Prayers for a deeply misguided soul.
Nice reply.
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.