Bio: A major figure in American non-violent history, William Lloyd Garrison was instrumental in getting the abolitionists to adopt the creed of non-violence. Garrison called for an abolition of capital punishment, ‘abstention from politics and abolition of all war, as well as the emancipation of the slaves. In 1838 he joined with Adin Ballou to found the New England Non-Resistance Society. The “Declaration of Sentiments” * which appears below was adopted by the American Peace Convention held in Boston in1838.
Quotations:
"We cannot acknowledge allegiance to any human government; neither can we oppose any such government, by a resort of physical force. We recognize but one King and Lawgiver, one Judge and Ruler of mankind. We are bound by the laws of a kingdom which is not of this world; the subjects of which are forbidden to fight; in which Mercy and Truth are met together, and Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other; which has no state lines, no national partitions, no geographical boundaries; in which there is no distinction or rank, or division of caste, or inequality of sex; the officers of which are Peace, its exactors Righteousness, its walls Salvation, and its gates Praise; and which is destined to break in pieces and consume all other kingdoms.
Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other lands. The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens are no more dear to us than are those of the whole human race. Hence, we can allow no appeal to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury. The Prince of Peace, under whose stainless banner we rally, came not to destroy, but to save, even the worst of enemies. He has left us an example, that we should follow his steps. “God commandeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
We conceive that if a nation has no right to defend itself against foreign enemies, or to punish its invaders, no individual possesses that right in his own case. The unit cannot be of greater importance than the aggregate. If one man may take life, to obtain or defend his rights, the same license must necessarily be granted to communities, states, and nations. If he may use a dagger or a pistol, they may employ cannon, bomb-shells, land and naval forces. The means of self-preservation must be in proportion to the magnitude of interests at stake, and the number of lives exposed to destruction. But if a rapacious and blood-thirsty soldiery, thronging these shores from abroad, with intent to commit rapine and destroy life, may not be resisted by the people or magistracy, then ought no resistance to be offered to domestic troublers of the public peace, or of private security. No obligation can rest upon Americans to regard foreigners as more sacred in their persons than themselves, or to give them a monopoly of wrong-doing with impunity.
The dogma that all the governments of the world are approvingly ordained of God, and that the powers that be in the United States, in Russia, in Turkey, are in accordance with His will, is not less absurd than impious. It makes the impartial Author of human freedom and equality, unequal and tyrannical. It cannot be affirmed that the powers that be, in any nation, are actuated by the spirit, or guided by the example of Christ, in the treatment of enemies; therefore, they cannot be agreeable to the will of God; and, therefore, their overthrow, by a spiritual regeneration of their subjects, is inevitable.
We register our testimony, not only against all wars, whether offensive or defensive, but all preparations for war; against every naval ship, every arsenal, every fortification; against the militia system and a standing army; against all military chieftains and soldiers; against all monuments commemorative of victory over a foreign foe, all trophies won in battle, all celebrations in honor of military or naval exploits; against all appropriations for the defense of a nation by force and arms on the part of any legislative body; against every edict of government, requiring of its subjects military service. Hence, we deem it unlawful to bear arms, or to hold a military office.
As every human government is upheld by physical strength, and its laws are enforced virtually at the point of the bayonet, we cannot hold any office which imposes upon its incumbent the obligation to do right, on pain of imprisonment or death. We the fore voluntarily exclude ourselves from every legislative and judicial body, and repudiate all human politics, worldly honors, and stations of authority. If we cannot occupy a seat in the legislature. or on the bench, neither can we elect others to act as our substitutes in any such capacity.
It follows that we cannot sue any man at law, to compel him by force to restore any thing which he may have wrongfully taken from us or others; but, if he has seized our coat, we shall surrender up our cloak, rather than subject him to punishment.
We believe that the penal code of the old covenant, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, has been abrogated by Jesus Christ; and that, under the new covenant, the forgiveness instead of the punishment of enemies has been enjoined upon all his disciples, in all cases whatsoever. To extort money from enemies, or set them upon a pillory, or cast them into prison, or hang them upon a gallows, is obviously not to forgive, but to take retribution. “Vengeance is mine—I will repay, saith the Lord.”
The history of mankind is crowded with evidences, proving that physical coercion is not adapted to moral regeneration; that the sinful disposition of man can be subdued only by love; that evil can be exterminated from the earth only by goodness; that it is not safe to rely upon an arm of flesh, upon man, whose breath is in his nostrils, to preserve us from harm; that there is great security in being gentle, harmless, long-suffering, and abundant in mercy; that it is only the meek who shall inherit the earth, for the violent, who resort to the sword, shall perish with the sword. Hence, as a measure of sound policy, of safety to property, life, and liberty, of public quietude and private enjoyment, as well as on the ground of allegiance to Him who is King of kings, and Lord of lords, we cordially adopt the non-resistance principle, being confident that it provides for all possible consequences, will ensure all things needful to us, is armed with omnipotent power, and must ultimately triumph over every assailing force.
We advocate no jacobinal doctrines. The spirit of jacobinism is the spirit of retaliation, violence and murder. It neither fears God, nor regards man. We would be filled with the spirit of Christ. If we abide by our principles, it is impossible for us to be disorderly, or plot treason, or participate in any evil work: we shall submit to every ordinance of man, for the Lord’s sake; obey all the requirements of government, except such as we deem contrary to the commands of the Gospel; and in no wise resist the operation of law, except by meekly submitting to the penalty of disobedience.
But, while we shall adhere to the doctrines of non-resistance and passive submission to enemies, we purpose, in a moral and spiritual sense, to speak and act boldly in the cause of God; to as sail iniquity in high places and in low places; to apply our principles to all existing civil, political, legal, and ecclesiastical institutions; and to hasten the time when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever.
It appears to us a self-evident truth that, whatever the Gospel is designed to destroy at any period of the world, being contrary to it, ought now to be abandoned. If, then, the time is predicted when swords shall be beaten into plough-shares, and spears into pruning hooks, and men shall not learn the art of war any more, it follows that all who manufacture, sell, or wield those deadly weapons, do thus array themselves against the peaceful dominion of the Son of God on earth.
Having thus briefly, but frankly, stated our principles and purposes we proceed to specify the measures we propose to adopt, in carrying our object into effect.
We expect to prevail through the foolishness of preaching— striving to commend ourselves unto every man’s conscience, in the sight of God. From the press, we shall promulgate our sentiments as widely as practicable. We shall endeavor to secure the cooperation of all persons, of whatever name or sect. The triumphant progress of the cause of Temperance and of Abolition in our land, through the instrumentality of benevolent and voluntary associations, encourages us to combine our own means and efforts for the promotion of a still greater cause. Hence we shall employ lecturers, circulate tracts and publications, form societies, and petition our state and national governments in relation to the subject of Universal Peace. It will be our leading object to devise ways and means for effecting a radical change in the views, feelings and practices of society respecting the sinfulness of war, and the treatment of enemies.
In entering upon the great work before us, we are not unmindful that, in its prosecution, we may be called to test our sincerity, even as in a fiery ordeal. It may subject us to insult, outrage, suffering, yea, even death itself. We anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, calumny. Tumults may arise against us. The ungodly and violent, the proud and Pharisaical, the ambitious and tyrannical, principalities and powers, and spiritual wickedness in high places, may combine to crush us. So they treated the Messiah, whose example we are humbly striving to imitate. If we suffer with him, we know that we shall reign with him. We shall not be afraid of their terror, nor be troubled. Our confidence is in the Lord Almighty, not in man. Having withdrawn from human protection, what can sustain us but that faith which overcomes the world? We shall not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try us, as though some strange thing had happened unto us; but rejoice, inasmuch as we are partakers of Christ’s sufferings. Wherefore, we commit the keeping of our souls to God, in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator. “For everyone that forsakes houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for Christ’s sake, shall receive an hundred fold, and shall inherit everlasting life.”
Finally, relying upon the certain and universal triumph of the sentiments contained in this Declaration, however formidable may be the opposition arrayed against them, in solemn testimony of our faith in their divine origin, we hereby affix our signatures to it, commending it to the reason and conscience of mankind, giving ourselves no anxiety as to what may befall us, and resolving, in the strength of the Lord God, calmly and meekly to abide the issue."
Friday, March 23, 2007
Religious Satyagraha, M.K. Gandhi
Bio: The prophet of 20th-century non-violence, Gandhi was to the Indian people a spiritual leader, a po litical realist, and a charismatic personal leader. His life view is deeply part of the religious and philo sophical teachings of Hinduism and the ethics of Christianity. His writings and his life attest to his belief in the power of truth, the redemptive power of suffering, and the total equality of all men.
Quotations:
"Mixing up of motives is damaging in any species of Satyagraha, but in religious Satyagraha it is altogether inadmissible. It is fatal to use or allow religious Satyagraha to be used as a cloak or a device for advancing an ulterior political or mundane objective."
Quotations:
"Mixing up of motives is damaging in any species of Satyagraha, but in religious Satyagraha it is altogether inadmissible. It is fatal to use or allow religious Satyagraha to be used as a cloak or a device for advancing an ulterior political or mundane objective."
Thursday, March 22, 2007
The Time of My Commitment, George Fox
Bio: of temptation who, not without great danger to yourself, are doing all you can to force your brother into danger? Do you deserve to be delivered from evil, that is, from the evil being, to whose impulse you submit yourself, and by whose spirit you are now guided, in contriving the greatest possible evil to your brother?
Quotations:
"...God is my wittnesse, by whom I am moved to give this forth for truths sake, from him whom the world calls George ffox, who is the son of God..."
"...I told them, I knew from whence all wars arose, even from lust, according to James’ doctrine; and that I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars."
"but I had faith in God, and believed I should be delivered in his time; for the Lord had said to me before, that I was not to be removed from the place yet, being set there for a service which he had for me to do. .
All that pretend to fight for Christ, are deceived; for his kingdom is not of this world, therefore his servants do not fight. Fighters are not of Christ’s kingdom, but are without Christ’s kingdom; his kingdom starts in peace and righteousness, but fighters are in the lust; and all that would destroy men’s lives, are not of Christ’s mind, who came to save men’s lives. Christ’s kingdom is not of this world; it is peaceable: and all that are in strife, are not of his kingdom.
All that pretend to fight for the Gospel, are deceived; for the Gospel is the power of God, which was before the devil, or fall of man was; and the gospel of peace was before fighting was. Therefore they that pretend fighting, are ignorant of the Gospel; and all that talk of fighting for Sion, are in darkness; for Sion needs no such helpers. All such as profess themselves to be ministers of Christ, or Christians, and go about to beat down the whore with outward, carnal weapons, the flesh and the whore are got up in themselves, and they are in a blind zeal..."
"All such as pretend Christ Jesus, and confess him, and yet run into the use of carnal weapons, wrestling with flesh and blood, throw away the spiritual weapons. They that would be wrestlers with flesh and blood, throw away Christ’s doctrine; the flesh is got up in them, and they are weary of their sufferings. Such as would revenge themselves, are out of Christ’s doctrine. Such as being stricken on one cheek, would not turn the other, are out of Christ’s doctrine: and such as do not love one another, nor love enemies, are out of Christ’s doctrine."
Quotations:
"...God is my wittnesse, by whom I am moved to give this forth for truths sake, from him whom the world calls George ffox, who is the son of God..."
"...I told them, I knew from whence all wars arose, even from lust, according to James’ doctrine; and that I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars."
"but I had faith in God, and believed I should be delivered in his time; for the Lord had said to me before, that I was not to be removed from the place yet, being set there for a service which he had for me to do. .
All that pretend to fight for Christ, are deceived; for his kingdom is not of this world, therefore his servants do not fight. Fighters are not of Christ’s kingdom, but are without Christ’s kingdom; his kingdom starts in peace and righteousness, but fighters are in the lust; and all that would destroy men’s lives, are not of Christ’s mind, who came to save men’s lives. Christ’s kingdom is not of this world; it is peaceable: and all that are in strife, are not of his kingdom.
All that pretend to fight for the Gospel, are deceived; for the Gospel is the power of God, which was before the devil, or fall of man was; and the gospel of peace was before fighting was. Therefore they that pretend fighting, are ignorant of the Gospel; and all that talk of fighting for Sion, are in darkness; for Sion needs no such helpers. All such as profess themselves to be ministers of Christ, or Christians, and go about to beat down the whore with outward, carnal weapons, the flesh and the whore are got up in themselves, and they are in a blind zeal..."
"All such as pretend Christ Jesus, and confess him, and yet run into the use of carnal weapons, wrestling with flesh and blood, throw away the spiritual weapons. They that would be wrestlers with flesh and blood, throw away Christ’s doctrine; the flesh is got up in them, and they are weary of their sufferings. Such as would revenge themselves, are out of Christ’s doctrine. Such as being stricken on one cheek, would not turn the other, are out of Christ’s doctrine: and such as do not love one another, nor love enemies, are out of Christ’s doctrine."
Our Father, Desiderius Erasmus
Bio: The man who symbolized the Renaissance, Deside rius Erasmus was a humanist, a monk, and a priest. He preached the contradiction of war and Christian ity, and called for a return to a simpler, more pure form of Christian faith. The excerpt below * was taken from The Complaint of Peace, Erasmus’ mas terful polemic against war and the selfish political motivations that caused war.
Quotations:
"Our Father,” says he; 0 hardened wretch! can you call him Father, when you are
just going to cut your brother’s throat? “Hallowed be thy name”:
how can the name of God be more impiously unhallowed, than by mutual bloody murder among you, his sons? “Thy kingdom come”: do you pray for the coming of his kingdom, while you are endeavoring to establish an earthly despotism, by spilling the blood of God’s sons and subjects? “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”: his will in heaven is for peace, but you are now meditat ing war. Dare you to say to your Father in heaven: “Give us this day our daily bread,” when you are going, the next minute per haps, to burn up your brother’s corn-fields, and had rather lose the benefit of them yourself, than suffer him to enjoy them unmo lested? With what face can you say, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us,” when, so far from for giving your own brother, you are going, with all the haste you can, to murder him in cold blood, for an alleged trespass that, after all, is but imaginary? Do you presume to deprecate the danger of temptation who, not without great danger to yoursell, are doing all you can to force your brother into danger? Do you deserve to be delivered from evil, that is, Irom the evil being, to whose impulse you submit yourself, and by whose spirit you are now guided, in contriving the greatest possible evil to your brother?"
Quotations:
"Our Father,” says he; 0 hardened wretch! can you call him Father, when you are
just going to cut your brother’s throat? “Hallowed be thy name”:
how can the name of God be more impiously unhallowed, than by mutual bloody murder among you, his sons? “Thy kingdom come”: do you pray for the coming of his kingdom, while you are endeavoring to establish an earthly despotism, by spilling the blood of God’s sons and subjects? “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”: his will in heaven is for peace, but you are now meditat ing war. Dare you to say to your Father in heaven: “Give us this day our daily bread,” when you are going, the next minute per haps, to burn up your brother’s corn-fields, and had rather lose the benefit of them yourself, than suffer him to enjoy them unmo lested? With what face can you say, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us,” when, so far from for giving your own brother, you are going, with all the haste you can, to murder him in cold blood, for an alleged trespass that, after all, is but imaginary? Do you presume to deprecate the danger of temptation who, not without great danger to yoursell, are doing all you can to force your brother into danger? Do you deserve to be delivered from evil, that is, Irom the evil being, to whose impulse you submit yourself, and by whose spirit you are now guided, in contriving the greatest possible evil to your brother?"
Nonviolence VS the Mafia, Danilo Dolci
Bio: Danilo Dolci went to northwestern Sicily in 1952 to work with the people there, people caught in desperate poverty. He has sought to educate the people to their own worth and to the effectiveness of concerted, non-violent action (including work strikes, public fasts and marches). Dolci and the people themselves have begun to erode the power of the Mafia.
The first selection was submitted by Dolci to the War Resisters’ International Triennial Conference. The second selection deals with the work of various
study centers in Sicily.
Quotations:
"The problem of our new revolution is to find how best to eliminate exploitation, murder, the investment of energy in weapons of destruction—how to pro-yoke chain reactions not of hate and death but of new constructiveness, of new quality of life.
It is easy to doubt the efficacy of non-violent revolution while it has yet to be proved, historically and systematically, that it can change structures. But in a world tired of murder, betrayal, point less death, there can be a more direct appeal to people’s con sciences when a movement for change is both robust and non violent."
"After fuller discussion, we decided on a day’s fast by 1,000 people, to be followed by a “strike in reverse”—working on a dilapidated country road. The people joined in with scarcely any fear at all, despite massive intervention by the police—because they knew they weren’t doing anybody any harm: and within a few days they had succeeded as never before in penetrating the public conscience with their protest and their own positive proposals.
With this profound capacity for awakening consciences, non violent action is also revolutionary in that it activates other forces that are revolutionary in different ways. And everyone who wants change makes the sort of revolution he can."
"Sometimes we may admire violent revolutionary forces not be cause they are the only possible ones, or the most suitable to the circumstances, but because where they are active they are often the only ones brave enough to exist at all. But anyone who thinks war the highest form of struggle, or the means of resolving conflicts, still has a very limited vision of man. Anyone with effective revolutionary experience knows—and has to admit—that to succeed in changing a situation he must have not only a material appeal hut a higher moral appeal; he knows that the appeal to truer principles, to a superior ethic, itself becomes an element of strength: and thus his action is revolutionary also insofar as it helps create new feelings, new abilities, new culture, new instincts—a new human nature."
"Which are more numerous—those who would gain by changes, or those who think they benefit from maintaining the status quo?
There are thousands of millions of people in the world at present excluded from progress. By interpreting and expressing the profound needs of these people, by helping them to take stock of their problems, by helping them to initiate enterprises of every kind, at every level, and to press effectively for changes, we can activate a positively revolutionary force."
"Many revolutionary movements, though good at arousing con sciences and effective in protest and pressure, suffer from weakness on their constructive front. But the demolition of old systems and the building of new organic groups should be simultaneous, co ordinated activities which potentiate each other: the growth of con vincing alternatives encourages attack on the old groups, while the loss of authority of the old structures facilitates development of the new.
I refer to the dam built on the Iato river: even though this “laboratory” is only a tiny part of the world, and still in its early stages, the sequence of events there provides a useful example.
A desperate population was dominated by the Mafia, strong through its political connections: there was no prospect of change. Together with the more enlightened people, we begin to seek possible remedies. The necessity and feasibility of building a large dam to irrigate the zone are established. Educational activity at the grass roots so that people understand what a dam is. Pressure, by a few at first, then growing ever wider and more continual, until the dam is started. The workers on the dam site form a trade union: jobs are no longer got through the Mafia, which loses prestige. Local mafiosi are publicly denounced; their relationship with the two powerful politicians from the area is likewise denounced; and two politicians are dropped from the Italian Government. Construction work is speeded up. Creation of the first (though still rudimentary) centers for promotion of a democratic irrigation syndicate to ensure non-Mafia water supply. Co-operatives are formed. In the neighboring Belice valley, pressure has begun for the construction of another, bigger dam; communal and intercommunal centers for organic planning are formed, and meanwhile another center is growing up at which people will learn the techniques of planned development with active involvement of the whole population."
"—disown violence, above all in an area where thousands of persons have been murdered, 520 by the Mafia alone, since the war, and where violence is the only accepted law. We look upon violence, in all its forms, as a temptation to be resisted, as a festering evil...."
"Little by little, as We have been able to experiment for ourselves and discuss our problems with our friends, we have come to
clearer idea of our aims. They are these we must:
Work assiduously and eschew violence for a new reality based on our sacrifice in lull awareness that it it sometimes becomes necessary to struggle to achieve our aims, our methods must he without reproach, since the end cannot be disassociated from the means, and in the knowledge that our every action has its inevitable consequences;
-work in conformity with the truth, while recognizing, at the same time, how difficult it can be to know what to do for the best;
—open our hearts to the highest moral values, wherever they may lie, so that the individual may have the opportunity of choosing his right road, so that the correct lessons may be learned from the most varied experiences;
—work in accordance with a plan of education and reform, which, while taking into account the complexity of life, shall bring into locus the objectives of the various groups of society and weld them into one harmonious, all-embracing order, so that, by bringing pressure to bear from within both on the quality and structure of society, one may seek to enhance the value of all men and all things.
The more perfect the methods, the more perfect the results; but nothing is perfect that has not the creation of life as its object."
The first selection was submitted by Dolci to the War Resisters’ International Triennial Conference. The second selection deals with the work of various
study centers in Sicily.
Quotations:
"The problem of our new revolution is to find how best to eliminate exploitation, murder, the investment of energy in weapons of destruction—how to pro-yoke chain reactions not of hate and death but of new constructiveness, of new quality of life.
It is easy to doubt the efficacy of non-violent revolution while it has yet to be proved, historically and systematically, that it can change structures. But in a world tired of murder, betrayal, point less death, there can be a more direct appeal to people’s con sciences when a movement for change is both robust and non violent."
"After fuller discussion, we decided on a day’s fast by 1,000 people, to be followed by a “strike in reverse”—working on a dilapidated country road. The people joined in with scarcely any fear at all, despite massive intervention by the police—because they knew they weren’t doing anybody any harm: and within a few days they had succeeded as never before in penetrating the public conscience with their protest and their own positive proposals.
With this profound capacity for awakening consciences, non violent action is also revolutionary in that it activates other forces that are revolutionary in different ways. And everyone who wants change makes the sort of revolution he can."
"Sometimes we may admire violent revolutionary forces not be cause they are the only possible ones, or the most suitable to the circumstances, but because where they are active they are often the only ones brave enough to exist at all. But anyone who thinks war the highest form of struggle, or the means of resolving conflicts, still has a very limited vision of man. Anyone with effective revolutionary experience knows—and has to admit—that to succeed in changing a situation he must have not only a material appeal hut a higher moral appeal; he knows that the appeal to truer principles, to a superior ethic, itself becomes an element of strength: and thus his action is revolutionary also insofar as it helps create new feelings, new abilities, new culture, new instincts—a new human nature."
"Which are more numerous—those who would gain by changes, or those who think they benefit from maintaining the status quo?
There are thousands of millions of people in the world at present excluded from progress. By interpreting and expressing the profound needs of these people, by helping them to take stock of their problems, by helping them to initiate enterprises of every kind, at every level, and to press effectively for changes, we can activate a positively revolutionary force."
"Many revolutionary movements, though good at arousing con sciences and effective in protest and pressure, suffer from weakness on their constructive front. But the demolition of old systems and the building of new organic groups should be simultaneous, co ordinated activities which potentiate each other: the growth of con vincing alternatives encourages attack on the old groups, while the loss of authority of the old structures facilitates development of the new.
I refer to the dam built on the Iato river: even though this “laboratory” is only a tiny part of the world, and still in its early stages, the sequence of events there provides a useful example.
A desperate population was dominated by the Mafia, strong through its political connections: there was no prospect of change. Together with the more enlightened people, we begin to seek possible remedies. The necessity and feasibility of building a large dam to irrigate the zone are established. Educational activity at the grass roots so that people understand what a dam is. Pressure, by a few at first, then growing ever wider and more continual, until the dam is started. The workers on the dam site form a trade union: jobs are no longer got through the Mafia, which loses prestige. Local mafiosi are publicly denounced; their relationship with the two powerful politicians from the area is likewise denounced; and two politicians are dropped from the Italian Government. Construction work is speeded up. Creation of the first (though still rudimentary) centers for promotion of a democratic irrigation syndicate to ensure non-Mafia water supply. Co-operatives are formed. In the neighboring Belice valley, pressure has begun for the construction of another, bigger dam; communal and intercommunal centers for organic planning are formed, and meanwhile another center is growing up at which people will learn the techniques of planned development with active involvement of the whole population."
"—disown violence, above all in an area where thousands of persons have been murdered, 520 by the Mafia alone, since the war, and where violence is the only accepted law. We look upon violence, in all its forms, as a temptation to be resisted, as a festering evil...."
"Little by little, as We have been able to experiment for ourselves and discuss our problems with our friends, we have come to
clearer idea of our aims. They are these we must:
Work assiduously and eschew violence for a new reality based on our sacrifice in lull awareness that it it sometimes becomes necessary to struggle to achieve our aims, our methods must he without reproach, since the end cannot be disassociated from the means, and in the knowledge that our every action has its inevitable consequences;
-work in conformity with the truth, while recognizing, at the same time, how difficult it can be to know what to do for the best;
—open our hearts to the highest moral values, wherever they may lie, so that the individual may have the opportunity of choosing his right road, so that the correct lessons may be learned from the most varied experiences;
—work in accordance with a plan of education and reform, which, while taking into account the complexity of life, shall bring into locus the objectives of the various groups of society and weld them into one harmonious, all-embracing order, so that, by bringing pressure to bear from within both on the quality and structure of society, one may seek to enhance the value of all men and all things.
The more perfect the methods, the more perfect the results; but nothing is perfect that has not the creation of life as its object."
Dorothy Day
Bio: A Communist in her 20’s and a convert to Catholicism during the Depression years, Dorothy Day is the founder and major directive force of the Catholic Worker Movement, known for its hospitality houses and rural communities. She is a humble, deeply spiritual woman who has fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and sheltered the homeless. She has nourished many of the radical Catholic figures of the day, and is known for her long-time peace witness.
The first selection * is from the Fall Appeal (there is also a Spring Appeal) that she writes for The Catholic Worker to raise funds for her work at St. Joseph’s House, 36 East First Street, New York, 10003, and was dated October 1971. The second selection * enunciates principles of the Catholic Worker Movement that have been influenced by the thought and experiences of Dorothy Day.
Quotations:
"St. Augustine has some good advice about voluntary poverty which enables us all to do the works of mercy: “Find out how much God has given you, and from it take what you need; the remainder which you do not require is needed by others. The superfluities of the rich are the necessities of the poor. Those who retain what is superfluous possess the goods of others.”
To serve others, to give what we have is not enough unless we always show the utmost respect for each other and all we meet."
"And I think too that that is what our soup line means. All the young students who live with us show their respect by doing the menial jobs, cleaning toilets, scrubbing floors, washing dishes. Men from this Bowery area also help with the mailing of the 80,000 copies of The Catholic Worker each month. It is a community activity, a little “industry” in which all share in the profits, those profits meaning a place to live, food, clothing, companion ship, etc. Of course it is work which men need most. We are ever conscious of that. But we all have that; we are self-employed, with no bosses! And no wages! “From each according to his ability and to each according to his need.” Or, as St. Paul puts it, “Let your abundance supply their want.” So God bless us all, and you too, who have helped us over the years, and will again, we know."
"IN ECONOMICS—because the guiding principle is production for profit and because production determines needs. A just order would provide the necessities of life for all, and needs would deter mine what would be produced. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Today we have a non-producing class which is maintained by the labor of others with the consequence that the laborer is systematically robbed of that wealth which he produces over and above what is needed for his bare maintenance.
IN PSYCHOLOGY—because capitalist society fails to take in the whole nature of man but rather regards him as an economic factor in production. He is an item in the expense sheet of the employer. Profit determines what type of work he shall do. Hence, the deadly routine of assembly lines and the whole mode of factory production. In a just order the question will be whether a certain type of work is in accord with human values, not whether it will bring a profit to the exploiters of labor.
IN MORALS—because capitalism is maintained by class war. Since the aim of the capitalist employer is to obtain labor as cheaply as possible and the aim of labor is to sell itself as dearly as possible and buy the products produced as cheaply as possible, there is an inevitable and persistent conflict which can only be overcome when the capitalist ceases to exist as a class. When there is but one class the members perform different functions but there is no longer an employer/wage-earner relationship.
TO ACHIEVE THIS SOCIETY WE ADVOCATE:
A complete rejection of the present social order and a non violent revolution to establish an order more in accord with Christian values. This can only be done by direct action since political means have failed as a method for bringing about this society. Therefore we advocate a personalism which takes on ourselves responsibility for changing conditions to the extent that we are able to do so. By establishing Houses of Hospitality we can take care of as many of those in need as we can rather than turn them over to the impersonal “charity” of the State. We do not do this in order to patch up the wrecks of the capitalist system but rather because there is always a shared responsibility in these things and (lie call to minister to our brother transcends any consideration of economics. We feel that what anyone possesses beyond basic needs does not belong to him but rather to the poor who are without it.
We believe in a withdrawal from the capitalist system so far as each one is able to do so. Toward this end we favor the establishment of a distributist economy wherein those who have a vocation to the land will work on the farms surrounding the village itself. In this way we will have a decentralized economy which will dispense with the State as we know it and will be federationist in character as was society during certain periods that preceded the rise of national states.
We believe in worker-ownership of the means of production and distribution, as distinguished from nationalization. This is to be accomplished by decentralized co-operatives and the elimination of a distinct employer class. It is revolution from below and not (as political revolutions are) from above. It calls for widespread and universal ownership by all men of property as a stepping stone to a communism that will be in accord with the Christian teaching of detachment from material goods and which, when realized, will express itself in common ownership. “Property, the more common it is, the more holy it is,” St. Gertrude writes.
We believe in the complete equality of all men as brothers under the Fatherhood of God. Racism in any form is blasphemy against God who created all mankind in his image and who offers redemption to all. Man comes to God freely or not at all and it is not the function of any man or institution to force the Faith on anyone. Persecution of any people is therefore a serious sin and denial of free will.
We believe further that the revolution that is to be pursued in ourselves and in society must be pacifist. Otherwise it will proceed by force and use means that are evil and which will never be out grown, so that they will determine the END of the revolution and that end will again be tyranny. We believe that Christ went beyond natural ethics and the Old Dispensation in this matter of force and war and taught non-violence as a way of life. So that when we fight tyranny and injustice and the class war we must do so by spiritual weapons and by non—cooperation. Refusal to pay taxes, refusal to register for conscription refusal to lake part in civil—defense drills, non-violent strikes, withdrawal from the system are all methods that can be employed in this fight for justice.
We believe that success, as the world determines it, is not the criterion by which a movement should be judged. We must be prepared and ready to face seeming failure. The most important thing is that we adhere to these values which transcend time and for which we will be asked a personal accounting, not as to whether they succeeded (though we should hope that they do) but as to whether we remained true to them even though the whole world go otherwise."
The first selection * is from the Fall Appeal (there is also a Spring Appeal) that she writes for The Catholic Worker to raise funds for her work at St. Joseph’s House, 36 East First Street, New York, 10003, and was dated October 1971. The second selection * enunciates principles of the Catholic Worker Movement that have been influenced by the thought and experiences of Dorothy Day.
Quotations:
"St. Augustine has some good advice about voluntary poverty which enables us all to do the works of mercy: “Find out how much God has given you, and from it take what you need; the remainder which you do not require is needed by others. The superfluities of the rich are the necessities of the poor. Those who retain what is superfluous possess the goods of others.”
To serve others, to give what we have is not enough unless we always show the utmost respect for each other and all we meet."
"And I think too that that is what our soup line means. All the young students who live with us show their respect by doing the menial jobs, cleaning toilets, scrubbing floors, washing dishes. Men from this Bowery area also help with the mailing of the 80,000 copies of The Catholic Worker each month. It is a community activity, a little “industry” in which all share in the profits, those profits meaning a place to live, food, clothing, companion ship, etc. Of course it is work which men need most. We are ever conscious of that. But we all have that; we are self-employed, with no bosses! And no wages! “From each according to his ability and to each according to his need.” Or, as St. Paul puts it, “Let your abundance supply their want.” So God bless us all, and you too, who have helped us over the years, and will again, we know."
"IN ECONOMICS—because the guiding principle is production for profit and because production determines needs. A just order would provide the necessities of life for all, and needs would deter mine what would be produced. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Today we have a non-producing class which is maintained by the labor of others with the consequence that the laborer is systematically robbed of that wealth which he produces over and above what is needed for his bare maintenance.
IN PSYCHOLOGY—because capitalist society fails to take in the whole nature of man but rather regards him as an economic factor in production. He is an item in the expense sheet of the employer. Profit determines what type of work he shall do. Hence, the deadly routine of assembly lines and the whole mode of factory production. In a just order the question will be whether a certain type of work is in accord with human values, not whether it will bring a profit to the exploiters of labor.
IN MORALS—because capitalism is maintained by class war. Since the aim of the capitalist employer is to obtain labor as cheaply as possible and the aim of labor is to sell itself as dearly as possible and buy the products produced as cheaply as possible, there is an inevitable and persistent conflict which can only be overcome when the capitalist ceases to exist as a class. When there is but one class the members perform different functions but there is no longer an employer/wage-earner relationship.
TO ACHIEVE THIS SOCIETY WE ADVOCATE:
A complete rejection of the present social order and a non violent revolution to establish an order more in accord with Christian values. This can only be done by direct action since political means have failed as a method for bringing about this society. Therefore we advocate a personalism which takes on ourselves responsibility for changing conditions to the extent that we are able to do so. By establishing Houses of Hospitality we can take care of as many of those in need as we can rather than turn them over to the impersonal “charity” of the State. We do not do this in order to patch up the wrecks of the capitalist system but rather because there is always a shared responsibility in these things and (lie call to minister to our brother transcends any consideration of economics. We feel that what anyone possesses beyond basic needs does not belong to him but rather to the poor who are without it.
We believe in a withdrawal from the capitalist system so far as each one is able to do so. Toward this end we favor the establishment of a distributist economy wherein those who have a vocation to the land will work on the farms surrounding the village itself. In this way we will have a decentralized economy which will dispense with the State as we know it and will be federationist in character as was society during certain periods that preceded the rise of national states.
We believe in worker-ownership of the means of production and distribution, as distinguished from nationalization. This is to be accomplished by decentralized co-operatives and the elimination of a distinct employer class. It is revolution from below and not (as political revolutions are) from above. It calls for widespread and universal ownership by all men of property as a stepping stone to a communism that will be in accord with the Christian teaching of detachment from material goods and which, when realized, will express itself in common ownership. “Property, the more common it is, the more holy it is,” St. Gertrude writes.
We believe in the complete equality of all men as brothers under the Fatherhood of God. Racism in any form is blasphemy against God who created all mankind in his image and who offers redemption to all. Man comes to God freely or not at all and it is not the function of any man or institution to force the Faith on anyone. Persecution of any people is therefore a serious sin and denial of free will.
We believe further that the revolution that is to be pursued in ourselves and in society must be pacifist. Otherwise it will proceed by force and use means that are evil and which will never be out grown, so that they will determine the END of the revolution and that end will again be tyranny. We believe that Christ went beyond natural ethics and the Old Dispensation in this matter of force and war and taught non-violence as a way of life. So that when we fight tyranny and injustice and the class war we must do so by spiritual weapons and by non—cooperation. Refusal to pay taxes, refusal to register for conscription refusal to lake part in civil—defense drills, non-violent strikes, withdrawal from the system are all methods that can be employed in this fight for justice.
We believe that success, as the world determines it, is not the criterion by which a movement should be judged. We must be prepared and ready to face seeming failure. The most important thing is that we adhere to these values which transcend time and for which we will be asked a personal accounting, not as to whether they succeeded (though we should hope that they do) but as to whether we remained true to them even though the whole world go otherwise."
Not the Smallest Grain of Incense, Tom Cornell
Bio: Tom Cornell, head of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, and an associate editor of The Catholic Worker, has been active in all forms of peace education and activism. This selection * is a statement made before sentencing at his trial in November, 1966 for destruction of his draft card. On May 27, 1968, the Supreme Court ruled 7-1 to uphold the 1965 law which makes it a crime to burn or otherwise destroy a draft card; Tom Cornell began to serve his sentence in June
1968.
Quotations:
"The Justice Department took it all with unaccustomed gravity. The gods had been mocked, and that could not be ignored.
It is characteristic of states to gather power unto themselves. With the accumulation of power they quickly forget the source and the purpose of that power. They tend to take on divine prerogatives. God alone has dominion over human life. Yet the state usurps that dominion by exacting capital punishment and by prosecuting war, always, mind you, in self-defense.
Throughout the Old Testament there is the recurring theme of idolatry. The early Christians were well aware of it too. Less so today. I submit, Your Honor, that the state today, the Government of the United States of America, is just as much a pagan god as Caesar was in imperial Rome, and that our society is just as guilty of idolatry as the worshipers at Caesar’s pagan altars. This new Moloch demands the bodies of our young men in its service, the service of death rather than the service of life, and little by little it exacts the souls of all of us as well, so that in the name of anti-communism and anti-totalitarianism, we are moving toward universal conscription. As part of this process, the Congress took a small piece of paper, of no significant value to anyone but a bar tender, and said over it, “Hoc est enim Corpus Meum.” The sacrament of the state then had to be honored. So the act of burning the draft cards was for me an act of purposeful desecration and an act of purification. Let not any state have such trappings, or arrogate to itself such prerogatives. It is blasphemy! I suspect that the great public interest that was generated by this symbolic act came from a dim awareness in the public mind that a blasphemous profanation had been made of the state religion. How else explain it, that burning an insignificant piece of paper is a crime, but that burning children in napalm is sacred duty?"
1968.
Quotations:
"The Justice Department took it all with unaccustomed gravity. The gods had been mocked, and that could not be ignored.
It is characteristic of states to gather power unto themselves. With the accumulation of power they quickly forget the source and the purpose of that power. They tend to take on divine prerogatives. God alone has dominion over human life. Yet the state usurps that dominion by exacting capital punishment and by prosecuting war, always, mind you, in self-defense.
Throughout the Old Testament there is the recurring theme of idolatry. The early Christians were well aware of it too. Less so today. I submit, Your Honor, that the state today, the Government of the United States of America, is just as much a pagan god as Caesar was in imperial Rome, and that our society is just as guilty of idolatry as the worshipers at Caesar’s pagan altars. This new Moloch demands the bodies of our young men in its service, the service of death rather than the service of life, and little by little it exacts the souls of all of us as well, so that in the name of anti-communism and anti-totalitarianism, we are moving toward universal conscription. As part of this process, the Congress took a small piece of paper, of no significant value to anyone but a bar tender, and said over it, “Hoc est enim Corpus Meum.” The sacrament of the state then had to be honored. So the act of burning the draft cards was for me an act of purposeful desecration and an act of purification. Let not any state have such trappings, or arrogate to itself such prerogatives. It is blasphemy! I suspect that the great public interest that was generated by this symbolic act came from a dim awareness in the public mind that a blasphemous profanation had been made of the state religion. How else explain it, that burning an insignificant piece of paper is a crime, but that burning children in napalm is sacred duty?"
Militant Non-Violence, William Sloane Coffin
Bio: Rev. William Sloane Coffin is a chaplain at Yale University, and one of the first men in the nation to challenge this country’s policy in Vietnam from a moral perspective. The following selection well illustrates this view.
Quotations:
"What we need to recognize is Gandhi’s truth that exploitation is the essence of violence, that violence in its cruelest form is not blue collar or no collar, but white collar; not individual and messy, but organized and efficient, antiseptic and profitable. The violent ones are less the mugging drug addicts that inhabit slum tenements than the modern-day Ahabs who occupy pentagonal palaces, skyscrapers like the Ling Tower, the house that: weapons built, and who never see blood unless their secretaries have a nosebleed.
To see how violent a world we live in, we have only to engage in an exercise of imagination: There are now three billion people on this planet. Reduce these peoples proportionately to a town of 1,000 and 60 will be Americans, 940 the rest of the world’s population. The 60 Americans will control half the total income of the town. The 60 Americans will enjoy on an average fifteen times as much of all material goods as the rest of the citizens. The 60 Americans will enjoy a life expectancy of 71 years while the 940 on an average will die before they are 40.
Now we can see how ridiculous it is to define violence in physical terms alone. For a man killed by a bullet is no less dead than a man who has died from a disease resulting from eradicable poverty. When you stop to think of it, poverty is no longer inevitable; there fore it is intolerable. It is no more a private tragedy; it is now a public crime.
But there are other forms of violence and death, the kinds suffered by the 60 Americans. American production is now power fully oriented toward consumption. And as consumption seems almost limitless, so too appears production. But to produce something, something else has to be destroyed, and the evidence of destruction is all about us. “Modern production,” write two commentators, “has obscured the sun and the stars, and it has made the cities unlivable. It chews up great forests and drinks whole lakes and rivers, and it consumes men’s religions and traditions and makes nonsense of their notions of the aims of education. It periodically slays heaps of men in war, and it daily mangles the spirits of millions of others in meaningless labor.”
Oh for a President who could repeat, in place of clichés whose application has long since ceased, these words of the poet-king so eerie in their timeliness:
The bay trees in our country are all wither’d
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-f ac’d moon looks bloody on the earth
And lean-look’d prophets whisper fearful change.
But what is to he done-non-violently? One obvious thing is to speak Elijah's truth that we dwell in a land of idol worshipers. Like Willy Loman we have the wrong dreams. The wrongness comes through most poignantly when talking with blue-collar Workers who, unlike blacks today amid unlike whites during the Depression are not excluded from the American pie; they are part of time American dream. Only what kind of a dream is it to return from spirit-mangling work to payments on the car, a mortgage on lime house, stultifying TV programs, an over-heated teen-age daughter amid a D-in-English car-smashing son? But who, particularly in the Church has had the candor and courage to tell them of their wrong dreams, to tell them that the wonders of man do not consist in consumer goods, to tell them that their wretchedness is interior and therefore that it is wrong to seek to scapegoat long haired students, liberal professors, the Vietcong, the UN?
In its most dangerous form, idol worshiping is reflected in the government and we need not bother with the obvious examples today."
"But what impresses me is that if High Noon encounters with nuclear weapons represent manliness, then we simply have to reinvent manhood.
And this, I think, is what non-violence is really all about: a new kind, or perhaps a New Testament kind, of manhood, patterned alter the person of Jesus.
I have only begun to think about this new kind of manhood, but this much at least seems clear. If the aim of non-violence is reconciliation and healing, both for the individual and society, then the emphasis must be not on being right but on being loyal to a truth that is good for all. It is not we who must prevail but a truth that is as true for our adversaries as it is for us. Clearly this demands an openness to, a willingness to learn from, our adversaries. (Actually a refusal to learn from another always reflects doubts about one’s own position.) In short, the fight is for everyone. Every confrontation should offer opportunities, as Gandhi would say, “for all to rise above their present conditions.” And this means we should avoid words or acts which inhibit the awakening of a decent response and only confirm us in our self-righteousness and self-pity."
"For until the adversary in power knows that non-violent men are willing to suffer for their beliefs, he will not be truly willing to listen to them, knowing he can count on their ultimate acquiescence to his power if not to his opinion. Of this we have had endless examples in recent years.
Somehow we have to combine a quality of openness with a quality of determination. We have to fight racial and class enemies, yet never as personal enemies. We have to become twice as militant and twice as non-violent, twice as tough and twice as tender, as only the truly strong can be tender.
That is why a Communion service is so meaningful to me. “After the same manner he took the cup, after he had supped, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood.’” That’s what we need—a new covenant with God and with Christ for a new kind of manhood. To this new covenant we must devote a great deal of thought. Perhaps we should inscribe on the exit doors of the church these words of Daedalus: “I go forth . . . to forge in the smith of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
Quotations:
"What we need to recognize is Gandhi’s truth that exploitation is the essence of violence, that violence in its cruelest form is not blue collar or no collar, but white collar; not individual and messy, but organized and efficient, antiseptic and profitable. The violent ones are less the mugging drug addicts that inhabit slum tenements than the modern-day Ahabs who occupy pentagonal palaces, skyscrapers like the Ling Tower, the house that: weapons built, and who never see blood unless their secretaries have a nosebleed.
To see how violent a world we live in, we have only to engage in an exercise of imagination: There are now three billion people on this planet. Reduce these peoples proportionately to a town of 1,000 and 60 will be Americans, 940 the rest of the world’s population. The 60 Americans will control half the total income of the town. The 60 Americans will enjoy on an average fifteen times as much of all material goods as the rest of the citizens. The 60 Americans will enjoy a life expectancy of 71 years while the 940 on an average will die before they are 40.
Now we can see how ridiculous it is to define violence in physical terms alone. For a man killed by a bullet is no less dead than a man who has died from a disease resulting from eradicable poverty. When you stop to think of it, poverty is no longer inevitable; there fore it is intolerable. It is no more a private tragedy; it is now a public crime.
But there are other forms of violence and death, the kinds suffered by the 60 Americans. American production is now power fully oriented toward consumption. And as consumption seems almost limitless, so too appears production. But to produce something, something else has to be destroyed, and the evidence of destruction is all about us. “Modern production,” write two commentators, “has obscured the sun and the stars, and it has made the cities unlivable. It chews up great forests and drinks whole lakes and rivers, and it consumes men’s religions and traditions and makes nonsense of their notions of the aims of education. It periodically slays heaps of men in war, and it daily mangles the spirits of millions of others in meaningless labor.”
Oh for a President who could repeat, in place of clichés whose application has long since ceased, these words of the poet-king so eerie in their timeliness:
The bay trees in our country are all wither’d
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-f ac’d moon looks bloody on the earth
And lean-look’d prophets whisper fearful change.
But what is to he done-non-violently? One obvious thing is to speak Elijah's truth that we dwell in a land of idol worshipers. Like Willy Loman we have the wrong dreams. The wrongness comes through most poignantly when talking with blue-collar Workers who, unlike blacks today amid unlike whites during the Depression are not excluded from the American pie; they are part of time American dream. Only what kind of a dream is it to return from spirit-mangling work to payments on the car, a mortgage on lime house, stultifying TV programs, an over-heated teen-age daughter amid a D-in-English car-smashing son? But who, particularly in the Church has had the candor and courage to tell them of their wrong dreams, to tell them that the wonders of man do not consist in consumer goods, to tell them that their wretchedness is interior and therefore that it is wrong to seek to scapegoat long haired students, liberal professors, the Vietcong, the UN?
In its most dangerous form, idol worshiping is reflected in the government and we need not bother with the obvious examples today."
"But what impresses me is that if High Noon encounters with nuclear weapons represent manliness, then we simply have to reinvent manhood.
And this, I think, is what non-violence is really all about: a new kind, or perhaps a New Testament kind, of manhood, patterned alter the person of Jesus.
I have only begun to think about this new kind of manhood, but this much at least seems clear. If the aim of non-violence is reconciliation and healing, both for the individual and society, then the emphasis must be not on being right but on being loyal to a truth that is good for all. It is not we who must prevail but a truth that is as true for our adversaries as it is for us. Clearly this demands an openness to, a willingness to learn from, our adversaries. (Actually a refusal to learn from another always reflects doubts about one’s own position.) In short, the fight is for everyone. Every confrontation should offer opportunities, as Gandhi would say, “for all to rise above their present conditions.” And this means we should avoid words or acts which inhibit the awakening of a decent response and only confirm us in our self-righteousness and self-pity."
"For until the adversary in power knows that non-violent men are willing to suffer for their beliefs, he will not be truly willing to listen to them, knowing he can count on their ultimate acquiescence to his power if not to his opinion. Of this we have had endless examples in recent years.
Somehow we have to combine a quality of openness with a quality of determination. We have to fight racial and class enemies, yet never as personal enemies. We have to become twice as militant and twice as non-violent, twice as tough and twice as tender, as only the truly strong can be tender.
That is why a Communion service is so meaningful to me. “After the same manner he took the cup, after he had supped, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood.’” That’s what we need—a new covenant with God and with Christ for a new kind of manhood. To this new covenant we must devote a great deal of thought. Perhaps we should inscribe on the exit doors of the church these words of Daedalus: “I go forth . . . to forge in the smith of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
Cesar Chavez
Bio: Dynamic, charismatic, deeply committed and deeply religious, Cesar Chavez is the leader of an unprecedented strike among migrant workers in California. Chavez is not a philosopher; he is an activist. It is through these actions that one can see a non-violence that is deeply rooted in his faith.
The first selection discusses the need for creativity in using non-violence as a method for social change. The second selection is the text of a statement that was made by Chavez at the completion of his twenty-five-day penitential fast in Delano, California, March
10, 1968.
Quotations:
"When people are involved in something constructive, trying to bring about change, they tend to be less violent than those who are not engaged in rebuilding or in anything creative. Non-violence forces one to be creative; it forces any leader to go to the people and get them involved so that they can come forth with new ideas. I think that once people understand the strength of non-violence— the force it generates, the love it creates, the response that it brings from the total community—they will not be willing to abandon it easily."
"I undertook this fast because my heart filled with grief and pain for the suffering of farm workers. The fast was first of all for me, and then for all of us in the union. It was a fast for non-violence and a call to sacrifice.
Our struggle is not easy. Those who oppose our cause are high and powerful and they have many allies in high places. We are poor, and our allies are few—but we have something the rich do not own. We have our own bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our weapon.
When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life.
I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness, is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non-violent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for others.
God help us to be men."
The first selection discusses the need for creativity in using non-violence as a method for social change. The second selection is the text of a statement that was made by Chavez at the completion of his twenty-five-day penitential fast in Delano, California, March
10, 1968.
Quotations:
"When people are involved in something constructive, trying to bring about change, they tend to be less violent than those who are not engaged in rebuilding or in anything creative. Non-violence forces one to be creative; it forces any leader to go to the people and get them involved so that they can come forth with new ideas. I think that once people understand the strength of non-violence— the force it generates, the love it creates, the response that it brings from the total community—they will not be willing to abandon it easily."
"I undertook this fast because my heart filled with grief and pain for the suffering of farm workers. The fast was first of all for me, and then for all of us in the union. It was a fast for non-violence and a call to sacrifice.
Our struggle is not easy. Those who oppose our cause are high and powerful and they have many allies in high places. We are poor, and our allies are few—but we have something the rich do not own. We have our own bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our weapon.
When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life.
I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness, is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non-violent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for others.
God help us to be men."
Fetters of Injustice, Dom Helder Camara
Bio: Dom Helder Camara, the Archbishop of Recife, Brazil, is one of the most respected spokesmen for non-violent revolution in the world today. His refusal to allow violence as a means for social change is most convincing, since his experience has been with the oppressed of the Third World. The following selection * is the text of a talk delivered in Geneva in January 1970 to the World Council of Church’s Consultation on Ecumenical Assistance for Development Projects.
Quotations:
"You have the joy of being men of faith, Christians. It is therefore important that I tell you that this message of mine is the outcome of prayer and personal intercession. Just because it sums up a great deal of my own experience as a shepherd in the Church in the northeast of Brazil (one of the most discussed and most traumatized places in the world), I asked Christ not to let me transmit a view which is too impassioned and too personal.
There are far more than two or three of us gathered here in his name; the master is therefore here in our midst. In every thought and word I shall bear in mind that he is present with us, listening to us, and that he will judge the statements that we make and the proposals that we submit.
I thank our Father for this atmosphere of faith, which enables me to speak to you as if I were standing before the supreme judge and rendering account to him of my thoughts, words, actions and omissions, when speaking to you about “development projects and concern for structural changes.
The present situation of mankind may be described briefly and objectively as follows: a sad reality, with marvelous prospects, yet the possibility (even the probability) of a tragic conclusion.
It is a sad fact that, according to the statement of the Beirut Conference (1968), 80% of the world’s resources are at the disposal of 20% of the world’s inhabitants: “While one segment of humanity is rich and growing richer, the rest will struggle in varying degrees of poverty and have little certainty of breaking out of their stagnation in the next decades.”
The prospects are marvelous because, as we all know, for the first time in history, man is in a position to fulfill the command of the creator to dominate nature and to complete his work of creation. For the first time the technological resources available could enable us “to promote the good of every man and of the whole man.”
The conclusion may be (and probably will be) tragic, owing to the blindness of the privileged 20% of mankind, who think it “normal” to spend 150 billion dollars per annum on armaments, but can hardly scrape together 10 billion for economic and social cooperation (to quote again from the Beirut Report).
Our responsibility as Christians makes us tremble. The northern hemisphere, the developed area of the world, the 20% who possess 80% of the world’s resources, are of Christian origin. What impression can our African and Asian brethren and the masses in Latin America have of Christianity, if the tree is to be judged by its fruits? For we Christians are largely responsibile for the unjust world in which we live.
Christianity is invoked in order to lead a sort of crusade against Communism. Christianity is invoked in order to combat the wave of hatred, deep-rooted resentment and terror which is rising every where. But what do the 20% who let 80% stagnate in a situation which is often sub-human—what right have they to allege that Communism crushes the human person? The 20% who are keeping 80% in a situation which is often sub-human—are they or are they not responsible for the violence and hatred which are beginning to break out all over the world?
During the course of centuries the injustices have become more and more firmly entrenched, and have perpetuated themselves to such an extent that we have come to accept them as the “social order” which should he defended and safeguarded. While all this was going on, we Christians have detached ourselves from the problems of this world to such an extent that we have made it easier for injustice to take root."
"What social order are people talking about? The one that we see today, that consists in leaving millions of God’s children in miserable poverty, should rather be called social disorder, systematized injustice. Private ownership? Is it not evident to everyone that on this point we Christians have abandoned the Fathers of the Church, and that we have ended by attributing divine right to private ownership, whereas God’s law says that the wealth of the world should be shared by all, and should never form odious, oppressive monopolies?"
"You have certainly observed what follies and cruelties are committed on the pretext of preventing subversion and combatting Communism.
The first consequence is that existing structures are maintained — structures in which centuries of violence are entrenched, for they protect the privileges of a minority at the expense of the poverty of millions. Totalitarian methods are adopted; informers are encouraged everyone suspects everyone else; liberty is completely suspended including freedom of speech. The atmosphere is one of complete insecurity, arbitrary imprisonment; moral and physical torture ate employed in order to extort confessions."
"It is inconvenient for the rich countries to work out effective changes in the socio-economic, political or cultural structures of the poor countries, for the very simple reason that the latter would then no longer need to provide the raw materials essential for the administration and expansion of the developing economies.
We should not delude ourselves: a change in structure in the underdeveloped countries is not possible without a change in structure in the developed countries. The expression must be taken literally. I do not mean merely a change in mentality with regard to the poor countries. I mean a profound change in international commercial policy. How much longer are we going to permit inter national trusts to make small groups of men fabulously wealthy, while they keep millions of others in slavery? I do not want to be told that modern corporations are becoming democratic because millions and millions of ordinary people are becoming shareholders and thus have control over the concern. Shareholders, yes, in the sense that they hold a few meager shares, but without any say in the management of the corporation, which is carried out anonymously, impassively and coldly by a group of people who do not mind coming face to face with those they have crushed."
"Therefore, let us render this service in the cause of peace: without measuring the sacrifices, try to prove that truth, love and faith, with the divine blessing, are capable of moving and breaking down the walls of Jericho."
Quotations:
"You have the joy of being men of faith, Christians. It is therefore important that I tell you that this message of mine is the outcome of prayer and personal intercession. Just because it sums up a great deal of my own experience as a shepherd in the Church in the northeast of Brazil (one of the most discussed and most traumatized places in the world), I asked Christ not to let me transmit a view which is too impassioned and too personal.
There are far more than two or three of us gathered here in his name; the master is therefore here in our midst. In every thought and word I shall bear in mind that he is present with us, listening to us, and that he will judge the statements that we make and the proposals that we submit.
I thank our Father for this atmosphere of faith, which enables me to speak to you as if I were standing before the supreme judge and rendering account to him of my thoughts, words, actions and omissions, when speaking to you about “development projects and concern for structural changes.
The present situation of mankind may be described briefly and objectively as follows: a sad reality, with marvelous prospects, yet the possibility (even the probability) of a tragic conclusion.
It is a sad fact that, according to the statement of the Beirut Conference (1968), 80% of the world’s resources are at the disposal of 20% of the world’s inhabitants: “While one segment of humanity is rich and growing richer, the rest will struggle in varying degrees of poverty and have little certainty of breaking out of their stagnation in the next decades.”
The prospects are marvelous because, as we all know, for the first time in history, man is in a position to fulfill the command of the creator to dominate nature and to complete his work of creation. For the first time the technological resources available could enable us “to promote the good of every man and of the whole man.”
The conclusion may be (and probably will be) tragic, owing to the blindness of the privileged 20% of mankind, who think it “normal” to spend 150 billion dollars per annum on armaments, but can hardly scrape together 10 billion for economic and social cooperation (to quote again from the Beirut Report).
Our responsibility as Christians makes us tremble. The northern hemisphere, the developed area of the world, the 20% who possess 80% of the world’s resources, are of Christian origin. What impression can our African and Asian brethren and the masses in Latin America have of Christianity, if the tree is to be judged by its fruits? For we Christians are largely responsibile for the unjust world in which we live.
Christianity is invoked in order to lead a sort of crusade against Communism. Christianity is invoked in order to combat the wave of hatred, deep-rooted resentment and terror which is rising every where. But what do the 20% who let 80% stagnate in a situation which is often sub-human—what right have they to allege that Communism crushes the human person? The 20% who are keeping 80% in a situation which is often sub-human—are they or are they not responsible for the violence and hatred which are beginning to break out all over the world?
During the course of centuries the injustices have become more and more firmly entrenched, and have perpetuated themselves to such an extent that we have come to accept them as the “social order” which should he defended and safeguarded. While all this was going on, we Christians have detached ourselves from the problems of this world to such an extent that we have made it easier for injustice to take root."
"What social order are people talking about? The one that we see today, that consists in leaving millions of God’s children in miserable poverty, should rather be called social disorder, systematized injustice. Private ownership? Is it not evident to everyone that on this point we Christians have abandoned the Fathers of the Church, and that we have ended by attributing divine right to private ownership, whereas God’s law says that the wealth of the world should be shared by all, and should never form odious, oppressive monopolies?"
"You have certainly observed what follies and cruelties are committed on the pretext of preventing subversion and combatting Communism.
The first consequence is that existing structures are maintained — structures in which centuries of violence are entrenched, for they protect the privileges of a minority at the expense of the poverty of millions. Totalitarian methods are adopted; informers are encouraged everyone suspects everyone else; liberty is completely suspended including freedom of speech. The atmosphere is one of complete insecurity, arbitrary imprisonment; moral and physical torture ate employed in order to extort confessions."
"It is inconvenient for the rich countries to work out effective changes in the socio-economic, political or cultural structures of the poor countries, for the very simple reason that the latter would then no longer need to provide the raw materials essential for the administration and expansion of the developing economies.
We should not delude ourselves: a change in structure in the underdeveloped countries is not possible without a change in structure in the developed countries. The expression must be taken literally. I do not mean merely a change in mentality with regard to the poor countries. I mean a profound change in international commercial policy. How much longer are we going to permit inter national trusts to make small groups of men fabulously wealthy, while they keep millions of others in slavery? I do not want to be told that modern corporations are becoming democratic because millions and millions of ordinary people are becoming shareholders and thus have control over the concern. Shareholders, yes, in the sense that they hold a few meager shares, but without any say in the management of the corporation, which is carried out anonymously, impassively and coldly by a group of people who do not mind coming face to face with those they have crushed."
"Therefore, let us render this service in the cause of peace: without measuring the sacrifices, try to prove that truth, love and faith, with the divine blessing, are capable of moving and breaking down the walls of Jericho."
Stations on the Road to Freedom, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Bio: Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the Lutheran pastor executed by Hitler for his resistance activities. A deeply religious, committed man, Bonhoeffer’s writings remain a challenge and inspiration to a new generation of committed men and women. This excerpt is from Letters and Papers from Prison, a collection of his works.
Quotations:
"Discipline
If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all things to govern your soul and your senses, for fear that your passions and longing may lead you away from the path you should follow. Chaste be your mind and your body, and both in subjection, obediently, steadfastly seeking the aim set before them; only through discipline may a man learn to be free.
Action
Daring to do what is right, not what fancy may tell you, valiantly grasping occasions, not cravenly doubting— freedom comes only through deeds, not through thoughts taking wing.
Faint not nor fear, but go out to the storm and the action, trusting in God whose commandment you faithfully follow; freedom, exultant, will welcome your spirit with joy.
Suffering
A change has come indeed. Your hands, so strong and active, are bound; in helplessness now you see your action
is ended; you sigh in relief, your cause committing to stronger hands; so now you may rest contented.
Only for one blissful moment could you draw near to touch freedom;
then, that it might be perfected in glory, you gave it to God.
Death
Come now, thou greatest of feasts on the journey to freedom eternal;
death, cast aside all the burdensome chains, and demolish
the walls of our temporal body, the walls of our souls that are blinded,
so that at last we may see that which here remains hidden.
Freedom, how long we have sought thee in discipline, action, and suffering;
dying, we now may behold thee revealed in the Lord."
Quotations:
"Discipline
If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all things to govern your soul and your senses, for fear that your passions and longing may lead you away from the path you should follow. Chaste be your mind and your body, and both in subjection, obediently, steadfastly seeking the aim set before them; only through discipline may a man learn to be free.
Action
Daring to do what is right, not what fancy may tell you, valiantly grasping occasions, not cravenly doubting— freedom comes only through deeds, not through thoughts taking wing.
Faint not nor fear, but go out to the storm and the action, trusting in God whose commandment you faithfully follow; freedom, exultant, will welcome your spirit with joy.
Suffering
A change has come indeed. Your hands, so strong and active, are bound; in helplessness now you see your action
is ended; you sigh in relief, your cause committing to stronger hands; so now you may rest contented.
Only for one blissful moment could you draw near to touch freedom;
then, that it might be perfected in glory, you gave it to God.
Death
Come now, thou greatest of feasts on the journey to freedom eternal;
death, cast aside all the burdensome chains, and demolish
the walls of our temporal body, the walls of our souls that are blinded,
so that at last we may see that which here remains hidden.
Freedom, how long we have sought thee in discipline, action, and suffering;
dying, we now may behold thee revealed in the Lord."
Christ's Teachings, Vinoba Bhave
Bio: Vinoba Bhave was one of Gandhi’s closest and most trusted disciples. One of the most respected practitioners of non-violence in the world today, he has spent the last twenty years walking through India, begging land for the peasants of that country, and directing the land development movement. The selection here * is a translation of an article by Bhave in the journal Bhumiputra.
Quotations:
"Jesus Christ’s teaching can be summed up in three of his sayings: 1. Love thy neighbor as thyself. 2. Love thy enemy. 3. Love one another as I have loved you.
If Jesus had merely said: “Love thy neighbor,” that would have been axiomatic. If you love your neighbor, he will also love you, and if you abuse him, he too will do the same. So, to love him is in your self-interest. But Jesus added the words “as thyself.” This is deep thinking, and requires great effort to practice. How much love do we lavish on ourselves, how much affection on our bodies! Lavish the same on your neighbor. So said Jesus."
"One who serves God and acts according to his teaching truly worships.
Jesus therefore urged “Love thy enemy,” He did not say: Love thy enemy if he loves you. That way I lose initiative to others. This limits my effectiveness. When I say I hold the initiative in the process of love, my behavior is governed by love for everyone, no matter what others do to me. Then we can conquer the world with love. Gautama Buddha said this. “Hatred is not calmed by hatred. Conquer anger with love.”
Gandhi’s “satyagraha” (insistence on truth) was, I believe, a practical application of this principle."
"Jesus gave his third teaching to his followers toward the end. There would have been nothing new if he had merely said: “Love one another.” Most religious sects say this. But Jesus added “as I have loved you,” meaning, “Just as I gave my all for you, you do the same for your colleagues. Dedicate yourselves to this task.” This was his last message."
"The atomic weapons have sounded a clarion call to man to unite, or they will wipe him out.
I believe in Jesus Christ, but do not believe in circumscribing him within strictly sectarian or theological walls. To me Jesus was something far beyond any individual phenomenon. [Jesus] was Love and Compassion incarnate. We can carry his message to the people by serving them with love, mercy and compassion in our hearts. That message will spread despite you and me, because it is the innermost cry of the human heart."
"To unite hearts is therefore the most important task before us today."
Quotations:
"Jesus Christ’s teaching can be summed up in three of his sayings: 1. Love thy neighbor as thyself. 2. Love thy enemy. 3. Love one another as I have loved you.
If Jesus had merely said: “Love thy neighbor,” that would have been axiomatic. If you love your neighbor, he will also love you, and if you abuse him, he too will do the same. So, to love him is in your self-interest. But Jesus added the words “as thyself.” This is deep thinking, and requires great effort to practice. How much love do we lavish on ourselves, how much affection on our bodies! Lavish the same on your neighbor. So said Jesus."
"One who serves God and acts according to his teaching truly worships.
Jesus therefore urged “Love thy enemy,” He did not say: Love thy enemy if he loves you. That way I lose initiative to others. This limits my effectiveness. When I say I hold the initiative in the process of love, my behavior is governed by love for everyone, no matter what others do to me. Then we can conquer the world with love. Gautama Buddha said this. “Hatred is not calmed by hatred. Conquer anger with love.”
Gandhi’s “satyagraha” (insistence on truth) was, I believe, a practical application of this principle."
"Jesus gave his third teaching to his followers toward the end. There would have been nothing new if he had merely said: “Love one another.” Most religious sects say this. But Jesus added “as I have loved you,” meaning, “Just as I gave my all for you, you do the same for your colleagues. Dedicate yourselves to this task.” This was his last message."
"The atomic weapons have sounded a clarion call to man to unite, or they will wipe him out.
I believe in Jesus Christ, but do not believe in circumscribing him within strictly sectarian or theological walls. To me Jesus was something far beyond any individual phenomenon. [Jesus] was Love and Compassion incarnate. We can carry his message to the people by serving them with love, mercy and compassion in our hearts. That message will spread despite you and me, because it is the innermost cry of the human heart."
"To unite hearts is therefore the most important task before us today."
An Open Letter to a Bishop, Philip Berrigan
Bio: Father Philip Berrigan was the first priest in the United States to be imprisoned for his religious-political activity. Prior to his involvement with anti war activities he spent many years working with blacks in the Baltimore ghetto. it was this experience that led him to an understanding of the repressive nature of our society’s institutes and to a strong op position to the Vietnam war. He and eight others were indicted in 1971 on conspiracy charges, the original indictment vocalized by the late F.B.I. Di rector, J. Edgar Hoover—in a charge which was re jected by the jury in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
This is an open letter to Bishop William Baum, who was recently called by the Pope to Rome to take part in the Bishops’ Synod. Bishop Baum had asked for some reflections on priesthood, world justice and peace, which Father Berrigan answers in this letter.
Quotations:
"Despite the fact that we come from different frames of reference, and that the Berrigan view of the Gospel (Dan’s and mine) is radically different from the hierarchy’s, we will not admit that our own responsibilities differ from yours."
"We constitute the Church in chains—advocates of resistance to naked power, disproportionate wealth, racism, war-making. We want to express our fidelity to the Church and to the Chair of Peter, even as we sorrow over Christian myopia, hardness of heart and even cowardice."
"The Church in America—in fact, in the West as a whole—has accepted as religion a kind of cultural syncretism, culminating in near-perfect allegiance to the State. Not a few of its more prominent Bishops have even waited upon the Presidency like court jesters. And now the culture is being violently challenged, and the State doesn’t so much govern as rule by force. To whom do we turn?
A case in point is the Catholic response to the Indochinese war. It is a classic case of burning incense to Caesar. After twenty-two years’ involvement in Indochina (President Truman committed American support to the French in 1949); after millions of Indochinese deaths (6 to 8 might be a conservative estimate); after as many as 100,000 American dead (Pentagon figures are probably half the total); after war expenditures of 300 billion; after documented ecocide and genocide; after all this, thirty-two American Bishops have finally condemned the immorality of the war. (This was written before the Bishops’ statement of November, 1971.— Ed. ) "
"We have obviously surpassed the German Church in negligence both moral and criminal. (Resistance to Hitler, for example, meant totalitarian reprisal, which is not the case here.) Despite the clarity of Paul Vi’s stand, despite Constitutional protections, no Bishop has challenged the illegality of the war in serious fashion; no Bishop has broken patently immoral laws (the Apostles were martyred for refusing to obey the law); no Bishop (except Parrilla of Puerto Rico) has advocated non-violent resistance to the war (Mayor Lindsay of New York City, a nebulous liberal at best, advocated such a course two years ago). And only two or three Bishops have visited Catholic resisters in jail, at least two of them virtually apologizing for their action: “This visit is a spiritual work of mercy, which I would perform for any of my flock.” More to the point would be an explanation of why they themselves were not in jail.
Furthermore, no Bishop has questioned the marriage of Big Business and Big Military in Big Government, and how the marriage results in government by and for the wealthy and powerful. No Bishop has condemned the American rape of the developing world, nor the arms race in horror weapons, nor American arms salesmanship, nor the division of the world by superpowers.
On the contrary, the American episcopacy has docilely and silently stood by while their countrymen and spiritual sons established the American empire and ruled it with ruthless might. They stood by as spectator, or advocate, while their country plunged into perpetual hot and cold warring, spent 1¼ trillion dollars on war and weapons since 1946, and filled up Arlington Cemetery with the dead of Korea, the Dominican Republic, and Indochina. And yet, the Church they lead, like the Savior, is come “to give life, and to give it more abundantly.” What a gross irony!
Do I exaggerate? Perhaps. Some Catholics, who have suffered for dedication to Gospel and Church, would go much further, how ever. One layman I know, a superb student of Gospel politics and Gandhian non-violence currently in jail, would say (his with a snort: “Shepherds? There is not one in the American Church! They are upper-management people for the most part. And they are the State’s sheep!” Of him, I must say that he is capable of transcending mediocrity. He remains loyal in a sense that most Catholics and most Bishops cannot understand.
Perhaps in the above you might perceive my difficulty in speculating about the priesthood, and how it might serve man as physician and prophet. For who will finally legislate as to training, experience, freedom? And who will provide what is most crucial of all—example? The men and women who can address the subject realistically are concerned mainly with witnessing against institutionalized terror and death—and they are in severe jeopardy or in jail."
"In effect, thinking Catholics make little distinction between treatment by Church and State. They know that both desire malleability and conformity, that both fear conscience, that both are self-righteous and dogmatic, that both are ruthless in handling deviants. To be fair, the Church is quicker to forgive and to forget. On the other hand, the State may be quicker to learn. But the point is that Catholics increasingly tend to ignore the official Church since it says so little real about the questions of life and death, and lives less than it says. How could it be otherwise? they ask. The official Church is not about the Gospel, or the plight of what Pope John called “the majority of men.” Therefore, how can it speak to either issue?
The understanding from this quarter is simply this: both Church and Stale are vast, sprawling bureaucracies which share an insufferably arrogant assumption that they offer the fundamental answers to the human condition. The understanding, further, is that, despite claims to the contrary, Church and State have brought Western civilization to its nadir, and have destroyed other civilizations in the process.
Critics have learned, or are learning in swelling numbers from history as well as from the Gospels, that nothing much makes sense except death to self and conversion to Christ and neighbor. All the virtues exemplified by the Lord—poverty, freedom in responsibility, the politics of community, willingness to risk jail and death for the exploited person—all these attack head-on the conceptions and realities of bureaucracies whether in Church or State. The goals of bureaucracies are simply not the goals of Christ."
"The Catholic priest in America—and in the West generally—-is more of a cultural phenomenon than he is a Gospel man. He is a nationalistic, white supremacist, and uncritical toward affluence and its source. His training reflects nuances of these cultural fixations, but, beyond that, it schools him merely in neutrality toward life. By that I mean, he tends to take a purely institutional view of threats to life, whether they be its abuse or destruction. Indeed, if he is sensitive, he will go through immense convolutions to escape such brutalities. Or if he is hardened, he will advocate them, or remain casual in face of them.
Therefore the problem becomes—how to instill convictions strong enough to resist dehumanization in oneself, in others, in structures. How to instruct him in non-violence as a way of life, as mark of the new man, as instrument of human revolution and social regeneration? How to teach him the realities of power in all its nuances, from the will to dominate others to the will to exploit whole nations and peoples? How to toughen him SO that one will understand and accept persecution, contempt, ostracism, jail, or death on account of conscience and (above all) on account of the suffering brother’? How to infuse him with such sensitivity to human rights and dignity that one will confront violence in every turn of his life—in himself, in the culture, in the State? How to convince him that Christ’s man must integrate word and act, in full recognition that this might lead him to death, even as it did his Lord?
I don’t know, because one can neither teach the above nor administer it. But the Church can beg the grace of God, the Church can provide the setting; even though it be modern catacombs, the Church can begin, realizing that her life must always constitute beginnings, and never endings. And if such fidelity means a vocation of opposition to Powers and Principalities as they operate in government and in the circle of prestige for which the government exists, so be it. If it means the outlawry of the Church, persecution . . . the Lord spoke of that too: “The time will come when those who kill you will think they are doing a service to God.” But in the process, the Church would serve humanity, would even help to give humanity a future on this planet which it could not otherwise have.
As for the impending deliberations on world justice and peace, I have anguished questions about them. Do the American Bishops accept the implications of their country’s control over one-half the world’s productive capacity and finance? Do they realize that, despite our affluence, we have institutionalized poverty for perhaps one-quarter of our own people, plus millions in the developing world? Will they admit that these appalling realities are not an accident, but a cold calculation, that they follow the logic of profit and policy? Can they comprehend that war, particularly modern war, decides what nation or “security bloc” will control the profits, and that on the success or failure of the Indochinese war hinges the American Open Door to the developing world? (Policy-makers fear that if the Indochinese force us out, certainty will spread among the world’s poor that wars of liberation can succeed.) Do they understand that a few hundred American corporations, with hundreds of billions in assets and inter national holdings, are empires in their own right, exerting political and economic dominion wherever they are? To deliberate justice and peace while overlooking such realities is both ignorant and dishonest. Just as it is dishonest to deny that while most men starve, most Bishops live in comfort and affluence, welcome the dividends of offending corporations, and remain discreetly silent before the excesses of capitalism."
This is an open letter to Bishop William Baum, who was recently called by the Pope to Rome to take part in the Bishops’ Synod. Bishop Baum had asked for some reflections on priesthood, world justice and peace, which Father Berrigan answers in this letter.
Quotations:
"Despite the fact that we come from different frames of reference, and that the Berrigan view of the Gospel (Dan’s and mine) is radically different from the hierarchy’s, we will not admit that our own responsibilities differ from yours."
"We constitute the Church in chains—advocates of resistance to naked power, disproportionate wealth, racism, war-making. We want to express our fidelity to the Church and to the Chair of Peter, even as we sorrow over Christian myopia, hardness of heart and even cowardice."
"The Church in America—in fact, in the West as a whole—has accepted as religion a kind of cultural syncretism, culminating in near-perfect allegiance to the State. Not a few of its more prominent Bishops have even waited upon the Presidency like court jesters. And now the culture is being violently challenged, and the State doesn’t so much govern as rule by force. To whom do we turn?
A case in point is the Catholic response to the Indochinese war. It is a classic case of burning incense to Caesar. After twenty-two years’ involvement in Indochina (President Truman committed American support to the French in 1949); after millions of Indochinese deaths (6 to 8 might be a conservative estimate); after as many as 100,000 American dead (Pentagon figures are probably half the total); after war expenditures of 300 billion; after documented ecocide and genocide; after all this, thirty-two American Bishops have finally condemned the immorality of the war. (This was written before the Bishops’ statement of November, 1971.— Ed. ) "
"We have obviously surpassed the German Church in negligence both moral and criminal. (Resistance to Hitler, for example, meant totalitarian reprisal, which is not the case here.) Despite the clarity of Paul Vi’s stand, despite Constitutional protections, no Bishop has challenged the illegality of the war in serious fashion; no Bishop has broken patently immoral laws (the Apostles were martyred for refusing to obey the law); no Bishop (except Parrilla of Puerto Rico) has advocated non-violent resistance to the war (Mayor Lindsay of New York City, a nebulous liberal at best, advocated such a course two years ago). And only two or three Bishops have visited Catholic resisters in jail, at least two of them virtually apologizing for their action: “This visit is a spiritual work of mercy, which I would perform for any of my flock.” More to the point would be an explanation of why they themselves were not in jail.
Furthermore, no Bishop has questioned the marriage of Big Business and Big Military in Big Government, and how the marriage results in government by and for the wealthy and powerful. No Bishop has condemned the American rape of the developing world, nor the arms race in horror weapons, nor American arms salesmanship, nor the division of the world by superpowers.
On the contrary, the American episcopacy has docilely and silently stood by while their countrymen and spiritual sons established the American empire and ruled it with ruthless might. They stood by as spectator, or advocate, while their country plunged into perpetual hot and cold warring, spent 1¼ trillion dollars on war and weapons since 1946, and filled up Arlington Cemetery with the dead of Korea, the Dominican Republic, and Indochina. And yet, the Church they lead, like the Savior, is come “to give life, and to give it more abundantly.” What a gross irony!
Do I exaggerate? Perhaps. Some Catholics, who have suffered for dedication to Gospel and Church, would go much further, how ever. One layman I know, a superb student of Gospel politics and Gandhian non-violence currently in jail, would say (his with a snort: “Shepherds? There is not one in the American Church! They are upper-management people for the most part. And they are the State’s sheep!” Of him, I must say that he is capable of transcending mediocrity. He remains loyal in a sense that most Catholics and most Bishops cannot understand.
Perhaps in the above you might perceive my difficulty in speculating about the priesthood, and how it might serve man as physician and prophet. For who will finally legislate as to training, experience, freedom? And who will provide what is most crucial of all—example? The men and women who can address the subject realistically are concerned mainly with witnessing against institutionalized terror and death—and they are in severe jeopardy or in jail."
"In effect, thinking Catholics make little distinction between treatment by Church and State. They know that both desire malleability and conformity, that both fear conscience, that both are self-righteous and dogmatic, that both are ruthless in handling deviants. To be fair, the Church is quicker to forgive and to forget. On the other hand, the State may be quicker to learn. But the point is that Catholics increasingly tend to ignore the official Church since it says so little real about the questions of life and death, and lives less than it says. How could it be otherwise? they ask. The official Church is not about the Gospel, or the plight of what Pope John called “the majority of men.” Therefore, how can it speak to either issue?
The understanding from this quarter is simply this: both Church and Stale are vast, sprawling bureaucracies which share an insufferably arrogant assumption that they offer the fundamental answers to the human condition. The understanding, further, is that, despite claims to the contrary, Church and State have brought Western civilization to its nadir, and have destroyed other civilizations in the process.
Critics have learned, or are learning in swelling numbers from history as well as from the Gospels, that nothing much makes sense except death to self and conversion to Christ and neighbor. All the virtues exemplified by the Lord—poverty, freedom in responsibility, the politics of community, willingness to risk jail and death for the exploited person—all these attack head-on the conceptions and realities of bureaucracies whether in Church or State. The goals of bureaucracies are simply not the goals of Christ."
"The Catholic priest in America—and in the West generally—-is more of a cultural phenomenon than he is a Gospel man. He is a nationalistic, white supremacist, and uncritical toward affluence and its source. His training reflects nuances of these cultural fixations, but, beyond that, it schools him merely in neutrality toward life. By that I mean, he tends to take a purely institutional view of threats to life, whether they be its abuse or destruction. Indeed, if he is sensitive, he will go through immense convolutions to escape such brutalities. Or if he is hardened, he will advocate them, or remain casual in face of them.
Therefore the problem becomes—how to instill convictions strong enough to resist dehumanization in oneself, in others, in structures. How to instruct him in non-violence as a way of life, as mark of the new man, as instrument of human revolution and social regeneration? How to teach him the realities of power in all its nuances, from the will to dominate others to the will to exploit whole nations and peoples? How to toughen him SO that one will understand and accept persecution, contempt, ostracism, jail, or death on account of conscience and (above all) on account of the suffering brother’? How to infuse him with such sensitivity to human rights and dignity that one will confront violence in every turn of his life—in himself, in the culture, in the State? How to convince him that Christ’s man must integrate word and act, in full recognition that this might lead him to death, even as it did his Lord?
I don’t know, because one can neither teach the above nor administer it. But the Church can beg the grace of God, the Church can provide the setting; even though it be modern catacombs, the Church can begin, realizing that her life must always constitute beginnings, and never endings. And if such fidelity means a vocation of opposition to Powers and Principalities as they operate in government and in the circle of prestige for which the government exists, so be it. If it means the outlawry of the Church, persecution . . . the Lord spoke of that too: “The time will come when those who kill you will think they are doing a service to God.” But in the process, the Church would serve humanity, would even help to give humanity a future on this planet which it could not otherwise have.
As for the impending deliberations on world justice and peace, I have anguished questions about them. Do the American Bishops accept the implications of their country’s control over one-half the world’s productive capacity and finance? Do they realize that, despite our affluence, we have institutionalized poverty for perhaps one-quarter of our own people, plus millions in the developing world? Will they admit that these appalling realities are not an accident, but a cold calculation, that they follow the logic of profit and policy? Can they comprehend that war, particularly modern war, decides what nation or “security bloc” will control the profits, and that on the success or failure of the Indochinese war hinges the American Open Door to the developing world? (Policy-makers fear that if the Indochinese force us out, certainty will spread among the world’s poor that wars of liberation can succeed.) Do they understand that a few hundred American corporations, with hundreds of billions in assets and inter national holdings, are empires in their own right, exerting political and economic dominion wherever they are? To deliberate justice and peace while overlooking such realities is both ignorant and dishonest. Just as it is dishonest to deny that while most men starve, most Bishops live in comfort and affluence, welcome the dividends of offending corporations, and remain discreetly silent before the excesses of capitalism."
A Meditation from Catonsville, Dan Berrigan
Bio: Father Daniel Berrigan is one of the most passionate and articulate members of the growing Catholic radical movement. His actions have been disturbing to many people; what he says is painful to hear. Daniel Berrigan is a poet, a priest, a felon.
The first selection is a letter written by Father Bern gan and smuggled out of the federal prison in Dan bury, Conn., where he was incarcerated. The state ment was made on the occasion of the end of a fast by war resisters transferred from Danbury to a prison in Springfield, Mo. The second selection is a meditation by Father Berrigan written before he and eight other men and women destroyed draft records in Catonsville, Maryland in May 1968.
Quotations:
"For which act we shall, beyond doubt, be placed behind bars for some portion of our natural lives, in consequence of our inability to live and die content in the plagued city, to say “peace, peace” when there is no peace, to keep the poor poor, the homeless, the thirsty and hungry homeless, thirsty and hungry.
Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise. For we are sick at heart; our hearts give us no rest for thinking of the Land of Burning Children. And for thinking of that other Child, of whom the poet Luke speaks. The infant was taken up in the arms of an old man, whose tongue grew resonant and vatic at the touch of that beauty. And the old man spoke: this child is set for the fall and rise of many in Israel, a sign that is spoken against.Small consolation; a child born to make trouble, and to die for it, the First Jew (not the last) to be subject of a “definitive solution.” He sets up the cross and dies on it; in the Rose Garden of the executive mansion, on the D.C. Mall, in the courtyard of the Pentagon. We see the sign, we read the direction: you must bear with us, for his sake. Or if you will not, the consequences are our own."
"We are no more, when the truth is told, than ignorant beset men, jockeying against all chance, at the hour of death, for a place at the right hand of the dying one."
"Finally, we stretch out our hands to our brothers throughout the world. We who are priests, to our fellow priests. All of us who act against the law turn to the poor of the world, to the Vietnamese, to the victims, to the soldiers who kill and die, for the wrong reasons, for no reason at all, because they were so ordered—by the authorities of that public order which is in effect a massive institutionalized disorder.
We say: killing is disorder, life and gentleness and community and unselfishness is the only order we recognize. For the sake of that order, we risk our liberty, our good name. The time is past when good men can remain silent, when obedience can segregate men from public risk, when the poor can die without defense.
We ask our fellow Christians to consider in their hearts a question which has tortured us, night and day, since the war began. How many must die before our voices are heard, how many must be tortured, dislocated, starved, maddened? How long must the world’s resources be raped in the service of legalized murder? When, at what point, will you say no to this war?
We have chosen to say, with the gift of our liberty, if necessary our lives: the violence stops here, the death stops here, the suppression of the truth stops here, this war stops here.We wish also to place in question, by this act, all suppositions about normal times, about longings for an untroubled life in a somnolent church, about a neat timetable of ecclesiastical renewal which, in respect to the needs of men, amounts to another form of time-serving."
"Redeem the times! The times are inexpressibly evil. Christians pay conscious, indeed religious tribute, to Caesar and Mars: by the approval of overkill tactics, by brinkmanship, by nuclear liturgies, by racism, by support of genocide. They embrace their society with all their heart, and abandon the cross. They pay lip service to Christ and military service to the powers of death.
And yet, and yet, the times are inexhaustibly good, solaced by the courage and hope of many. The truth rules; Christ is not forsaken. In a time of death, some men—the resisters, those who work hardily for social change, those who preach and embrace the unpalatable truth—such men overcome death, their lives are bathed in the light of the resurrection, the truth has set them free. In the jaws of death, of contumely, of good and ill report, they proclaim their love of the brethren.
We think of such men, in the world, in our nation, in the churches; and the stone in our breast is dissolved; we take heart once more."
The first selection is a letter written by Father Bern gan and smuggled out of the federal prison in Dan bury, Conn., where he was incarcerated. The state ment was made on the occasion of the end of a fast by war resisters transferred from Danbury to a prison in Springfield, Mo. The second selection is a meditation by Father Berrigan written before he and eight other men and women destroyed draft records in Catonsville, Maryland in May 1968.
Quotations:
"For which act we shall, beyond doubt, be placed behind bars for some portion of our natural lives, in consequence of our inability to live and die content in the plagued city, to say “peace, peace” when there is no peace, to keep the poor poor, the homeless, the thirsty and hungry homeless, thirsty and hungry.
Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise. For we are sick at heart; our hearts give us no rest for thinking of the Land of Burning Children. And for thinking of that other Child, of whom the poet Luke speaks. The infant was taken up in the arms of an old man, whose tongue grew resonant and vatic at the touch of that beauty. And the old man spoke: this child is set for the fall and rise of many in Israel, a sign that is spoken against.Small consolation; a child born to make trouble, and to die for it, the First Jew (not the last) to be subject of a “definitive solution.” He sets up the cross and dies on it; in the Rose Garden of the executive mansion, on the D.C. Mall, in the courtyard of the Pentagon. We see the sign, we read the direction: you must bear with us, for his sake. Or if you will not, the consequences are our own."
"We are no more, when the truth is told, than ignorant beset men, jockeying against all chance, at the hour of death, for a place at the right hand of the dying one."
"Finally, we stretch out our hands to our brothers throughout the world. We who are priests, to our fellow priests. All of us who act against the law turn to the poor of the world, to the Vietnamese, to the victims, to the soldiers who kill and die, for the wrong reasons, for no reason at all, because they were so ordered—by the authorities of that public order which is in effect a massive institutionalized disorder.
We say: killing is disorder, life and gentleness and community and unselfishness is the only order we recognize. For the sake of that order, we risk our liberty, our good name. The time is past when good men can remain silent, when obedience can segregate men from public risk, when the poor can die without defense.
We ask our fellow Christians to consider in their hearts a question which has tortured us, night and day, since the war began. How many must die before our voices are heard, how many must be tortured, dislocated, starved, maddened? How long must the world’s resources be raped in the service of legalized murder? When, at what point, will you say no to this war?
We have chosen to say, with the gift of our liberty, if necessary our lives: the violence stops here, the death stops here, the suppression of the truth stops here, this war stops here.We wish also to place in question, by this act, all suppositions about normal times, about longings for an untroubled life in a somnolent church, about a neat timetable of ecclesiastical renewal which, in respect to the needs of men, amounts to another form of time-serving."
"Redeem the times! The times are inexpressibly evil. Christians pay conscious, indeed religious tribute, to Caesar and Mars: by the approval of overkill tactics, by brinkmanship, by nuclear liturgies, by racism, by support of genocide. They embrace their society with all their heart, and abandon the cross. They pay lip service to Christ and military service to the powers of death.
And yet, and yet, the times are inexhaustibly good, solaced by the courage and hope of many. The truth rules; Christ is not forsaken. In a time of death, some men—the resisters, those who work hardily for social change, those who preach and embrace the unpalatable truth—such men overcome death, their lives are bathed in the light of the resurrection, the truth has set them free. In the jaws of death, of contumely, of good and ill report, they proclaim their love of the brethren.
We think of such men, in the world, in our nation, in the churches; and the stone in our breast is dissolved; we take heart once more."
If we Listen Well, Ed Guinan
Bio: Edward Guinan is a Paulist priest and founder of the Community for Creative Nonviolence in Washington, D.C.
Quotations:
"Finally one comes to appreciate the reality that there can be no “we’s” and “they’s” in our lives, but only brothers and sisters—all children of God—all sacred and dignified. Destruction of any one of these God-gifts means a certain destruction of oneself, and a mystery that is gone forever from this small, fragile world."
"Violence can be seen as destructive communication. Any adequate definition must include physical, verbal, symbolic, psychological and spiritual displays of hostility and hatred. The definition must include both our acts and our inactions and that which is done directly to people or indirectly to them through what they esteem. Many forms will take on a combination of these characteristics.
Violence should then include physical acts against another (i.e., the range of acts from personal attack to war, that which violates human autonomy and integrity); verbal attacks that demean and humiliate; symbolic acts that evoke fear and hostility; psychological attitudes that deny one’s humanity and equality (legal, institutional and moral); spiritual postures that communicate racism, inferiority and worthlessness (i.e., beliefs and values that demean or categorize). Violence then becomes a dynamic rather than merely an act.
Hunger, poverty, squalor, privilege, powerlessness, riches, despair, and vicarious living are forms of violence—forms that a society approves and perpetuates. We have been too willing to discuss violence in terms of ghetto uprisings, student unrest, street thievery and trashing, and have been unwilling to direct our attention to the more pathological types of violence that are acceptable—the types that daily crush the humanity and life from untold millions of brothers and sisters."
"The other type of violence is the violence of the respect able, the violence of the powerful that seeks personal gain and privilege by maintaining inhuman conditions. It is the violence of the board rooms, legislators and jurists—the white collar violence that pours surplus milk down sewers, robs workers of their wages, maintains prisons of infamy, lies to children, discards the weak and old and insists that some should half-live while others rape and ravage the earth. This latter type of violence is what we must become aware of and actively dismantle if the future is to hold any possibilities for peace and a world where all men and women have a right to live and develop and participate by reason of their humanity, not by reason of their class, productive ability or shrewdness."
"Non-violence cannot then be understood as passivity or indifference to the dynamic of life (i.e., communication between men). It is not the posture of removing oneself from conflict that marks the true non-violent man, but, quite on the contrary, it is placing oneself at the heart of that [conflict] dynamic. Non-violence means taking the responsibility for aiding the direction of human communication and brotherhood. Non-violence means an active opposition to those acts and attitudes that demean and brutalize another, and it means an active support of those values and expressions that foster human solidarity. Non-violence, in essence, means taking a stand in favor of life and refusing to delegate individual moral responsibility to another person or group; it means taking control of one’s life and aiding others in doing likewise. Non-violence is an attempt to find truth and love even in the midst of hatred, destruction and pride.
As the means cannot be separated from the desired ends, nonviolence cannot be separated from peace, for it is the value system and dynamic that makes peace possible."
"These are not good times, but good times do not mold great people. The sins of our excesses and arrogance can destroy us, or these failings can humble us to sainthood. Such are the times.If the great virtues and teachings of the martyrs, resisters and saints are relegated to a Utopian or future-oriented condition, then, indeed, they have little value for us at all. But the great heritage that this “community of liberation” has left us is not some unreal, impossible dream. It is this: Love can, and must, be lived today, despite the pain and difficulty of such life.
Tomorrow will carry the tenderness and peace which we live now. Do not compromise today. It is all, dear brothers and sisters, that we have."
"The editor of this volume finds it unnecessary to argue their case, but merely requests that you read thoughtfully; you may discover that there is a difference between rhetoric and prayer. The former may well impress you, but only the latter will bring you salvation."
"Yet in the aloneness and struggle, in the departures and questions, in the cries and songs, in the dance and prayers there are imprints of heroic men and women, there are weavings of beauty, there are caresses of God."
Quotations:
"Finally one comes to appreciate the reality that there can be no “we’s” and “they’s” in our lives, but only brothers and sisters—all children of God—all sacred and dignified. Destruction of any one of these God-gifts means a certain destruction of oneself, and a mystery that is gone forever from this small, fragile world."
"Violence can be seen as destructive communication. Any adequate definition must include physical, verbal, symbolic, psychological and spiritual displays of hostility and hatred. The definition must include both our acts and our inactions and that which is done directly to people or indirectly to them through what they esteem. Many forms will take on a combination of these characteristics.
Violence should then include physical acts against another (i.e., the range of acts from personal attack to war, that which violates human autonomy and integrity); verbal attacks that demean and humiliate; symbolic acts that evoke fear and hostility; psychological attitudes that deny one’s humanity and equality (legal, institutional and moral); spiritual postures that communicate racism, inferiority and worthlessness (i.e., beliefs and values that demean or categorize). Violence then becomes a dynamic rather than merely an act.
Hunger, poverty, squalor, privilege, powerlessness, riches, despair, and vicarious living are forms of violence—forms that a society approves and perpetuates. We have been too willing to discuss violence in terms of ghetto uprisings, student unrest, street thievery and trashing, and have been unwilling to direct our attention to the more pathological types of violence that are acceptable—the types that daily crush the humanity and life from untold millions of brothers and sisters."
"The other type of violence is the violence of the respect able, the violence of the powerful that seeks personal gain and privilege by maintaining inhuman conditions. It is the violence of the board rooms, legislators and jurists—the white collar violence that pours surplus milk down sewers, robs workers of their wages, maintains prisons of infamy, lies to children, discards the weak and old and insists that some should half-live while others rape and ravage the earth. This latter type of violence is what we must become aware of and actively dismantle if the future is to hold any possibilities for peace and a world where all men and women have a right to live and develop and participate by reason of their humanity, not by reason of their class, productive ability or shrewdness."
"Non-violence cannot then be understood as passivity or indifference to the dynamic of life (i.e., communication between men). It is not the posture of removing oneself from conflict that marks the true non-violent man, but, quite on the contrary, it is placing oneself at the heart of that [conflict] dynamic. Non-violence means taking the responsibility for aiding the direction of human communication and brotherhood. Non-violence means an active opposition to those acts and attitudes that demean and brutalize another, and it means an active support of those values and expressions that foster human solidarity. Non-violence, in essence, means taking a stand in favor of life and refusing to delegate individual moral responsibility to another person or group; it means taking control of one’s life and aiding others in doing likewise. Non-violence is an attempt to find truth and love even in the midst of hatred, destruction and pride.
As the means cannot be separated from the desired ends, nonviolence cannot be separated from peace, for it is the value system and dynamic that makes peace possible."
"These are not good times, but good times do not mold great people. The sins of our excesses and arrogance can destroy us, or these failings can humble us to sainthood. Such are the times.If the great virtues and teachings of the martyrs, resisters and saints are relegated to a Utopian or future-oriented condition, then, indeed, they have little value for us at all. But the great heritage that this “community of liberation” has left us is not some unreal, impossible dream. It is this: Love can, and must, be lived today, despite the pain and difficulty of such life.
Tomorrow will carry the tenderness and peace which we live now. Do not compromise today. It is all, dear brothers and sisters, that we have."
"The editor of this volume finds it unnecessary to argue their case, but merely requests that you read thoughtfully; you may discover that there is a difference between rhetoric and prayer. The former may well impress you, but only the latter will bring you salvation."
"Yet in the aloneness and struggle, in the departures and questions, in the cries and songs, in the dance and prayers there are imprints of heroic men and women, there are weavings of beauty, there are caresses of God."
Friday, January 12, 2007
Kristof, Power, Fowler... exploit student Inactivists and Darfur
[originally posted 4/12/07]
"Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing." Albert Schweitzer (from Eva Fogelman's, "Conscience & Courage: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust.")
OPEN LETTER TO KRISTOF, POWER AND FOWLER (RESPONSE TO "COMMENTS" INVITED - WILL BE DISPLAYED).
[SEE: A Hunger For Justice : Darfur Becomes One Man's Cause for Deprivation Delphine Schrank, C01 (Post) Washington Post, April 14, 2007]
Dear Samantha, Nicholas, and Jerry,
Glance around this site - Peace and Nonviolence - The Berrigans, Gandhi, King, Hanh, Wm. Lloyd Garrison.... Remind yourselves of what responsible people that saw truth as you have have done with their lives, not just their pens or mouths. For more examples see excerpts from "Conscience & Courage: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust."
When have three people done so much good and been responsible for so much atrocity? Why am I targeting you? You still are in a position to more good than anyone for Darfur; and you are still in a position to do much more murder. Why target you? With great knowledge comes great responsibility.
It is not enough you put the word out. In doing so you took on the mantel of Darfur Rescue Leader, and you cannot remove it - impossible.
Here is it in a nutshell. Let's say I am Dr. Joseph Lister and in the 2nd half of the 1800's I discover that bacterium on scalpels is killing huge number of patients. GREAT! He writes a paper and gets it in the newspaper! GREAT! Now Dr. Lister goes on about his normal routine, no one get's it, and Dr. Lister does not bother sterilizing his tools. Murder right? In fact, Lister darn near killed himself for 20 years to get the word out. He saved a lot of lives. Success is 1% inspiration 99% perspiration.
Samantha, you of all people discovered what it takes to stop genocide - YOU have the greatest knowledge and hence the greatest responsibility to ACT. You discovered that stopping genocide takes people laying down their lives - in great number!!! One Lemkin is not enough! 100 Lemkins may be!!!! You saw this Samantha and you cannot escape the moral responsibility that places on you. Your behavior is the "evidence" the world relies on. Your behavior says "Darfur is not that bad... surely not worth laying down MY life for!"
Nicholas, your words totally redirected my life starting three years ago. But most people have less imagination than I. With what you know personally, that you are living normally in the face of genocide - speaks much louder than your Columns. Nick Kristof's behavior says, "Nothing worth laying down MY life for is going on."
Jerry, either you don't believe Genocide is worth laying down one's life for, OR you don't believe Darfur Genocide is laying down your life for.
If the three of you don't start laying down your lives, it is game over Darfur. If you do start laying down your lives - chain yourselves to the UN doors, sit at the White House gate demanding a meeting with Bush, blockade the Chinese embassy... you will do justice to your earlier words and stop Genocide for the first time.
Samantha, your book was so right on. Your ending was perfect: "George Bernard Shaw once wrote, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." After a century of doing so little to prevent, suppress, and punish genocide, Americans must join and thereby legitimate the ranks of the unreasonable." BUT YOU THREE HAVE VIOLATED EVERYTHING - YOU'VE BEEN AND ENCOURAGED OTHERS TO BE PERFECTLY REASONABLE. ENOUGH!
If you do less than lay down your lives you've done nothing more than exploit Darfur for your personal advantage - that is the physics of it. And for God's sake quit filling these student InActivist's heads that they have done other than abandon Darfur and exploit it for some self-pleasuring themselves. You are in the company of Gandhi, King, the Berrigans and above all real Holocaust Rescuers. Watch yourselves.
Start Loving
[WE HAVE UNTIL JUNE 30, CONTROL OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL, TO RESCUE & RESTORE DARFUR. JOIN A BRIGADE OF PEACEMAKERS, NOW, OR IT IS TOO LATE.]
See updates at all sites:
DARFUR'S LAST HOPE: Brigade of PeaceMakers: for Darfur. JOIN NOW
SAVING DARFUR, EARTH, OURSELVES: Jesus, God, Good...
REAL ACTIVISM LOOKS LIKE THIS: Holocaust Rescuers
REAL ACTIVISM LOOKS LIKE THIS: Peace and Nonviolence
REAL ACTIVISM LOOKS LIKE THIS: David Dellinger
4 DARFUR HEROES; 21,000 FOR HOLOCAUST: Darfur Dying for Heroes
HUNGER STRIKE: Stand with Darfur: Sudan Embassy
WE'RE PROOF OF NO GENOCIDE: Darfur Genocide a Fraud
Actions 6/06 - 1/07: Stand With Darfur White House II
Actions 5/06 - 6/06: Stand With Darfur White House
Actions 7/05 - 5/06: Rescue Restore Darfur
"Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing." Albert Schweitzer (from Eva Fogelman's, "Conscience & Courage: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust.")
OPEN LETTER TO KRISTOF, POWER AND FOWLER (RESPONSE TO "COMMENTS" INVITED - WILL BE DISPLAYED).
[SEE: A Hunger For Justice : Darfur Becomes One Man's Cause for Deprivation Delphine Schrank, C01 (Post) Washington Post, April 14, 2007]
Dear Samantha, Nicholas, and Jerry,
Glance around this site - Peace and Nonviolence - The Berrigans, Gandhi, King, Hanh, Wm. Lloyd Garrison.... Remind yourselves of what responsible people that saw truth as you have have done with their lives, not just their pens or mouths. For more examples see excerpts from "Conscience & Courage: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust."
When have three people done so much good and been responsible for so much atrocity? Why am I targeting you? You still are in a position to more good than anyone for Darfur; and you are still in a position to do much more murder. Why target you? With great knowledge comes great responsibility.
It is not enough you put the word out. In doing so you took on the mantel of Darfur Rescue Leader, and you cannot remove it - impossible.
Here is it in a nutshell. Let's say I am Dr. Joseph Lister and in the 2nd half of the 1800's I discover that bacterium on scalpels is killing huge number of patients. GREAT! He writes a paper and gets it in the newspaper! GREAT! Now Dr. Lister goes on about his normal routine, no one get's it, and Dr. Lister does not bother sterilizing his tools. Murder right? In fact, Lister darn near killed himself for 20 years to get the word out. He saved a lot of lives. Success is 1% inspiration 99% perspiration.
Samantha, you of all people discovered what it takes to stop genocide - YOU have the greatest knowledge and hence the greatest responsibility to ACT. You discovered that stopping genocide takes people laying down their lives - in great number!!! One Lemkin is not enough! 100 Lemkins may be!!!! You saw this Samantha and you cannot escape the moral responsibility that places on you. Your behavior is the "evidence" the world relies on. Your behavior says "Darfur is not that bad... surely not worth laying down MY life for!"
Nicholas, your words totally redirected my life starting three years ago. But most people have less imagination than I. With what you know personally, that you are living normally in the face of genocide - speaks much louder than your Columns. Nick Kristof's behavior says, "Nothing worth laying down MY life for is going on."
Jerry, either you don't believe Genocide is worth laying down one's life for, OR you don't believe Darfur Genocide is laying down your life for.
If the three of you don't start laying down your lives, it is game over Darfur. If you do start laying down your lives - chain yourselves to the UN doors, sit at the White House gate demanding a meeting with Bush, blockade the Chinese embassy... you will do justice to your earlier words and stop Genocide for the first time.
Samantha, your book was so right on. Your ending was perfect: "George Bernard Shaw once wrote, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." After a century of doing so little to prevent, suppress, and punish genocide, Americans must join and thereby legitimate the ranks of the unreasonable." BUT YOU THREE HAVE VIOLATED EVERYTHING - YOU'VE BEEN AND ENCOURAGED OTHERS TO BE PERFECTLY REASONABLE. ENOUGH!
If you do less than lay down your lives you've done nothing more than exploit Darfur for your personal advantage - that is the physics of it. And for God's sake quit filling these student InActivist's heads that they have done other than abandon Darfur and exploit it for some self-pleasuring themselves. You are in the company of Gandhi, King, the Berrigans and above all real Holocaust Rescuers. Watch yourselves.
Start Loving
[WE HAVE UNTIL JUNE 30, CONTROL OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL, TO RESCUE & RESTORE DARFUR. JOIN A BRIGADE OF PEACEMAKERS, NOW, OR IT IS TOO LATE.]
See updates at all sites:
DARFUR'S LAST HOPE: Brigade of PeaceMakers: for Darfur. JOIN NOW
SAVING DARFUR, EARTH, OURSELVES: Jesus, God, Good...
REAL ACTIVISM LOOKS LIKE THIS: Holocaust Rescuers
REAL ACTIVISM LOOKS LIKE THIS: Peace and Nonviolence
REAL ACTIVISM LOOKS LIKE THIS: David Dellinger
4 DARFUR HEROES; 21,000 FOR HOLOCAUST: Darfur Dying for Heroes
HUNGER STRIKE: Stand with Darfur: Sudan Embassy
WE'RE PROOF OF NO GENOCIDE: Darfur Genocide a Fraud
Actions 6/06 - 1/07: Stand With Darfur White House II
Actions 5/06 - 6/06: Stand With Darfur White House
Actions 7/05 - 5/06: Rescue Restore Darfur
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