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285 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 “final word” in this volume. What follows is an edited transcription of their conversation. AB: I have been acutely aware of and, perhaps more so, challenged by certain anniversaries this year. Throughout 2008, for example, there is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the 40th anniversary of the Catonsville Nine; the 75th anniversary of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin’s founding of the Catholic Worker; and the 40th anniversary of the death of Thomas Merton. My sense is that most people are not aware of what these folks said and were trying to say, and that we need to hear these voices more than ever. I am wondering if you have been thinking about any of these anniversaries and of the ways in which a justice - and faith-bound people might rightfully commemorate them? DB: My role in all of this, the 40th, the 75th, etc. In one sense, it’s been quite passive because of my health. In another sense, it’s been very spiritual A Conversation with Daniel Berrigan Anna J. Brown and James L. Marsh Marsh-Ch15.indd 285 Marsh-Ch15.indd 285 2/1/2012 4:55:35 PM 2/1/2012 4:55:35 PM 286 Anna J. Brown and James L. Marsh and very active in trying to carry the memories and not let them die in an era of nostalgia, which I think is always a temptation. It is as though we are seeking to recreate better times by just hauling out the memories of friends, people, and events. It seems to me that to be true to memory is to reproduce the essential goodness and truth telling that mark these lives and this work, all of which we are still trying to understand and walk with today. So, I was thinking especially of Merton’s anniversary because in a sense his death crowned the year, coming in the dead of winter and in the last month of the year. And out of all of these figures, it seems to me, his influence has grown most markedly. His work is still being published, particularly his work on war and peace. This is the work that we anguished over because it had just been tossed by the wayside by the authorities of the Church. Suddenly that work is before us again and sounding really as fresh as yesterday or this morning. He urges us, for example, to take seriously this whole business of saving the earth, of saving the human community, etc. So it’s very heartening to know that his voice is still vibrant and of the moment. It’s also heartening to know that the Trial of the Catonsville Nine is still being produced around the country and around the world. These are very hard blessings. They are blessings but they are very harsh because they speak of unfinished work and unfinished humanity and unfinished Christianity, and to take it one step further is crucial. AB: Yes, that is why I said “challenged,” because there is nothing that you can really be at ease with in these anniversaries. As you have said, we can’t just mark them; we must live them, we must get in to what’s essential about them so that we may be sane in these insane times. JM: I was thinking along the lines of the Catonsville Nine, having in mind, more specifically, the meaning of Catonsville forty years later. What’s changed, what’s remained the same, and what’s gotten worse? What obvious ways, for example, have things gotten worse within the nation and the international community since the 1960s and the destructiveness unleashed then by the American empire? Looking back on that now— that era compared to now—it certainly wasn’t an idyllic time but it somehow seems to have been much more of an innocent and hopeful time. Do you agree with that? Things are a lot worse; I know, in terms of the amount of the world we are trying to control, the Middle East, Latin and Central America, etc. DB: I think it’s always helpful for me in a quiet way, perhaps in a very small way, to reflect on the...

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