Faith, Resistance, and the Future:Daniel Berrigan's Challenge to Catholic Social Thought

Daniel Berrigan's Challenge to Catholic Social Thought

James L. Marsh

Publication Year: 2012

The book presents Daniel Berrigan's contribution and challenge to Catholic Social Thought. His contribution lies in his consistent, comprehensive, theoretical, and practical approach to issues of social justice and peace over the last fifty years. His challenge lies in his critique of capitalism, imperialism, and militarism, inviting Catholic activists and thinkers to undertake not just a reformist but a radical critique and alternative to these realities. The aim of this book is, for the first time, to make Berrigan's thought and life available to the academic Catholic community, so that a fruitful interaction takes place. How does this work enlighten and challenge such a community? How can this community enrich and criticize his work?To these ends, the editors have recruited scholars and thinker-activists already familiar with and sympathetic to Berrigan's work and those who are less so identified. The result is a rich, engaging, and critical treatment of the meaning and impact of his work. What kind of challenge does he present to academic-business-as-usual in Catholic universities? How can the life and work of individual Catholic academics be transformed if such persons took Berrigan's work seriously, theoretically and practically? Do Catholic universities need Berrigan's vision to fulfill more integrally and completely their own mission? Does the self-knowing subject and theorist need to become a radical subject and theorist?Even though the appeal of academics is important and perhaps primary, because of the range and depth of his work and thought and the power of his writing, there is a larger appeal to the Catholic community and to activists working for social justice and peace. The work has, therefore, not only a theoretical and academic appeal but also a popular and grass roots appeal.Given the current and on-going US military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, Berrigan's work invites us to think about the justice of such interventions or, given the destructiveness of modern weapons, whether the notion of just war makes any sense. Given the recent crisis on Wall Street, does it make sense any longer to talk about the possibility of a just capitalism? Given the most recent revelations about Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram, is it not imperative to think about how torture, preventative detention, and extraordinary rendition serve the ends of empire? In light of all of this, doesn't Berrigan's call for a pacific, prophetic community of justice rooted in the Good News of the Gospel make compelling sense?

Published by: Fordham University Press

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We would like to express our appreciation to Rosemary O’Connell for her help in preparing this manuscript for publication. We are grateful to Anna Brown’s husband, David I. Orenstein, for his . . .

Introduction

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pp. 11-21

This book has its origins in a conference at the University of Notre Dame in the fall of 2005, under the auspices of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. The conference theme, selected . . .

Philosophy and the Prophetic Challenge

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pp. 22-29

In various forms, if only as a quarrel, an association between philosophy and poetry extends throughout the history of philosophy. That sort of association does not exist between philosophy and . . .

Daniel Berrigan’s Theology: Retrieving the Prophetic and Proclaiming the Resurrection

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pp. 30-40

Daniel Berrigan is one of the most remarkable and significant American Catholic theologians of the past century. Like Thomas Merton, Martin Luther King, Jr., William Stringfellow, and others, he has . . .

The State of Resistance: On the Relevance of Daniel Berrigan’s Work to Catholic Social Thought

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pp. 41-48

Like many, I initially encountered Daniel Berrigan through his written words; first, in an introduction to a 1969 book edited by David Kirk of the Emmaus Community in Harlem under the title . . .

Father Berrigan and the Marxist-Communist “Menace”

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pp. 49-56

Father Berrigan seldom refers to Karl Marx in his writings. His training as a Jesuit, and indeed a Jesuit with considerable interest in theology and philosophy, has given him a deep acquaintance with the . . .

The Language of the Incandescent Heart:Daniel Berrigan’s and Etty Hillesum’s Responses to a Culture of Death

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pp. 57-79

Daniel Berrigan and Etty Hillesum opened themselves fully to a world ravaged by war and learned to accept, with gratitude and praise, all that this world gave in return. Their acceptance of this world was . . .

Self-Appropriation and Liberation:Philosophizing in the Light of Catonsville

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pp. 80-99

These words, of course, are from The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, written by Daniel Berrigan. The words are uttered by the character Daniel Berrigan in the trial of himself and eight others, who entered the draft . . .

Consecrating Peace: Reflecting on Daniel Berrigan and Witness

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pp. 100-118

The day Nixon left the White House for good I arrived in America for the first time. If I had come looking for America, I had first encountered something unexpected and for the most part nameless. More . . .

Bernard Lonergan and Daniel Berrigan

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pp. 119-131

Asking what Bernard Lonergan has to do with Daniel Berrigan probably seems to some a transposition to personalities of the age-old question: What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? Or, in an equally . . .

A Kind of Piety Toward Experience:Hope in Nuclear Times

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pp. 132-154

I don’t have to look far to find the influence of Father Daniel Berrigan, SJ, in my life. Taped to my office door is a bumper sticker for Nebraskans for Peace, a statewide peace and justice organization that came . . .

Berrigan Underground

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pp. 155-182

From April to August 1970 Daniel Berrigan, the “holy outlaw,” went underground and eluded FBI capture.² Having lost the latest appeal of the Catonsville Nine—nine Catholic antiwar activists, who on . . .

Lonergan and Berrigan: Two Radicaland Visionary Jesuits

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pp. 183-208

In the ordinary conventional view of things, there appears to be little that unites Bernard Lonergan and Daniel Berrigan other than their mutual membership in the Society of Jesus, their devotion to both . . .

Government by Fear, and How Activistsof Faith Resist Fear

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pp. 209-236

Fear and courage are perennial topics of discussions in moral philosophy. From Aristotle’s analysis of the courage of the soldier on the battlefield, we have inherited the idea that courage, as with any virtue, requires . . .

Announcing the Impossible

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pp. 237-247

In the spring of 1998, Fordham University invited Father Daniel Berrigan to teach a class on poetry related to social justice. The class, which I had the great privilege of taking, focused on works by . . .

The “Global War on Terror”:Who Wins? Who Loses?

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pp. 248-284

On May 17, 1968, Daniel Berrigan and his brother Philip joined seven other Catholic protesters3 at the Catonsville, Maryland, draft board. They went into the draft board (housed in the Catholic . . .

A Conversation with Daniel Berrigan

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pp. 285-294

Editors’ Note: Anna Brown (AB) and James Marsh (JM) met with Daniel Berrigan (DB) during the summer of 2008 in his apartment. The point of the meeting was to allow for Berrigan to have the . . .

Notes

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pp. 295-377

Contributors

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pp. 379-384

Index

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pp. 385-387

E-ISBN-13: 9780823249367
Print-ISBN-13: 9780823239825
Print-ISBN-10: 0823239829

Page Count: 416
Publication Year: 2012