draft card burner, nuclear weapon disarmer speaks in dublin 14th august

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday August 10, 2002 17:19 by ciaron o'reilly - dublin catholic worker dublincatholicworker at yahoo dot co dot uk 0879184552

articles on dan berrigan appear in saturday's irish times and sunday's business post

Fr. Daniel Berrigan SJ will be speaking at the Royal Dublin Hotel 7.30 p.m., O'Connell St. on Wednesday August 14th. 7.30 p.m.

For going on half a century Philip and Daniel Berrigan have been a prophetic thorn in the side of political, military and church elites in the United States. Their nonviolent militant insistence on the sanctity of human life and the criminality of modern warfare has been non-negotiable.

From their 1968 burning of draft cards through their numerous court scenes and prison sentences the Berrigans have spoken truth to power. In the early 1970's, FBI Godfather J.Edgar Hoover obssessed with these troublesome priests, and their opposition to the Vietnam War, conjured a charge of "conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger". A plan to perform a citizens arrest on Henry Kissinger had been distorted and spun by the Feds into a criminal indictment. Today, Henry Kissinger dodges police warrants in South America and Europe related to his role in massacres in Indo-China and Chile. As always, the Berrigan's only crime has been to be ahead of their time.

In the 1980's, the Berrigans and friends grounded hopes, dreams and demands of nuclear disarmament by entering a General Electric factory in Pennsylvania and taking household hammers to nuclear weapons components. They had embodied the Old Tetsament prophecy of Isaiah to "beat swords into ploughshares" initiating a direct disarmament movement that continues to decommsison all sorts of hi tech killing machines - B52 Bombers, Trident Submarines, Hawk Fighters et.al. In some cases juries have celebrated and acquitted the "ploughshares communities", in others the Berrigans and friends have been sent to jail for long sentences. The Berrigans have pioneered a style of assertive nonviolence that engages the hi tech overkill/low intensity conflict manner of waging America's wars post-Vietnam.

Daniel Berrigan is a New Yorker. His poetry, prose, work with cancer and Aids patients are informed by the dynamism of this heaving metropolis. The events of September 11th. shocked him into an initial silence - refusing interviews or comment. He was roused once again by the failure of church leaders to offer any moral counter to the Bush Administration's exploitation of the event to unleash more death and fire. This time on some of the world's poorest people in Afghanistan. He addressed a hostile student audience at Fordham University following the U.S. Catholic bishops voting 140 - 4 to support U.S. military action in Afghanistan. A vote that had abandoned both pacifist and just war church traditions. Fr. Daniel Berrigan responded ".....the Bishops have abandoned us....maybe we should burn our copies of the gospels, process into our church sanctuaries holding aloft the Air Force Rule Book, with its command to kill our enemies and incense that instead. At least that would be more honest. It would express our fidelity to the gods of war, since we do not worship the God of Peace."

As part of the Irish diaspora, Berrigan shares a concern with the rapid erosion of Irish neutrality, the transformation of Shannon Airport into a pit stop for the U.S. military en route to Afghanistan and Iraq and the arrival of weapons manufacturer raytheon in Derry as part of the peace/decommissioning process.

Fr. Daniel Berrigan's talk "War is Terror is War" at the Royal Dublin Hotel, O'Connell St, Dublin City Centre on Wedensday August 14th. 7.30 p.m. is sponsored by Afri and the Dublin Catholic Worker.

For more information Ph. Ciaron O'Reilly 087 918 4552 or Afri 01 882 7581