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Father Berrigan and the Marxist-Communist “Menace”
- Fordham University Press
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49 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 Church Fathers and the Scholastic tradition—the tradition of what used to be called, and which some still call, philosophia perennis. Above all, of course the texts from which he has drawn his greatest inspiration are the Judeo-Christian Scriptures themselves. So what point is there in reflecting on his relationship , actual or potential, to the Marxist tradition? Well, for one thing, there is Vietnam. Father Berrigan’s name is intimately connected with that country, against which—or at least against the more dynamic part of which—the government of the country in which he was born and has spent most of his life, hurled manpower and weaponry on a vast scale. Indeed, as is well known, Father Berrigan experienced US military bombing on the occasion (in 1968) of his own mission to Hanoi. The Marxist connection here is that the Hanoi-based regime claimed to represent a certain version of communism, ultimately inspired by Marx. To this day, in fact, it still does. So Father Berrigan, in opposing the war draft Father Berrigan and the Marxist-Communist “Menace” William L. McBride Marsh-Ch04.indd 49 Marsh-Ch04.indd 49 2/1/2012 4:30:53 PM 2/1/2012 4:30:53 PM 50 William L. McBride and the US government’s prosecution of the war itself, was supporting the claims to self-defense of a self-styled Marxist state. As were so many of us, but almost none with his degree of commitment. There were many in the Catholic hierarchy and laity who regarded “Godless Communism” as the great foe to be defeated at all cost, including the cost of waging war if and when (seemingly) feasible. Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York, to whom Father Berrigan refers in his autobiography and in some of his essays, was archetypical in this respect. During World War II, when the immediate enemy was Nazism, he decreed that the most militaristic stanza (“Then conquer we must/When our cause it is just” and so on) of the Star-Spangled Banner be sung at the conclusion of Sunday Masses in his churches. This practice ended after the Allied victory, but Cardinal Spellman then moved to the fore as the anticommunist Cold War warrior par excellence. During the Vietnam War he made regular Christmas visits to the American troops there, wearing a military uniform. He epitomized, as it were, the other soul of the American Catholic Church, the establishment soul, which Father Berrigan’s admirers regarded, and continue to regard, with a certain amount of horror. Which of the two souls—the war-oriented or the peace-oriented— represented a more authentic Christianity? For those whom Father Berrigan’s courage and commitment have inspired, the answer is obvious. But it is an interesting fact—interesting anthropologically, philosophically, and theologically—that the supposedly monolithic creed which is Catholic Christianity could be embodied in two such drastically different worldviews even within a single country. If we look back across different countries and continents and nineteen hundred years of what claims to be a continuous tradition, however, we encounter such a bewildering variety of outlooks as to make the Berrigan/Spellman divergence appear comparatively slight. Just imagine the two of them, individually or together, for example, in dialogue with someone like Origen! It is small wonder, then, that similar remarks can be made concerning divergences of worldviews among those who have called themselves communists in the Marxian tradition, even though that tradition is of such comparatively recent origin. Ho-Chi Minh, whose regime the US government tried so hard to defeat, claimed to have taken inspiration not only from Marx but also from some of the best-known historical American political figures. In the Vietnam of today, great new prosperity has come to some while the old ideals of community and even of family, which were generally maintained during the Ho-Chi Minh era, now seem increasingly quaint and irrelevant. (Contemporary Vietnam has a very high divorce Marsh-Ch04.indd 50 Marsh-Ch04.indd 50 2/1/2012 4:30:53 PM 2/1/2012 4:30:53 PM [3.237.87.69] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:35 GMT) Father Berrigan and the Marxist-Communist “Menace” 51 rate, for example.) What is left of Marxism other than a...