NET Journal; 285; Father Berrigan: The Holy Outlaw

[Father Daniel Berrigan] Ten years to the early days of civil rights in the north my brother Phil was involved in the civil rights in the south in far more deep and painful way, and, um the exchange we were trying to work out in those days of kind of pre-NATO understanding of how north and south might come together without blood, without tragedy, something that of course was never fulfilled. We were beginning to get our own kind of baptism, if i can keep the image down below here, um Thought, I think we didn't realize that the waters were very apt to turn to blood, that might happen, has happened. And that old idea of being baptized and reborn might actually cause-- might actually cause the death of very good man. These waters of time have been great dipped in a great deal of blood since then. From innocent Vietnamese blood to innocent American blood. [Narrator]: Father Daniel Berrigan is a poet and a Jesuit priest who defied the

law as a means of dramatizing his opposition to the war in Vietnam. On May 17, 1968, Father Berrigan, his brother Philip, also a priest, and seven other men and women entered the Selective Service Office at Catonsville, Maryland and burned several hundred draft files with homemade napalm. The "Catonsville Nine" were later tried and convicted of destroying government property. On April 9, 1970, the day he was due to begin serving his prison sentence of three and a half years, Father Berrigan went underground. He successfully evaded capture for four months. On August 11th, Father Berrigan was finally arrested by agents of the FBI on Block Island, Rhode Island. [Howard Zinn]: He was the first priest I had ever been close to, Jesuit. I always thought that Jesuit was something out of the middle ages, ya know or ya know, the 16th century. That's where the Jesuits were. I never thought of a real, live Jesuit, but here was one and a poet to

boot, and a marvelous man. In Hanoi or Hanoi experiencing Hanoi, I guess had a profound effect on him. I think it has a profound effect on all people who go there. And, you must remember, we went there in early 1968 when the United States was still bombing the north, and still bombing Hanoi. There was something about that that, I think did a lot to Dan because he spent a lot of time in shelters. [clainging noises, people speaking in Vietnamese] [people speaking in Vietnamese, clanging noises, knocks on door] And, uh, in fact there was one scene that Dan wrote a poem about.

[Berrigan]: So we were in this shelter and very unexpectedly came on three children who were crouching in there too, against all expectations, and one of the elder children feeding rice to one of the younger ones, and I wrote this this little verse within a couple days and tried to read it later at our trial to the great anger and discomfiture of the judge. But it seemed to sum up for me everything that Catonsville was about in one image, in one reality. It's called "Children in the Shelter." "Imagine; three of them. As though survival were a rat's word and a rat's death waited there at the end. and I must have in the century's boneyard heft of and flesh and bone in my arms. I picked up the littlest, a boy his face breaded with rice (his sister calmly feeding him as we climb down.) In my arms fathered in a moments grace, the Messiah of all my tears. I bore, reborn a Hiroshima child

a Hiroshima child from hell." [Howard Zinn] So when months later we were back in the States and I read in the newspapers about what he had done at Catonsville, I was a little surprised you know because of the surprising event, but I wasn't that much surprised because I, I knew that he felt after coming back from North Vietnam that somebody had to cry out in the streets, you know, somebody had to do something special, something -- someone had to keep doing something that would arouse the American people to even begin to sense what was happening and what we were doing with our bombs, what we were doing with our silence, even those of us who weren't dropping the bomb. So I wasn't surprised. And he felt that burning draft records was a statement, a flaming statement.

[flames crackling] [flames crackling] [flames crackling] [Berrigan]: May he make it possible through this actions for others to live. May he make it more difficult for them to kill one another. We make our prayer in the name of that God whose name is peace and decency and unity and love. Amen. In 1967, I had a sense, only just under the skin, that I was at the end of something. I had been to Hanoi and see the journal house our military had made of quite a beautiful society. That Easter Sunday, upon returning I visited a boy in Syracuse, New York who had emulated himself in front of the cathedral; he later died. And then there was horror upon horror, Martin Luther King's murder and so on. Suddenly, I

saw that my sweet skin was hiding out behind others, so with 8 the other felons, I went into a draft board in Catonsville in May of that year and removed about 300 draft files and burned them with homemade napalm. Under the utterly absurd and totally un-American assumption that it is better to burn papers than children. [Dan Berrigan, archival footage] We regret very much, I think all of us. the inconvenience and the suffering that we brought to these clerks here. It was done so quickly and we had hoped that they wouldn't be so excitable over a few files. It's very hard to bring home to people exactly what they're doing by being custodians of those files. [Female speaker]: I was sitting at my desk doing my work and these 2 ladies were in the office with me. I noticed a gentlman came up in the hall outside there, and I said, 'yes, sir may I help you?' And uh so then right on top of him came another man. And then he

started come in, he looked right. He looked in here and then he looked over there and he said uh, as they walked into the office, I said 'what can I do for you?' And with that all the rest of them came, all of a sudden, quickly and uh the one man with the trash burner, he went around to my files and stood there and started dumping files into this trash burner and this one- I tried to prevent it, and this one man attempted to stop me from doing it. And he did, he did succeed. [Male speaker] So when we decided that those files had no right to exist, as I say we were trying to be profoundly ?historical? about the thing. What kinds of property, protected by what kinds of law actually serve human life? This is a question that cannot be evaded at wartime. For us to go in there, therefore, isn't a long line of descent; a long line of overtly

illegal activities. It goes back in the west to Old Testament prophesy. More nearly to our own times of the activity of Jesus himself in the world. His invasion of the property of the occupying power, even the property of the temple. [Male speaker]: Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. [Paddywagon doors close behind those arrested] [Male speaker to female witness]; What would you say is going to happen to your office here? Has this seriously disrupted your service? [Female witness]: Yes, it has seriously disrupted it, it really has. It's going to take hours and hours and hours of intense, hard labor to reconstruct and bring back all of these. It's doing a great injustice to the boys themselves because in many instances these boys have gone to a lot of trouble to get doctor's statements which costs them a lot of money, these things were all inside these files. [Berrigan]: It was

certainlly with a great heave of relief that we were able to say afterward it's all over and no one was hurt and this really seemed to have been something different than what was current almost as many people said, gradually, like a new day-- like a new day of creation because before us, at least in this century, that kind of thing had not happened. That there was a non violent explicit attack upon property as an attempt to vindicate human life in the midst of a say the idolatries paid to property and the absolute cheapening of human life there were spells. [Zinn]: And he knew, you see, he knew that it made people uncomfortable, as it still makes people uncomfortable, breaking the law, burning draft board records, setting fire to something because we have, I guess we have, not only in this country but in the modern world, we have this fetish about property, about things, much more than we have about people. I guess that's one of the points he wanted to make: people are more important than pieces of paper,

people are being burned and killed. I guess it's like Garrison, not far from here, in 1835, William Lloyd Garrison burned the Constitution, which upset people, you don't burn the US Consititution. Garrison Garrison did it to make a point about slavery, and I guess Dan was doing something like the same thing. [Berrigan]: Well I don't want to become complicated about it. We went in there and destroyed a few files, and placed ourselves in a very interesting position with regard to communicating with our society. Hung around until the keystone cops arrive, stood trial, in a way that was very much according to their rules and expectations of us. We were very straight, our trousers were pressed we didn't go in for any of the delightful antics of the recent Chicago trials. We played their rules, which I must add by way of a footnote,

I would never do again. [Zinn]: He was brought up in the American tradition, even the American liberal tradition. The American liberal tradition is it's alright to commit civil disobedience, maybe, but if you do you should take a punishment, sometimes people add 'like a man'. You take a punishment, you go to jail. That's the sporting thing to do, it's the right thing to do, it's what Socrates did. Socrates said, 'I'll accept the punishment on the supposition,' and this was Socrates supposition, 'that basically this government is a decent government. Athens has made a mistake with me, they've done something wrong, there is a flaw, but fundamentally, it's a decent government to which I owe some allegiance.' And I guess Dan Berrigan said, 'I've watched what the government has done to human beings, our brothers, because the world consists of our brothers in Vietnam, and I don't believe our government is behaving

like a decent government and I don't believe we owe it allegiance.' I think maybe he was going back to the idea in the Declaration of Independence, which is an even older American idea than the idea to take the punishment for civil disobedience, and that is, that when a government becomes destructive of certain very fundamental things, like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then that government does not deserve the allegiance of its people anymore. Anyway I'm just trying to recapture in my mind what he was thinking about at that moment when he decided, 'no I'm not going to jail. This government doesn't deserve that kind of subservience. [Male Narrator]: During the time he was in hiding, Father Berrigan changed his location often. He stayed with 37 different families in 10 eastern and midwestern cities. Ten days prior to his arrest, Father Berrigan was interviewed by Lee Lockwood for NET in an underground location, an apartment in New York City. [Lockwood]: Well, Father Dan, you've been underground for some time now,

what's it like to be underground in the United States of America? [Berrigan]: Well, I might say that it looks as though it could go on forever. It's looks good enough, looks useful enough for the movement. I think it's been an enormous opportunity to work up close with people, with small groups, to meet with the media, to reflect and medidate, to do a great deal of reading. In fact, I do everything that I was doing before, but do it squared. Do it twice as intensely, twice as much. [Lockwood]: How long have you been underground now? [Berrigan]: Well, [Dan Berrigan] It's going into its fourth months now and I can remember very vividly in the beginning, when if i could have promised myself one week or two weeks I would have been very content. So I'm delighted at that. My delight of course is always always mitigated and even inbittered by the fact that the war, and the fact that whatever one can do, is so small but one does what he can, that's all right. [Lockwood]: I understand that you got something planned for tomorrow. Do you want to tell us? what that its? [Berrigan] Well it's a very simple little project. Tomorrow for the first time since I went

underground I'm going to preach in a church, in an urban church and I'm doing that with deliberation, with understanding of the danger involved. I'm doing it very simply because I haven't been allowed, so far I haven't had the opportunity to be in a church. I think i've been preaching the gospel in other ways, at least I hope I have. What I want, really-- I want to be with a group of worshiping Christians, not necessarily Catholics and I want to refer to the New Testament, and I want to relate it to what we've done and to invite people in as practical, and simple, and as direct a way I know to consider this, even though they are shocked by it. [Lockwood]: Do you think they will be shocked by it? [Berrigan]: Well, [Dan Berrigan] I predict that I think you know this tremendous cleavage among peoples is occurring also, among the Christian communities as a result of the war and I feel that very deeply. I feel that there are many people who are in despair over me, and are extraordinary scandalized by what I have done. I feel, at times, in great despair over over

Christians. [church organ music] [Father Raines]: We live in extraordinary times, and in extraordinary times we must be ready to take advantage of suddenly emerging possibilities, so it is with us this morning. We have a visitor. For reasons that will become obvious with a little reflection, it was not possible to anticipate his arrival amongst us in advance. For reasons they're equally obvious, he will

have to leave directly following the sermon. He doesn't want to have to do this. He is a person who would like nothing more and to be able to come under normal circumstances without this paraphernalia and talk to us about the state of this nation, and the state of Christian church within this nation. As a person I'm sure he'd like to stay all afternoon and into long hours of the morning, but we no longer live in a time and a place where that is possible. Perhaps some day Perhaps some day it will be possible once again in this nation. So now, if you would join me in welcoming our guest, our visitor, [pause] Father Daniel Berrigan. [static, mumbling] [ambient sound] [Berrigan]: Dear friends,

I must thank, first of all, so many who have made this morning possible, that I should be in a church with my fellow Christians in such circumstances as my life is has brought me to. I come to you, really in the name of all those who said no to this war - From prison, from the underground, from exile, from the lower courts, from death itself. I do not hesitate to say in the light of the readings we have heard from scripture that I come to you also in the name of the unborn, to present on an ordinary Sunday morning to fellow Christians, the scandal of one who lives outside the law. The added scandal of one whose brother, also a priest, is in federal prison, the first political prisoner in our history who was a priest.

To present you with a further scandal that I have refused to submit before the law and to go to prison myself and that I am hunted and underground for the duration of the war, at least. To suggest to you that my life may open questions also for yours, for your families, for your work, for your attitude to human life and death, especially the death of children and the innocent. Dear friends, I believe we in such times as make such demands upon us also. I believe we are in such times as making it increasingly impossible for Christians to obey the law of the land, and to remain true to Christ. And this is the simple word that I bring to you as a brother in Christ. I bring it with the full

consciousness that in bringing it, I increase my own jeopardy. But for my brother and myself, the choice is already made. We have chosen to be powerless criminals in a time of criminal power. We've chosen to be branded as peace criminals, by war criminals. This is how we have tried to read the simple words that you heard this morning. This is how we have tried read and translate and embody in our own lives the will of god. To respond to the voices of those great men and women who speak to us out of eternity, out of the past but most of all, out of today, out of today's prisons and exile and underground and death itself. Good men and women are increasingly perplexed,

they listen when their hearts or sore with a continual ill news of the daily press and television. They find themselves cornered by life with fewer and fewer decisions to take in regard to conscience. They ask again and again night and day, 'what can we do?' A Christian can confront the law of the land, that law which protects the war makers even as that prosecutes the peacemakers. The Christians can refuse to pay taxes, they can aid and abet in harbor people like myself or in legal jeopardy for resistance, along with ?A.W.? Wells. They can work with GIs on bases, helping those young men to awaken to the truth of their condition in their society, in coffee houses or in hospitality in their own homes, they can organize within their profession and neighborhood, in churches, so that a solid wall of conscience that confronts

the deathmakers. They can make it increasingly difficult for local draft boards to function. There are a hundred non-violent means of resisting those who would inflict death as the ordinary way of life. There are a hundred ways of non-violent resistance up to now, untried or half-tried, or badly tried. But the peace will not be won without such serious and constant and sacrificial and courageous actions on the part of large numbers of good men and women. The peace will not be won without the moral equivilant of the loss and suffering and separation that the war itself is exacting. Dear friends, dear brothers, I thank you for being patient.

I thank you for accepting me in this very brief span. I ask your prayers for all those who are in deep trouble with the law, who've had to face separation from families and friends and to forge new lives for themselves in such times. A very small price indeed, for the death of a single child. May the peace of Christ, which is promised to the courageous and the patient and the cheerful of heart be your also. [garbled as Berrigan exits church. Footsteps on sidewalk.] [Zinn]: Don't hurt yourself, we need you.

[Berrigan]: Thank you, Father. [Female Parishioner #1]: It was a surprise sermon to me, becuase I thought that Dr. Raines would have been the main speaker, but first we have a visitor as he announced, and I think the emphasis was mostly on Father Berrigan's speech. [Interviewer]: What did you think of Father Berrigan's sermon? [Female Parishioner #1]: Well, I think he was very sincere, I think he brought the facts to the people. I assume that he is very interested in the peace movement, and perhaps that was because of his activities in the peace movement, he probably, I don't want to use the term 'unfrocked', but that's what I think is happened. [Interviewer] So you think he was disciplined by the church? [Female Parisioner #1]: That's what I thought or else [Interviewer]: Do you think he was disciplined by the church? [Female Parishioner #1]: That's what I would assume, that he was

disciplined by the church because of his activities in the peace movement [cars honking] perhaps. Or else he left the church, one of the-- I don't know. [Interviewer]: What do you think about his views about the war? What do you think about-- [Female Parishioner #2]: I think they're very good, and I wish that the war was over. I think that we should all do what we can to make the effort to cause the war to drop or cease. I had a grandson that was killed in the war, and of course, I don't like war. My son was in the war, World War II war for five years. He came home without a scratch, and I thought my grandson would do the same, but he didn't. [Zinn]: That's a shame. [Parishioner #2]: So I don't like war. [Interviewer]: I don't think anyone likes war. Do you sympathize with Father Berrigan's act of burning draft files and then running away from his jail sentence and appearing in situations like this in the underground? [Female Parishioner #1]: Oh, I see that- I didn't quite understand

I didn't quite understand the facts in the case. That is why he-- in other words he should be in jail, is that the idea? [Interviewer]: That's right, he has a jail sentence hanging over him. [Female Parishioner #1]: In another section of the country? Is he from another section of the country? [Interviewer]: He's from the east. [Female Parishioner #1]: Oh, I see. [Zinn]: Do you sympathize with that kind of action as a war protest? [Female Parishioner #1]: Oh, no, no I-- I do not sympathize with the burning of draft cards. I think that's very un-American, but that's-- that's his way of speaking, a way of sympathizing. I think there's other ways, being a conscientious objector. I've read about, that they are sending these young men to camps and the other military camps where they're assigned different duties. [Interviewer]: (garbled), but the point to me is that doesn't stop the war. What did you feel about Father Berrigan asking everybody to put themselves in jeopardy, and to commit actions that are actually illegal, in order to to resist the war and bring it to an end? [Female Parishioner #2]: Well, that's his idea, and he thinks it's right to do that. I can understand his point of view, thinking it is right to do those kinds of things. But, personally,

I-- I wouldn't do it myself. [Female Parishioner #1]: (garbled) I believe in law and order first. I don't believe in breaking the law in any respect. [Female Parishioner #2]: I agree with her. I don't believe in violence. I think that's wrong, but I wish that everyone could sign a petition saying that we do not want the war, and the war would be over. [Male Parishioner #1]: When John Raines spoke of an unexpected guest, I was trying to imagine if he was speaking allegorically of Jesus Christ, or who he was speaking of. So I was completely amazed that we could have this privilege. [Interviewer]: How do you feel precisely about Father Raines' type of witness in legality? [church bell chimes and siren in background] [Male Parishioner #1]: Well, his is the kind of heroic witnessed that I wish I had the courage to do that, which seems so so very removed from the kind of thing that a person can do and still function in middle

class society. It's a brave witness, indeed. [Interviewer]: Of course, that's what Father Berrigan was trying to get people like yourself to confront, the idea of going one step further and actually letting go of your middle-class position, and your middle-class values, and taking a chance, and raising the ante. Do you feel that his sermon made you want to do that, or take any chance that your life could change as a result of Father Berrigan's concern? [Male Parishioner #1]: I've made that decision quite a long time ago, really that the I want to be within rather than outside. His position was that a person has to be willing to lose friends and change his whole life for the kind of position that he's taking and my own choice is to work within rather than from without. And I have only admiration for those who can take that kind of position and it's possible that I should too. [Interviewer]: In all

your fifty years of church-going, have you ever had an experience similar to this one? [Male Parishioner #2]: No, nothing like it, no and I wish we had more. [Interviewer]: Were you surprised that Father Berringan's appearance? [Male Parishioner #2]: Yes, very much surprised! [Interviewer]: And what did you think of his sermon? [Male Parishioner #2]: To tell you the truth, I couldn't hear it. I had hearing devices, new ones, and I couldn't hear it. I would just get a little now and then. [Interviewer]: But you know who he is and what he stands for? Do you know anything about him? [Male Parishioner #2]: No. Who is it, Father Barrying? [Interviewer]: Father Berrigan, the priest who delivered the sermon this morning. [Male Parishioner #2]: Well, I know somebody told me that he had been a priest, that he left the church. [Interviewer]: No, he's still a member of the church. [Male Parishioner #2]: He's still a member of the church? But he's one of the recalitrant members. [Interviewer]: Well, perhaps so. [Male Parishioner #2]: He just doesn't agree with everything. There's a tremendous number of them today. [scene change] [Interviewer]: Father Daniel Berrigan is a member of your providence? Is that right? [Father Mitchell]: That's true, that's true. Yes.

He's a member of the providence, and I myself know Dan rather well. We were together at one time when he was teaching at Le Moyne and I was on the same faculty with him. I was Dean of Le Moyne College for a period of years when Dan was there on the faculty. That would be have been in 1959 to 1963. During that period and, so I So, I-- I'm very fond of Dan and he's a very good friend of mine. I have a great deal of admiration and regard for him even when we disagree about things. [Interviewer]: As Father, has Dan Berrigan's superior, Father Mitchell, how would you evaluate his performance as a priest and as a Jesuit? [Father Michell]: Well, I think anyone who has ever known Dan or even been closely associated with him can't help but be impressed by his tremendous concern for

man and Christianity, for the gospel, and even when one disagrees with Dan, and there are many who do, I think, you know they always see him really as someone who is evidently a man of the gospel and he's a priestly priest. [Dan Berrigan] I've already checked with the parents and they say that we should say something. It's one of those points at which we feel that the silence is a great gift to everyone. I think that my brother and I have always mysteriously been marked by the presence of a baptism or wedding or something heavily charged with the mystery of life as we entered upon new phases of our life and this is also true tonight in the gift of this child. This child which stands for children and in virtue that for the children of Vietnam, the children of Brazil, the children of South Africa, all of those children whose chances we're trying to widen

by an evening like this and what is to follow this evening. I am sure it would be entirely according to the hopes of the parents that everyone here would declare themselves godparents and human parents of this child which by and large is the same thing. That is to say that incorporate into their hopes for one innocent and defenseless life would be the hopes of all for all those who are victims of wrong power, wrong-headed and wrong-hearted power, which is crushing the innocent around the world. So that we accept such a child not into an abstract community whose existence is a matter of conjecture in the real world of blood and tears, but that this child would be accepted here and would accept us here as those who might stand proxy for the human future.

Shortly before has death, A.J. Musty, the man who never grew old, declared that the need of our country was for a foreign policy for children. We declare that again tonight with the help of all those who stand for something except death as a social method. [pause, whispering] We baptise you, dear child, in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit, and all of us! [appleause] [Thank you's and kisses] [scene change] [Interviewer]: He's in good standing as a priest and as a Jesuit? [Father Mitchell]: Oh yes, Dan is in good standing as a priest and as a Jesuit

[Interviewer]: What things do you disagree with Dan on? [Father Mitchell]: Yes, will I do disagree with Dan on the particular method that he's chosen to dramatize his opposition to the war in Vietnam. I've never been able to see it. It seems to me to turn ultimately to an attack on the legal system, and I cannot see how that is in the long-run going to be beneficial to anybody. [Interviewer] How do you [Interviewer]: How do youstand in relation to the church itself, to your church? [Berrigan]: Well, the Jesuits are, I would say, supportive to a degree. They're not exactly delighted, I'm sure that many of them are very puzzled. That's really my family was in the church, thats why I bring that up. Um, but they're certainly much more willing to go with the idea of Jesuit underground than they would have even a year ago. I feel we have a long history of Jesuits in trouble with the state and the church. We've had Jesuits underground not only in

modern Russia, but in Elizabethan England-- [Interviewer]: but never in the United States. [Dan Berrigan]: --never in the United States, regrettably, I wish we had begun this long ago; we'd be more used to it now. [Father Mitchell]: If you could find a priest with almost any opinion on the civil life and the legal system and our political life and they express their opinion, and I think especially today, Catholics are able to see and know that priests do have various opinions and that this is not an official church of the position in any way. It is Dan Berrigan's opinion, which he is expressing. [Freida Berrigan, Dan's mother]: I've heard from Dan, and he seemed, as you said, in good spirits and the flash I got of him on TV showed me that he's-- he seemed in good health.

Much better health than when I saw him when he left Cornell. [pause] [Interviewer]: I'd like to ask you what you think personally of the actions which your two sons, Phil and Dan, have taken in the resisting the war. [Freida Berrigan]: I feel I'm with them, whole-heartedly [pause] because of the these young boys that are slaughtered, leave home and then come home to be buried and few, a few that I've heard who did come back after

their time was up, I'm not clear about what they're fighting for [pause] So, I'm in hopes that their work has done some good [pause] I mean Dan and Phil's. [Interviewer]: Do you feel, as they do, that it is proper to break the law and, in showing your resistance to the war? [Freida Berrigan]: Ye [clears throat] Yes I do because it's uh

it's not god's law. [Interviewer]: How do you stand with the federal people at the moment? Do you think they're on a trail? Do you expect life on the underground of the short lived or do you think you have some time ahead of you? [Berrigan]: Well, I'm proceeding now on the very open assumption that this thing can go on, and I think that we have a solid background now, these months, in order to show that. I think that we're able to show concretely that people are able so to organize their lives and so to organize imagination and the resources that they're able to help in a way which will keep this thing going. [Interviewer]: You see yourself as a teacher in a movement? [Berrigan]: Well, if that's -- that's a little too pretentious. I see myself as somebody who from let's say a geography a personal jeopardy is opening up new ways for other people by way of invitation, they're invited in new directions as a result of my presence. They're invited to respond to this in a way that is that is really concrete in the lives they're leading.

Whether within their family, within their profession, within their church or synagogue. To worship in new ways, to see themselves as teachers or doctors or lawyers in new ways, because some many of them are reaching personal and professional impasses anyway and are finding very great difficulty in going ahead with the structures, the American structures, as they are. [Zinn]: I guess the underground requires, [stammers] it requires criminals or as Dan Berrigan put it, criminals for peace, refugees from injustice and then of course there are people will help them and if the government continues to supply refugees and criminals by trying to put in jail those who backed militantly against the war, those who commit civil disobedience, then I think more and more of those people who are want to be- who the government wants to put away are going to maybe follow Dan Berrigan's example. Some of them will, maybe many of them will. And I think that if they do

they will find people who will help them, as people helped Dan Berrigan. And to me this is a sign of health in American society. [Interviewer]: Are you one of the people who helped Dan Berrigan when he was underground? [Zinn]: I don't think -- I don't -- I don't think that kind of question should be asked, frankly, I don't think it should be answered because [pause] it's not a game, it's not a drama, it's not martyred. I don't think Daniel Berrigan did what he did in an act of martyrdom, and I don't think the people who helped him should treat it that way and I don't think that's the kind of thing that should be talked about on television. I guess the only thing I would say is that I would help Dan Berrigan in every way that I could, and I would

help any refugee who was arres-- you know a refugee from injustice, somebody in that position and because-- because I-- ya know, the law, what we call law, hunts out hunts down some of the best people in society, the people we need to really build the kind of country that we need. So my hope is that people will help in situations like this. [scene change] [Interviewer]: Do you mean to say that you feel it by raising the level of your own risk and your own jeopardy that you have a greater appeal or a sharper appeal to other people in terms of their raising of their own a commitment? [Berrigan]: Well I think that's exactly part of the of the struggle that we've had in these months since I've been underlong since I've been under. It's an

effort not merely to talk to many Americans who the media, but really to get the people I live with, people harbor and who aid and keep me afloat and keep me in communion with others, to raise exactly these questions. That is to say, what is the virtuous man today? And what especially is his attitude toward the law when it was being used by those in power to break the law of humanity? [scene change] [Interviewer]: Was Dan a very rebellious boy? [Freida Berrigan]: No, no [pause] no no. He probably was at times a little so, but as a rule I can't say that he was. Do you Jer? [Jerry Berrigan, brother]: No, Dan had kind of a rough time from Pop. Dan tended to be a somewhat frail physically and wasn't able to take his share of the outside chores and duties that my father would assign the rest of us. I'm talking again now what the farm where we lived. Consequently, he was

in a sense forced into an interior role, that is he would be in the houes and he would be helping my mother with her chores around the house and he would be doing a good deal of reading and I'm sure a thinking that the others of us didn't have, you might say an opportunity for, whether or not we had the inclication is another matter, but Dan had a pretty rough time with Pop. And it's a mark of Dan's greatness, that during my father's last days when he was ill and even dying, Dan was of all of us the most solicitous, and the most attentive. That's just the way Dan is. [Zinn]: The effect he had on me was the kind of effect that is very hard to measure, an emotional effect, [pause] a poetic effect. [Anthony Towne, poet]: His poetry is like himself it is extempraneious, and it is inventive, and

I'm very [pause] uh unstructured, and I believe that if one may assume a time when history settles down and scholars look at all these matters, which is doubtful, that he will finally be remembered, perhaps more as a poet than anything else, quite likely, and not as a fugitive, or a felon, or a burner of instruments of death. [Zinn, reading]: 'Compassionate casual is a good face, a good heart goes without saying, someone seems for infinitely rare once twice in a lifetime that conjunction we name brother or friend. Biology, mythology, castoff clothes, we grew together as stars made men like called

design. Construced sternly, no variants not by a hair's breath in course and recourse. In the heavens in our mother's body by moon and month where whole men made, we obey them and will be born.' He seems to have in his bones, inside of him, these images and those sounds that we only get that rare times. In that way he's made me feel things more deeply. [pause] Maybe I should say one other thing, and that is he's made me aware of friendship. It's very easy in large movements to forget about friendship. There are the friends you had outside of movements and then there's the movement which is a kind of large amorphous thing, and what he made me aware of is that if any movement it's worth anything has to consist of friendships.

[Narrator]: Tony Mullaney and Robert Cunnane are priests and members of the Milwaukee Fourteen. They are among the more than one hundred priests, nuns, and layman who have been indicted for destroying draft files since Kagan's bill. Father Mullaney and Father Cunnane, both strongly influenced by Daniel Berrigan, have served their jail sentences and are now searching for new ways of resistance. [Father Mullaney]: If you allow yourself to really listen to Berrigan, and that's not an easy thing to do because he's a threat, but if you allow yourself to listen to him, then you'd begin sharing you know what he's experienced and before you know you're saying something like this that 'well, how do I respond to this type of thing? And then you find yourself getting deeper and deeper into resistance, the the step from descent to resistance is a very great step.

It's you know-- everything up to that point from letter writing to you know visiting congressman that that's a pretty clear continuum. But then to step into the area of resistance, say through burning of draft cards and receiving draft cards, that's that's a much tougher step to take. [Father Cunnane]: I like Tony's, excuse me I didn't mean to butt in on you, but I like your point about listening to Dan because there seems to be a lot of people, whether on one extreme or the other you know, one crowd says he's a nut and they dismiss him. The crowd says that he's a prophet and they dismiss him as well. I'm really, I think the crowd that call him a nut are probably more honest than the ones that call him a prophet. He's not a prophet, he's an ordinary human being He is a great poetic talent, but he's no different from you from me and this sort of saying he's a prophet therefore I can never do what he does is a beautiful cop-out. [scene change] [Interviewer]: Do you have any concrete knowledge Father Dan

that your actions have really made a change or helped to make a change in the lives of individuals or groups of people who you'ce come in contact with? [Dan Berrigan] Well, I have a certain evidence of that. I think really the first evidence of anything really occurring in the lives of others is some evidence that that that some changes occurred to one's self you know, and I'm quite certain that that that has occurred. I'm also a reasonably confident because of the way we have talked, the intensity with which groups of us have and talked together. I'm reasonably confident that other people also find this as, this combination of nonviolence and fidelity to one's actions, and even the upping of the original jeopardy or action that they find that's finding, that that that's moving, that means something to them and they're willing to follow through on it. [Father Mullaney]: We've both turned the corner you know and and I think once you make that jump from dissent to resistance that it's very very difficult to

withdraw you know. Now what forms the resistance will take is another problem, and in fact I just wouldn't be willing to discuss them, even if it's my path we're clear because you know this is not 1968, it's 1970 and discussions of this sort, because of the times, are not appropriate in this medium I'm afraid. But the style of resistance is [pause] I made my choice. [Father Cunnane]: It would seem like you were educated by jail and all we went through and it's almost like becoming a lawyer and they're not practicing in a way. You're almost in it and you can't help but see you know the way things are and that you know you're bound to it. At least it seems to me if you try and stay a little bit honest with yourself, you're bound to it some future date to come in something. You just can't help it. [Father Mullaney]: Certainly one problem as I mentioned earlier is the problem of

nonviolence. I still feel this commitment, but I also feel a commitment to actions that are proportionate to the continuing insensitivity of national leadership and it's very difficult to come up with a form of resistance that that has those two qualities. [Interivewer]: Do you feel like you're offering a kind of alternative to the Weatherman-type of underground operation? [Berrigan]: Well, I don't know, I don't know the inner workings of the Weatherman Underground, I don't think many people do. But I would like to say that I think that the society in in a kinda base and inhuman sense needs the Weatherman to be violent and even secretly hopes that they will be, because the society just as it needs an army, and in a sense needs someone to kill, also needs someone to be killed, needs someone to pursue it needs the mafia, it needs the Ku Klux Klan, it needs the Panthers, and I would like to say also that I'm very anxious to have contact with the Weathermen

and that I see whatever ministry I could have in the Underground is also in that direction. [Zinn]: It's like no other period in American history when we've had reform movements, because they were all sorts of partial things, They were all based on the idea that something is wrong and we'll fix it up. Ya know?There's the race question, there's the depression, there's a Spanish American War, but we'll fix that up. Basically the country is ok, and the system's ok, and our system of government and our economic system they're all ok and our values are ok, and what's different now is that a lot of people are beginning to say, particularly young people, that it's not ok, it's deeper than that. What we've been thinking about, what we've been cherishing, what we're valuing, how we've been proceeding, what we've been doing with our wealth, the way we think about other people in the world, the way we think about ourselves, who we give power to-- all of that has got to be changed that. That's what's going underground means, I think as a statement about America, which is important today. [scene change] [Berrigan]: I sense a kind of straight line or let's say even a crooked line, a line in nature

a line of a stream maybe, between those beginnings of stirrings of social understanding and where my brother and I and the other Catonsville people stand today. Because the real change is going to be at least as deep and as bloody as the cost of immobility, and that's indeed a very very hard price. But I guess if you have to be willing to pay it, at least in principle. [William Stringfellow]: Right after his seizure at our house, in the days in the next days, we were visited by a good many of our neighbors, expressing there interest and concern, and an overwhelmingly, their support for our hospitality for Dan.

But they came, many of them it seemed to me, in a sort of a spirit of condolence, they way you might go to a house where there had been a death, and that bothered me and still bothers me because nobody has died here and Dan's in prison, but he's not dead and he's not really silent. [scene change] [News interviewer]: Do you have any comment for us at all? [Berrigan]: It's good to be here. [News Interviewer]: What are you doing here on Block Island? [Berrigan]: Well, I was writing, and reading, and meditating and exactly what I'll be doing in jail. [News Interviewer] :What are your future plans? [Berrigan]: Resistance. [voice over, Dan Berrigan]: I would say that our hope isn't placed in conversion of those who have power now. It's placed in something arising very mysteriously from very different forces, ya know from Chicago to Saigon and Hanoi and even Catonsville. But the form of all of that, I think awaits upon the enduring of that, and then for me to announce some sort of sort of clear vision of the next year even would be totally absurd. I don't know if I'm going to survive the next

year, and I don't know if you are either. [End Credits] [no audio] [Narrator]: Father Dan Berrigan is now serving his three and a half year sentence in the federal penitentiary at Danbury, Connecticut. Under federal regulations, Father Berrigan is prohibited from meeting with members of the press and from publishing articles or poetry for the duration of his prison term. [music] This is NET,

National Educational Television. [no audio] [no audio]