(Wikimedia Commons; image altered)
America asked several authors to consider the life of Daniel Berrigan, S.J., on the fifth anniversary of his death. Paul Elie is the author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own (2003) and
Reinventing Bach (2012).
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During a memorial service at St. Ignatius of Loyola Church in Manhattan for Walker Percy in 1990, his editor, Robert Giroux, eulogized him as “a superb novelist, a distinguished man of letters, a witty and searching critic, a great American.” As I read those words not long after, the “great American” tag took me by surprise; it invited us to see a Catholic writer in a different light.
From Howard Zinn s People s History of the United States
Classic Archives: The Gulf of Tonkin con job and other covered up facts by mainstream media and historians
Hal Ashby s Coming Home, with Bruce Dern and Jane Fonda among the leads was a powerful statement about the effects of the war in Vietnam on the home front.
From 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country and failed. When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.
Daniel Berrigan, S.J., and Jim Forest in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City, circa 1973. (Photo courtesy of Jim Forest)
“The king commanded and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions,” it is reported in the Book of Daniel
. Daniel Berrigan, S.J., a frequent captive, was well named. “How many times have you been locked up?” was a question journalists often asked him. “Not enough” was his usual response.
Dan Berrigan spent much of his life in various lions’ dens at home as a child when his father was in a rage, in paddy wagons and prisons, in demonstrations that were sometimes targets of violent attacks, in a city (Hanoi) under bombardment, in urban neighborhoods police regarded as hazardous yet lived to be 94, dying peacefully in bed.
Political Engagement: A New Article Of Lived Faith - Honolulu Civil Beat
Political Engagement: A New Article Of Lived Faith
People in the pews and those who have left must challenge faith leaders who have helped advance political agendas that hurt people.
About the Author
Dawn Morais (who uses the byline Dawn Morais Webster for Civil Beat Community Voices) has called Hawaii home since 2001. Following a corporate career, she now provides communications counsel to nonprofits and teaches at the University of Hawaii. Her writing has appeared in local media, National Catholic Reporter, The Merton Seasonal, The Baltimore Sun, and Bamboo Ridge. A dissident Catholic, she worships at St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church in Kalihi, host to Hawaii’s first Catholic Worker House.