Punishment for Peace by Philip Berrigan

Punishment for Peace Reviews

• 
  Stefania Dzhanamova

  In his book, Philip Berrigan, a member of the Josephite order, attempts to answer what it means to be a man through his personal experiences and his thoughts on political and social issues.
  
  Philip attracted the American public's attention on May 17, 1968, when he, his brother, and five other people walked into the selective service headquarters in Catonsville, Maryland, took the files of the local draft board, doused them with homemade napalm, and burned them. Indicted for the Catonsville action, he went underground, but he was arrested not long after. In early 1971, he, then in Federal prison, was charged with conspiring to kidnap President Nixon's national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, and to blow up several Federal buildings to protest the Vietnam conflict. 
  
  His narrative transports the reader back to the sixties and depicts the protest movement, the struggle against the American involvement in Vietnam, and the effort to put an end to nuclear madness. Although his work is not as richly descriptive as those of Daniel Berrigan, I still felt the sting of tear gas and the hollow thump of a policeman's club, and it seemed to me that I stood, together with the Catonsville Nine, before judges who sentenced them to jail for protesting against the government's violent foreign policies.
  
  What I like about the author of this account is that there are not any posturing and narcissism in his words. He writes with modesty and self-criticism. I was surprised to find out that he had been an enthusiastic killer in the Second World War. He had come home from the front as Philip the Bold, the toughest Irish-American kid around and a proud participant in the mass slaughter. As I traced his life journey to New Orleans, where he taught in an all-black high school, I was even more surprised to learn that he, and his fellow Catholics, struggled with racism, which he made efforts to overcome. 
  
  The Berrigan brothers seem to have shared similar, if not identical at times, views on politics and society. Both of them were contentious, independent, tough-minded radicals, suspicious of power and the powerful, sympathetic to outsiders, answering to a "higher law" than that of the state, and determined not to allow anyone to step on them. Going by Daniel's memoir of his time in prison, in which he mentions the concern and loneliness that he felt upon being separated from his brother, the two of them had a special bond. In this account, though, Philip accuses his brother of being a grandstander and "dime store liberal," questioning his commitment to the protest movement. He also reveals that he struggled with jealousy because, he believed, Daniel was more articulate, witty, and smart than him.
  
  According to the author, he was a Catholic trying to become a Christian. He was looking for an alternative to violence, and he saw in nonviolent resistance a weapon more effective than guns and bullets. He understood that history was not about somebody else and other time and place, but about those who lived now. He tempered his stubborn, prophetic righteousness with prayers, helping the needy, and good humor. 
  
  A PUNISHMENT FOR PEACE urges the readers to ask their hearts and minds not what it means to be a Catholic or a Protestant, but what it means to be human. Berrigan demonstrates that he is a courageous person with a genuine commitment to peace and social justice. This book reminds that conflicts like the one in Vietnam do not make streets safer and jobs more secure, and that killing people does not teach children respect for human life. 
• 
  Steven H

  A BROAD RANGE OF ISSUES COVERED BY THE ACTIVIST
  
  Philip Francis Berrigan, SSJ (1923-2002) was an American peace activist and Catholic priest with the Josephites.
  
  He wrote in the first chapter of this 1969 book, “Humanistic change… is found at variance with establishment suppositions … One ventures such criticism with trepidation… such criticism is made in light of the enormous accomplishments of our society, which has in times past harbored the desperate and poor, and … opened awesome and marvelous vistas of freedom from want and drudgery through the laboratory and machine. Similar thoughts strike one in assessing current liabilities and assets in the Church, which is… trying to come to terms with both the Gospel and the world… One hopes for man because Christ became man… Man, after all, needs very little… necessities for sustenance… hope for acceptance on both sides of the grave. Such a view clashes harshly with the reality of an America whose incomparable power is greater than that of all humanity combined and compared… For America’s power can neither accept its blacks, nor succor its poor, nor assure its peace, nor answer the starvation for millions abroad.” (Pg. 4-5)
  
  He observes, “To say that the Church is sharing man’s crisis today is a generous claim, true only to a point… Many Christians take heart from signs of Church renewal, and they point … to better qualities of training, liturgy, social sensitivity… and CONSCIENCE. Openness to other Christians, to Jews… and unbelievers, is a remarkable and encouraging commonplace… One might venture, however, that such criteria of ‘progress’ miss the mark… Such reflections lead us to forget the fact the Church is under judgment from both the Gospel and the world…” (Pg. 19)
  
  He asserts, “Christians should have refused to send their young men to war, refused to pay war taxes, and refused to work in defense industries. Christians should have led draft protestor into jail… Christians should have disrupted military bases nonviolently… Christians should have attempted … to destroy war machinery… In a word, Christians should have fought with the weapons of their witness to make this nation honest, to force conformity with its Declaration of Independence, its commitment to the United Nations Charter…” (Pg. 23)
  
  He says, “At the present time American technocracy’s victims are the black men and the poor man… One could further complicate the issue y offering the hypothesis that the middle class and the rich are the most victimized of all…” (Pg. 33) Later, he adds, “black men have been, even under slavery, the only Americans who have constantly made an issue of democracy… black people indict the individual and national conscience… Black people have shamed the churches for their lip service to the Gospel; it is no fantasy to say that Christians will be progressively forced to practice a true Christianity or to give it up entirely.” (Pg. 45-46) Later, he adds, ��the fundamental focus in relations … should be the racism in the minds and hearts of white people, for only the removal of this racism will make truly effective measures possible.” (Pg. 73)
  
  He argues, “American wealth: There is nothing wrong about wealth, but there is something very wrong about being wealthy while others starve… American power: There is nothing wrong with power, but there is something very wrong with power when it becomes the unqualified servant of wealth… American culture: … there is something very wrong about the way we counterfeit and abuse it… American morality: … there is something monstrously evil about the way we prostitute it, then defend [it]… in the name of Christ… American technology: there is something very wrong when technology becomes the technical machinery for profit motivation…” (Pg. 93-95)
  He notes, “One can no longer deal with desperate people as mere pockets of desperation---the world is no longer that kind of world. In a very real sense, therefore America’s poor exemplify the world’s poor. Both strive to make an issue of economic inequality; both move toward revolution as a means of redress.” (Pg. 121)
  
  He points out, “It is a curious fact that talk of violence always breaks down somewhere short of talk about injustice. Or perhaps it is not so curious, since the analysts of violence are invariably those most guilty of injustice or those most responsible for only talking about it… The analysts wish to preserve their power intact, all the while decrying violence and ignoring injustice.” (Pg. 162)
  
  He states, “Resistance, we felt, did not terminate with one act or another. It had to be pursued or dropped. In this case, it meant using available nonviolent tools to challenge the fierce and systematic imposition of American myth, exploitation, and militarism upon the weak and hopeless… we had to ask ourselves what human response if necessary against the dehumanization of our society, with its technical surrogates, its overproduction and overconsumption, its contempt of marginal people, its obsession with ideological excuses, its profound trust in force, its fears and insecurities.” (Pg. 175-176)
  
  He summarizes, “What can be said of our style of life except that it resembles the corruption and decadence of empire? If it be that, it may be in the throes of imperial decline and fall, whose hopeful side will be a revolution to build a better nation and a better world; or whose tragic side will be domestic and international anarchy that will lead the world into nuclear firestorm and human collapse.” (Pg. 191)
  
  He laments, “As for the Church, let it not be found lacking. I have been formally relieved of my parish duties and informally relieved f my faculties in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The latter was done without charges, without a hearing, without notification. It is unofficial suspension of a unilateral kind, which leads me to prefer the tender mercies of the courts. But I must admit that as a priest, I find it particularly painful, since I can no longer offer the Eucharist with the prisoners nor discuss the Scripture with them nor hear their confessions.” (Pg. 197)
  
  This book will be of great interest to those studying the Berrigans, and their movement.