On May 17, 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, nine men and women entered a Selective Service office outside Baltimore. They removed military draft records, took them outside, and set them afire with napalm.The Catholic activists involved in this protest against the War included Daniel and Philip Berrigan; all were found guilt of destroying government property and sentenced to three years in jail. Dan Berrigan fled, and later turned himself in.The Berrigans and their colleagues went on to lives spent struggling against war, poverty, and injustice. And The Trial of the Catonsville Nine became a powerful expression of the conflicts between conscience and conduct, power and justice, law and morality. Drawing on court transcripts, Berrigan wrote a dramatic account of the trial and the issues it so vividly embodied. The result is a landmark work of art that been performed frequently over the past thirty five years, both as a piece of theater and a motion picture.This new edition includes Berrigan's original introduction, and additional materials by Robin Anderson and James Marsh that bring its ideas and themes up to date against the context of the war in Iraq.A wonderfully moving testament to nine consciences.- Clive Barnes, The New York TimesOne who wants to know what an authentically Christian response to the questions of our time is like would be wise to listen to Father Berrigan.-The New York Review of Books
In the spring of 1968, a group of Catholic antiwar activists barged into a draft board in suburban Baltimore, stole hundreds of Selective Service records, and burned the documents in...
Jim Forest, who worked with Berrigan in building the Catholic Peace Fellowship in the 1960s, draws on his deep friendship over five decades to provide the most comprehensive and intimate picture yet available of this modern-day prophet.
... rather , it must particularize the act or acts which , it is alleged , constitute the offense charged , so that the court can be assured that the indictment charges conduct which is , in fact , prohibited by law . ” Overstreet v .
This book shares their discernments of conscience and the civil resistance legacy of Plowshares with its background of Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker, while also engaging the work of the Berrigan brothers, the Catonsville nine, and the ...
The Berrigan Letters: Personal Correspondence between Daniel and Philip Berrigan
The Hill and Wang Critical Issues Series: concise, affordable works on pivotal topics in American history, society, and politics. Using newly available documents from both American and Vietnamese archives, Hunt...
“A Voice said, 'You have accomplished your mission. ... And I said, 'But why do I have to suffer so much and die so painfully? ... He looked for all the world like a prison camp inmate: skeletal, wasted, cold and gray and yellow, ...
Exploring the historical antecedents and mimetic dimensions of "Theater of the Real"
Expanding on the stories in her popular column for the website Waging Nonviolence, Berrigan has crafted a welcome antidote to the various parenting fads currently on offer from French moms and tiger moms and mean moms.
Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary