Daniel Berrigan, who at age 95 died in 2016, was the first priest in U.S. history to be arrested for protesting war, and he became in the 1960s a symbol of opposition to the Vietnam war and then in the 70s and 80s to nuclear weapons.

He taught that God does not bless war, justify war, or create war. He pointed to a nonviolent Jesus who blesses peacemakers, calls us to love our enemies, and commands us to take up the cross of non violent resistance. Dan not only helped end the Vietnam war and lead the movement against nuclear weapons, he changed the understanding of the Catholic church.

Daniel Berrigan was born in 1921, and entered the Jesuits as a teenager. He spent some time in France and studied Buddhism before being ordained as a priest in 1952. He published his first book of poetry, “Time Without Number,” in 1957 which won the Lamont Poetry Award. He would goon to publish 50 books of poetry, essays, theology studies, journals, plays, and scripture studies. At Dan’s 80th birthday party, Kurt Vonnegut said, “Danis Jesus as a poet.”

By the mid-1960s, Fr Daniel Berrigan had become a leading voice against the war in Vietnam (which most Americans, right up to the end, supported). On October 22, 1967, there was a massive mobilization on the Pentagon and Dan took a delegation of Cornell students to the protest and they all were arrested. It was to be the first of 100s of times of being arrested.

On May 17th, 1968, Dan, as part of the Catonsville Nine, entered a draft boardhouse in Catonsville Maryland, took 300 draft files, went out into the parkinglot and in front of the press, poured homemade napalm on the draft records andburned them. I quote from his press statement that day:
“Our apologies, good friends for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlour of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.” Their action attracted massive press, and led to 100s of similar demonstrations, and helped end the war and the draft.

After being sentenced for his part in the protestant Catonsville, Daniel disappeared for four months (popping up at campuses all around the country). This infuriated Hoover and led to Dan topping the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list. He was re-arrested in August 1970, at the home of William Stringfellow, and served three years inside.

 Dan became one the most well-known priests in the world, and consistently called for the Church to abolish the just war the and return to the nonviolence of Jesus. He never though had a bishop who offered public support to him. (I know how that feels.)

On September 9, 1980, Dan, his brother Phil (also a priest) and six friends, walked in to the General Electric headquarters in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania and hammered on unarmed nuclear weapon nosecones. They were arrested, convicted, and faced up to ten years in prison. Their “Plowshares” action was the first of hundreds of similar actions against the bomb.

Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, Dan spoke each week around the United States and published books of poetry, essays, and studies on the Hebrew bible. He also served as a hospital chaplain in New York hospitals for the poor.

Like other nonviolent practitioners for peace (I’m thinking of Gandhi and King), his public actions and deep spirituality were inseparable.

Here is some of his wisdom:

He wrote: “As we work for peace and justice, let go of results. Do the good because it’s good. Speak the truth because it’s right. Work for peace and justice because that’s what God wants. And leave the outcome to God.”

Dan believed in nonviolence, but three types: contemplative nonviolence—he spent time in mediation and prayer every day; active nonviolence – standing, marching, sitting where he wasn’t wanted; he took action over and over again; and prophetic nonviolence, writing and speaking out publicly for justice and peace. He had a long-haul view of things

He once told his friend and fellow Jesuit John Dear, “Do not be afraid. Don’t live in fear. Live in faith and hope and peace.” He practiced fearlessness, like Gandhi.

Dan lived by the saying: “If you want to be hopeful, you have to do hopeful things.” He used to say: “We’re going to reverse Dante and say, ‘Take on hope all ye who enter here.'”

Dan also named the evil he was resisting as death with a capital D. He said what we are up against is not just war, nukes, and so forth, but Death itself. “The culture of violence is Death,” he said. “We see Death everywhere: in our 35 wars, in the 800 million sisters and brothers who are starving around the world; in our racism, sexism, corporate greed, executions, 16000 nuclear weapons, and ongoing environmental destruction.” “But, ”he went on to say, “you and I do not promote Death, serve Death, or work for Death. (We serve Life).  Moreover, he insisted, Death does not get the last word. Life has a ‘slight edge’ over death.”

On one Easter Sunday he was picnicking with friends in Central Park, New York, and they were reflecting on the resurrection of Jesus. Dan, “If it were him, after all the violence that had been done to him, I wouldn’t have come back. I’d be resentful and angry, but Jesus makes breakfast for these people (his followers who betrayed him and ran away). There’s no anger or resentment or revenge in Jesus.”

Today I chose as our first reading the poem Some. It reminded me of Dan’s quip, “Don’t just do something, stand there.” The reference at the end to the bread, the risen bread, is to the metaphor from the community of St John (John 6:35), a metaphor for Jesus being the ongoing and literal food for the hungry, life for those suffering or dying, and hope for us all.

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While the golden rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) in one form or another appears in numerous places in Jewish and Greek wisdom (and beyond), its use in Luke’s text (our second reading today) is distinctive. Jesus is not its author, and so its presentation as such is no major step beyond either Judaism or Greek philosophy, which already offer the same basic insight. Jesus’ near-contemporary Hillel, for instance, is also reported as saying “That which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation” (b.Shabbat 31a). Jesus’ originality however lies not in proposing the golden rule, but in re-interpreting it as the love of enemies.

Where typically this “do unto others” principle is seen as a summary of decent behaviour, Jesus pushes much harder. It is not enough to be kind to those from whom you expect kindness, or to whom you otherwise owe it. It is love of enemies, not friends, that marks the follower of Jesus.

Recently, you may recall, the US Vice-President, J.D. Vance, attempted to use theological ethics to defend deportation of undocumented immigrants. Vance tried to claim that the Christian ordoamoris (order or structure of love) means that you love “your family and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens.” For Vance there is a priority order when it comes to who gets loved. And the clear message being that treatment of immigrants is less important (down the priority list) than love of family, neighbour, community, and fellow citizens. And, it is precisely this sort of prioritizing that Jesus is criticizing. The response from Pope Francis to the Vice-President’s ethics is worth reading.[i]

The grain of truth in Vance’s ethics is that we are indeed called to act with particular care and love towards those in our daily lives, not least those to whom we are bound in family structures, but (here’s the rub) also in whatever concrete situations of need we encounter. Love is certainly not just to “love” people in principle, at whatever distance. Yet this “ordo” of love that Augustine of Hippo named, and Thomas Aquinas elucidated, is not a theological rationale for familial or national particularism. Thomas in fact wrote “one ought, for instance, to succour a stranger, in extreme necessity, rather than one's own father, if he is not in such urgent need.”[ii]And this is the ethic that guides our medical professionals today.

There is indeed an ordo amoris, and unless rightly “ordered,” love is not really love as Jesus means it. And the right ordering of love begins and ends with the love of God for all. This would apply even to the traditional renderings of the golden rule: we should treat migrants and refugees as we would want to be treated ourselves. The other great principle of Israelite religion, to love one’s neighbour as oneself, leads in the same direction. Yet in Jesus’ sermon (our text today) we have something more radical and difficult than the common decency lacking so often now in the public sphere: love of enemies, not just of either family or of the needy, is the command.

If the true order of love defies appropriation for Vance’s politics, nevertheless there is no easy escape from Jesus’ call for the earnest liberal or appalled progressive either. The fact that it is presently so easy to see the lack of moral substance in some others’ public actions is a spiritual danger. Jesus tells those who listen not to judge. God’s mercy is not constrained by our own views of how much others may need it, nor by whether they deserve it. If we are to love our enemies, we must stand with the poorest and most marginalized, but we cannot leave the powerful mis-treaters o off our prayer lists either.

In our own context, as I wrote about on Tuesday, we have seen this last week the Christianity of Destiny Church used to bolster their belief that, not only is it okay to protest, but in their ‘war on woke’ it is okay to intimidate children and assault library staff. I, like many New Zealanders, am appalled by this. I also find the ethics of their actions at the library hard to reconcile with Christianity.

So is our Lukan text in telling us not to judge, to love and pray for those who intimidate and assault, and in effect stand on the sidelines, as the warriors against woke continue to rampage?

This is where I find the thinking and practice of great spiritual ‘resisters’ (resisters against injustice) like TeWhiti-o-Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi at Parihaka, like Mahatma Gandhi in India, like Fr. Daniel Berrigan in the USA, both inspirational and helpful.

A few brief comments on them:

Firstly, they were careful with their language, their framing of the struggle. Berrigan talked about resisting evil (which he named as Death, with a capital D). Not a ‘war’ against Death. For the ‘war’ word can lead people to justify all sorts of misdemeanours and atrocities (on both sides). Indeed the metaphor and reality of ‘war’ divides the world into sides. Berrigan instead, by using the word ‘Death’ or ‘evil’ allows him to separate a person’s actions from their being. The actions might be serving Death, but the person in their being is a child of God. And in theological language Death, like evil, is already defeated (in Christ), we don’t have to war against it, we just have to resist it.

Secondly, resisting is an action. It’s something we do. As Gandhi said, action expresses priorities. It might be speaking up, writing, signing a petition, sitting or standing where you’re not supposed to, sharing your views, and supporting by conversation or coin. Resisting is also something carefully done. Consequences considered. Collateral damage, like how it impacts innocents, considered. How does this action, in resisting, also maintain my belief in and commitment to the dignity and worth of every person, including those who are promoting the opposite of Life and goodness?

Thirdly, always allow for the possibility we might be wrong. The temptation to justify our actions with theological language is always strong. The temptation to put God on our side is always strong.

Not that God, the God of the Bible, of Judaism and Christianity, doesn’t take sides. God always asks: How are we treating the most vulnerable, the most marginal? What hope are we offering? Charity or justice or neither? Are we offering a seat at the table or crumbs on the porch? Who sets the rules for the table? And, what will you and I give up, to be bearers of God’s hope and life in our time?

[i]https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2025/documents/20250210-lettera-vescovi-usa.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

[ii] Summa Theologiae 2.2.31:“puta si sit in extrema necessitate, quam etiam patri non tantam necessitatempatienti.”

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