Dan Berrigan's Meditation on the Action of the Catonsville 9Our Apologies good friends, for the fracture of good order |
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On May 17th, 1968, Nine people, including Father Daniel Berrigan and his brother Father Phillip Berrigan, entered a draft board and removed draft files of those who were about to be sent to Viet Nam. They took these files outside and burned them with home-made napalm, a weapon commonly used on civilians by the U.S. forces. They then awaited their arrest by authorities. The following is the statement Dan Berrigan read in court during their trial.
Some ten or twelve of us (the number is still uncertain) will, if all goes well (ill?) take our religious bodes during this week to a draft center in or near Baltimore There we shall of purpose and forethought remove the 1-A files sprinkle them in the public street with home-made napalm and set them afire For which act we shall beyond doubt be placed behind bars for some portion of our natural lives in consequence of our inability to live and content in the plagued city to say "peace peace" when there is no peace to keep the poor poor the thirsty and hungry thirsty and hungry Our apologies good friends for the fracture of good order the burning of paper instead of children the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house We could not so help us God do otherwise For we are sick at heart our hearts give us no rest for thinking of the Land of Burning Children and for thinking of that other Child of whom the poet Luke speaks The infant was taken up in the arms of an old man whose tongue grew resonant and vatic at the touch of that beauty And the old man spoke: this child is set for the fall and rise of many in Israel a sign that is spoken against Small consolation a child born to make trouble and to die for it the First Jew (not the last) to be subject of a "definitive solution" And so we stretch out our hands to our brothers throughout the world We who are priests to our fellow priests All of us who act against the law turn to the poor of the world to the Vietnamese to the victims to the soldiers who kill and die for the wrong reasons for no reason at all because they were so ordered by the authorities of that public order which is in effect a massive institutionalized disorder We say: Killing is disorder life and gentleness and community and unselfishness is the only order we recognize
For the sake of that order we risk our liberty our good name The time is past when good men may be silent when obedience can segregate men from public risk when the poor can die without defense How many indeed must die before our voices are heard how many must be tortured dislocated starved maddened? How long must the world's resources be raped in the service of legalized murder? When at what point will you say no to this war? We have chosen to say with the gift of our liberty if necessary our lives: the violence stops here the death stops here the suppression of the truth stops here this war stops here 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 the resisters those who work hardily for social change those who preach and embrace the truth such men 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 in the world in our nation in the churches and the stone in our breast is dissolved we take heart once more.
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