the jury dare to deal
with the spirit of the law
and the issues we are talking about
If not, we can expect
no peace, no solutions
only disorder and riots
in our country and in the world

John Hogan:
I just want
to let people live
That is all

Tom Lewis (upon being asked by an attorney if he indeed engaged in the Catonsville action):
Yes
It was the response of a man
a man standing for humanity, a man
a Christian, a human being
seeing what was happening not only
in Vietnam but beyond Vietnam...
I wasn't concerned with the law
I wasn't even thinking about the law
I was thinking of what those records meant
I wasn't concerned with the law
I was concerned with the lives
of innocent people
I went in there with the intent of stopping
what the files justify
The young men
whose files we destroyed
have not yet been drafted, may not be drafted
may not be sent to Vietnam for cannon fodder
My intent in going there
was to save lives. A person
may break the law to save lives

Marjorie Melville:
We were trying to find out
our role as Christians
Was it to see people's needs
and get involved
or were we to say
Well, this is too difficult
It is too hard to know what to do
Do we stand back
or do we go in
on the side of the people and say
What can I do to help?
...I did not want to bring
hurt upon myself
but there comes a moment
when you decide
that some things should not be
Then you have to act
to try to stop those things

Tom Melville:
I hear our President confuse greatness with strength
riches with goodness, fear with respect
hopelessness and passivity with peace
The cliches of our leaders
pay tribute to property and indifference to suffering

Mary Moylan:
This is what it means to be a Christian
that you act on what you say you believe
This is what
Christ meant when He lived
We have not only to talk
but if we see something wrong
we have to be willing
to do something about it
This is my belief

Dan Berrigan:
The great sinfulness
of modern war is
that it renders concrete things abstract...
Redeem the times!
The times are inexpressibly evil
Christians pay conscious indeed religious tribute
to Caesar and Mars
by the approval of overkill tactics, by brinkmanship
by nuclear liturgies, by racism, by support of genocide
They embrace their society with all their heart
and abandon the cross
They pay lip service to Christ
and military service to the powers of death
And yet, and yet, the times are inexhaustibly good
solaced by the courage and hope of many
The truth rules. Christ is not forsaken
In a time of death some men and women
the resisters, those who work hardily for social change
those who preach and embrace the truth
such men and women overcome death
their lives are bathed in the light of the resurrection
the truth has set them free
In the jaws of death
they proclaim their love of the brethren
We think of such men and women
in the world, in our nation, in the churches
and the stone in our breast is dissolved
we take heart once more