Why Donald Trump Should Not Be President
Donald Trump is a man who dwells in bigotry, bluster and false promises.
The man who wanted us to be uncomfortable
On
a rainy Friday morning in the city he called home for many years, the
Rev. Daniel Berrigan was celebrated more than mourned at a funeral mass
in Manhattan.
by MARK CHIUSANO
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The
funeral for Father Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit poet and peace activist,
was held at the Church of St. Francis Xavier in Manhattan last week,
where he was praised as a hero, a holy man, even a saint, by speakers
and mourners.
Berrigan
was the rogue priest who, along with his brother Philip, became a
symbol of the anti-Vietnam War and Catholic peace movement. He later
protested nuclear weapons, the Iraq War and the detention of “enemy
combatants” at Guantanamo Bay.
He
spent years in federal prison for his actions, which included damaging
nuclear warheads and lighting draft cards on fire with homemade napalm.
He
clashed with the church — and there was a certain irony in this radical
peace activist, who was a member of the militant Jesuit order, being
eulogized in a Jesuit church that also plays host to military regimental
ceremonies.
But
such are the contradictions inherent in eulogizing an activist,
controversial in life but praised after his or her work is done.
Making of an activist
Pete Swanson said he had been Berrigan’s student years ago.
As
a newly ordained priest teaching at Brooklyn Preparatory School during
the 1950s, Berrigan was “electric even then,” Swanson, 77, says. “He had
an aura about him. He was on a different plane.”
But the teacher and pupil soon moved in different directions.
Berrigan
left the school and moved on to activist work. Swanson ended up getting
drafted in 1960, mistakenly, he says. He has been afflicted with
Retinitis pigmentosa since birth, he says, a degenerative disorder of
the eyes that eventually results in severe vision impairment. But the
doctor refused to grant a medical deferment. Even in basic training, he
says he was night-blind.
“Father
Berrigan was against the war, I got caught up in it by mistake,”
Swanson says. While Berrigan was dodging the FBI and protesting, Swanson
says he had friends “getting blown up” in Vietnam.
Asking questions that are easy to ignore
Swanson’s
feelings are conflicted, even paradoxical. Nuclear disarmament is very
important to him, he says. But it was activists like Berrigan who pushed
disarmament to a political reality.
“In hindsight, Berrigan did what he had to do.”
Swanson’s
reaction to Berrigan is indicative of the way activists are treated in
their own time. Some of Berrigan’s tactics might still be controversial,
but his vision seems less so today.
In
a note to the Xavier community after Berrigan's death, Xavier's high
school president Jack Raslowsky wrote of what some have said is the
strength of a Jesuit education: being made to feel "uncomfortable."
"Dan
Berrigan was uncomfortable, and he made others uncomfortable. He was a
consistent, prophetic witness for peace and often asked questions that
were easier for most to ignore."
Will
we feel the same about those who continue Berrigan's legacy in 50
years? The climate change partisans who chain themselves to each other
in oil company lobbies. The Occupiers at Zuccotti Park (who Berrigan
visited, in fact, at the end of his life). The Black Lives Matter
protesters who were once joined by throngs of supporters, but now often
continue their protests and actions alone.
Berrigan’s
legacy urges us to minister to the helpless and downtrodden, to those
in the jails, the war zones, the sick, the homeless, the poor. And to
minister to everyone else by pushing relentlessly for a better world.
If
anything, Berrigan would likely suggest that we do not protest enough —
that insufficient questions are raised about drones and endless states
of low-level, far-away warfare.
The questions might annoy, or disrupt, but someday we’ll say they were good.
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