Posted on 04/30/2016 6:36:14 PM PDT by ButThreeLeftsDo
Pacifist - Somebody who believes we are fighting for the wrong side.
First, I am an absolutely traditionalist (Latin Mass pre-Vatican II) Catholic. I too was offended by the participation of Fr. Dan Berrigan and his late brother Fr. Phillip Berrigan and many other radical priests and nuns in what I viewed as anti-American as well as anti-war activities. I have not changed my mind on that since the 1960s.
However, unlike most anti-war types, Fr. Dan Berrigan was consistent, as he saw it on life issues. He openly questioned how anyone could be against the killing of innocent people in war and not be just as opposed to abortion, to capital punishment, to the warehousing of the elderly in nursing homes, indifference to the suffering of the poor, etc.
I am not as consistent as he since I believe that the US needs to maintain nuclear deterrence, should have crushed Ho Chi Minh, needs to execute many, if not all, of those convicted of capital crimes. I do agree with him on the poor although our concern should be expressed through voluntary giving and hands on personal assistance to the poor rather than socialist schemes to force our neighbors to pay. Having spent some time as a patient in nursing homes, I share his views on them although they are sometimes necessary as a last resort as hospice care can be.
My BIG agreement with him is on abortion. He not only wrote widely published op-ed columns on the fact that the left shamed itself by failing to oppose abortion or by even cheerleading for it. He also was arrested in Operation Rescue occupying one or more abortion mills to physically prevent abortions. Not many on the left can say that they did that.
Justice requires that we recognize his flaws but equally that we recognize his virtues. As a determined and outspoken pro-lifer, he was more troubling and embarrassing to the left than to us.
A similar figure now up for ultimate canonization as a saint is the late Dorothy Day, foundress of the rather leftist, anti-war, anti-nationalism but quite charitable Catholic Worker Movement. She got started by having an abortion at an early age and then falling away from the Church as she cruised leftist intellectual circles in NYC, took a live in lover, but became ever more motivated in her service to the poor and her own pro-life perspective by the fact that she had had an abortion. She attended Mass regularly avoiding the Eucharist because of guilt but she eventually accepted forgiveness and redoubled her efforts for the poor. I cannot agree with much of her politics but I cannot help but admire the saintly qualities that she developed and lived by.
Fr. Dan Berrigan: a deeply misguided soul on some but not all things. I join in your prayers for him. If I am fortunate enough to enter heaven, I expect to meet him there, despite his flaws and mine.
See #62.
Delchiante:
Are you completely comfortable with the deaths of so very many women, children, disabled at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I understand the rationalizations of speeding the surrender without having to slug it out, inch by inch, conquering the Japanese Archipelago with perhaps a million American military casualties and probably even more Japanese civilian casualties BUT was there no intermediate path to show off to Tojo (and particularly, if possible, the all too sheltered Emperor Hirohito) the power of the atomic bomb on an offshore uninhabited or evacuated island? The normally quiet as a churchmouse Hirohito (a living god in the minds of the Shinto majority in Japan) directly ORDERED Tojo and the Japanese government to unconditionally surrender after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I suspect Hirohito would have done exactly the same if he were convinced of the power of our atomic bombs BEFORE they were dropped. In that event, many innocents would have lived.
See also the firebombing of Tokyo and of Dresden. If we had lost the war, our Army Air Corps leaders would have been the ones hanged as "war criminals." Intentionally killing innocent civilians in large numbers, if allowable at all, must be only a very last resort after all other options have been exhausted.
As to the draft, a better name would have been the Selective Slavery System (in manifest violation of the 13th Amendment which outlawed not only slavery but also "involuntary servitude).
No longer would grandstanding politicians have to convince young men to risk life and limb in service to the grandstanding politicians' cause. NO! Now they could be forced into involuntary service. Many of the young voluntarily signed up for Gulf Wars I and II without a draft because they were personally convinced of the justice for which they would fight.
Without the draft, there would either have been no VietNam War (unlikely option) or Lyndon Johnson would have prosecuted that war promptly, massively, and quite finally (far more likely option) or no one would have signed up voluntarily for service.
I despise the phony "moral equivalency" of the late and unlamented Joseph Cardinal Bernardin's "seamless garment" abomination (a rationalization for Catholics to be voting Demonrat while minimizing their guilt in doing so. I can, however, see how the gullible are taken in by it. Maybe Fr. Dan Berrigan was just gullible and let his good heart get in the way of common sense on matters military and of gummint spending.
Mrs. Don-o:
Once again, thanks for your intervention on behalf of the late Fr. Berrigan and yet more expressions of justice and common sense. God bless.
I have my own sins to heartily despise. I would not be even remotely interested in rejoicing to see somebody else in hell.
Thanks/ #65
P.S., intentionally killing innocent civilians is the moral equivalent of abortion and the very definition of murder.
For 6,000 years man has been killing and enslaving their fellow man, not living for the next life.
For 2,000 years, the gospel is to be preached, promising a world of future peace in the Kingdom, and individual peace today in world with its powers and principalities run by the enemy.
I will put it this way.
I don’t think a priest’s goal is to be on the FBI Most Wanted List.
Berrigan was a real pacifist. Strongly opposed killing unborn babies, and openly confronted Marxist Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua) over the killing / repression of Miskito Indians who opposed being forced into the Sandinistas’ totalitarian national plan..
I don;’t think anybody has that as their “goal”!
Like the late Brent Bozell (pere), I think Daniel Berrigan’s ultimate allegiance was not in the category of politics,but of sanctity. I hope they will join hands and hearts in the Beatific Vision. Pray that I will be freed from my sins so I can join them there myself. It’ll be, by God, a good conversation.
When one avoids prosecution or prison time that they were scheduled to do, the FBI takes note.
If don’t want to do the time, don’t do the crime. And if you are a Christ centered priest, you should be proud to serve your sentence, not go into hiding with other leftists.
Interesting that one of the main reasons that South Vietnam ultimately lost was because the Catholic minority there was not too kind to the Buddhist majority. Many converted to Catholicism there only because of the perceived benefits of doing so.
It’s not rejoicing. It is accepting of a reality. Something Berrigan should have realized before his demonic acts took place.
His brother, Philip Berrigan, was also radical priest. He married a nun while still a priest. Don’t know how that got sorted out.
You weren't living in NYC when the damned Berrigan brothers were active; I WAS! Neither was a "PEACE ACTIVIST"; both were and continued to be anti-American COMMIES !
Are YOU also a stinking COMMIE ?
Exactly !
Well, that’s YOU and you can “play” at being a plaster “SAINT” all you want; I was personally affected by his actions and rejoice that he has shed these mortal coils...too bad it didn’t happen far earlier. *spit*
Would you rather be speaking Japanese or German now?
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