JailJournal

Thy Kingdom Come

2009-08-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

The following is the complete version of an article, HUMAN EFFORTS, GOD´S GRACE, published in the Catholic Worker, June-July 2009:

THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE --
Meditating on the “Our Father” in Jail
by
Joseph E. Mulligan, S.J.

The following is from my journal written while I was in two county jails from late January to late April, 2004, serving a 90-day sentence for “crossing the line” onto Ft. Benning, Ga., in a November 2003 protest against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas. The School, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), has trained thousands of Latin American soldiers, some of whom have returned to their countries to be notorious torturers, assassins, and other human-rights violators.

“Thy kingdom come”

May human society be transformed into a loving and just community for all peoples,
and may nature and all the universe continue to evolve into their fullness in Christ.
We are delivered into your Kingdom
when we live and build the world in a way
that demonstrates that you are indeed King,
not that you force us to obey, like earthly tyrants,
but that your principles and values hold ultimate sway in our daily living
and in our political and economic relations,
when we love one another as individuals
and as citizens of sister nations and races in the community of all peoples.
May your Spirit change our hearts and world structures
so that peace with justice will reign.

St. Matthew used “kingdom of heaven” out of reverence for your name; he meant the same as Mark and Luke did when they wrote “kingdom of God” -- not some incredible fantasy of a spiritual realm filled with disincarnate souls floating around, but this universe and this earth transformed into the garden for all which you intended at the origin.
Jesus himself proclaimed that this Kingdom is at hand, among us, not merely within, as some translations put it, as if it were a kingdom of interior consolation, warm feelings, and nice intentions in our heart and mind.
The Kingdom is larger than that: Jesus is Lord of all -- of our hearts and minds and interior values, certainly, but also Lord of the work of our hands and of the structures we create to live socially, politically, and economically.
The federal magistrate conducting the trial of those who protested against SOA/WHINSEC, after listening to our testimony and hearing of our dreams for a peaceful society, delivered his opinion that what we were describing sounded like the Kingdom of heaven but that we should know that it is not of this world. Perhaps Matthew’s “kingdom of heaven” is foremost in the judge’s mind, or perhaps he has other reasons for holding his opinion.
Yes, your honor, Jesus did say that his kingdom is “not of this world “ (in a very specific situation in his life), meaning that he would not rely on the world’s violent methods of self-defense such as armies when the police came for him: “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here” (Jn 18:36).[1]
Similarly, before the start of his public ministry, he had rejected domination and coercion as his method for helping the Kingdom to come. In the desert he rejected political power over others, any kind of miraculous spectacle which could coerce people´s will, and the power which comes from distributing bread and other necessities (Mt 4:1-11). His sword would be the one that Paul later took up: “the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God” (Eph 6:17).

But throughout his ministry
he courageously denounced evil, corruption, and injustice
in this world
and sketched the outlines of the Kingdom
inaugurating it by his way of living and struggling
here on earth.
That is why he was jailed and executed as a trouble-maker, criminal, social critic,
but in his resurrection he conquered death
and the injustice which had condemned and crucified him;
he is proved, for those with faith, to be the innocent party in the trial,
while his executioners are shown to be guilty of judicial murder.
He is the first-born of the New Creation, of the Kingdom,
which is present in seedling
and, as he proclaimed, is coming here and now.

Yes, the Kingdom is “utopia”
in the literal sense
that in its fullness it is “nowhere” on earth, in history.
That is all too obvious
in our criminal-justice system
as well as in the increasingly unjust distribution of the world´s resources
and in the military domination and exploitation
of the world by the U.S. and other powers.
But there is some justice and peace,
and we keep struggling for more.
The seeds of the Kingdom are planted and are growing,
even if in a fragile and quiet way as the parables indicate.
The risen Christ is with us in the struggle,
keeping our hope alive,
nourishing our love and commitment,
accompanying us and strengthening us in our wavering moments,
and assuring us that his Abba’s project will not ultimately be defeated.

********************
“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”

“The people united will never be defeated”
has been a popular slogan of struggle in Chile and other Latin American countries.
“Nicaragua won; El Salvador will win”
was chanted in El Salvador in the 1980s,
where revolutionaries found hope in the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua.
“We shall overcome,” proclaimed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
along with those who organized, marched, and went to jail with him.
“Yes, it can be done” (“sí, se puede”) chanted César Chavez and the United Farm Workers.
“Don’t mourn, organize” was the message of labor songwriter Joe Hill and other union activists.

These encouraging messages show us how to cooperate with God
in bringing about the coming of the Kingdom and the implementation of God’s will.
It couldn’t be clearer that God’s will for the Kingdom
is to be carried out on earth,
not just among the departed souls and angels.
How? By using our God-given intelligence and freedom to solve our problems,
working together with her for a better world.
We must let God’s will be done in our lives, families, and communities
and organize so that God’s will for justice and freedom
may become a reality for all
in social, political, and economic structures.
In these structures and systems, it is people’s power, united and smart,
which makes change,
for the entrenched power of the ruling class
does not yield without a struggle.
As Dr. King said, “We know through painful experience
that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor;
it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
Organized Truth-force, speaking truth to power,
non-cooperation, boycotts, marches, sit-ins,
draft resistance, tax resistance, and other forms of civil disobedience,
organizing unions, neighborhood groups, and political parties,
voting and getting out the vote, especially when the stakes are significant --
these are some of the methods of exerting power non-violently at our disposal.

God’s will
is not that women and children be beaten,
that more people be unemployed or exploited,
that millions suffer malnutrition or AIDS,
that the prisons and jails of the U.S. contain over 2 million inmates,
that the U.S. invade other countries at will.
These evils happen
because we misuse the freedom and potential God has given us.
Problems made by humans,
can be solved by humans.

In this seemingly impossible and overwhelming task, we may feel alone,
even if we organize millions to act in unison.
But we are not left to our own devices, limited energy, and propensity toward despair.
Moses and the prophets were always assured of Abba’s presence and strength
even in the face of fierce opposition.
Jesus often told his disciples: “Do not be afraid; I am with you.”
United to the Vine, we will produce much fruit.
It was not God’s will that Jesus suffer cruelly and perish ignominiously on the cross
“for our sins,”
to assuage some divine wrath,
to make a sacrifice of expiation,
to save us.
These are Old Testament images which were applied to Jesus after his death and resurrection. In retrospect, Christian theology sees that they were fulfilled in a magnificent way by Jesus.
It was God’s will that Jesus
announce the Kingdom of justice and love and inaugurate it by his work,
that he denounce hypocrisy and corruption in high places
that he be faithful to this dangerous mission
in face of the intense persecution it would unleash against him,
and that Jesus and his cause be vindicated in the resurrection.
“Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want”(Mk 14:36). Jesus’ will was one with Abba’s; he was the faithful prophet and courageous liberator to the very end.

******************
[1]All biblical quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version: Catholic Edition (Catholic Bible Press, 1993).

Militant Nonviolence

2009-01-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

Love for Enemies: Militant Nonviolence
by
Joseph E. Mulligan, S.J.

Published in shorter form as “The Fruit of God’s Own Life,” Catholic Worker (New York, NY), March-April 2008)

*****************************************************
The following is a modified version of a chapter of the journal I wrote while I was in two county jails from late January to late April, 2004, serving a 90-day sentence for “crossing the line” onto Ft. Benning, Ga., in a November 2003 protest against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA). The School, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), has trained thousands of Latin American soldiers, some of whom have returned to their countries to be notorious torturers, assassins, and other human-rights violators.
For more information about School of the Americas Watch: www.soaw.org
******************************************************

Non-violence as a Way of Life and as a Method

As a way of life, Christian non-violence constantly challenges us to be freed from the vestiges of those violent attitudes and behaviors which are programmed into us by the self-centered, avaricious, dog-eat-dog culture in which we live (with my apologies to the canines, since even dogs don’t devour each other the way we do!)

As a tactic or method, Jesus’ approach is a way of engaging the opponent not in battle for his life but in a respectful but firm struggle for his mind and heart, aimed at bringing about his recognition of the truth of a situation and of his own complicity in it with the further goal of bringing about a change of heart and behavior. The “opponent” may be the direct perpetrator of the violence and injustice and/or the society which supports her and in whose name she acts.

This kind of Christian pacifism (literally “peace-making”) has no relation either etymologically or historically to the kind of “passivism”which has unjustly undermined the Christian response to societal evil over the centuries. The non-violence of Jesus (speaking truth to power in word and deed) involves loving and doing good to one’s enemies by actively challenging their involvement in injustice and inviting them to live in a new solidarity with their former victims.

The classic texts presenting Jesus’ teaching on non-retaliation and love for enemies are Mt 5:38-48 and Lk 6:27-36. Let us focus on Lk 6:27-29a: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also....”

Jesus as Nonviolent Resister

The best example of how to do this is Jesus’ own illustration in action as found in John 18:19-23. (How could anyone try to interpret this passage without seeing it in the context of Jesus’ own behavior?) When the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching, the prisoner responded with a certain boldness: “I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in the synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together.... Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; they know what I said.”

At this point a policeman hit Jesus in the face, saying, “Is that how you answer the high priest?” Jesus answered, “If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”
Jesus did not strike back in violence, but neither did he hang his head, lower his eyes, or apologize for his statement. Rather than becoming mute, he challenged his aggressor, putting him on the spot by asking him to explain his action.

Later Jesus would keep silent in an eloquent response to Pilate’s question: “Where are you from?” (Jn 19:9). Pilate was driven to exasperation by this simple denial of his power: “Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” To this Jesus did respond, but in a way that relativized Pilate’s power, situating it as being under God’s authority: “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above” (19:11; see also Mt 27:12-14).

When Jesus was interrogated by the high priest (Mt 26:63) and by Herod (Lk 23:9), he also gave them the silent treatment, refusing to recognize their authority over him.

This firm, even defiant, attitude characterized the Suffering Servant in Isaiah: “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me.... Who will declare me guilty? All of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up” (Is 50:6-9).

At the moment of his arrest, while Jesus did not join with one of his disciples in using the sword, he did challenge his captors: “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me” (Mt 26:51-55).

In the case of a conflict between the community and an offensive member, Jesus counseled the community to confront the person: “If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender” (Lk 17:3). Hopefully this will lead to repentance and change: “If there is repentance, you must forgive.”
Matthew describes the process in greater detail (18:15-17): “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” But if necessary witnesses are brought in, the community becomes involved, and ultimately disciplinary action may be required: “if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

Thus “turning the other cheek” is very different from lowering one’s head, eyes, and shoulder before the aggressor, not daring to look him in the eyes or speak. That subservient posture is frequently typical of the slave, the poor, the oppressed, the outcast who has internalized the system’s characterization of him or her as an inferior being. But Christians know that they are loved by God and by the community and thus have a strong sense of their own dignity and a healthy self-respect and self-image; with this inner power they can stand up to the aggressor, who is only another child of God. And they can find human alternatives to violence rather than degrading themselves and betraying their nonviolent principles by “returning evil for evil,” which after all means doing evil.

Nonviolence in Practice

Jesus exemplified the attitude of “turning the other cheek” in a challenging way not only during his passion but consistently throughout his public ministry. On those occasions when he was threatened with death, he courageously returned to the turf of his persecutors and continued his ministry of loving care and prophetic denunciation (e.g., openly healing people on the sabbath, and in one case even throwing the merchants and money-changers out of the temple). The one who turns the cheek is saying: “I have done nothing wrong; you are wrong to hit me. Knowing that, if you insist on hitting me again, go ahead. I’m not afraid.” By returning to dangerous places and situations, Jesus was conveying a similar message to those who were trying to assassinate him.

In the same way the apostles proved to be recidivists in proclaiming the message of Jesus and of his resurrection in defiance of the authorities, knowing they would be arrested every time. They did not silence themselves (Acts 4:18-20, 29-31; 5:27-31).

Beatings, arrests, and incarceration did not stop Gandhi and King and their associates from always coming back to the confrontation, collectively offering “the other cheek” time after time. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who struggled for peace and reconciliation among his brethren, offered his breast, his body to his opponents who were his brothers:

“Dearest brother, I know it is you who will shoot me tonight,
piercing our mother’s heart with a wound
that can never heal....
Here is my breast! Aim your gun at it, brother, shoot!
I offer my body, the body our mother bore and nurtured.
Destroy it if you wish.
Destroy it in the name of your dream --
that dream in whose name you kill....
Come back, dear brother, and kneel at your mother’s knee” (Love in Action – Writings on Nonviolent Social Change, Berkeley, Cal., Parallax Press, 1993).

When Fr. Rutilio Grande, S.J., and two peasants with him were brutally gunned down in 1977, their martyrdom had a profound impact on the new archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero. “The blood of martyrs is the seed of faith” – and hope.

Archbishop Romero considered the conversion of the oppressor the “vengeance of the Christian”: “Let us be firm in defending our rights, but with great love in our hearts, because to defend our rights in this way we are also seeking the conversion of sinners. This is the vengeance of the Christian” (June 19, 1977 homily, Mons. Oscar A. Romero: Su pensamiento, San Salvador, Imprenta Criterio, 1980-89). The martyrdom of Romero, even though it did not end the repressive policies of the Salvadoran and U.S. governments, touched the hearts and changed the lives of millions throughout the world, strengthening them in their commitment to struggle for justice.

In the nonviolent actions at Ft. Benning to close the School of the Americas, one member of the community (body) follows the other in crossing the line – presenting one’s body, cheek and all, to the armed opponent. And some members have turned the other cheek in this militant non-violence two or more times, with the penalty being increased each time.
This is not passive acceptance of humiliation. Jesus’ words about turning the other cheek, giving your shirt as well, and giving to beggars and thieves are ways that “the oppressed can recover the initiative and assert their human dignity in a situation that cannot for the time being be changed. The rules are Caesar’s, but how one responds to the rules is God’s, and Caesar has no power over that” (Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1992, p. 182). The oppressed “have suddenly ... taken back the power of choice.”

A striking example of the oppressed asserting their human dignity is found in the latter period of the Old Testament. When the pagan emperor arrested seven brothers and their mother and compelled them, “under torture with whips and thongs, to partake of unlawful swine’s flesh” (2 Maccabees 7), they resisted valiantly. One of the sons, when it was demanded, “quickly put out his tongue and courageously stretched forth his hands, and said nobly, ‘I got these from heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again.’ As a result the king himself and those with him were astonished at the young man’s spirit, for he regarded his sufferings as nothing.”

The “victory” of the nonviolent resister

Jesus and others who publicly violate the letter of the law do not seek but do accept the penalty as a necessary consequence of their words and deeds. And they consider their experience of being punished an extension of the prophetic action which can also touch hearts and influence minds.
Jesus had said: “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am he” (Jn 8:28). See also Jn 3:14 and 12:32-33: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.”

The soldier who pierced the side of Jesus’ corpse was named Longinus by Christian tradition, which believed that he was converted by Jesus’ loving death. His statue is in a prominent place of honor in St. Peter’s basilica in the Vatican. In connection with the piercing, St. John quotes Zechariah: “They will look on the one whom they have pierced” (Jn 19:37). In Zechariah this look is accompanied by mourning and conversion.
In the synoptics a soldier at the cross says: “Certainly this man was innocent” (Lk 23:47) or “Truly this man was God’s son” (Mk 15:39 and Mt 27:54). (Perhaps in these accounts the strange natural phenomena at the moment gave an assist to their confession.)

Jesus’ death in love and courage also strengthened Joseph of Arimathea (a secret disciple of Jesus because of fear) and Nicodemus (the Pharisee who had come to Jesus at night – Jn 3:2) to “come out” and ask Pilate for the body and give it proper and respectful burial (Jn 19:38-42).

By raising Jesus from the dead, God revealed, to the eyes of faith, that the victory goes to the condemned and executed Victim and that this good man had suffered unjustly.

Hope in struggle

Like Jesus, we recognize that we cannot entertain an optimism which would assure us that all our most precious expectations will be realized in our lifetime, or solely by our effort. But hope is much more profound, and more mysterious: a fruit of God’s own life in us and in all of creation, a spark of energy propelling God’s historical project ahead, even with crooked lines, setbacks, deaths, and resurrections.

Hope is as basic as faith and love. If we believe in God as loving Creator, we cannot doubt the ultimate fruition of her good work; and if we love the universe and all humanity (starting with the present generation and our children and grandchildren), we cannot doubt the ultimate result of God’s love and our love – the fulfillment and happiness of all creation in Christ, whose resurrection is the first fruits of the cosmic harvest.
Meanwhile, hope is nourished along the way by our celebrations of small victories and by our joyful savoring of the values of the Kingdom experienced here and now.

And action itself strengthens and sustains hope. People who maintain their commitment to active struggle, especially with others in community, find that hope is not lacking (when they take time to think about it!).
By the same token, those who drop out, to devote themselves to purely materialistic or purely spiritualistic private pursuits, find that hope dries up – and then their hopelessness tends to justify their shutting down to the grand issues and struggles of world history.

END

For the original, longer version of this article, please see: http://jailjournal.blogspot.com/2007/04/love-for-enemies-militant-nonviolence.html

Violence in Jail and in Society

2008-02-08T21:30:00.000-08:00

Violence in Jail and in Society

Violence in Daily Life in Jail

A few days ago some of the inmates were watching a blood-and-guts, shoot-em-up film on TV featuring a constant barrage of people shouting, threatening each other, cursing each other out, and otherwise verbally abusing one another, as well as people beating, kicking, and shooting each other.

At the same moment, in the hall outside our unit’s window, a guard was verbally abusing a young inmate with an intensity equal to that of the spoken violence on the TV show. Fortunately this scene did not lead to physical harm, since the inmate controlled himself. I don’t know what the inmate, who lives in the neighboring unit, had done to provoke the guard’s wrath.

Perhaps the young man had been watching the same shoot-em-up and responded to some conflict situation (e.g., another inmate turning the channel) with the same methods he saw exemplified and glorified by Hollywood. After he is released, will the guard be an additional role model for him?
In the evening some inmates watched two hours of fake but ostensibly very brutal wrestling, following by real boxing.

The next morning began with a heavy-set guard bellowing at us that it was time for our twice-weekly change of jail shirt and pants. This particular officer seems incapable of telling us anything except in a loud, abusive manner.

As we filed past the clothes bin, some inmates were trying to indicate to another guard the approximate size they needed. All of a sudden the heavy-set guard shouted: "They don’t tell you what they want, you just give them the clothes. They’re just damn inmates. Shit!" I figured the last word was used as an expletive rather than a noun describing us, but who knows?

Discussing this with other inmates, we agreed that the guard’s behavior and mood is more his problem than ours -- perhaps he gets no respect or love at home, someone opined. A cellmate who has a background in police work and psychology said: "I won’t let his dysfunctional attitude take away the joy in my heart" -- wisdom for many conflict situations in life.

Later an inmate told me that the bellowing guard had been beaten up by an inmate a few months ago for his abusive manner. The inmate reportedly was charged with assault; I don’t know what else happened to him. The cycle of violence continues.

That afternoon a tall, blond, nice-looking female guard opened the door of our unit to announce something. "Jones, get your shit together and get out here now," she shouted. I chuckled at the incongruity, but no one else seemed to notice it.

Sister Carol Gilbert, O.P., serving a sentence in federal prison for a Plowshares anti-nuclear action, wrote in a letter to friends this month: "I had extra cleaning duty a few days into the new year because I thought 4:15 p.m. stand-up count had cleared and sat on my bed. Two of us were screamed at, as this is the method used here."

Violence on TV

Yesterday afternoon I spent a few hours watching the tube, wanting to give full attention to some shows I had only heard from a distance. The first two were courtroom dramas -- "Judge Mathis" and "People’s Court." Probably among the cheapest of TV productions, these consisted of men and women shouting at each other, interrupting each other as they expressed intimate secrets of relationships gone sour, and the judge finally shouting them all down!

Then came the blockbuster -- the Jerry Springer show. With a scantily-clad woman standing on the sidelines, men and women display their disputes on stage, screaming the most abusive language they can find. Words are bleeped out every few seconds.

Then, with the audience wildly cheering them on, they try to attack each other physically as the stage police grab them in various body places to keep them apart. Meanwhile Jerry strolls around the stage, occasionally asking the fighters about some detail of their relationship.
The final phase begins with the men and women gratuitously disrobing as they continue to shout and fight. Now the colosseum gets into a frenzy. But for the TV audience, the gladiators’ private parts are blocked out. (My fellow inmates tell me that the program sells videos which impede neither sound nor sight.)

This show features not only sex and violence, but sex in violence. Of course, the live audience and TV viewers are laughing and howling throughout. But in spite of their light-heartedness about it, I think this kind of TV fare, every day, has some serious impact -- perhaps making physical and verbal violence seem ordinary in the minds of some, or confirming its acceptability in the minds of others.

From the other units near ours, late at night, emanate scary sounds of inmates shouting at and threatening one another at full volume. Inmates who have lived in those units report that fighting erupts with some frequency, usually resulting in minor injuries. Are they acting out what they view on TV?

But fighting in jail is just a small part of societal violence. It seems that one day an inmate had the dubious distinction of receiving visits from his two girlfriends at the same moment. When they saw each other at the front door of the jail, a serious fight broke out between them, with the mother of one helping her daughter against the other. Perhaps they had been watching too much Jerry Springer, or too much nightly news.

Does Media Violence Promote Violent Behavior?

How, and to what extent, the pervasive violence in the media affects viewers and listeners is a complex psychological question which deserves more exploration. Magazines sent to inmates must come directly from the publisher, but articles can be clipped out and mailed in to us.

According to TIME ("Does Kindergarten Need Cops?" Dec. 15, 2003) experts on child behavior agree that "aggressive behavior in children has been irrefutably linked to exposure to violence on TV and in movies, video games and other media." The article cites psychologist Jerome Singer, co-director of the Yale University Family Television Research and Consultation Center: "Dozens of studies have shown this link. Probably hundreds."

The TIME article reports an alarming increase in violent behavior in kindergartners and first-grade pupils. For instance, the Philadelphia school district had 19 reports of weapons possession and 42 assaults by kids in kindergarten or first grade in the first 3 months of the 2003-2004 school year. A psychologist in the Ft. Worth, TX, school district said: "We’re talking about serious talking back to teachers, profanity, even biting, kicking and hitting adults, and we’re seeing it in 5-year-olds."
In addition to media violence, other factors mentioned are "lack of lap time" and excessive pressure to pass academic tests.

In "Voting Democracy off the Island" (Harper’s Magazine, March 2004), Francine Prose analyzes the message and impact of "reality-based" TV programs. After describing various scenes and situations, she identifies a set of "guiding principles" of these reality shows: "flinty individualism, the vision of a zero-sum society in which no one can win unless someone else loses, the conviction that altruism and compassion are signs of folly and weakness, the exaltation of solitary striving above the illusory benefits of cooperative mutual aid, the belief that certain circumstances justify secrecy and deception, the invocation of a reviled common enemy to solidify group loyalty" (p. 60). (The author notes that these are "the exact same themes that underlie the rhetoric we have been hearing and continue to hear from the Republican Congress and our current administration.")

The message is that people will do anything for money, no matter how treacherous or hurtful. If reality TV programs last long enough, "they will produce an entire generation that has grown up watching them and may consequently have some trouble distinguishing between reality TV and reality.... Watching a nightly Darwinian free-for-all cannot help but have a desensitizing effect.

Once you’re absorbed and assimilated the idea that civility is, at best, a frill, you may find yourself less inclined to suppress an eruption of road rage or the urge to ridicule the homely Average Joe who dares to approach a pretty girl.... After all, it’s the way the world works; it’s how people behave" (p. 64).

The media’s influence on behavior is evident not only in relation to violence. "Smoking in movies is responsible for addicting 1,080 U.S. adolescents to tobacco every day," according to a June 10, 2003 editorial in the British medical journal The Lancet, as reported in the National Catholic Reporter, Feb. 6, 2004. The NCR reported that "watching popular movies is the No. 1 factor in leading teens to light up, say researchers from New Hampshire’s Dartmouth Medical School in a landmark 2003 study published in The Lancet.

Governmental Violence

It is important to distinguish between media violence which is recognized as being fictional and real-life violence reported in the news.
In the latter category we find the very real and pervasive violence of various kinds (domestic and foreign) committed by governments, acting with the authority invested in them by their people. I feel that official, governmental violence influences citizens’ values and behavior in a significant way -- more profoundly than the fictional violence in the media.

Unfortunately the violence of the U.S. government at least matches that of the blood-and-guts shoot-em-ups. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called his country "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today," pointing to a consistent history of violence within and beyond our borders. Focusing on the war in Vietnam in 1967, he said he could not effectively preach non-violence in the ghettos of America while this country was using the most extreme forms of violence in Southeast Asia.

On the domestic front, the death penalty, as an exercise of official violence by states and occasionally by the federal government, is counterproductive because it teaches the population that people can be killed in a cold, public, and premeditated way when that is deemed "necessary."

Other forms of governmental violence -- e.g., causing harm to the poor whether in the U.S. or the Third World, ruining the environment, accepting the possibility of nuclear warfare -- also teach powerfully by example.

A Consultation in Jail

A fellow inmate, "Paul," told me that violence in the media conditions people to use or accept it in real life. In his opinion fantasy shows, featuring the violence of werewolves and monsters, do not have this effect. Some songs, too, contribute to the development of a self-centered personality; as an example he mentioned a big hit with the title "Fuck the world."

He stated emphatically that the demonstration and glorification of sex on TV reinforces an obsession with sex in many people, and that a similar depiction of the world of drug consumption -- without showing the human degradation, the withdrawal symptoms, the ruin of families and friendships and careers, and other ugly aspects -- lures many into it. Film and TV viewers see the glamorous clothes and flashy cars of the pushers, the excitement of the addicts, the fast life -- but rarely the tragic end of the addict or the severe punishment of the pusher. He strongly recommended New Jack City as very true to life and as a rare example of a popular film which does show the destructive aspects of the drug culture both for addicts and pushers; I will try to find it after release.1

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Footnote 1

Having seen the film in July 2004, I am grateful for Paul’s recommendation. New Jack City (1991) is a captivating movie which brings out the hard realities of the drug business. Nino Brown (played by Wesley Snipes), a gang leader who is on his way to monopolizing crack in New York City, considers violence a necessary part of his enterprise. "It’s all business, nothing personal," he observes several times in relation to his and his gang’s use of deadly force. A CEO or board chairman of a corporation polluting the environment or producing unsafe vehicles or running a hazardous sweatshop or selling cigarettes would say the same thing, as would the international vice-president of a company calculating the profits it will make in war-ravaged, occupied, "free-market" Iraq.
Such leaders of society would also say, with Nino, "It’s mine, all mine," referring either to their enterprise as their private property with no societal obligations or responsibilities, or to the physical and human resources of the world as their global market for their galloping self-enrichment.
"You gotta rob in the Reagan era to get rich," another of Nino’s memorable remarks, would be asserted with more conviction and enthusiasm today by insiders in the George W. Bush administration as well as by overtly criminal entrepreneurs like drug kings and bank robbers. Get rich -- by any means necessary.

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My conversation partner believes that 90% of jail inmates have serious addiction problems -- 70% if alcohol and marijuana are not considered. I can only report a little anecdote: when, as newly arrived inmates here, we went for a brief consultation with the doctor, the five young men ahead of me all answered "yes" when the nurse asked whether they use marijuana.

I also asked my fellow inmate/interviewee about police officers who work in drug enforcement: "approximately what percentage are crooked or corrupt?" Between 30 and 40 percent, he replied.

According to a Human Rights Watch report of April 2003, "Incarcerated America," more than two million men and women "are now behind bars in the United States. The country that holds itself out as the ‘land of freedom’ incarcerates a higher percentage of its people than any other country. The human costs – wasted lives, wrecked families, troubled children – are incalculable, as are the adverse social, economic and political consequences of weakened communities, diminished opportunities for economic mobility, and extensive disenfranchisement.

"Contrary to popular perception, violent crime is not responsible for the quadrupling of the incarcerated population in the United States since 1980. In fact, violent crime rates have been relatively constant or declining over the past two decades. The exploding prison population has been propelled by public policy changes that have increased the use of prison sentences as well as the length of time served, e.g. through mandatory minimum sentencing, ‘three strikes’ laws, and reductions in the availability of parole or early release.

"Although these policies were championed as protecting the public from serious and violent offenders, they have instead yielded high rates of confinement of nonviolent offenders. Nearly three quarters of new admissions to state prison were convicted of nonviolent crimes. Only 49 percent of sentenced state inmates are held for violent offenses.

"Perhaps the single greatest force behind the growth of the prison population has been the national ‘war on drugs.’ The number of incarcerated drug offenders has increased twelvefold since 1980. In 2000, 22 percent of those in federal and state prisons were convicted on drug charges.

"Even more troubling than the absolute number of persons in jail or prison is the extent to which those men and women are African-American. Although blacks account for only 12 percent of the U.S. population, 44 percent of all prisoners in the United States are black.

"Census data for 2000, which included a count of the number and race of all individuals incarcerated in the United States, reveals the dramatic racial disproportion of the incarcerated population in each state: the proportion of blacks in prison populations exceeds the proportion among state residents in every single state. In twenty states, the percent of blacks incarcerated is at least five times greater than their share of resident population."2

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Footnote 2
For footnotes in this report, and to see the entire document, go to http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/incarceration

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Structural Violence

Thomas Merton situates violence in its broad, global context: "The population of the affluent world is nourished on a steady diet of brutal mythology and hallucination, kept at a constant pitch of high tension by a life that is intrinsically violent in that it forces a large part of the population to submit to an existence which is humanly intolerable. Hence, murder, mugging, rape, crime, corruption."

For Merton "the crime that breaks out of the ghetto is only the fruit of a greater and more pervasive violence: the injustice which forces people to live in the ghetto in the first place. The problem of violence, then, is not the problem of a few rioters and rebels, but the problem of a whole structure which is outwardly ordered and respectable, and inwardly ridden by psychopathic obsessions and delusions."

Merton recognizes that violence must at times be restrained by force, "but a convenient mythology which simply legalizes the use of force by big criminals against little criminals -- whose small-scale criminality is largely caused by the large-scale injustice under which they live -- only perpetuates the disorder.

"Pope John XXIII in Pacem in Terris quoted, with approval, a famous saying of St. Augustine: `What are kingdoms without justice but large bands of robbers?´" Merton emphasizes that the problem of violence today must be traced to its root: "not the small-time murders but the massively organized bands of murderers whose operations are global."3

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Footnote 3
Thomas Merton: Essential Writings, selected with an introduction by Christine M. Bochen (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), p. 118.

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In their social clubs, churches, and country resorts, these global criminals socialize pleasantly among themselves, carefully avoiding any mention of the environmental lawsuit against corporation X, the charges against CEO Y of illegal anti-union tactics, the accusation against international counsel Z of bribing foreign officials. No one would be so rude as to ask an international sales representative whether his or her oil giant or global construction firm or weapons factory is profiting from the war in Iraq and from government contracts awarded without competitive bidding. Thus conversation remains amicable, with no one feeling uneasy.4

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Footnote 4
Shortly after my release from jail, I read Inequality and Violence in the United States: Casualties of Capitalism, by Barbara H. Chasin (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1998). Using a class analysis of American society, the author describes two major types of violence: interpersonal and structural. "Interpersonal violence is what many experts and most of us mean when we use the word -- identifiable persons injure others and are usually aware that they have done so. Structural violence, on the other hand, is a consequence of the routine workings of a society, especially of its stratification system. Structural violence occurs when people’s lives are made demonstrably worse by their lack of access to resources. If identifiable groups are suffering physically from conditions that could be changed given the existing state of knowledge, while other groups are not, then there is structural violence" (p. 4). The author provides many telling examples and a clear analysis of "structural violence."

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In prison among small-time criminals, the same pattern of socializing holds. Most prisoners get along remarkably well with one another, in conditions of crowdedness, scarcity, and personal tension and insecurity unimagined by our wealthy and prestigious counterparts in their clubs and suburbs. Here, as there, one’s "business" on the outside is not usually an issue. Those who have written bad checks would not generally promise something to the neighbor in the next cell which could not be delivered, just as an Enron executive unloading his stock would probably not sell it to a golf partner.

The CEO selling millions of dollars’ worth of lethal weapons to a repressive dictatorship or to both sides in the same war would not sell an UZI submachine gun to the child of his church choir director; nor would the average gun-runner pass along a razor to an immature and perhaps angry fellow prisoner.

Thus in their private lives and immediate social circles, the white-collar global criminals and the lower-class, smaller-scale criminals can seem like "nice people," except of course to their victims. Here I am part of one of these groups; I would feel no more secure, and no more comfortable socially, in the church gatherings and country clubs of the other group.

Kindness

Thankfully, not everyone takes the lesson of violence taught by Jerry Springer and Pres. Bush and his corporate cronies to heart. In courts and jails, as well as in other areas of American life, there is some relief from meanness and nastiness. Most guards and marshals seem to be "just doing their job," with no special need to affirm their authority or their self-worth by abusing prisoners either physically or psychologically.

One young guard begins his announcements or orders to us by addressing us as "gentlemen" and speaks in a normal tone. Another had the thoughtfulness and good sense to get a wheelchair in which to transport an inmate who could hardly walk because of his arthritis and gout; by contrast, another guard the next day made the man walk to the infirmary.

Today a notice is posted on the inside of the door of our unit -- a Memo from the Accounts Clerk advising all inmates that next week peanut butter and strawberry cookies will not be available for purchase in commissary but that the following week larger packs of cookies, including vanilla ones, will be available. Thanks, Accounts Clerk, for this thoughtful and considerate gesture. It wasn’t necessary, but this inmate appreciates the courtesy (even though, since I’m fasting, I have no personal interest in the matter!).

True, notified in advance, some inmates may order items which are available, to their own benefit and to that of the commissary. (We hand in the order forms two days before the goods are delivered to us.) And as one seasoned inmate put it: "If they want to avoid a lot of trouble, there are three things they don’t mess with: mail, visits, and commissary."

During our trial the marshals minutely enforced the courtroom rules, ejecting several spectators for minor infractions of the required decorum. One marshal, however, ever vigilant, noticed that some folks were having trouble hearing the proceedings up front, so he invited the hard of hearing to take the front benches.

When I expressed my appreciation and gratitude for his thoughtfulness to our friends, the marshal exclaimed: "Everybody thinks I’m a bad guy, especially for putting a few people out, but I’m just doing my job." I thanked him again.

Letter in Jail to Dorothy Day

2007-05-05T13:35:00.000-07:00

Letter in Jail to Dorothy Day
by
Joseph E. Mulligan, S.J.

A shorter version of this letter/article was published in the December, 2004 issue of the Catholic Worker.

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The following is a chapter of a journal I wrote while I was in two county jails from late January to late April, 2004, serving a 90-day sentence for “crossing the line” onto Ft. Benning, Ga., in a November 2003 protest against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA). The School, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), has trained thousands of Latin American soldiers, some of whom have returned to their countries to be notorious torturers, assassins, and other human-rights violators.
For more information about School of the Americas Watch: www.soaw.org
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Dear Dorothy,

I have just found great joy and inspiration in reading your autobiography, The Long Loneliness. Thank you for sharing your life of love and struggle with us.
Jon Sobrino, the Jesuit at the Central American University in San Salvador who was giving a seminar in Thailand when his six Jesuit brothers and Elba and Celina were assassinated by U.S.-trained Salvadoran troops in 1989, writes a letter on every anniversary of that massacre to his dear friend and martyred brother, Ignatio Ellacuría, who was the Jesuit rector of the university and principal target of the assassins. I would like to write to you in the same genre.
I’m sure you won’t remember (although, perhaps now, with your memory, mind, and body transformed in the risen Christ, you will) our brief conversation over tea when I visited the Catholic Worker in New York City -- perhaps in 1972, after I got out of federal prison where I had done two years for destroying draft records as a protest against the Vietnam war in 1969. The content of our chat eludes me now, but I do remember your warmth and graciousness.

I feel that I have also come to know you through my friendships with Catholic Workers over many years. In 1967 in Chicago I met Karl Meyer and his family, who had a CW house on the near north side. With some other friends, Karl had organized a series of discussions in parishes concerning various aspects of the Vietnam war and the draft; I gave some input in several sessions.
Karl and I were later together in federal prison at Sandstone, MN -- I for the “Chicago 15" draft-board action, Karl for practicing and promoting tax resistance. There we grew closer in friendship as we talked while walking around the softball field. Karl spoke often and warmly of you, Peter Maurin, and Ammon Hennacy; thus I became more familiar with CW thought.
Karl now identifies himself as an atheist, but this has not diminished our friendship (why should it?), as I’m sure it has not lessened your love and respect for him. In The Long Loneliness you describe your deep friendship with Rayna, a beautiful person and committed revolutionary, who died “at the peak of her glowing, radiant life.” Your reflection about her resonates deeply in me: “When I think of Rayna, I think of Mauriac’s statement in his life of Christ that those who serve the cause of the masses, the poor, working for truth and justice, have worked for Christ even while denying Him” (p. 68).
I also think of Karl and so many other good friends and comrades in this way, as “anonymous Christians” (Mt. 25:31 ff), to use Karl Rahner’s phrase, even though, out of respect for their self-definition, I usually do not tell them that I see them in this light.

In early 1969 I attended a meeting at the CW house in Milwaukee, Casa Maria, where Mike Cullen and his family lived in service of the needy. Mike had taken part in the “Milwaukee 14" draft-board action in 1968, as you well know, and had not yet started his sentence. The meeting was an occasion for a group of interested persons to learn of Mike’s path to civil disobedience and to discern whether the Lord was calling us in that direction. Later, when I arrived at Sandstone, Mike welcomed me and we became close friends as we often discussed politics and theology.
Chuck Fullenkamp, one of my “partners” in the “Chicago 15" action, who had lived and worked with Mike at Casa Maria, was with us in the same prison; and we also shared spiritually and became lasting friends. (Chuck and his son visited me last year in Nicaragua.)
In Chicago after my release on parole in 1972, I became a close friend of the Catholic Workers, especially of John Baranski, who with others participated in anti-war resistance actions. I have also come to know the Day House community in Detroit and have visited CW communities in Davenport, Los Angeles, and D.C.
The movement has been and remains a sign of hope and an inspiration to me: people (the vast majority being laity) living out the poverty and hospitality of the gospel (e.g., the Beatitudes and Mt. 25) and struggling non-violently to combat the injustices which cause misery for others, especially war and the un-Christian priorities evident in military budgets.

But I feel that my story connects with yours in several interesting ways, the first going back long before my birth in 1943. In 1916, at the age of 19, you returned with your family to your native New York City to live in lower Manhattan. My Dad, Eugene Mulligan, had been born in that part of the city in 1906. It is thrilling to me to imagine that perhaps he as a boy and you as a teenage girl might have walked the same streets, seen the same tenements, noticed the same smells, and heard the same variety of immigrants’ languages.
It is for this reason that I relished your vivid descriptions of the area. Dad’s family’s living conditions were probably similar to those you and your family experienced -- not destitution, but poverty.
My Mom, Genevieve Lillis, a year younger than Dad, was born and grew up in Astoria, Queens, across the East River from you. She also lived in similarly austere conditions.
I myself have never lived in real material poverty -- not even in Nicaragua, where such is the common lot of the majority. My current jail experience is just a brief taste of it, and even here our basic physical needs are met perhaps more adequately than they were in your case and that of my parents as children.
Nevertheless, my parents’ stories of living with little made a lasting impact on me, helping me to define my real “needs” as being quite simple and to experience solidarity with the truly needy. My modest degree of freedom from “inordinate attachments” to comfort and security has enabled me to live, at least for short periods, in austere situations in Nicaragua and in prisons and jails in the U.S.

Another commonality I feel with your experience has to do with the poem, “Hound of Heaven,” by Francis Thompson. You describe listening to Eugene O’Neill reciting the poem in a saloon. “The idea of this pursuit by the Hound of Heaven fascinated me,” you recall. “The recurrence of it, the inevitableness of the outcome made me feel that sooner or later I would have to pause in the mad rush of living and remember my first beginning and my last end” (81-2).
I first heard the poem not in a saloon but in my English class at the Jesuit high school in Detroit, recited by a teacher. “I fled Him, down the nights and down the days....” But it had a similar haunting effect on me and kept speaking to me from time to time during my senior year and two years of college before the Hound carried me off to the Jesuit novitiate!
You would kneel in the back of a Catholic church, “not conscious of praying.” Once the Lord helped me to open myself to his call and to think seriously about it, I would go to the Duns Scotus Franciscan friary just north of Detroit to sit or kneel in the chapel, reflecting in silence.

A third experience of yours that I identify with is your heady feeling of optimism about the movement of history in favor of justice after a revolution -- in your case, the Russian Revolution of 1917. “We took the revolution for granted. We watched its progress; we were thrilled by its victories.... We became internationally minded. We lived in one world, and it was a world where dreams came true, where there was a possibility of the workers beginning to take over the means of production and starting to build that kind of society where each received according to his need and worked according to his ability.... We were arrogant and impatient of study and felt we were carried along on a wave of success” (83-4).
You saw the time come when the dictatorship of the proletariat became “a dictatorship by the elite few, by the members of the party.” But in its infancy the revolution was positive and hope-giving.
Did you imbibe some of this optimistic excitement in the 1960s and 1970s? I did, in spite of the reversals, tragedies and, as we saw later, the limited nature of the triumphs. With great sacrifice the civil-rights movement achieved significant gains, as did Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, which you supported; that picture of you sitting captive between two burly California cops speaks volumes.
The movement against the war in Vietnam grew to massive proportions, contributing to a cease-fire in 1973 and U.S. withdrawal in 1975. The socialist physician, Salvador Allende, was elected president of Chile in 1970 (then, it is true, killed in the brutal U.S.-sponsored coup three years later). The Sandinistas, including many revolutionary Christians in their ranks, led the 1979 overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua -- thus sparking hope for other revolutionary movements in Central America. (“If Nicaragua won, El Salvador will win!”)
And the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) opened the windows of our old Church to the modern world and its currents of change, officially affirming the Catholic commitment to justice and peace which you and the CW movement had been exemplifying for decades.
True, political and ecclesiastical reaction soon gathered force, reversing many of the accomplishments. But you and other young radicals needed the victories and optimism of the late 1910s, just as you and your CW family and other radicals in the 1960s and 1970s were nourished by the positive signs of the times of that era. I certainly was.
Now the challenge is to keep that flame of struggle alive, knowing what was achieved in the past (with all its limitations) and therefore what things and greater things can be attained in the future through struggle, even in spite of the evidently advancing evil, especially of U.S. imperialism. For this our hope needs to be firmly grounded in prayer and in faith in Christ’s ongoing empowerment of us in the struggle to bring his Kingdom of justice and peace closer.

A fourth aspect of your story which brings me closer to you is your concern about Nicaragua, where I have lived for 18 years. In the late 1920s you went around “in a stew and fomented over our interventions in Nicaragua and the political situation in New York” (116). At the time of your baptism in the Catholic Church, you were “working with the Anti-Imperialist League, a Communist affiliate, that was bringing aid and comfort to the enemy, General Sandino’s forces in Nicaragua” (145).
You probably knew Bishop John Lancaster Spaulding of Peoria, IL, a member of the League. General Sandino’s brother, Socrates, was also a key figure in the solidarity movement in the U.S. Together you all helped to bring about the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 1933. If you had lived beyond 1980, you surely would have joined the struggle against the Reagan administration’s policy of training and supporting the anti-Sandinista Contras.

I was delighted to discover a fifth experience of yours that I share -- turning to God in prayer out of happiness and gratitude rather than just because of a need. In a time of such prayer, the old phrase, “religion as the opiate of the people,” came to you repeatedly as a jeer. “But, I reasoned with myself, I am praying because I am happy, not because I am unhappy. I did not turn to God in unhappiness, in grief, in despair -- to get consolation, to get something from Him” (128). And so you went on praying in gratitude to God.
As a teenager, whenever I turned to God (which was not all that often!), perhaps in a high-school retreat or sometimes at Mass, I was aware of all that I had received from God, from my family, from my childhood parish and grade school in New York, from my high school in Detroit, and from my friends. I felt gratitude for all these gifts of love and wanted to try to do something meaningful and significant with my life and talents in response for all that I had received.
In my two years at the University of Detroit, I was considering medicine and had just begun to follow a pre-med curriculum when, in a moment of considerable openness during an obligatory weekend retreat on campus, I was struck by the seriousness and strength of Christ’s invitation to serve him and his people as a priest. As I devoted some time and meditation to this, consulting with some Jesuits I had known in high school and college, the call became clearer, and suddenly I was very grateful for this gift. Ever since, in times of prayer, especially at the start of the retreat, the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, I rejoice and give thanks for God’s abundant gifts, especially the people in my life.

A final point which resonates with me is your perception, sharpened by your first jail experience, of class discrimination by the criminal-justice system. While picketing the White House with a group of suffragists, you were arrested and then sentenced to 30 days in jail. During your first eight days, while you and others were on a hunger strike, you reflected on the other inmates, especially prostitutes, and on their upper-class counterparts: “People sold themselves for jobs, for the pay check, and if they only received a high enough price, they were honored. If their cheating, their theft, their lie, were of colossal proportions, if it were successful, it met with praise, not blame. Why were some caught, not others? Why were some termed criminals, and others good businessmen? What was right and wrong? What was good and evil?” (75-6).
Did you ever discuss this with your friend, Thomas Merton, whom you knew through correspondence? I thought of you last November when I visited the Trappist monastery in Gethsemani, KY, and the cemetery where Merton is buried. On this matter, especially big-business involvement in war, he wrote: “Violence today is white-collar violence, the systematically organized bureaucratic and technological destruction of man. The theology of violence must not lose sight of the real problem which is not the individual with a revolver but death and even genocide as big business. But this big business of death is all the more innocent and effective because it involves a long chain of individuals, each of whom can feel himself absolved from responsibility, and each of whom can perhaps salve his conscience by contributing with a more meticulous efficiency to his part in the massive operation.”
Merton noted that Adolf Eichmann and others like him “felt no guilt for their share in the extermination of the Jews.” Their feeling of justification was due “partly to their absolute obedience to higher authority and partly to the care and efficiency which went into the details of their work.” They could forget the reality of what they were doing because they were dealing with numbers, not with people, and “since their job was one of abstract bureaucratic organization.”
Merton saw the same distancing mechanism at work “to an even greater extent in modern warfare in which the real moral problems are not to be located in rare instances of hand-to-hand combat, but in the remote planning and organization of technological destruction.... Modern technological mass murder is not directly visible, like individual murder.... It is this polite, massively organized white-collar murder machine that threatens the world with destruction, not the violence of a few desperate teen-agers in a slum.
“But our antiquated theology myopically focused on individual violence alone fails to see this. It shudders at the phantasm of muggings and killings where a mess is made on our own doorstep, but blesses and canonizes the antiseptic violence of corporately organized murder because it is respectable, efficient, clean, and above all profitable” (Thomas Merton: Essential Writings, Maryknoll, N.Y., Orbis Books: 2000, pp. 120-1).
Here in jail, a large young man told me he is doing a sentence for battery (in a bar), which of course is a serious violent crime. But there are no corporate or governmental officials here for battering the people of Iraq or the environment. Another is here for bank robbery, but I haven’t met anyone doing time here for robbing millions of small-time investors by cooking the corporate books or for the usury committed against Third World people by squeezing hundreds of billions of dollars out of them just in interest payments on foreign debts contracted by their upper-class rulers and their unscrupulous and irresponsible First World bankers.

I just want to mention two more things – before the lights are turned off at midnight. Thanks for reporting on and sharing your indignation over the judicial crime perpetrated in 1927 in the conviction and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti -- “two anarchists, a shoemaker and a fish peddler, who were arrested in 1920 in connection with a payroll robbery at East Braintree, Massachusetts, in which two guards were killed” (141).
Vanzetti, “with his sense of peace at his fate,” wrote in a last letter to a friend: “If it had not been for these things [his imprisonment and imminent execution] I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died unmarked, unknown, a failure. This is our career and our triumph.
Never in our full life could we hope to do such work
for tolerance, for justice,
for man’s understanding of man,
as we now do by accident.
--- That last moment belongs to us
- that agony is our triumph.”
A sense of peace and joy in the midst of suffering was the astounding gift promised by Jesus to his faithful disciples. Thanks for providing another example of this mystery from the experience of Sacco and Vanzetti, who found meaning and purpose, and therefore peace, in bearing persecution for the cause of the oppressed.

Dorothy, I must tell you how delighted I am with one anecdote in particular -- a real gem with an important message. In 1918 you entered nurses’ training at King’s County Hospital in Brooklyn and soon started working as a student nurse. Your first patient was a 94-year-old Canadian woman who became more than cantankerous in refusing to be bathed daily.
“‘Let us help you,’ one of the nurses said soothingly. ‘Can’t you see that we want to take care of you because we love you?’
“‘Love be damned,’ the little old lady cried, ‘I want my wig.’ She sat there perched on the end of her thin spine, her eyes blazing black and clear. Her arms were clasped around her bare and scrawny knees. Around a large bare spot on her head she had a thin fringe of hair which stood up like a field of ferns.
“‘She has been crying for her wig since she came in,’ the other nurse said. ‘We let her have her teeth, but she wants her wig.’
“The little old lady needed more than soap and water and clean bed linen. She needed more than to be loved. She wanted to be respected as a person, and for that she needed to have her wishes respected. She needed such appurtenances as her wig. I remember we compromised with a cap and so pleased her” (86-7).

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Jailhouse Reading -- "The Immigrants," a novel by Howard Fast

2007-05-01T14:52:00.000-07:00

by
Joseph E. Mulligan, S.J.

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The following is a chapter of a journal I wrote while I was in two county jails from late January to late April, 2004, serving a 90-day sentence for “crossing the line” onto Ft. Benning, Ga., in a November 2003 protest against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA). The School, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), has trained thousands of Latin American soldiers, some of whom have returned to their countries to be notorious torturers, assassins, and other human-rights violators.
For more information about School of the Americas Watch: www.soaw.org
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Yesterday a friend brought The Immigrants, the epic novel by the late Howard Fast. In this setting one can devote full attention to a novel and read it well in a day or two!
Howard Fast describes the rise to power and wealth of Dan Lavette, son of an Italian immigrant fisherman, in San Francisco in the first third of the twentieth century. But his drive to the top, buying up ships, hotels, a department store, and even running an airline, imprisons his heart and soul, preventing him from giving himself entirely to May Ling, the love and joy of his life.

Having married into vast wealth, Dan found his relationship with the banker’s daughter turning into hostility and emptiness. But when he falls in love with May Ling, the beautiful daughter of his Chinese bookkeeper, he encounters new life, joy, and peace.
His wife Jean, however, refuses to grant Dan a divorce, and his empire-building requires him to maintain the fiction of “proper” family life. His relationship with May Ling was deepening, but Dan would leave San Francisco for weeks on end, once without even telling her he was going. When he returned, May Ling told him that she could not take that kind of relationship for more years and so she was moving to Los Angeles with her parents and the son Dan had fathered and loved.
“I love you,” he assures May Ling.
“As much as you can love anyone, Dan.”
“You’re my whole life.”
“No. Not even ten percent of it, Dan.”
“...I know it’s been hard for you.... I get involved in things. It’s not the money. I don’t give a damn about money, you know that. But all my life I’ve been climbing Nob Hill and pushing at those bastards up there. I go to bed and dream I’m still the kid in the fishing boat with the whole damn city in flames” (p. 294). Dan’s parents had been killed in the earthquake and fire of 1906.

Dan was not only the business partner of Mark Levy but also a very close friend of him and his family. Mark’s wife, Sarah, asked Dan bluntly but out of deep concern for him: “Why don’t you leave Jean?”
“Everything Mark and I have, everything we built, a whole lifetime of making something that’s going to be the biggest thing in this state, maybe in the whole country -- and we’ve just begun, it’s just starting to roll. I leave Jean, and she washes it out. She told me this. It’s not just a question of community property -- we’re in hock almost fifteen million dollars to her father’s bank.”
“Danny, it’s just a business. It’s nothing. It’s a golem that has both of you by the throat. Why can’t you and Mark see that?”
“It’s not just a business. It’s my life. Without it, I’m nothing.”
“God help you,” Sarah whispered (p. 314).
Dan’s sense of identity and self-worth was totally tied up with his meteoric “success” in building his and Mark’s empire.

When Dan longed to start an airline, Mark suggested that they go public, issue stock, and get a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Dan was hesitant but soon agreed, due to his exuberant confidence and need to climb higher: “We’re just beginning to crawl onto the top of this golden shitpile they call big business, and once we get there, we’re going to stake it out” (p. 346). He knew the nature of the green stuff of the pile; what drove him was power and the need to prove himself.
Arriving in Los Angeles on the first flight of his new airline, he visits May Ling and asks: “Do you believe me when I say that I love you -- more than anything on earth?”
“I believe you love me. Not more than anything on earth. I think you love the game you’re playing more” (p. 374).
Dan had just admitted it was a game: “Funny, we got this damned empire, and it’s all like a game I’m playing.” A game with high stakes -- his own humanity and a precious relationship.

Liberation from the game came to Dan in the form of the stock-market crash of 1929. He and Mark lost everything; and when he and Jean divorced, he wanted her and their two children to have all their common property.
With his last $120 in his pocket, Dan went to supper at Mark and Sarah’s. The two men were more relaxed than Sarah had seen them in years.
Mark said: “I can’t believe that it’s over.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Dan said.
“I don’t understand,” Sarah said. “In a world where men jump out of windows because they’ve been ruined, you two are celebrating.”
“It makes a kind of sense,” Mark said. “If only because it’s finally over” (p. 470).

Dan went to Los Angeles on a one-way bus ticket. Assaulted by thugs for a few dollars he had earned as a manual worker, he fought them off but ended up punching a cop who arrived on the scene. After doing ninety days in jail, Dan emerged only to spend a night around campfires on a weedy lot with a hundred other homeless and jobless men. “It takes twenty-four hours without food to make a bum, or four days without shaving,” an old man said to him. Dan admitted it.
The next morning he was seen by a fishing-boat captain who had worked for him in San Francisco and who offered Dan a job. With some money and clean clothes, he mustered all his courage and went to see May Ling. She, their son, and her parents received Dan warmly and gratefully, and he pulled out the words to share what had transpired.
May Ling watched “and listened to the single man she had loved and given herself to in the one lifetime she lived. She understood.... His life had been smashed and battered, and that was necessary. There was no other way for him to come to an accounting with himself. She understood the illusion of free will, and finally, in his own way and in his own good time, he had arrived at that understanding. It was a great triumph that he was celebrating, but that knowledge would be for the two of them and only for the two of them” (p. 490).
The stock-market crash had freed him from his false self, enabling him to live his own life with the wife and son he loved.
Leaving City Hall after their wedding, May Ling asked: “What they call the good life -- you haven’t any regrets?”
“I could do it again,” he said. Start over. Bluff and bull his way into the world of the wheeler-dealers, even making the construction of the Golden Gate bridge happen.
“No. I would have died ... in some flophouse along Main Street before I’d go back. At least it would be a death of my own choosing” (p. 493).
Now it was not merely external circumstances which had forced his liberation: his decision about his life flowed from his truly free will.

In the final paragraph of his novel, Howard Fast wrote: “ In the book of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, which Feng Wo [May Ling’s father] had translated from the Chinese and which was published by the University of California Press, there were a few lines from the Natural Way of Lao Tzu:
Moved by deep love, a man is courageous.
And with frugality, a man becomes generous.
And he who does not desire to be ahead of the world,
becomes the leader of the world.”
One of my cellmates, a man with long hair and long beard who has lived on the streets and in jails, read The Immigrants with great interest and pleasure. “I had a feeling it would end that way,” he told me. “Dan finally found peace of mind.”

In the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, whose purpose is to free us from “inordinate attachments” so that we may choose what is in accord with our true self, the author teaches that “all things on the face of the earth are created for man to help him in attaining the end for which he is created. Hence, man is to make use of them in as far as they help him in the attainment of his end, and he must rid himself of them in as far as they prove a hindrance to him.”
The purpose of meditating on the life and work of Jesus in the gospels is to come to an intimate knowledge of him, “who has become man for me, that I may love him more and follow him more closely,” according to Ignatius. As in the case of so many others, if the rudimentary boyhood faith of Dan Lavette had been nurtured to maturity, perhaps he would never have gotten caught up in the deadly and deceptive game.

Several years ago I had the pleasure and privilege of visiting Howard Fast and his wife, Mimi, in their home in Connecticut. I was drawn to him after reading The Confession of Joe Cullen, a novel which Howard was inspired to write after reading “The Mysterious Death of Father Carney” by Anne Nelson and George Black in The Nation (August 4-11, 1984).
I had been working on the case of Fr. James (Guadalupe) Carney for some years. In 1997 and 1998 the CIA and Defense Department released declassified (and heavily expurgated) documents concerning Father Carney. The priest had worked in Honduras for eighteen years. His defense of human rights and his support of the farmers’ organizing efforts resulted in his deportation in 1979.
After working as a pastor in Nicaragua, he returned to Honduras in 1983 as a chaplain to an armed revolutionary column; the group was captured by the Honduran army, and Father Carney “was disappeared.” Although officials presented his chalice and stole to his relatives, they never explained the circumstances of his death, suggesting only that he probably starved to death in the mountains. Five years later, a former officer of the Honduran army told The New York Times that he personally had interrogated Carney (New York Times Magazine, June 5,1988).
His body has not been found, and the Honduran military officers responsible for his death have not been identified. Whether any U.S. agents or officials were involved in his disappearance remains an open question.
The most striking aspect of the CIA and Pentagon documents is the extraordinary amount of material which is blacked out.

In Fast’s novel Joe Cullen is a pilot who, on a mission in Honduras, gets to know an American priest who had been captured by the Honduran army after he had entered from Nicaragua with a revolutionary group. The Hondurans put the priest into Cullen’s aircraft and order him to take off, but during the flight they throw the prisoner out.
Cullen returns to New York City where, plagued by guilt, he confesses his complicity to a district attorney. The plot develops from there.

I was graciously received by Howard and his wife, and we spent several hours sharing our life stories and our work. I have come to know Howard better by reading his autobiography, Being Red, and several novels. Knowing his life-long struggle for justice in solidarity with the oppressed, I am not surprised to find his passion running through his beautifully crafted novels. His heart was clearly with the underdog and outsider, and he elegantly laid bare the false world of the rich and powerful.
END

Letter from Jail

2007-04-22T14:53:00.000-07:00

Letter from Muscogee County Jail
By Joseph Mulligan
Published in The Witness online, February 9, 2004
http://www.thewitness.org/article.php?id=312

Letter from Harris County Jail
March 11, 2004
http://thewitness.org/printArticle.php?id=301

[Ed. Note: These two parts constitute one full article by Joseph Mulligan on U.S. foreign policy and Central America, specifically in terms of Nicaragua and the conservative/reactionary political leadership of that nation. The first installment was written from the Muscogee County Jail in Georgia. In late February, Mulligan and several other political prisoners were moved to the Harris Co. Jail in Georgia.]

*****************************************************
This is the first chapter of a journal I wrote while I was in two county jails from late January to late April, 2004, serving a 90-day sentence for “crossing the line” onto Ft. Benning, Ga., in a November 2003 protest against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA). The School, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), has trained thousands of Latin American soldiers, some of whom have returned to their countries to be notorious torturers, assassins, and other human-rights violators.
For more information about School of the Americas Watch: www.soaw.org
******************************************************

Stations of the Cross in Jail

2007-04-22T14:45:00.000-07:00

Stations of the Cross in Jail: Part 1
By Joseph Mulligan
Published in The Witness online, February 28, 2006

http://www.thewitness.org/article.php?id=1031

As I enter the fortieth day of my fast (March 7), I begin to "do" the Stations of the Cross in my mind and imagination.....

*******************************************

Stations of the Cross in Jail: Part 2
Published in The Witness online, March 30, 2006

http://www.thewitness.org/article.php?id=1047

IV. JESUS IS DENIED BY PETER (Mk 14:66-72; Lk 22:54-62)

Peter, who was loath to admit the cross in Jesus' path, now could not accept it in his own. "I do not know this man you are talking about" (Mk 14:71).

Would I have had the courage to admit being a disciple of Jesus, knowing that I might be put in jail and tried with him as a "co-conspirator"?.......

*****************************************************
This is a chapter of a journal I wrote while I was in two county jails from late January to late April, 2004, serving a 90-day sentence for “crossing the line” onto Ft. Benning, Ga., in a November 2003 protest against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA). The School, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), has trained thousands of Latin American soldiers, some of whom have returned to their countries to be notorious torturers, assassins, and other human-rights violators.
For more information about School of the Americas Watch: www.soaw.org
******************************************************

Meditating on the “Our Father” in Jail

2007-04-21T14:36:00.000-07:00

Meditating on the “Our Father” in Jail
by
Joseph E. Mulligan, S.J.

The following is from my journal written while I was in two county jails from late January to late April, 2004, serving a 90-day sentence for “crossing the line” onto Ft. Benning, Ga., in a November 2003 protest against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas. The School, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), has trained thousands of Latin American soldiers, some of whom have returned to their countries to be notorious torturers, assassins, and other human-rights violators.
My “Letter from the Muscogee County Jail” was published by The Witness during my first month in jail – http://www.thewitness.org/agw/mulligan021304.html
Other jail journal entries have also been posted by The Witness.

“Our”

If the Lord’s prayer is for all people,
then God is the God of all,
who then must be brothers and sisters of one family.

God of all nations, races, and language groups.
God of drug users and pushers
and of social drinkers and liquor dealers,
of smokers and tobacco advertisers;
of petty thieves in jail,
and of corporate criminals in country clubs,
and of the victims of both.
Of those who terrorize with chemical and bacteriological weapons,
and of those who hurt and kill by polluting the atmosphere for profit,
and of their victims.
Of those who assault and batter a person for a purse,
and of armies which attack nations for their oil and investment opportunities.
Of those who defraud with a bad check,
and of the company insiders who cheat by cooking the books
and steal by selling their stock before the crash,
and of their victims.
Of those who are in jail for perjury,
and of those who lie in advertising and governmental public relations.
Of those in prison for probation violation,
and of those in the White House, State, and Defense
who violate the rules of international law.
Of those behind bars for DUI (driving under the influence),
and of those equally reckless ones, behind desks, using and threatening WMD.
Of the drunk and disorderly,
and of the sober (or careful) executives of disorderly, rogue corporations.
Of those who fail to appear in court for driving without a license
and of those who invade without a license.

Today I finished reading Joyce Milton’s Tramp -- The Life of Charlie Chaplin (DaCapo Press, 1998). Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux, condemned as a serial wife killer who swindled his victims before killing them, accused the judge, jury, and spectators of hypocrisy: “As for being a mass murderer, does not the world encourage it? Is it not building weapons of destruction for the sole purpose of mass killing? Has it not blown unsuspecting women and children to pieces, and done it very scientifically? As a mass killer, I am an amateur by comparison.”
But he and they will be judged: “I shall see you all very soon.” (footnote 1)

“Our” Father,
of prostitutes in prison, and of their pimps on the street,
of business executives who cause unemployment,
and of politicians who allow social ruin in the maximization of profits.
Of the gun users and of the sellers of weapons,
and of those who promote violence by filling the media with it,
by exemplifying it in war, or in the home.

Bill Quigley, law professor at Loyola University of New Orleans and lead attorney in our trials, in “Yesterday My Friend Chose Prison” (4-9-03), dedicated to the anti-SOA prisoners of conscience, wrote:
“Yesterday my friend joined the people we put in the concrete and steel boxes,
mothers and children and fathers that we cannot even name,
in prison for using and selling drugs,
in prison for trying to sneak into this country,
in prison for stealing and scamming and fighting and killing,
but none were there for the massacres,
no generals, no politicians, no under-secretaries, no ambassadors.”

Who’s the criminal here? All of us stand in dire need of God’s mercy and transforming Spirit, but only some are judged “guilty” and punished by human justice.

***********************************

“Father”

Mother/Father
“Abba” -- Dad/Mom
Love, care, and mercy for all the kids, especially the most difficult and needy.
Unearned, unmerited mercy,
not dependent on our talents, moral worth, or reputation;
grace generously given,
and thus powerful to free us from our self-righteousness, which is always self-deception,
since it makes us selective in our vision and protective in our blindness.

As Love, Abba frees us from our need to rationalize our anti-social behavior
and to justify ourselves by focusing on some “works” and looking away from others.
Frees me to be myself -- a sinner called to be a saint, an egoist called to be generous --
and to let the masks, props, and titles fall,
to know myself as I am before Abba,
to repent of hurting others either on a personal or world scale,
to stand up and continue on the journey, open to the Spirit’s energy
to change a heart of stone into a heart of flesh;
to try to be caring and responsible in my personal relations
and in my social, political, and economic ones.

************

“who art in heaven”

and who are here on earth, in society,
through your Incarnation (“becoming flesh”) in Jesus of Nazareth,
who is in the prisoner, the hungry, the naked, the homeless,
crying out to us as individuals and social groups,
denying us the escape of saying “I love God”
while hurting or ignoring my neighbor and my neighbor countries.

But yes, who art in heaven --
that is, everywhere,
on earth and above, throughout the galaxies,
to be confined, tamed, named, and domesticated nowhere.
Not as the tribal god of any gender, nation, race, or class,
nor under house arrest in Washington, Jerusalem, Rome, Mecca, or any other temple.
Who does not need our children to say,
in the pledge of allegiance, that our nation is “under God,”
but who does want every nation to acknowledge
that it is under higher laws and principles, not a law unto itself,
and that its citizens should not consider nationalism their “ultimate concern,”
their Absolute, especially in time of war,
which cannot be “just” for both sides at the same time,
no matter how fervently the chaplains bless both armies,
assuring them they are doing God’s work.

Abba “in heaven” is our Supreme Authority,
whose commandment is that we love one another.
Who, as Pater and Mater, does not forbid patriotism,
but keeps it in perspective,
reminding us that our true Patria is the universal Kingdom of justice, peace, and love,
not just the land under our flag.
Who inspired an anti-imperialist statesman to say: “My country right or wrong --
may it ever be right,
but when it is wrong, let us make it right” (Carl Schurz).
For it is always my country, for which I share responsibility.

Thus the true patriot, “under God” who is in heaven,
is not the one who simply waves the flag,
prays for the troops and urges them on (from the sidelines)
as they march off to wars around the world,
and consoles their families when they return in flag-draped coffins,
but the citizen
who democratically questions the government policies which send the soldiers
to kill and to die,
who exercises the rights to freedom of speech and redress of grievances,
who organizes to pressure for change,
and who invites soldiers and civilian collaborators
to let their conscience examine what they are about to do,
to be a conscientious objector before or after induction,
if that is where their Light leads,
and to obey their conscience, which for them is the voice of Truth,
of the Commander-in-Chief of the worldwide human nation.

*******************************

“Hallowed be thy name”

May your name be held holy, revered, respected,
not tripping lightly off the tongue
of every political, civic, and church leader
who talks in public as if he/she had a special Internet link to your will.
And may your name, “Abba,” be understood correctly:
“Mom/Dad,” ever kind and merciful to all the kids,
and thus our liberator from all our pretensions.
Parent and Creator, who brought the universe,
with all its inhabitants, into being,
and so cannot but want life in all its fullness and joy
for all your universal family.

Your name is holy. You are all-holy, entirely Good.
No human construct is all-holy --
no nation or empire, no constitution, no tradition, no “sacred” book,
no human structure of organized religion or government.
When our human products fall into the common temptation
of deifying and sacralizing themselves,
then those idols which demand human sacrifice
need to be shattered, secularized, relativized, de-mystified --
that is, brought down to earth and shown to be of clay --
so that human beings may be free
to know the truth and to love Abba and all people.

Yes, in your holiness and goodness we are all called to share.
St. Paul addressed his letters to the “saints” in various communities,
invited to be a New Creation in Christ.
But Christ is the only human being who is totally holy,
totally filled with the Holy Spirit, one with Abba.
The rest of us share his life and holiness, in very limited measure.
Paul emphasized that he had not yet attained the crown
but was running toward it (Philippians 3:12-14).

**********************************

“Thy kingdom come”

May human society be transformed into a loving and just community for all peoples,
and may nature and all the universe continue to evolve into their fullness in Christ.
We are delivered into your Kingdom
when we live and build the world in a way
that demonstrates that you are indeed King,
that your principles and values hold ultimate sway in our daily living
and in our political and economic relations,
when we love one another as individuals
and as citizens of sister nations and races in the community of all peoples.
May your Spirit change our hearts and world structures
so that peace with justice will reign.

St. Matthew used “kingdom of heaven” out of reverence for your name; he meant the same as Mark and Luke did when they wrote “kingdom of God” -- not some incredible fantasy of a spiritual realm filled with disincarnate souls floating around, but this universe and this earth transformed into the garden for all which you intended at the origin.
Jesus himself proclaimed that this Kingdom is at hand, among us, not merely within, as some translations put it, as if it were a kingdom of interior consolation, warm feelings, and nice intentions in our heart and mind.
The Kingdom is larger than that: Jesus is Lord of all -- of our hearts and minds and interior values, certainly, but also Lord of the work of our hands and of the structures we create to live socially, politically, and economically.
The federal magistrate conducting the trial of those who protested against SOA/WHINSEC, after listening to our testimony and hearing of our dreams for a peaceful society, delivered his opinion that what we were describing sounded like the Kingdom of heaven but that we should know that that is not of this world. Perhaps Matthew’s “kingdom of heaven” is foremost in the judge’s mind, or perhaps he has other reasons for holding his opinion.
Yes, your honor, Jesus did say that his kingdom is “not of this world “ (in a very specific situation in his life), meaning that he would not rely on the world’s violent methods of self-defense such as armies when the police came for him: “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here” (Jn 18:36). (footnote 2)
Similarly, before the start of his public ministry, he had rejected domination and coercion as his method for helping the Kingdom to come. In the desert he rejected political power over others, any kind of miraculous spectacle which could coerce people´s will, and the power which comes from distributing bread and other necessities (Mt 4:1-11). His sword would be the one that Paul later took up: “the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God” (Eph 6:17).

But throughout his ministry
he courageously denounced evil, corruption, and injustice
in this world
and sketched the outlines of the Kingdom
inaugurating it by his way of living and struggling
here on earth.
That is why he was jailed and executed as a trouble-maker, criminal, social critic,
but in his resurrection he conquered death
and the injustice which had condemned and crucified him;
he is proved, for those with faith, to be the innocent party in the trial,
while his executioners are shown to be guilty of judicial murder.
He is the first-born of the New Creation, of the Kingdom,
which is present in seedling
and, as he proclaimed, is coming here and now.

Yes, the Kingdom is “utopia”
in the literal sense
that in its fullness it is “nowhere” on earth, in history.
That is all too obvious
in our criminal-justice system
as well as in the increasingly unjust distribution of the world´s resources
and in the military domination and exploitation
of the world by the U.S. and other powers.
But there is some justice and peace,
and we keep struggling for more.
The seeds of the Kingdom are planted and are growing,
even if in a fragile and quiet way as the parables indicate.
The risen Christ is with us in the struggle,
keeping our hope alive,
nourishing our love and commitment,
accompanying us and strengthening us in our wavering moments,
and assuring us that his Abba’s project will not ultimately be defeated.

********************
“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”

“The people united will never be defeated”
has been a popular slogan of struggle in Chile and other Latin American countries.
“Nicaragua won; El Salvador will win”
was chanted in El Salvador in the 1980s,
where revolutionaries found hope in the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua.
“We shall overcome,” proclaimed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
along with those who organized, marched, and went to jail with him.
“Yes, it can be done” (“sí, se puede”) chanted César Chavez and the United Farm Workers.
“Don’t mourn, organize” was the message of Mother Jones and other labor organizers.

These encouraging messages show us how to cooperate with God
in bringing about the coming of the Kingdom and the implementation of God’s will.
It couldn’t be clearer that God’s will for the Kingdom
is to be carried out on earth,
not just among the departed souls and angels.
How? By using our God-given intelligence and freedom to solve our problems,
working together with her for a better world.
We must let God’s will be done in our lives, families, and communities
and organize so that God’s will for justice and freedom
may become a reality for all
in social, political, and economic structures.
In these structures and systems, it is people’s power, united and smart,
which makes change,
for the entrenched power of the ruling class
does not yield without a struggle.
As Dr. King said, “We know through painful experience
that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor;
it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
Organized Truth-force, speaking truth to power,
non-cooperation, boycotts, marches, sit-ins,
draft resistance, tax resistance, and other forms of civil disobedience,
organizing unions, neighborhood groups, and political parties,
voting and getting out the vote, especially when the stakes are significant --
these are some of the methods of exerting power non-violently at our disposal.

God’s will
is not that women and children be beaten,
that more people be unemployed or exploited,
that millions suffer malnutrition or AIDS,
that the prisons and jails of the U.S. contain over 2 million inmates,
that the U.S. invade other countries at will.
These evils happen
because we misuse the freedom and potential God has given us.
Problems made by humans,
can be solved by humans.

In this seemingly impossible and overwhelming task, we may feel alone,
even if we organize millions to act in unison.
But we are not left to our own devices, limited energy, and propensity toward despair.
Moses and the prophets were always assured of Abba’s presence and strength
even in the face of fierce opposition.
Jesus often told his disciples: “Do not be afraid; I am with you.”
United to the Vine, we will produce much fruit.
It was not God’s will that Jesus suffer cruelly and perish ignominiously on the cross
“for our sins,”
to assuage some divine wrath,
to make a sacrifice of expiation,
to save us.
These are Old Testament images which were applied to Jesus after his death and resurrection. In retrospect, Christian theology sees that they were fulfilled in a magnificent way by Jesus.
It was God’s will that Jesus
announce the Kingdom of justice and love and inaugurate it by his work,
that he denounce hypocrisy and corruption in high places
that he be faithful to this dangerous mission
in face of the intense persecution it would unleash against him,
and that Jesus and his cause be vindicated in the resurrection.
“Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want”(Mk 14:36). Jesus’ will was one with Abba’s; he was the faithful prophet and courageous liberator to the very end.

******************

“Give us this day our daily bread”

Today our jailers were 1 1/2 hours late bringing the sandwiches and cookies for lunch; since I am fasting, for me this meant only that I had to wait a while to enjoy my regular noon-time treat of milk flavored with Yoo-hoo chocolate drink.
The other inmates waited patiently, confident that their “bread for today” would come, just as breakfast had been delivered through the slot in the wall, and supper would be.
But most people in the Third World do not have this confidence that three meals, or even one, will come their way today. When they pray for their daily bread, they ask with a deadly seriousness and with a hope tempered by hunger.
Let us pray and struggle that the super-abundant resources of the world be distributed justly so that no one suffers a lack of daily bread, and that the rising numbers of obese and overly but unhealthily fed folks in the rich societies learn to take their just portion and right quality of daily nourishment.
Meeting the food needs of the world depends on forging economic systems of adequate production and just distribution. “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Mt 6:33).

In Christian spirituality “our daily bread” began to refer to the Bread of Life, the Eucharist, where we recognize the risen Christ “in the breaking of the bread,” as did the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-35). When the community comes together as brothers and sisters to share a meal, we feel Christ’s presence in our midst and especially in the miracle of sharing. “Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” Jesus is present in community: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Mt 18:20).
As this spirit of sharing feeds the hungry and houses the homeless in the U.S. and throughout the world, we will recognize Christ as the Love inspiring it, just as we sense his presence in every effort for justice and peace.

“You are the body of Christ,” wrote Paul (1 Cor 12:27). But is the community the real presence? I believe so. Not only that, but the real presence in the sacrament is meant to be the Bread of Life to nourish and strengthen Christ’s presence in the people. “I was hungry and you gave me food.... Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Mt 25:35,40).
Where is the risen Christ? In large part, in the community and in our work for the Kingdom. Imagine if we showed the same respect, reverence, and love to Christ’s Body in the Church, in the sick, in the imprisoned as we do to his Body on the altar and in the tabernacle! The HIV/AIDS patient or the addict or the unemployed would be the Most Blessed Sacrament, and we would really encounter Christ in our sharing with his members.
Perhaps this is why the tradition of benediction (adoring the Eucharistic bread and blessing the people with it) has waned in the post-Vatican II Church -- because we believe that Christ is present in the sacrament not so much to be adored there as to nourish and help his Body, the Church. And his presence on the altar is most meaningfully and salvifically celebrated when the altar is the table of our shared meal.
At Mass, when I say the words of Jesus -- “This is my body, which will be given (or broken) for you; this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new covenant, which shall be shed for you” -- I am thinking not so much of the epiphany of Christ in the bread and wine at that moment but in the wonder of his giving his body to be broken within hours on the cross and his blood to be shed out of faithfulness to his prophetic mission for his people.
He knew that his body would be torn apart, and his blood spilled out, as a consequence of his liberating work, and he accepted this death penalty rather than waver from his task. This is epitomized for me by the moment of martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador: one day after delivering, in his Sunday sermon broadcast nationally, one of his strongest denouncements of his own government’s repression (“Stop the repression.... No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to God’s will”), standing at the altar at the offertory, shortly before the consecration, his body was broken and his heart burst by one bullet from an assassin in the service of the oligarchy and the U.S.-supported military.
He enacted the words of consecration in his own sacrifice of his life, and he celebrated the resurrection with his Lord Jesus. “If they kill me, I will rise again in the Salvadoran people,” he had said.
During the Eucharistic prayer I am also aware of and joyfully celebrating the change of the bread and wine, and I am conscious of the words Jesus used about the New Covenant. This is the interior, personal covenant: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer 31:33).
This is an extremely serious and important affirmation by Jesus: that the New Covenant is embodied in him. Let us pray that we, as members of his Body, may truly be people of this new covenant of love.

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“And forgive us our trespasses”

Abba is love and mercy.
We simply have to accept the gift
and believe that we are forgiven.
No “works” are required on our part
except to recognize our sin, repent, and have a sincere intention to do better in the future.
The key element is to be struck by what is really sinful in my life,
not what I am “supposed” to feel sorry for according to the catechism.
Have I hurt someone by an unjust act or word?
Have I done harm to large numbers of people
by my involvement in unjust, anti-social policies
of my gender, government, corporation, church, or other group I am part of?
This latter dimension of sin is often overlooked by preachers and counselors
who focus only on the interpersonal dimension of our lives, e.g. --
Am I fulfilling my responsibilities to my family?
Do I avoid using violence at home or with my neighbors?
Do I refrain from stealing from them or from the corner grocery?
But we are also social and political beings,
members of collectives which act in our name and for us.
Is my government or corporation hurting or helping
the hungry children of the whole human family?
Is my government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,”
as Dr. King believed?
Are we stealing the oil of Iraq by assault and armed robbery?
While I may try to respect the dignity and rights of women,
does my Church violate their rights systematically
by denying equal rights to participate at all levels of ministry?
While I, with the assistance of the law, avoid blowing smoke in others’ faces,
is the corporation I work for or hold stock in
destroying bodies on a massive scale by polluting the air, water, and earth?
While I may have some friends among (or at least talk respectfully with)
unskilled laborers and members of minorities,
is my company, school, or church a vicious union-buster
and a violator of equal-opportunity laws?

The criterion for receiving communion and for considering someone a “good Catholic”
should be much more encompassing than simply whether the person
has been married in the Church or is in a second marriage.
Sexual relationships can be beautiful expressions of love and communication
or they can be hurtful and destructive.
But there are many other ways we can harm people as well,
and many of them are in the sphere of our political and economic relationships.

It is a truly liberating gift of God
when we allow our masks and lies and excuses to fall away
and our conscience is shaken by the recognition of some harm we are doing.
The next moment is also a divine gift:
when we feel sorrow, repent, and ask God and others for forgiveness,
accept that unearned mercy,
and get up and begin to live differently,
knowing that we are sinners called to be apostles.

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“As we forgive those who trespass against us”

When I recognize my own sinfulness, feel sorrow, ask for forgiveness, and gratefully receive that forgiveness and begin a new life, I cannot but respond positively to someone who goes through the same process and asks my forgiveness.
But the process must be complete: the aggressor must stop abusing the victim before the victim can forgive. How, then, can women in the Catholic Church forgive the all-male clergy, unless we are struggling alongside them for their full rights? How can the people of Latin America forgive us, unless we are trying to abolish SOA/WHINSEC and other instruments of violent repression, which harm them, and striving to cancel their crushing foreign debt?

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“And lead us not into temptation”

Perhaps the gravest temptation for people engaged in the struggle to build the Kingdom is to despair of this possibility and abandon the dream. As an antidote to this, we have the entire record of the bible, where Abba and Jesus constantly try to raise the hopes and spirits of their people, encouraging us to continue on the journey.
And throughout history a cloud of saints and martyrs, as well as “holy atheists” who often put professed Christians to shame, show that it is possible to live a life of integrity in the midst of corruption and of struggle against overwhelming odds.
We also have the support of one another in our communities where our dream is kept alive and our hope nourished. Active engagement itself, always searching for new strategies, sustains hope: those who remain faithful to the struggle find their hope being renewed, whereas those who drop out to live a strictly private life fall into a deeper and deeper cynicism and pessimism, perhaps partly to rationalize their inactivity.
Let us use our minds to develop effective strategies to produce victories, which we need along the way, even small ones: but let us see that the ultimate value of our work and struggle is intrinsic to them, not depending wholly on the outcome, so that we can say, if necessary: “We did our best; we lost this inning; but it was all worth it.”
Ultimately hope, like faith and true love, is the fruit of God’s life in us.

Another serious temptation in this line of work is self-righteousness: considering ourselves superior to the unenlightened and uncommitted masses, and some of us thinking of ourselves as a “vanguard” going further, taking more risks, bearing more crosses, and working harder than our comrades in the same movement.
The first kind of self-righteousness, based on a failure to remember our own process of conscientización (consciousness-raising), impedes our ability to communicate with the people and sometimes leads activists to label the people as their enemy. Antidote? To recognize that many people are insecure about their own future, are super-busy with their daily life and work, and are easily manipulable by the media and other opinion-formers -- but are nevertheless capable of gaining an adequate social analysis, recognizing their own and others’ true interests (as distinct from the interests of the elite), and entering into struggle. Their birth of consciousness can be assisted by us if we do our jobs sensitively, respectfully, and intelligently.
The second kind of self-righteousness, based on a spirit of egotistic competition within the ranks of our own movement, divides us and undermines our power. Antidote? To recognize our own and others’ gifts and limitations and to see ourselves as members of one body: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” (1 Cor 12:21).

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“But deliver us from evil”

In Spanish we say: “libranos del mal” -- liberate us from evil. The many dimensions of this process are explored systematically in liberation theology.
From the evil of self-centeredness in our own heart,
often based on fear and self-doubt,
and from the evils of injustice
which are products of that selfishness --
Liberate us as you liberated your people from slavery in Egypt,
by calling us to struggle to free ourselves.
For freedom cannot be given or imposed,
against our flight from it,
against our desire to remain “happy slaves,”
against our conformism, passivity, laziness,
and poor self-image to which we may wish to cling.
Freedom is seized by those who respond to the call and the challenge.

**************

“For thine is the kingdom”

It is the Kingdom of God, and it will come in God’s time and manner; we are its heralds and servants, called to be steadfast in our task.

“And the power”

The energy and force for good in the universe is God’s: the gentle force of truth and love which can touch hearts and transform them by the Holy Spirit and can “bring down the powerful from their thrones and lift up the lowly,” filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty (Lk 1:52-53).

“And the glory”

Let us not build kingdoms to our own glory, but to God’s, lest we become the oppressor.

“Now and forever. Amen.”

Footnotes:

1. Seeing the movie, “Monsieur Verdoux,” after my release, I found some additional interesting statements by Verdoux. He opens his pre-sentence speech by jabbing at the problem of unemployment: “The prosecutor at least admits that I have brains. I have, and for 35 years I used them honestly. After that, nobody wanted them. So I was forced to go into business for myself.”
Just before going to the guillotine, Verdoux was interviewed by a reporter. “Crime doesn’t pay, does it?”
Verdoux: “No, sir. Not in a small way.”
“What do you mean?”
“To be successful in anything, one must be well organized.”
“Give me a story with a moral to it. You, the tragic example of a life of crime.”
“I dont see how anyone can be an example in these criminal times.”
“You certainly are, robbing and murdering people.”
“That’s business.”
“Other people don’t do business that way.”
“That’s the history of many a big business. Wars, conflict, it’s all business. One murder makes a villain, millions a hero. Numbers sanctify, my good fellow.”
When a priest visited and said “I’ve come to ask you to make peace with God,” Verdoux replied: “I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man.”

2. All biblical quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version: Catholic Edition (Catholic Bible Press, 1993).

Love for Enemies: Militant Nonviolence

2007-04-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

Love for Enemies: Militant Nonviolence
by
Joseph E. Mulligan, S.J.

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The following is a chapter of a journal I wrote while I was in two county jails from late January to late April, 2004, serving a 90-day sentence for “crossing the line” onto Ft. Benning, Ga., in a November 2003 protest against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA). The School, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), has trained thousands of Latin American soldiers, some of whom have returned to their countries to be notorious torturers, assassins, and other human-rights violators.
For more information about School of the Americas Watch: www.soaw.org
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The classic texts presenting Jesus’ teaching on non-retaliation and love for enemies are Mt 5:38-48 and Lk 6:27-36. (In these as in other important passages – e.g., the infancy narratives, the beatitudes, the Our Father, the passion – there are some interesting differences from one evangelist to another.)
Let us begin with Lk 6:27-29a: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also....”

Jesus as Nonviolent Resister

The best example of how to do this is Jesus’ own illustration in action as found in John 18:19-23. (How could anyone try to interpret this passage without seeing it in the context of Jesus’ own behavior?) When the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching, the prisoner answered: “I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in the synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together.... Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; they know what I said.”
At this point a policeman hit Jesus in the face, saying, “Is that how you answer the high priest?” Jesus answered, “If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”
Jesus did not strike back in violence, but neither did he hang his head, lower his eyes, or apologize for his statement. Rather than becoming mute, he challenged his aggressor, putting him on the spot by asking him to explain his action.
Later Jesus would keep silent in an eloquent response to Pilate’s question: “Where are you from?” (Jn 19:9). Pilate was driven to exasperation by this simple denial of his power: “Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” To this Jesus did respond, but in a way that relativized Pilate’s power, situating it as being under God’s authority: “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above” (19:11).

This firm, almost defiant, attitude characterized the Suffering Servant in Isaiah: “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me.... Who will declare me guilty? All of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up” (Is 50:6-9).

In the case of a conflict between the community and an offensive member, Jesus counseled the community to confront the person: “If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender” (Lk 17:3). Hopefully this will lead to repentance and change: “If there is repentance, you must forgive.”
Matthew describes the process in greater detail (18:15-17): “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” But if necessary witnesses are brought in, the community becomes involved, and ultimately disciplinary action may be required: “if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

Thus “turning the other cheek” is very different from lowering one’s head, eyes, and shoulder before the aggressor, not daring to look him in the eyes or speak. That subservient posture is typical of the slave, the poor, the oppressed, the outcast who has internalized the system’s characterization of him or her as an inferior being. But Christians know that they are loved by God and by the community and thus have a strong sense of their own dignity and a healthy self-respect and self-image; with this inner power they can stand up to the aggressor, who is only another child of God. And they can find human alternatives to violence rather than degrading themselves and betraying their nonviolent principles by “returning evil for evil,” which after all means doing evil.

Luke seems to have made a conscious choice to place the golden rule – “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (6:31) – in the midst of Jesus’ teaching on love for enemies. In Matthew this verse is found at a considerable distance (7:12) from Jesus’ teaching on love for enemies. By placing the golden rule here, Luke seems to be suggesting that love for enemies is meant to touch their hearts and change their behavior toward Christ’s disciple.

Nonviolence in Practice

Jesus exemplified the attitude of “turning the other cheek” in a challenging way not only during his passion but consistently throughout his public ministry. On those occasions when he was threatened with death, he courageously returned to the turf of his persecutors and continued his ministry of loving care and prophetic denunciation. The one who turns the cheek is saying: “I have done nothing wrong; you are wrong to hit me. Knowing that, if you insist on hitting me again, go ahead. I’m not afraid.” By returning to dangerous places and situations, Jesus was conveying a similar message to those who were trying to assassinate him.
In the same way the apostles proved to be recidivists in proclaiming the message of Jesus and of his resurrection in defiance of the authorities, knowing they would be arrested every time. They did not silence themselves (Acts 4:18-20, 29-31; 5:27-31).

Beatings, arrests, and incarceration did not stop Gandhi and King and their associates from always coming back to the confrontation, collectively offering “the other cheek” time after time. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who struggled for peace and reconciliation among his brethren, offered his breast, his body to his opponents who were his brothers:
“Dearest brother, I know it is you who will shoot me tonight,
piercing our mother’s heart with a wound
that can never heal....
Here is my breast! Aim your gun at it, brother, shoot!
I offer my body, the body our mother bore and nurtured.
Destroy it if you wish.
Destroy it in the name of your dream --
that dream in whose name you kill....
Come back, dear brother, and kneel at your mother’s knee” (Love in Action – Writings on Nonviolent Social Change, Berkeley, Cal., Parallax Press, 1993).

Archbishop Romero considered the conversion of the oppressor the “vengeance of the Christian”: “Let us be firm in defending our rights, but with great love in our hearts, because to defend our rights in this way we are also seeking the conversion of sinners. This is the vengeance of the Christian” (June 19, 1977 homily, Mons. Oscar A. Romero: Su pensamiento, San Salvador, Imprenta Criterio, 1980-89).

The conversion of the enemy is perhaps what Paul means when he speaks of “heaping burning coals on their heads”: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:19-21).
Gordon Bennett calls this “moral jujitsu.” Friends had sent me, through the mail, a few pages from The Other Side (March-April, 2004); the entire magazine would not have gotten past the mail room here, but the clipped pages along with a letter did. In his article, “The Jujitsu of Jesus,” Bennett cites an interpretation of the “burning coals” by Daniel Buttry: “The burning coals are not the fires of hell; rather, they indicate the burning of shame and remorse.” Buttry, Bennett notes, “points out that Middle Eastern people, including the Hebrews, often expressed remorse by putting ashes on their heads, symbolizing the breaking of the cycle of vengeance by means of repentance and reconciliation. Literally, the ‘burning coals’ might be ashes. And the suggestion to pour them over another is a bit of jujitsu wisdom: Draw out your adversaries’ weaknesses by calling attention to and shaming their practice of hate and malice – that which they think to be their greatest asset.”
Bennett also cites Michael Nagler (Is There No Other Way? The Search for a Nonviolent Future), who “recounts one story of a white civil-rights activist, David Hartsough, during his second day of a lunch-counter sit-in in Virginia.
“While peacefully reciting to himself the twenty-third psalm as he sat on the stool in the tension-filled cafeteria, David was yanked from his seat and threatened with a knife. ‘You got one minute to get out of here,’ said his persecutor, ‘or I’m running this through your heart.’ After a brief pause, David slowly shifted his gaze from the bowie knife at his chest to the face of the man who brandished it. In those eyes, he met ‘the worst look of hate I have ever seen in my life.’ David thought to himself, ‘Well, at least I’ve got a minute.’ Then he said to the man, ‘Well, brother, you do what you feel you have to, and I’m going to try to love you all the same.’
“‘For a few frozen seconds,’ Nagler writes, ‘there seemed to be no reaction; then the hand on the knife started shaking. After a few more long seconds it dropped. The man turned and walked out of the lunchroom, surreptitiously wiping a tear from his cheek.’”

In the nonviolent actions at Ft. Benning to close the School of the Americas, one member of the community (body) follows the other in crossing the line – presenting one’s body, cheek and all, to the armed opponent. And some members have turned the other cheek in this militant non-violence two or more times, with the penalty being increased each time.
This is not passive acceptance of humiliation. Jesus’ words about turning the other cheek, giving your shirt as well, and giving to beggars and thieves are ways that “the oppressed can recover the initiative and assert their human dignity in a situation that cannot for the time being be changed. The rules are Caesar’s, but how one responds to the rules is God’s, and Caesar has no power over that” (Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1992, p. 182). The oppressed “have suddenly ... taken back the power of choice.”

A striking example of the oppressed asserting their human dignity is found in the latter period of the Old Testament. When the pagan emperor arrested seven brothers and their mother and compelled them, “under torture with whips and thongs, to partake of unlawful swine’s flesh” (2 Maccabees 7), they resisted valiantly. One of the sons, when it was demanded, “quickly put out his tongue and courageously stretched forth his hands, and said nobly, ‘I got these from heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again.’ As a result the king himself and those with him were astonished at the young man’s spirit, for he regarded his sufferings as nothing.”

Howard Zinn described the interior “power” of the nonviolent resister in these terms: “You ask how I manage to stay involved and remain seemingly happy and adjusted to this awful world where the efforts of caring people pale in comparison to those who have power. It’s easy. First, don’t let ‘those who have power’ intimidate you. No matter how much power they have, they cannot prevent you from living your life, speaking your mind, thinking independently, having relationships with people as you like....
“And note that throughout history people have felt powerless before authority, but that at certain times these powerless people, by organizing, acting, risking and persisting, have created enough power to change the world around them, even if a little.... Remember that those who have power, and who seem invulnerable, are in fact quite vulnerable, that their power depends on the obedience of others, and when those others begin withholding that obedience, begin defying authority, that power at the top turns out to be very fragile” (“On Getting Along,” Z Magazine, March 7, 1999).

Luke’s Composition: Love for Enemies between Beatitudes and “Do Not Judge”

In Matthew the Beatitudes are at the start of Ch. 5 (vv.1-11), and Love for Enemies begins much further along, at v. 38. But Luke puts the Beatitudes (6:20-26) immediately before Love for Enemies. Why?
“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets” (Lk 6:22-23). If the disciples are blessed, happy, when they are hated and reviled, and if they are to leap for joy on that day, then they should expect to receive the treatment – being hated, cursed, and abused -- which Jesus speaks about in vv. 27-28, even though it is undeserved and unjust. In the light of the Beatitudes, they should not feel any desire to hate or hurt their enemies – or, if they feel such desire, they are equipped to control it.
By controlling their anger and doing good to their persecutors, they will set an example to be emulated: “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Lk 6:31).

Luke’s insertion here, just after Love for Enemies, of the passage against judging others (which, in Mt, does not occur until Ch. 7) also makes eminent sense: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.... The measure you give will be the measure you get back” (6:37-38). Hating our enemies, hurting those who hurt us, cursing those who curse us, and doing violence to those who strike us are behaviors based on judgment and condemnation of the other person and on our failure to forgive.
And these hard attitudes are in turn made possible by the moral blindness about ourselves which Jesus describes in the verses immediately following: “Can a blind person guide a blind person? ... Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” (6:39-42).

“Do not resist an evildoer”

Let us return now to the beginning of the passage on retaliation and love for enemies, according to Matthew: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer.” (5:38-39a). (Luke does not include this verse.)
Walter Wink notes that the meaning of antistenai in Mt 5:39a is a difficult problem. “It is translated ‘resist’ in almost all versions...., but its use in this passage is insupportable. Purely on logical grounds, ‘resist not’ does not fit the aggressive nonviolent actions described in the three following examples. Since in these three instances Jesus provides strategies for resisting oppression, it is altogether inconsistent for him to counsel people in almost the same breath not to resist it.
“Matthew 5:39a also seems to suggest false alternatives: one either resists evil, or resists not. Fight or flight.” If Jesus urges us not to resist, then he is telling us to be passive and complicit in our own oppression. The will of God seems to be that we submit to evil. “And this is precisely the way most Christians have interpreted the passage. ... What the translators have not noted, however, is how frequently anthistemi is used as a military term. Resistance implies ‘counteractive aggression,’ a response to hostilities initiated by someone else.” Wink cites several examples of the use of the word in this sense.
“In short,” he concludes, “antistenai means more than simply to ‘stand against’ or ‘resist.’ It means to resist violently, to revolt or rebel, to engage in an insurrection.” Thus the text urges Christians not to be supine and complicit in their own oppression but on the other hand not to react violently to it either. “Rather, find a third way, a way that is neither submission nor assault, neither flight nor fight, a way that can secure your human dignity and begin to change the power equation, even now, before the revolution.”

Wink notes that there is good reason to suspect “that the original form of this saying about resistance is best preserved in the New Testament epistles,” especially in Romans 12 and particularly in 12:17 and 12:21: “Do not repay anyone evil for evil.... Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” That is, try to “overcome” evil, but do not become its mirror image. “The examples that follow in Matthew 5:39b-41 in fact presuppose some such sense. Could this ancient catechetical tradition have originally stood, then, in Matthew’s translation? If ‘do not repay evil for evil’ and ‘do not forcibly resist evil’ have equivalent meanings, could they simply be different versions of the same tradition?
“We can now, for the first time, answer a cautious yes to that question.” Wink cites George Howard who has recently discovered “what he regards as an early Hebrew text of the Gospel of Matthew, which reads at 5:39a: ‘But I say to you, do not repay evil for evil.’ ...Even if this text is not as early as Howard thinks,” Wink observes, “its very existence, from any period, proves that at least one Hebrew version regarded ‘Do not repay evil for evil’ as the proper way to read Matt. 5:39a.... The logic of Jesus’ examples in Mt 5:39b-42 goes beyond both inaction and overreaction, capitulation and murderous counterviolence, to a new response, fired in the crucible of love, that promises to liberate the oppressed from evil and the oppressor from sin” (Wink, pp. 184-6).
We might also note that, if “do not resist an evildoer” is equivalent to “do not repay evil for evil,” this helps us to appreciate it in counterpoint to the observation which immediately precedes it (Mt 5:38): “You have heard that it was said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ but I say to you....” An “eye for an eye....” is clearly an expression of retribution for an evil act already committed; Jesus’ message fits this context: do not retaliate with evil.

The “victory” of the nonviolent resister

By raising Jesus from the dead, God revealed, to the eyes of faith, that the victory goes to the condemned and executed Victim and that this good man had suffered unjustly.
But Jesus’ victory over his executioners and over the system of law and religion they represented began during his passion itself. First of all, that system was deprived of its myth of legitimacy: its priests and lawyers could not defeat Jesus in open argument about the truth, and so they abandoned that effort and used trumped-up charges and then crowd pressure to get the brute force and violence of the pagan empire to destroy him physically. The debate turned into a brawl, and in that the system lost an important rampart of its support – its legitimacy and authority in the minds of many. It was seen to have force but not authority.
A similar dynamic has been at work throughout history whenever a religious or political establishment eliminates a martyr (a witness against it) by sheer force – sometimes through subterfuge and false charges, sometimes openly. When Augusto Cesar Sandino, the Nicaraguan fighter for independence and for the peasants, was “disappeared” by Somoza’s National Guard in 1934, the Somoza dynasty was deprived at its inception of an important pillar of legitimacy; and when Anastasio Somoza García’s son presided over the assassination of the respected journalist and human-rights champion Pedro Joaquín Chamorro in 1978, the regime’s legitimacy was reduced to zero and fell to the Sandinista-led people’s movement the next year.
The assassination of deeply loved and highly respected religious figures in El Salvador had a similar effect on the people’s attitude toward the regime. Although it prevailed, it was seen to do so by naked and brute force.

Secondly, the weakness of the system was revealed by its inability to deter Jesus, through intimidation, from his chosen course in faithfulness to his cause. “The cross also exposes the Powers as unable to make Jesus become what they wanted him to be, or to stop being who he was.... Because they could not kill what was alive in him, the cross also revealed the impotence of death..., the Powers’ final sanction” (Wink, p. 141).
Jesus’ brutal persecutors could not force him to become violent or even to hate them and to pray for vengeance upon them.
Jesus controlled his fear of torture and death and thus was able to break the spiral of violence.
His nonviolent response mirrors the very nature of God: “Had God not manifested divine love toward us in an act of abject weakness, one which we experience as totally noncoercive and nonmanipulative, the truth of our own being would have been forced on us rather than being something we freely choose” (Wink, p. 142).

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Similarities Between Jesus’ Non-violent Resistance and Our Own

1. The confrontation with injustice flows from a life of service to the needy and is considered a necessary response to the structural causes of their pain.
A. Jesus healed the sick and fed the hungry, but he also proclaimed the Good News of the Kingdom of justice to the oppressed and engaged in “divine disobedience” to challenge the religious and political system which oppressed the people. His recognition of and esteem for the poor widow who deposited her “mite” in the temple treasury (Lk 21:1-4) is preceded immediately by his denunciation of the scribes “who devour widows’ houses” (20: 45-47) and is followed by his foretelling of the destruction of the beautifully adorned temple (21:5-6).
B. Many people in the movement to close SOA/WHINSEC and in other non-violent campaigns live lives of service to the poor in Catholic Worker and other communities or as volunteers in community service organizations.

2. Civil disobedience is the result of a careful, prayerful period of discernment.
A. Jesus spent forty days in the desert, fasting and praying, wrestling with the question of the proper means he would use to accomplish his mission, before launching his public campaign; and he frequently spent time in prayer apart from the apostles. Just before his passion he meditated and prayed at great length (Jn 13-17).
B. Gandhi, King, Cesar Chavez, Phil Berrigan, Dorothy Day, and the people I have known in the peace movement and in various campaigns of Third World solidarity are deeply reflective persons who carefully discern God’s will for them in relation to their analysis of the signs of the times. Some may take part in weekend retreats in preparation for action; afterwards, gatherings are held to process the experience, to celebrate, and to draw insights for the future.
Before the “Chicago 15" action (destruction of draft files as a protest against the war in Vietnam) in 1969, we had several weekend and all-day retreats in which Phil and Dan Berrigan and others would share their experience and help us to discern.
In the movement to close SOA/WHINSEC, I was first moved and attracted by the deep spiritual dimension I found in the November 2002 mobilization in Georgia, especially in the Mass with over 2,000 participants in the “Ignatian tent.” In 2003 I took part in an “affinity group,” as did all who would participate in civil disobedience, to discern spiritually, pray together, and plan the specifics of the action of “crossing the line.”

3. The action is done in a spirit of peace and non-violence – speaking truth to power forcefully but always with respect for our “opponents” in the hope that they may learn from our message and join in the process of change.
A. In this way Jesus practiced the “love for enemies” he preached, perhaps in the “cleansing of the temple” touching the limits of non-violence and giving us reason to believe that we could go that far in the draft-board “raids” and in other similar protests (e.g., the Plowshares actions involving minor, mainly symbolic damage to nuclear weapons). He never shut the door on the possibility of the conversion of his opponents and indeed did win the hearts of some.
B. In our actions we do not locate in the government workers facing us all the responsibility for the violence or injustice we are denouncing; we speak respectfully and clearly to them, inviting them to see their work in a broader light and to follow their conscience.
At the gates of Ft. Benning some of us directed a special appeal to the U.S. and Latin American troops, asking them to analyze the war and consider applying for conscientious objector recognition. Over the years some military officers have become critics of U.S. military policies and of the foreign policy the military serves.

4. Jesus and many practitioners of non-violence today also share a common frustration! Our day in court, like that of Jesus, does not usually prove to be an apt occasion for a serious discussion of the deep legal and moral issues involved in the case at hand.
A. If Jesus had been represented by an attorney in his trials, the defendant probably would have been sternly advised not to “take the stand.” But Jesus chose to testify to the truth, and his testimony was used against him.
The verdict was delivered very swiftly in the ecclesiastical trial, thus depriving Jesus of a chance to explain what he meant by “I am” or “you have said so” in his reply to the question whether he was the Son of God or the Messiah. And the larger, more important issues – his healings on the sabbath, his association with “sinners,” his denunciations of the religious leaders as corrupt hypocrites, etc. – were not even mentioned. These were the “offenses” which had infuriated his opponents throughout his public life and had driven them often to try to kill him, but these issues were kept out of the courtroom.
B. Similarly, in the trials of resisters during the Vietnam war, the Plowshares anti-nuclear protesters, and our trials for the actions at Ft. Benning, the fundamental legal and moral issues of international and constitutional law, the Nuremberg and just-war principles, corporate irresponsibility and other important concerns have been ruled irrelevant, preventing any testimony along these lines, especially if a jury is involved as the decision-making body.
Jesus was asked simply: Did you say you are the Son of God? Yes or no? To us the prosecutor’s only question is: Did you “cross the line”? Did you refuse induction, burn draft files, damage a nuclear bomber?

5. Jesus and others who publicly violate the letter of the law do not seek but do accept the penalty as a necessary consequence of their words and deeds. And they consider their experience of being punished an extension of the prophetic action which can also touch hearts and influence minds.
A. Jesus had said: “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am he” (Jn 8:28). See also Jn 3:14 and 12:32-33: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.”
The soldier who pierced the side of Jesus’ corpse was named Longinus by Christian tradition, which believed that he was converted by Jesus’ loving death. His statue is in a prominent place of honor in St. Peter’s basilica in the Vatican. In connection with the piercing, St. John quotes Zechariah: “They will look on the one whom they have pierced” (Jn 19:37). In Zechariah this look is accompanied by mourning and conversion.
In the synoptics a soldier at the cross says: “Certainly this man was innocent” (Lk 23:47) or “Truly this man was God’s son” (Mk 15:39 and Mt 27:54). (Perhaps in these accounts the strange natural phenomena at the moment gave an assist to their confession.)
Jesus’ death in love and courage also strengthened Joseph of Arimathea (a secret disciple of Jesus because of fear) and Nicodemus (the Pharisee who had come to Jesus at night – Jn 3:2) to “come out” and ask Pilate for the body and give it proper and respectful burial.
B. Before my incarceration, when some friends would comment “too bad you’re going to have to waste a number of months silenced in jail,” I ventured to say: “Well, maybe just being in jail for the cause is a constant protest.”
And I have found this to be true. Just being here, and fasting, is a strong message which has flown over the jail walls and reached many people – a general public as well as my friends and relatives. Some have been motivated to look more seriously at SOA/WHINSEC and related issues, while others have felt nudged into greater action on these or other matters.
Other practitioners of non-violent action have seen their time in jail, whether fasting or not, bear similar fruits.
And when love draws some to give up not only freedom but life itself for the people, then the energy is immeasurably more powerful. When Fr. Rutilio Grande, S.J., and two peasants with him were brutally gunned down in 1977, their martyrdom had a profound impact on the new archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero. In turn, the assassination of Romero three years later touched and moved the world. “The blood of martyrs is the seed of faith” – and hope.

6. Hope is another characteristic shared by Jesus and other non-violent resisters.
A. Jesus had constantly proclaimed that the Kingdom of God was “at hand” and invited all to be converted to this movement for a New Creation. Even when he knew that the authorities were closing in on him and that his days were numbered, he was confident that the advance of God’s Kingdom could not be stopped and that he had played and would continue to play an essential part in the process.
In the face of death, Jesus had said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.... The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father” (Jn 14:6, 12).
After promising them the Spirit of truth, he assures them of a share in his risen life: “because I live, you also will live” (14:19). United with him, they will be greatly empowered: “those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit” (15:5).
As members of his risen Body, they will experience the paradox of peace in the midst of persecution: “I am not alone because the Father is with me. I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!” (16:32-33)
Jesus’ final words in Matthew point similarly to a hope based on his constant accompaniment: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mt 28:20).

B. Like Jesus, we recognize that we cannot entertain an optimism which would assure us that all our most precious expectations will be realized in our lifetime, or solely by our effort. But hope is much more profound, and more mysterious: a fruit of God’s own life in us and in all of creation, a spark of energy propelling God’s historical project ahead, even with crooked lines, setbacks, deaths, and resurrections.
Hope is as basic as faith and love. If we believe in God as loving Creator, we cannot doubt the ultimate fruition of her good work; and if we love the universe and all humanity (starting with the present generation and our children and grandchildren), we cannot doubt the ultimate result of God’s love and our love – the fulfillment and happiness of all creation in Christ, whose resurrection is the first fruits of the cosmic harvest.
Meanwhile, hope is nourished along the way by our celebrations of small victories and by our joyful savoring of the values of the Kingdom experienced here and now.
And I believe that action itself strengthens and sustains hope. People who maintain their commitment to active struggle, especially with others in community, find that hope is not lacking (when they take time to think about it!).
By the same token, those who drop out, to devote themselves to purely materialistic private pursuits or to purely spiritualistic private pursuits, find that hope dries up – and then their hopelessness tends to justify their shutting down to the grand issues and struggles of world history.

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The Challenge of Nonviolence in My Own Life:
An Ongoing Discussion with Myself and Others

The methods, purpose, and power of militant nonviolence as I have described them in this chapter are very clear, compelling, and meaningful to me; and I have tried to practice this kind of nonviolence in various social and political struggles. I remain committed to it as a Christian. My purpose in this chapter has been to show that the non-violence of the gospel is not a passive acceptance of injustice or a symptom of political apathy but rather a potentially powerful method for changing hearts and nations.
However, I must admit that I do not always and everywhere put every word of Jesus on this topic, especially the examples he gives, into practice in a literal way. Nor have I taken literally the injunction to tear out my right eye or cut off my right hand if they lead to sin (Mt 5:29-30), for they can also be instruments for doing good. My reading of Mk 16:18 has not inspired me to “pick up snakes” or to “drink deadly things.” And whereas Jesus said, “Give to everyone who begs from you” (Mt 5:42), I cannot in good conscience give money to people who are drinking or using drugs.
We do not abandon common sense and the use of our God-given reason in our interpretation and application of the bible; rather, we believe that the Holy Spirit is at work in individuals and in the community to help us to make the most loving response in a given, sometimes complex, situation.
I still grapple with this question: how to put Jesus’ teaching and example of non-violence into practice in the most loving, responsible way in complex situations? Some examples:

A. Use of State Violence in Protection of Property

The generosity recommended in Lk 6:29b-30 (“From anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again”) seems to have the same positive purpose as blessing and praying for the enemy: to bring about, through an unexpected expression of Christian generosity and through the working of the Spirit, a change of heart and behavior in them.
Upon release from federal prison in 1972 after serving two years for the destruction of draft files (“Chicago 15" action against the Vietnam war), I amazed my fellow community members by saying that I could not in good conscience call the police to report a nonviolent crime like burglary; the police might shoot the fleeing criminal, and if convicted he might receive years in prison – a sentence which I would consider a violent punishment. I was keenly aware of the force society uses to protect property.

While I am still conscious of this reality, my unwillingness to use the police and courts has become less absolute. Over the years, I have called the police to report thefts which I and others have suffered, and (in the very different case of violent state terrorists) I demand the prosecution of human-rights violators who have tortured, killed, and “disappeared” innocent persons. I do not deny the discrepancy between my “practical” behavior and the ideal presented by Jesus. But if it is an ideal (“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” – Mt. 5:48) , then we must constantly hold it before us while doing the most loving and responsible thing in pursuit of justice for all persons involved in a given situation.
Am I guilty here of a kind of pragmatic rationalization? Perhaps, but one needs to consider the complexities of each situation, especially when other people are involved as victims of a theft or robbery. For instance, a few years ago someone broke into my car and stole an envelope full of U.S. passports which belonged to a group of American students who were spending a semester in Managua. Some credit cards and a valuable ring were also among the loot.
I did not hesitate to report the crime to the police, and I think this was the right decision. Not only did we want to get the passports and credit cards back, if possible. (We entertained a slight hope that the thieves might have discarded the passports and that someone might find them and make a police report.) But, in addition, in order to replace their passports, the students had to present to the American embassy a document from the local police showing that the theft had been reported. It would have been unjust for me to make a unilateral decision concerning these important documents of the students. Should I have lied by saying that I had lost them?

About ten years ago I had my first experience of serious property theft when my small pick-up truck was stolen from a hospital parking lot. Four years earlier I had purchased the vehicle with funds from the Detroit Province of the Society of Jesus, but the title was in the name of the Jesuit university here in Nicaragua. Thus the truck was not “mine” but ours. In this case as in the theft of the passports, it was not entirely up to me to make my moral decision according to my personal (and minoritarian) interpretation of Jesus’ words.
Besides, what if the thieves had hurt someone in a serious accident or used the truck to commit some other crimes?

In a third case, the thieves must have had the “fear of God” put into them when they stole a leather bag from my car, which was parked in front of a church, and then found that the contents were my chalice, paten, hosts, stole, and bible! My decision not to report this to the police was based more on my skepticism about results than on nonviolent principles. Similarly, when my wallet was pickpocketed on a very crowded bus, I did not think seriously of filing a police report.

Robbing the handicapped is an especially repulsive crime. One day in a very poor barrio, a young acquaintance of mine, confined to a wheelchair due to a U.S.-supplied “contra” bullet, was sitting just outside a home I was visiting. As I started to leave the house, a man quickly approached Fabián and ripped his watch off his wrist. I took off in hot pursuit of this particularly shameful robber, who ran around the first corner and then disappeared in someone’s house or backyard. It was fortunate that he outran me, since one or both of us might have done something which we would have seriously regretted. I did take Fabián to the police station to make a report. (The police often lack vehicles or gasoline to make house calls!)

What about crimes of forceful robbery involving physical violence against me or others? When I was mugged by four big guys about three blocks from Union Station in Washington, D.C., I was relieved that all I had lost was my wallet. A few bruises and scrapes were the only marks on me; they were satisfied with my wallet and did not feel compelled to exercise gratuitous violence on me. Going along with the opinion of friends who felt that the police would be ineffective in this kind of situation, I did not report the crime. The next day I actually found nearby some of the items which had been in the wallet.
On the other hand, I reacted differently to the forceful robbery suffered by an American student who was studying and working here as a member of a program with which I am associated. One robber held her at knifepoint at a bus stop as his accomplice ripped her knapsack off her back. Fortunately, the only trauma she suffered was emotional, but this was understandably of a very severe sort.
Since this happened in the neighborhood where she and the other students were living, we felt that the robber might strike the group again – or that he might hit anyone in Managua, which would be equally traumatic and outrageous. Moreover, the young woman felt obliged to report the crime to the police, and the process of doing so seemed to help her emotionally and psychologically. I drove her and others to the police station and gave her moral support as she made her report.

While I have modified my position regarding the use of the police in relation to crime, there is still one “crime” which I would not report to the authorities, especially if I were the only victim: a non-violent taking of a small amount of money or things (food, medicine) to sustain one’s own life or the life of one’s family. Legally a crime, morally it is justified. Jesus recognized that basic human need takes priority over the letter of the law when he recalled that David and his hungry men “entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests” (Mt 12:4). Moreover, in his healings on the sabbath and in his table fellowship with “sinners” Jesus demonstrated that the human person in need is more sacred than any law.

It is interesting to note (even though the moral conclusion to be drawn is not evident!) that Matthew did not consider it essential to present the case of theft or robbery among the offenses calling for a non-violent response. The question of how to respond to thieves is presented in Luke – “From anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt, ...and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again” (Lk 6:30) – but not in Matthew. The latter speaks of someone wanting to sue the Christian for her coat (Mt 5:40) or to borrow from her, which is different from stealing, and does not include the reference to someone “taking away” the Christian’s goods.

B. Use of Force to Defend Oneself and Others

Fortunately I have never had to use force directly to defend myself or another person. I have done this indirectly, however, on one occasion when I took part in a legal process to have a young man in a Detroit parish committed to a psychiatric hospital against his will. He was physically threatening to himself and to his mother, who had asked me to help her to carry out her painful decision.
Could I justify using the minimal amount of force necessary to defend myself from an attacker? Could I do that to defend another person from an attacker? Indeed, would I be obliged to do so – either directly or by calling for police intervention? Would I be nit-picking if I were to justify my action on the grounds that I would not be returning evil for evil but trying to prevent an evil act from being done? If an aggressor hits me on the cheek, I could decline to respond in kind, for that might be simply retaliation which might serve no useful purpose; but could I not attempt to grab his arm to prevent him from hitting me?
What is, after all, the situation Jesus envisioned when he counseled his disciples to “turn the other cheek”? Perhaps the person who is slapped in the face is already tied up and subdued, and thus unable to ward off the blow. Regardless of that, there is no indication that the slap envisioned by Jesus is the first act of a serious physical assault which could result in grave injury or death.
In the latter category, imagine a mass murderer at the start of his rampage. If I had the necessary force at my command to subdue and stop him, or if I had the chance to call the police, would I not be obliged to take those measures in defense of myself and others?

With regard to perpetrators of state terror, such as assassins, torturers, and agents who have “disappeared” innocent people (like my friend Fr. Jim Carney), I do have experience in this area: I have worked for years now to get some of them charged, arrested, and put on trial.
This is not out of a desire for vengeance. Of course, I would not demand the death penalty for them; neither would I want them to rot behind bars for the rest of their lives. A modest sentence, after a clear verdict of guilty, would suffice to serve the purposes of justice and perhaps to defend others from being victimized by these or other perpetrators of gross violations of human rights.

C. Revolutionary Violence

While I recognize the danger, even likelihood, that a revolutionary response to oppression may simply ratchet up the level of violence, I cannot say with certainty that it would always and necessarily have that effect. First of all, revolutionaries do not initiate the violence; it pervades the society, both in the form of police and military repression and in the form of social injustice. Thus, revolutionary violence is understood by some as a form of self-defense against the systemic violence of the status quo. If the Latin American revolutions of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s had been victorious, who can say with assurance that they would not have produced societies less violent in many respects and at many levels?
I believe that was true of Nicaragua in the early years after the revolutionary overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship – until the Reagan administration increased its military support for the Nicaraguan “contras,” thus raising the level of violence and human suffering to the point where the Sandinistas were voted out in 1990.
True, those vanquished in a revolution can be expected to translate their resentment and their desire to return to their former privileged position into a militant and probably military reaction, and they will probably gain the support of the U.S. empire since they are its local managers and enforcers. But still, their counter-revolutionary success is not necessarily guaranteed in every instance.

Because I personally choose militant nonviolence as my way of struggling for change, am I to condemn all the Christians who have taken part in armed struggle and who were convinced that it was their way of working for liberation, justice, and true peace?
The experience of two priest friends of mine brought out the complexity of this question. As members of a peasant farm cooperative in the north of Nicaragua during the 1980s, they participated fully in the life and work of the community, wanting to be considered as equals and true brothers of all in a social organization which represented important progress toward justice. When the cooperative became the object of a military assault by the “contras,” my friends were confronted by a very difficult task of discernment: to take their turns on guard duty, or to decide that as religious that was an unacceptable task for them. It turned out that the “contra” attack happened on a day when the priests, who had not resolved the issue in their conscience, were working elsewhere.

PS

In Lk 10:4, when Jesus, early in his ministry, sent out the seventy two disciples “like lambs in the midst of wolves,” he told them to “carry no purse, no bag, no sandals.” He had sent out the twelve with similar instructions (Lk 9:3; Mt 10:9-10; Mk 6:8). But toward the end of his ministry, he told his apostles (according to Luke alone): “Now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one” (Lk 22:36).
Commentators interpret “buying a sword” in a figurative way: be prepared for opposition. And yet opposition was envisioned also in the earlier sending of the seventy in Lk 10. Is the sword, if it is to be understood literally, to be used for protection against animals on the journey, or against bandits?
When the apostles responded, “Lord, look, here are two swords,” he replied, “It is enough” (Lk 22:38). And shortly thereafter, when Jesus was about to be arrested, one of the apostles “struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, ‘no more of this,’ and he touched his ear and healed him” (Lk 22:50-51). Do Jesus’ two responses now mean that the apostles should not carry swords?

(This journal entry ends here – with questions rather than firm conclusions.)

My 8-Day Retreat in Jail

2007-04-09T17:54:00.000-07:00

My 8-Day Retreat in Jail:
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius During Holy Week
by
Joseph E. Mulligan, S.J.

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The following is a chapter of a journal I wrote while I was in two county jails from late January to late April, 2004, serving a 90-day sentence for “crossing the line” onto Ft. Benning, Ga., in a November 2003 protest against the U.S. Army's School of the Americas (SOA). The School, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), has trained thousands of Latin American soldiers, some of whom have returned to their countries to be notorious torturers, assassins, and other human-rights violators.
For more information: www.soaw.org
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Sunday, April 4 – Palm Sunday

Today, the first day of Holy Week, is also the first day of my eight-day retreat.

Imagine this scenario. The newly elected pope, who will take the name John XXIV, is due to arrive at 11 a.m. in St. Peter's basilica for his first solemn Mass as pontiff. At 8 a.m. he and several friends are having breakfast with a family in a modest home in a Roman neighborhood. John XXIV then takes a walk through the neighborhood, shaking hands with the folks and exchanging blessings with them, taking the names of some beggars so he can arrange shelter for them later.
At 10 a.m. he walks over the bridge, through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds who are weeping for joy, and up to the basilica for the celebration.
Five years later he ordains María Gomez of Nicaragua to the priesthood and thanks her as he kneels before her for her priestly blessing.
When María celebrates her first Mass in her squatters' settlement in Managua, the former president of the country arrives by public transportation and, without her usual bodyguards, walks the remaining two blocks to the cinder-block church.
Imagine how these scenes of humble service on the part of leaders would thrill the people, especially the poor, the outcast, the unemployed, and all victims of discrimination.

Today we celebrate Jesus' grand entrance into Jerusalem: the people were acclaiming him joyfully and praising God, but he was riding on a mere donkey rather than a proud and strong stallion. To underline the significance, Matthew (21:5) quotes Zechariah (9:9): “Tell the daughter of Zion, look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
Shortly before, Jesus had told his disciples: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mt 20:25-28).
This was in response to the mother of the sons of Zebedee, who had knelt before Jesus to make her request for positions of privilege and power for her sons; she, an oppressed woman, had interiorized the social patterns of domination.
Like her, some early Christians were slow to understand the radical equality which was to be a mark of Jesus' kind of community: “My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please,’ while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there,’ or, ‘Sit at my feet,’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?” (James 2:1-7)

Just after his message about the greatness of service, Jesus, “moved with compassion,” healed two blind men who were sitting by the roadside (20:29-34) and proceeded toward Jerusalem.
It was at the Mount of Olives that Jesus told two disciples to go to find the donkey and colt (Mt 21:1-2); and at the foot of the Mount of Olives, in Gethsemane, Jesus would soon experience his agony in the garden (Mt 26:36-46), exposing his complete humanness and humble servanthood.
After entering Jerusalem, Jesus cleansed the temple, showing that humble servanthood did not preclude but actually required prophetic acts of love. Luke records that Jesus wept over Jerusalem before proceeding to his prophetic deed, perhaps suggesting that Jesus wanted to give one more sign of truth to help the people recognize “the things that make for peace” (Lk 19:42). The true prophet, even while denouncing sin and injustice, is moved by love and compassion for the people and by a desire to help them to change in order to be saved from the coming calamity.

The second reading in today's liturgy (Philippians 2:6-11) puts Jesus'life and especially the events of this week in their grand theological perspective. By "emptying himself" to become fully human, even to the point of crucifixion, Jesus is the antithesis of the sinful person, understanding sin to be that self-glorification which expresses itself in pride, arrogance, and selfishness.
Paul describes the attitude required for living in community: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus...." (2:3-5). Then he presents Jesus' example of selflessness as the model of this kind of communitarian mindset: "though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And ... he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death -- even death on a cross."
Having this mind or attitude that was in Christ Jesus, his disciples can live together, sharing materially and spiritually in such a way that they “shine like stars in the world” (2:15) even “in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.”

Sin, on the other hand, is an unfettered, selfish liberty which has no concept of connectedness and no recognition of filial or social responsibility. Paul cautioned against this distorted kind of freedom in Galatians 5:13-15: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.”
Sin, at its origin in Genesis, is twofold: self-idolization (“you will not die.... You will be like God” – 3:4-5) leading immediately to the rending of the social fabric (“Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ He said, ‘I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?’” -- 4:8-9).
A blind, irresponsible liberty will necessarily trample upon the human rights of others.

Examples abound of such insensitivity on both the personal and collective level. As for the latter, super-nationalism, racism, male chauvinism, and human arrogance toward the environment are forms of selfishness “writ large.” With typical American arrogance of power, the Carter administration did not heed Archbishop Romero's request for an end of military aid to the murderous Salvadoran army. Similarly, the Reagan administration brushed off the World Court's ruling to cease interfering by force and violence in the affairs of Sandinista Nicaragua.
And this very day, as the Marines “seal off” Fallujah and hostilities in Iraq increase in ferocity, the Bush administration manifests a more and more blatant (and seemingly self-defeating) arrogance in its occupation of a land whose recorded civilization goes back several millennia. Will top U.S. administrator Paul Bremer soon say: “We had to destroy Fallujah in order to save it?”
According to an AP article in the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer (April 3, 2004), Muslim clerics condemned the mutilation of the bodies of the four U.S. civilians – but not their slayings. “While the condemnation of the mutilation was helpful, that is only a partial answer,” declared Brig.Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy chief of U.S. military operations in Iraq. “Murder of innocents should be condemned.”
Here it is evident that truth, as usual, has been a serious casualty of war. Innocents? These civilians were heavily armed, highly trained private bodyguards protecting other foreign occupiers of Iraq.
“Islam bans what was done to the bodies, but the Americans are as brutal as the youths who burned and mutilated the bodies,” said a retired school principal. “They have done so much to us and they have humiliated us so often,” he added, expressing particular outrage at U.S. soldiers barging into private homes.

Michelle Naar-Obed, after working in Iraq in January of this year as part of the Christian Peacemakers Team, reported: “People told us that whereas they once had one dictator, they now are dealing with 100,000 dictators who can't even get basic necessities up and running” (Loaves & Fishes Catholic Worker newsletter, Spring, 2004).
The repetitious proclamation of our goal – to create a democracy with free elections, etc. -- is sounding more hollow every day. To impose “democracy,” to force people whose political and religious culture is worlds apart from ours to accept our version of freedom – are glaring self-contradictions. And to continue to insist that the new Iraq must follow (democratically, of course) our economic model of free-market capitalism, with doors wide open to foreign ownership of the country's resources, is our prescription for neo-colonial plunder.
In another oil-rich country, under the banner of promoting democracy, the National Endowment for Democracy, funded by the U.S. Congress, is pumping in $1 million a year to support the opposition against Venezuela's democratically-elected president, Hugo Chavez, just as it contributed millions in the 1980s to help remove the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. (Footnote One)

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FOOTNOTE ONE

The Venezuelan people reaffirmed their support for Pres. Chavez in a referendum on August 15, 2004 declared to be valid and legitimate by the Organization of American States, the Carter Center, and other international observers.

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During this retreat I have started reading Thirty Days – On Retreat with the Exercises of St. Ignatius, by Paul Mariani (New York: Penguin Compass, 2003). In addition to providing a clear introduction to St. Ignatius and the Society of Jesus, Paul Mariani shares beautifully his experience of making a thirty-day retreat.
Reflecting on sin, he mentions many of its structural or institutional manifestations, including “the atrocities committed by soldiers trained by the U.S.'s School of the Americas” (p. 49). Among such atrocities he speaks of the killing of “the six Jesuits in 1989 in San Salvador, along with their housekeeper and her fifteen-year-old daughter. All awakened in the middle of the night by soldiers, several trained at our School of the Americas.”
The author, an award-winning poet, critic, essayist, and biographer who teaches English at Boston College, is brutally honest and very incisive in telling how personal sin has been part of his life. “Sitting here in Mary Chapel, I was meditating on my own sinfulness, as Ignatius instructs us to do, asking ‘for a growing and intense sorrow, and tears, for my sins’ and calling ‘to memory all the sins of my life’”(p. 68).
Mariani describes some incidents, beginning in childhood, where he hurt others physically and emotionally and was also on the receiving end of violence and rejection. He quotes Robert Lowell: “My eyes have seen what my hand did.” And the author reflects on his own life: “My own sentiments exactly. Regardless of how I was sinned against, I see now more clearly than ever just how deeply I have sinned against those I love” (p. 76).
He ponders Ignatius's question, “What am I, really, compared with all other human beings?” And he answers: “a man of modest achievements, a man who has hurt others.... How many have I hurt? Rejected? Snubbed? Used over a lifetime? Too many” (pp. 78-79).
Meditating on the prophet Nathan's challenge to David concerning his treatment of Uriah, Mariani asks: “How often, in our greed, have we snatched after what did not belong to us? By deliberately sinning, have I not set myself up as a two-bit god, snatching at what was not mine?” (p. 80) He sees his greed and selfishness as flowing from his petty self-idolization.
In my own life I consider it a gift of the Holy Spirit that at times I have been struck by a clear realization of my own participation in sin and that this has led to “a growing and intense sorrow for my sins.” I hope it has also produced some real fruits of amendment!

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Monday of Holy Week

In his ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, receiving the joyful acclamation of the people, and in his attitude of self-emptying, not clinging to equality with God, Jesus radiates a strongly attractive power. Todaýs liturgy invites us to open our hearts to the presence of Jesus as our close friend and to seek a more personal, affective relationship with him.
The psalm speaks of living with God and seeing his beauty up close; the gospel passage is about a special, intimate friendship which two sisters and their brother enjoy with the Lord, and he with them.

“One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.
For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble....
And I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make melody to the Lord” (Ps 27).
We remember that, when Jesus saw two of John's disciples following him, “he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi (which translated means Teacher), where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see’” (Jn 1:38-39). They stayed with him in the same house, beholding the beauty of his personality and inquiring of him about many things. They offered the joyful sacrifice of their hearts and perhaps had a little sing-along and exchanged jokes with him!
Today's psalm continues:
“‘Come,’ my heart says, ‘seek his face!’
Your face, Lord, do I seek. Do not hide your face from me.”
“Come and see,” Jesus said. Let us seek his face: his forehead, at times furrowed with care; his eyes, sometimes sparkling with hope and enthusiasm, sometimes tearful out of compassion; his smile, his speech, his heart; his hands which touched the sick, the outcasts, the “impure,” his friends, the scriptures, the tables of the money-changers, the bread and wine, the cross, the nails, the disciples nearly incredulous with joy to see and touch him again.

Today's gospel passsage presents Jesus arriving at Bethany, the home of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary -- some of his best friends. “Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair” (Jn 12:3). There is no hint that Jesus shied away from this close physical contact with his good friend. Luke told how Mary had sat at the Lord's feet to listen (Lk 10:39) and how Jesus affirmed her as his disciple.

Jesus' love for this family (Jn 11:3,5,36) had led him to risk his life to help them. His disciples had warned him that his enemies in Judea “were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” (Jn 11:8) Deep friendship also moved Thomas to want to share Jesus' suffering: “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (v. 16).
Deeply moved by Mary's grief, Jesus himself began to weep (vv 33-35). His compassion moved him to bring Lazarus back to life. But then, after his sister Mary anointed Jesus' feet, it was Lazarus's turn to be in life-threatening solidarity with his wanted friend. A great crowd came “to see Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus” (12:9-11).

In Spanish the word for “society,” as in Society of Jesus, is compañía, based on the image of sharing bread together. All Christians can be compañeros of Jesus as members of communities, sharing the bread and roses of daily life and recognizing him in the Eucharistic “breaking of the bread”: the two disciples told the apostles what had happened on the road to Emmaus, “and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread” (Lk 24:35).
In the Spiritual Exercises St. Ignatius suggests that we ask for this special fruit of our meditations on the gospel: “an intimate knowledge of our Lord, who has become man for me, that I may love him more and follow him more closely.” To the extent that we grow in real friendship with Christ, to that extent will we be healed of the arrogant and destructive self-centeredness which is the root of sin. (To continue our exercises in etymology, we might also note, as Paul Tillich did, that the English word sin has to do with “putting asunder” or tearing the fabric of unity.)

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Tuesday of Holy Week

1. Yesterday's Columbus Ledger-Enquirer arrived today, featuring extremely unusual front-page coverage of two Central Americans. An AP picture showed a child in the Palm Sunday procession at the cathedral of Managua.
Immediately to the right of the picture was an AP article reporting that a Salvadoran soldier was killed along with eight U.S. troops and 22 Iraqis in anti-American “rioting” in Iraq. The Salvadoran was killed near Najaf when supporters of anti-American Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr “opened fire on the Spanish garrison during a street protest that drew about 5,000 people” (Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, April 5, 2004).
The statement about our protest last November against SOA/WHINSEC included a message concerning the Salvadorans and other Central American troops in Iraq: “One of our main reasons for demanding that the U.S. government close SOA/WHINSEC has to do with the recruitment of Latin American troops into the military strategies and operations of the U.S. government. SOA/WHINSEC is a symbol and instrument of this, as its very name indicates. Other countries of the hemisphere have been pressured into sending token forces (about two hundred from each of several nations) to cooperate in a military occupation which the Bush administration has defined as necessary for U.S. security. Do the people of Latin America need to participate in this kind of ‘security cooperation’?”
One of the soldiers now in training at SOA/WHINSEC may be the next Central American to be killed for supporting the U.S. imperial venture in Iraq. If he is another Salvadoran, he will have given his life for a nation which, for all practical purposes, had occupied his country in the 1980s.

2. Today's mail also brought a letter from Fr. Jerry Zawada, a Franciscan priest who is reporting today to federal prison to begin the six-month sentence he received for his participation with us in the action last November at Ft. Benning. Jerry, a “recidivist” at SOA/WHINSEC, has also been involved in solidarity visits in Iraq and actions of civil disobedience against nuclear weapons. For one of the latter protests, Jerry was sentenced on March 29 to one month in prison, to be served in addition to the six-month term he begins today.
In his court statement on March 29, Jerry spoke of both issues, Iraq and nuclear weapons: “Several of us here in this courtroom have personally witnessed the effects of what our weapons and warfare have done to the children and other innocent people in Iraq. At night in my sleep I can hear the screams of six-year-old Mahmoud as he begs to be relieved of the awful pain of cancer in his joints as a result of depleted uranium and the inability to receive relief medication.....
“Do we not want a future for our children? We want children to live in safety, free from the violence of the nuclear threat. Our nation should be the first to dismantle, since we were the first and only ones to use such weapons upon innocent civilians.”

3. A week ago, as April 4 approached, I remembered my visit in 2002 to the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Center in Atlanta. There I was deeply moved by seeing the videos of Dr. King marching and by hearing his voice again. His 1967 speech on Vietnam had influenced my own understanding of the war, and his history of non-violent civil disobedience had inspired me to engage in the destruction of draft files in 1969. So, on this Palm Sunday, April 4, I celebrated this great contemporary prophet, assassinated 36 years ago.
The need to continue the civil-rights struggle is obvious in many places. In Columbus, Ga., the NAACP held a demonstration Sunday which focused on police violence against African-Americans. “Resting on the Government Centeŕs steps were pictures of Dr. King and Kenneth Walker, fatally shot by a Muscogee County sheriff́s deputy on December 10" (Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, April 5, 2004). The district attorney of another county is reportedly studying the possibility of prosecuting the deputy who killed Walker. No firearm or drugs were found on Walker's body or in his car. He had been shot twice in the head with the deputy's tactical submachine gun.
As a recording of Dr. King's 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech was played on loudspeakers, a petition was circulated to recall Sheriff Ralph Johnson. “We must remember we have come a long way since 1968, but we still have miles to go,” said John Vodika of the Georgia Prison Advocate for Inmates. “If Dr. King were alive today, he would think the criminal justice practices and penal systems in this country are genocidal. The criminal justice system is fueled by fear and racism.”
Reginald Pugh, Columbus Metro Urban League president, asked: “Have we really made any progress? A little, but we are still on shaky ground.” He said people need to stop waiting for the next leader and become empowered. “Everybody needs to be engaged to bring change about,” Pugh said. “We will get nothing done until we get with it and get real.”

4. To be able to speak out for peace and justice like Dr. King, let each of us ask that the Lord, who formed us in the womb, make “my mouth like a sharp sword and make me a polished arrow” (Isaiah 49:2), as the prophet prays in today's first reading.
And as Jesus tells us in today's gospel, let us love one another as he has loved us (Jn 13:34), lovingly proclaiming the prophetic swords and arrows of the Good News. Thus everyone will know that we are his disciples.

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Wednesday of Holy Week

Examination of Conscience as Tax Day Approaches

By declaring war on Iraq in the absence of a workable plan for peace, the Bush administration sowed seeds of utter chaos whose death and destruction have engulfed hundreds of Americans and other "coalition" forces, thousands of Iraqi fighters and civilians, and 200 Madrid subway commuters. President Bush and his cabinet should be tried for their responsibility for these deaths and for recklessly imperiling the lives of hundreds of thousands of others in Iraq and in our own homeland.
Every death, every wound in Iraq, Palestine, Madrid and other theaters where the deadly results of U.S. arrogance can be viewed sharpens my personal sense of sinfulness and guilt as an American citizen.
As April 15 approaches, the deadline for filing income-tax returns presents a crisis of conscience for many Americans. What responsibility does a citizen have for our government́s use of tax money in relation to the war in Iraq, the development of nuclear weapons, and other issues of civic and moral concern? Paying for the bombs is only one step removed from dropping them.

Some of my friends have concluded that in conscience they cannot support many of the destructive acts and policies of our own government. Some choose to live below the taxable income level, thus avoiding the possession of wealth which police and military force protects. Others withhold a percentage of their taxes corresponding to the portion of the federal budget allocated to the Pentagon or specifically to the war in Iraq, perhaps donating this amount instead to charity or to efforts for peace. They recognize that their property or wages may be attached or that they may even be prosectued for following their conscience in this way. Some refuse to pay any taxes to Washington.
Some of these conscientious citizens make their refusal public, hoping to influence others and contribute to changing U.S. policy. For others, quietly maintaining their personal integrity is enough.

The testimony that Jesus had forbidden people to pay taxes to the emperor (Lk 23:2) was evidently false and inaccurate. He had not clearly forbidden it, but neither had he affirmed any obligation to pay. Rather, he left the matter as an open question of conscience for people to decide: “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's” (Lk 20:25). Jesus knew the question had been posed to him as a trap, and so he avoided a complete, direct answer. But in doing so he provided grist for his accuserś later charge against him.
What Jesus clearly did affirm is the important distinction between the authority of the emperor and the authority of God – a difference which is blurred when governments seek to make false gods of themselves and thus to demand from their subjects unconditional obedience.
And so throughout the ages Jesus' distinction between the supreme and the lesser authorities has provoked healthy crises of conscience in his followers. Peter and the other apostles, confronted with the order to stop teaching about Jesus, came down firmly and boldly on the side of God́s authority: “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29).

In addition to the question of taxes, every new day of war brings a crisis of conscience to many American soldiers -- both those in Iraq and those who may be ordered to go there. One soldier who served in Iraq was morally repulsed by the killing of civilians and by the blood-for-oil purpose of the U.S. intervention; having refused to return and having applied for conscientious objector status, Camilo Mejía is now confined to a U.S. military base in Georgia and awaits court-martial.
Oscar Romero, the martyred archbishop of San Salvador, told the soldiers of his country that they had no obligation to follow unjust orders -- a principle recognized at least in theory by American and other military forces.
Soldiers and civilians today, especially in a democracy, have the moral duty to analyze government policies and to decide whether in conscience they can help to implement such policies. Members of the military may wish to consider the option (perfectly legitimate) of applying for conscientious objector status. Civilian taxpayers who are morally opposed to their government's militaristic priorities may choose to consider various forms of non-cooperation. At the very least the advent of April 15 should put the violence in Iraq, nuclear weapons, and other U. S. policies on the moral agenda for serious discernment by all conscientious citizens. Those who continue to pay taxes which finance policies they do not support could redouble their political efforts to change those policies.

The fact that obedience to conscience may have serious consequences should come as no surprise to those millions who have seen "The Passion of the Christ" and to those who may be considering the ethical dimension of taxpaying during the week before April 15 -- this year, Holy Week. Unfortunately, many Christians do not perceive in the suffering Jesus a courageous prophet whose agony is a consequence of his denunciation of injustice and of his anouncement of good news to the poor.

President Bush continues to repeat the most nonsensical “explanations” of U.S. purposes in Iraq. “There are terrorists there who would rather kill innocent people than allow for the advance of freedom,” he said yesterday. “That's what you're seeing going on: these people hate freedom, and we love freedom, and that's where the clash occurs” (AP article, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, April 7, 2004).
Are the thousands of people who are demonstrating angrily against their U.S. conquerors and rising up in violent wrath all “terrorists”? Are they clashing with foreign troops out of a hatred of our freedom? The reality is that they reject the U.S. government's forceful imposition of its notion of freedom – license for U.S. corporations to freely dominate the globe in their passion for profits. As Noam Chomsky has said succinctly: “The U.S. occupying forces have imposed on Iraq an economic program that no sovereign country would ever accept: it virtually guarantees that the Iraqi economy will be taken over by Western (mostly U.S.) multinational corporations and banks” (interview by Hawzheen O. Kareem).
Chomsky further explained the severely limited kind of “freedom” to be granted to Iraq: “U.S. planners surely intend to establish a client state in Iraq, with democratic forms if that is possible, if only for propaganda purposes.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu suggests a connection between the high number of executions carried out in Texas under George W. Bush and his “belligerent militarist policies.” At the University of London in February 2004 the archbishop, in a lecture critical of the death penalty, said: “It does appear as if the death penalty makes very little difference to the crime statistics. What it seems to be doing is to brutalise society.
“President Bush was governor of Texas, a state which is notorious for the high number of executions it carries out. It may not be fanciful to see a connection between this and the belligerent militarist policies that have produced a novel and dangerous principle, that of pre-emption on the basis of intelligence reports which in one particular instance have been shown to be dangerously flawed and yet were the basis for the U.S. going to war.
“It dragged with it a Britain that declared that intelligence reports showed Iraq to have the capacity to launch its weapons of mass destruction in a matter of minutes. An immoral war was thus waged, and the world is a great deal less safe than before. There are many more who resent the powerful who can throw their weight about so callously and with so much impunity. We see here on a global scale the same illusion that force and brutality can produce security as we note at national and communal levels where harsh sentences and being tough on crime will necessarily make our neighbourhoods safer” (The Tablet, 21 February 2004).

What the archbishop considers the force and brutality of an immoral war is the “awesome power of almighty God” in the estimation of U.S. Marine chaplain Lieut. Carey H. Cash. The author of A Table in the Presence: The Dramatic Account of How a U.S. Marine Battalion Experienced God's Presence Amidst the Chaos of the War in Iraq (W. Publishing Group, 2004), interviewed today by Pat Robertson on the 700 Club TV show, told of his battalion's abundant experiences of God's favor and protection in Iraq. Rockets heading straight at them were “miraculously” diverted from their course. Perhaps their visual acuity was enhanced by the power of suggestion of Ps 91, v. 5: “You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day.”
Robertson and the chaplain called this “the soldier's psalm,” which indeed affirms a remarkable divine favoritism: “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right side, but it will not come near you” (v. 7). And these thousands are all “bad guys,” as our top civilian and military leaders tirelessly dub our Iraqi opponents: “You will only look with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked” (v. 8).
Cash and his host also referred fervently to the book of Joshua. Soldiers would be fortified to hear, for instance: “Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (1:9).
Would they also be inspired by vv. 24-28 of Chapter 8? Here we learn that “when Israel had finished slaughtering all the inhabitants of Ai in the open wilderness where they pursued them, and when all of them to the very last had fallen by the edge of the sword, all Israel returned to Ai, and attacked it with the edge of the sword. The total of those who fell that day, both men and women, was twelve thousand – all the people of Ai. For Joshua did not draw back his hand, with which he stretched out the sword, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. Only the livestock and the spoil of that city Israel took as their booty, according to the word of the Lord that he had issued to Joshua. So Joshua burned Ai, and made it forever a heap of ruins, as it is to this day.”

Mark Twain caught this fervor (deliberately exaggerated to make his point)in his War Prayer:
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.
“O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
“We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”

At Robertson's invitation the Marine chaplain closed the interview with a prayer, asking that the “awesome power of almighty God” would continue to manifest itself in protecting our troops in Iraq and that America would be a nation of “prayer warriors” in support of our soldiers. The basic message was clear: God is with us, and against them. How unfortunate, and how symptomatic of the military's manipulation of the gospel, is the use of the name “Emmanuel,” which was applied to the non-violent Jesus (Mt 1:23).

Finally, tonight's NBC-TV news included a statement by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld which must have driven his public-relations handler to desperation, if they consdider most viewers to possess at least average ability in simple logic. After annoucing that Iranians are entering Iraq, Rumsfeld actually said: “It is unhelpful to have neighboring countries meddling in Iraq.”

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P.S. I wish to thank all the wonderful people who have written to me in jail expressing their prayers and support.

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Holy Thursday
9:15 a.m.

I am starting Holy Thursday by watching Dr. Condoleezza Rice's televised testimony before the 9/11 commission. I doubt that she will reveal anything new or significant, and I can't imagine the commission members catching her in any glaring inconsistencies – or, if they do, making her squirm.
Whether the Bush team took sufficient precautions to prevent the disasters of 9/11 seems very difficult to resolve one way or the other. The terrorist attacks conveniently served administration purposes, but whether officials had deliberately relaxed security measures in order to allow a major terrorist attack to be carried out, as some critics have suggested, remains to be seen.
But it is extremely important to highlight the revelations by Paul ÓConnor (Treasury) and Richard Clarke (former top anti-terrorism coordinator) to the effect that the Bush team immediately seized on the events of 9/11 to justify and gain popular support for an invasion of Iraq. And the idea of such an attack was not a sudden brainstorm. Officials of the Bush I administration longed to go all the way in 1991 to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime, and these same people and others kept their desire alive and advocated their plan during the Clinton years. The Project for the New American Century makes this very clear.
The Project and related geopolitical plans proposed an aggressive projection of U.S. power around the world. Purpose? To control crucial economic resources and to “open up” regions of the world to “free market” penetration by U.S. capital. Iraq was a major site of unhidden treasure.
Thus we do not have to wait for a smoking gun but rather for the public to realize, with all its implications, that officials of the incoming administration in early 2001 brought their gun to Washington and kept it aimed at Iraq as it had been for some years, ready to smoke as soon as a sufficiently horrific terrorist act (a “Pearl Harbor”) could be blamed, correctly or not, on Iraq.

It is in this world, now dominated by the American empire, that Jesus becomes incarnate today. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (Jn 1:1-3).
The Word (“logos”) is the Logic, Pattern, Blueprint of human society and of all creation, akin to Wisdom in the Old Testament. Through him/her all things came into being: gender, race, nationality, language, culture, and government as a way of ordering communal life. As Walter Wink emphasizes, all of these are good, though fallen (precisely when they raise themselves to become gods of domination), but always capable of being redeemed (Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1992).
When Jesus redeems, he restores persons and things to their true selves, since he is the Plan according to which everything was created. As Thomas Merton said, “To be a saint is to be yourself” – your true self, before you were programmed to be fearful, self-centered, dominating, and violent.
The Word is the light of all people because we exist in his/her likeness and pattern. In the light of the Word the true being of everything is illuminated..
St. Paul speaks of the risen Christ as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation ... in whom all things hold together” and have their true being (Col 1:15-17). Since Christ is the perfect image of God, and we are created in God́s image and likeness, we attain our true identity by being incorporated into Christ.
And yet the world, even his own, did not accept him: “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him” (Jn 1:11).
Creation had become twisted, distorted from its divine model, and so the creature did not know its true nature. John presents Jesus' explanation of this: “The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God” (3:19-21).
In a similar vein Paul explains that evil suppresses the truth: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth” (Rom 1:18).
The battle between light and darkness is part of the war between good and evil. While some choose evil, others receive the Word and are transformed into what they truly are, children of God: “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (Jn 1:12).

St. Ignatius of Loyola imagined this vast cosmic drama from the viewpoint of God in his meditation on the incarnation, where he asks the retreatant to see the people on the earth in all their diversity: “some are white, some black; some at peace, and some at war; some weeping, some laughing; some well, some sick; some coming into the world, some dying; etc.” (The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, by Louis J. Puhl, S.J. -- Westminster, Md., The Newman Press, 1957, p. 50.).
The Trinity, beholding “all nations in great blindness, going down to death and descending into hell,” decides to work the redemption of the human race.
After considering what the persons on the face of the earth do, “for example, wound, kill, and go down to hell,” the retreatant then contemplates the Incarnation and begs for the grace to join in this mission of the Lord. It is not a trivial task, but rather an attempt to change history and human persons.
In his retreat journal Paul Mariani gave some striking examples of the modern “structural sin” which characterizes our conflictual world and which cries out for the prophetic and transforming power of the incarnate Jesus today: “Swiss banks collaborating with the Nazis to steal the property of Jewish victims, their lives apparently not enough. American tobacco companies creating killer cigarettes, then lying about it year after year, as the death toll from cancer mounts, my own mother among the statistics. The injustice of it all and of how we cover over these injustices. I thought of the Jews' deep passion for justice – Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Psalmist – refusing to let these things be swept away by a kind of selective amnesia. I thought of Jesus, one more Jew from the provinces, beaten half to death, then led out to die.
“God Himself crying out against the sheer weight of the injustices against the poor, the defenseless, those who cannot afford adequate counsel. The lies, the false claims and counterclaims, legal systems opposing true justice…. Black slaves and Native Americans, long dead, whose basic human rights were abrogated time and time again” (pp. 97-98).

The Word made flesh is “Emmanuel,” which, Matthew explains, means “God with us” (Mt 1:23). Since Jesus is the True Person, some wise men from the East, searching for truth, come to him in Bethlehem: “On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh” (2:11).
To whom did they kneel to give homage? Not to a domineering ecclesiastical chief who would have demanded that they reject their cultural and religious heritage as “pagan” or perhaps even diabolical, but to an infant in a modest dwelling. The baby Jesus did not require their total submission; the family gratefully accepted the visitorś gifts and wished them well on their journey.
If the religions of the world could receive each otheŕs gifts in mutual appreciation and gratitude, the kingdom of the one God would come closer. This prospect is not helped by Marines from a “Christian nation” attacking and calling in air strikes on a mosque, thus killing scores of Muslims, as happened yesterday in Iraq.

The holy family became refugees in Egypt to avoid the jealous wrath of King Herod, who took out his anger by killing “all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men” (2:16)
Later, other jealous religious authorities and the representative of the Roman emperor would succeed in executing Jesus. And down through the ages, kings, emperors, and presidents have beaten down with overwhelming violence most “uppity” types – whether prophets of God́s kingdom or would-be political rivals, or even simply independent leaders who refuse to genuflect at the imperial throne.

The narrative of Jesus' public ministry began outside the temple, indeed outside the city – in the wilderness with a bizarre-looking man who had no official status or credentials. John the Baptist appeared “in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’” (3:1-2).
He demanded true repentance which manifests itself in deeds as worthy fruit: “But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor;’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire’” (3:7-10).
In the Church let us not rest on our laurels as having been baptized as infants into the family of Jesus and the saints and martyrs. In the Society of Jesus, may he keep us from resting on the holiness and fame of our great missionaries and martyrs of the past.

In Luke's version of the Baptist's preaching we find something of the specific content of his message – a strong call to social justice: “And the crowds asked him, ‘What then should we do?’ In reply he said to them, ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.’ Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and then asked him, ‘Teacher, what should we do?’ He said to them, ‘Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.’ Soldiers also asked him, ‘And we, what should we do?’ He said to them, ‘Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages’” (Lk 3:10-14).
All are urged to share the resources of life; government officials and soldiers are told to avoid fraudulent and extortionate methods. What would the Baptist ask us U.S. Christians to do today in relation to, or in resistance to, the policies of our government and corporations? Rather than sharing resources, are we not monopolizing them for own own selfish consumption? Are our government officials and military officers not levying taxes on other countries – e.g., payment of their usurious foreign debt, while they must abandon their just demands on our corporations in compliance with the new rules of world trade? Are we not extorting other countries to conform to our designs for exploitation under the guise of “free-trade” agreements?
Christian corporate captains ignore all the Baptist’s injunctions except the last one, which they preach to their employees: “Be satisfied with your wages,” as if this meant that soldiers, police, and other workers did not have a right to struggle for a just wage.

Jesus will not only proclaim the need for repentance and for the appropriate fruits of conversion, but he will “baptize in the Holy Spirit” (Mt 3:11), i.e., he will share his own Spirit of Love to transform the hearts of those who receive his spoken word.
In the baptism of Jesus, a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (3:17).
Thus affirmed, Jesus begins to look toward his own mission and the means he should choose to implement it. Fasting forty days and nights in the desert, he is first confronted by the temptation to appeal to people by offering them bread: “But he answered, ‘It is written, ‘one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (4:4).
Next he is tempted to win them over by dazzling them with spectacular tricks and finally to coerce them with the political and military power of the kingdoms of the world. But to wield this kind of power, Jesus would have to worship the evil one, the principle of violence and domination: “Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him’” (4:10).
Jesus does not want his free followers to be bread or rice Christians, or circus fans, or coerced crowds.
“Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee…. From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’” (4:12,17). Jesus picked up the torch from the jailed Baptist and proclaimed the very same message, undoubtedly recognizing that he was risking the same fate as the one he had chosen as his baptizer.

The fishermen responded “immediately” to Jesus’ invitation to make them fishers of people (4:18-22). Such figures of speech are not to be analyzed literally: in this case, the fish who are brought into the bark of Peter, far from suffocating, find fullness and joy in community and in a meaningful mission. Nor are people to be tricked by bait or caught in a net (coerced) to follow Jesus.
Now with four disciples, Jesus “went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people” (4:23).
Later, after much teaching and healing, Jesus continues “teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness” (9:35). And he commissioned the Twelve to be heralds of his own message: “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near’” (10:7).
In Luke's version, Jesus began to proclaim the good news of the kingdom by reading from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Lk 4:18-19).
We can catch a glimmer of the excitement as well as the meaning of Jesus' announcement of the “good news of the kingdom of God” by hearing one of the key Old Testament references to “good news” or good tidings: “Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings…. See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him…. He will feed his flock like a shepherd….” (Is 40:9-11)
That good news was that God was then showing his royal power to liberate his people from their captivity in Babylon. More generally, the kingdom of God is where God rules, where his will is done on earth by people who accept and live by God’s values. This is Jesus' news report.

The Sermon on the Mount begins with the Beatitudes (Mt 5:1-12). In Luke's version (6:20-26), these are fewer and more stark, more material; and they are followed by their corresponding “woes.” There is no need to project these reversals of fortune entirely into a heavenly after-life as if they had no application within history.
All of the Beatitudes are, of course, admirably exemplified by Jesus himself. I also find it helpful and inspiring to reflect on saints (both canonized and not) and “blessed” who by their lives have shown us the meaning and challenge of each Beatitude.
How the disciples on that mountain must have thrilled, and wondered, when the Master called them “salt of the earth” and “light of the world” (Mt 5:13-14). Salt is infinitesimal when compared to the earth; light is often weak and regularly fades completely. But the little flock is called to remain faithful to its crucial mission for the sake of the earth and the world. Later, Jesus would liken the Kingdom of God to a small mustard seed (13:31-32) and to a little measure of yeast (13:33).
Jesus urges his followers to proclaim the Good News of God́s love through “good works”: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (5:16). The Lord remembered how the Baptist had stressed the need to “bear fruit” rather than just to recite formulas of faith.

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Good Friday

The gross manipulation of the English language continues.

Item 1.
Even with tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis of various Muslim groups rising up, in demonstrations or in arms, against the foreign occupiers, American leaders (from sergeants on the battlefield to the commander-in-chief) are still labeling our opponents the “bad guys.” As the number of evil ones grows exponentially, will there be a commensurate increase in U.S. killings of civilians? Will we soon be told that all 25 million Iraqis are “extremists” because they have an extremely hostile attitude toward the invading armies?

Item 2.
As a Japanese hostage was shown on the morning news staring in horror at a sword two inches from his neck, the script running at the bottom of the screen identified the Japanese soldiers in Iraq, who must be removed from the country if the hostages are to be spared, as being on a “humanitarian mission.”
Last year the Nicaraguan government assured its people that its small contingent of troops in Iraq were on a “humanitarian” mission to help disarm land mines. The Iraqis, however, fail to appreciate the humanitarian nature of the collaboration of anyone with the foreigners occupying their country by force and violence.
_____________________________

Local Columbus TV today presented some bad news about Holy Thursday as celebrated in Atlanta. The archbishop had decreed that female feet could not be among those washed in the ceremony commemorating Jesus' washing of the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper. Demonstrators at the cathedral protested the archbishop's order.
The exclusion of half the human race was a glaring and scandalous contradiction to the beautiful meaning of Jesus' dramatic example of unity and equality in a community of mutual service. Today, in a letter to a friend who works for the archdiocese, what could I do but offer her a simple but heartfelt apology? (In our Christian Base Communities in Nicaragua, not only do women as well as men have their feet washed in this ceremony, but, as the basin and towel are passed around the twelve volunteers, people wash one another’s feet in obedience to the command of Jesus.)
_______________________________

Jesus in Jail

The hectic pace of the last few days has slowed down, and the tension has subsided at least for the night. It was quiet in the jail where Jesus was held.
All his disciples had deserted him and fled at the moment of his arrest. Peter, at least, had been hanging around the high priest's courtyard; but, upon being questioned, he denied knowing Jesus.
Although Jesus' body was sore from the beating he had received from the temple guards, he was filled with a deep inner peace, knowing he had been faithful to his mission and that Abba was with him. At dawn he would be taken before Pilate.

In 1944 a compañero of Jesus, Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J., would also find himself on a death row, accused by the Nazis of criticizing and conspiring against the Third Reich. He too experienced a profound interior peace and joy which came from his awareness that he had been steadfast in the life’s mission his Lord had given him. During Advent, even in prison, he felt "true happiness" as a companion to hope "that all the promises hold good": "It does happen, even under these circumstances, that every now and then my whole being is flooded with pulsating life and my heart can scarcely contain the delirious joy there is in it. Suddenly, without any cause that I can perceive, without knowing why or by what right, my spirits soar again and there is not a doubt in my mind that all the promises hold good" (Alfred Delp, S.J. -- Prison Writings, Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2004), p. 27).
Alfred had also made his own Ignatius's “Suscipe” – “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding , and my entire will, all that I have and possess. Thou hast given all to me. To Thee, O Lord, I return it. All is Thine, dispose of it wholly according to Thy will. Give me Thy love and Thy grace, for this is sufficient for me.”
As a religious Alfred had offered God his liberty when he first pronounced his vow of obedience and, very shortly before his execution by the Nazis, when he made his final vows. In prison he probably felt that he was giving the Lord his liberty, and his life, in a very specific, concrete way.

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FOOTNOTE TWO

For more on Fr. Delp, please see my chapter in this Jail Journal –
The Prison Writings of Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J. --
A Meditation By a Fellow Jesuit in Jail
http://jailjournal.blogspot.com/2007/03/prison-writings-of-fr-delp-meditation.html

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For many years now I have tried to be open to Christ's call to join him in working for his Kingdom of justice and peace. In the Jesuit community and in the larger peace community, I have sought to discern God's will for me along this particular road of ministry. Following on this path, I am immensely grateful for the meaningful work I have found and the wonderful pilgrims who have accompanied me in many struggles.
This journey has included four experiences of incarceration for which I have absolutely no regrets: two years in federal prison for participating in the destruction of draft files as an act of resistance against the war in Vietnam; one night in the Washington, D.C., jail after Phil Berrigan and I poured blood on the gateposts of the White House as a protest against the 1989 assassination of the six Jesuits and the two women at the Central American University in San Salvador; a few hours in a Pentagon detention facility for taking part in a “die-in” as a protest against the SOA/WHINSEC; and my current ninety days of incarceration.
In my vow of obedience I too had offered my liberty to Christ, promising to seek and follow his will in the Society of Jesus. Incarceration as a consequence of my ministry has been a small but significant concretization of that oblation of my freedom and a way to accompany Jesus even in his experience of arrest and detention.

In spite of his bruises, Jesus fell asleep on the hard floor, only to awaken shortly when two bandits were thrown in with him. They too had been picked up by the chief priest́s police, who were especially vigilant because of the large crowds who had come to Jerusalem for Passover.
Awakened by their entry, Jesus asked them why they had been arrested.. When he heard that they had been robbing travelers on the outskirts of the city, he remarked that their penalty for such a crime could be severe but would probably not be capital punishment. “You don't understand,” one said, “we are Zealots and we were getting funds for the rebellion.
“The guards told us about you – that the chief priest will accuse you before Pilate of stirring up the people, claiming to be a king, and going against the emperor. But we know you are not one of us Zealots. You must really hate these corrupt and lying priests. You must be praying that fire come down from heaven to consume them and the Romans who will carry out your execution.”
“It would be natural to feel that way,” Jesus smiled, “but I am asking God to forgive them, for they do not really know what they are doing.”
“Sure, sure,” the bandit snorted. “We'll see how you feel tomorrow. Let's make a bet: if you still feel that way when we're hanging on those crosses, I'll ask you to forgive me too and take me with you to your paradise.”

“Anima Christi”

During my Holy Week retreat I have tried to enter into the well-known prayer, “Anima Christi,” which Ignatius included in the book of the Exercises.

“Soul of Christ, sanctify me.”
May the Holy Spirit, Spirit of Love, soften my heart,
helping me to be more sensitive and kinder to others
and to “speak boldly” in defense of the gospel of love and justice
as the early Christians did after Pentecost.
“Come, Holy Spirit, fill my heart and kindle in me the fire of thy divine love.”

“Body of Christ, save me.”
– Save me by preventing me from being amputated from your Body, the people.
If I fall alone into the raging waters, may your lifeline bring me back to the Bark.
– May your Eucharistic Body nourish me so that I can be a more vital community member
and enable me to assimilate you as the Word of Life,
as Ezekiel “ate the scroll” of your truth (Ezekiel 3:1-3).
– And as I break the Eucharistic bread and pass the cup of your blood to the community,
by your mercy speaking your words of self-giving,
help me to be willing to give my body to be broken and my blood to be shed
not just in one special, final moment,
but every day in friendship and service.

“Blood of Christ, inebriate me.”
Gladden my heart.
Cheer me up when I’m down;
and when I'm happy,
prompt me to show it with a smile and sense of humor.

“Water from the side of Christ, wash me.”
Baptize me anew every day to wash away the dust, grime, and air pollution of our culture:
gender and nationalistic chauvinism,
racism,
anthropocentric ecological irresponsibility,
individualistic competitiveness of all kinds,
fearful egocentrism,
and clericalistic arrogance.

“Passion of Christ, strengthen me.”
May the passion of the Christ –
both the real event and the movie –
fortify me and millions of others
to carry on the struggle for the Kingdom
no matter what may lie ahead.
And may we come to a more complete and more personal understanding
of Jesus and his work in the gospels
as the prelude and provocation of his passion,
that we may love him and his people more deeply
and follow him more perfectly.

“O Good Jesus, hear me.”
Mom used to say, in times of difficulty:
“God is good.”
And Jesus is our good friend who always listens.
May the Spirit help us to listen, too, to him and to one another.

“Within your wounds, hide me.”
It is not for protection from any vengeful anger of a cruel tyrant god
that we need to be hidden within Jesus' wounds,
for such a seedy image is a blasphemous insult to Jesus' and our loving “Abba,”
as Bishop Tom Gumbleton noted in his Palm Sunday sermon (April 4, 2004)
after the reading of the Lord’s passion:
“Over the past few weeks, even months, we have been inundated with talk of the film ‘The Passion of the Christ.’ The emphasis has been on Jesus being brutalized, victimized, and becoming a helpless victim who seems almost totally passive, being crushed with a kind of violence that is almost too much for most people to even watch and absorb.
“Supposedly, according to that kind of theology, this was what God demanded. God demanded that Jesus be so totally destroyed and suffer so terribly to pay for our sin.
“But if we listen really carefully to the scriptures, that's not the message. Jesus was not a helpless victim. What kind of a God would demand that God's only Son be treated that way and demand that kind of payment? We can almost not imagine a crueler image of God. It certainly does not fit into our understanding of who God is. God is love and only love” (“The Peace Pulpit,” National Catholic Reporter).
As the mountains of El Salvador hid the poor in resistance and in flight, may Jesus hide us from repressive governments in the service of the world's oligarchies – so that we may, as he often did, get away to struggle another day, until the hour of death is inevitably upon us.

“Permit me not to be separated from you.”
You always say: “Do not be afraid, I am with you.”
Help me to stay by your side,
never separated from you or from your Body, the community,
for that would be the only real defeat.

“From the wicked foe defend me.”
Defend me from the enemy within –
pride, which would make me into an idol,
and fear, which would reduce me to a slave.
In relation to opponents outside,
help me to hate the injustice but not the perpetrator,
and to confront opponents resolutely but respectfully,
with the relative truth I have glimpsed.

“At the hour of my death, call me.”
Grateful for my sixty years,
I pray that you continue to pour out your Spirit,
so that younger generations shall still see visions
and that we older men and women shall still dream dreams (Acts 2:17; Joel 2:28)
until the hour comes when you call us once again:
“Come and see, come follow me.”

“And bid me come to you”
in poverty of spirit
and, finally, in total material poverty as well.

“That with your saints I may praise you, for ever and ever. Amen.”
May our friendship grow in this life,
so that I may look toward an eternal conversation of love and praise
as my perfect joy.

Thomas Merton had a profound sense of the crucifixion of Jesus as an ongoing reality in history and of his personal duty to bring the victims and potential victims down from the cross. In 1961 he wrote to a friend: “I am now perfectly convinced that there is one task for me that takes precedence over everything else: working with such means as I have at my disposal for the abolition of war....
“This is purely and simply the crucifixion over again. Those who think there can be a just cause for measures that risk leading to the destruction of the entire human race are in the most dangerous illusion, and if they are Christian they are purely and simply arming themselves with hammer and nails, without realizing it, to crucify and deny Christ. The extent of our spiritual obtuseness is reaching a frightful scale” (Essential Writings, Orbis Books, 2000).

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Holy Saturday

Jesus is dead, buried, gone.
Some believe he will rise.
Today they wait.

Today around 9 a.m. Mike Walli, my fellow anti-SOA protester and cellmate, came into our cell with the TV remote control in hand to announce with joy that all the other inmates were asleep and so we could watch whatever we wanted in the dayroom. This turned out to be the “Washington Journal” on C-Span, which was focusing on the controversy over the wording of the pledge of allegiance.
According to one caller, the main issue today regarding the pledge is not whether it should include the phrase, “under God,” which was inserted in 1954. Rather, the problem is that the Bush administration and its supporters have, in effect, their own pledge: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the corporations of America, and to the Republicans for whom it stands, one nation, under their God, with liberty and justice for them.”

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Easter Sunday

Little by little the disciples began to share with one another
their growing sense of his living presence and power among them.
And when he sent them his Spirit,
they went out with joy and courage to proclaim his message of truth, justice, and peace,
and to affirm that God had raised up the executed victim.

In a similar way the Salvadoran people sing a popular ballad about their beloved San Romero:
“The blood that you shed was for the cause of a people
who suffer great repression,
on account of the rich and the government....
It is clear to the people that your death was not isolated,
but was the action of imperialism and the armed forces....
Oscar Arnulfo has not died;
he lives in the struggles of his people.
For that reason we will never forget your heroic example”
(cited in Oscar Romero: Reflections on His Life and Writings, by Marie Dennis, Renny Golden, Scott Wright; Orbis Books, 2000).

The martyrdom of Romero brought a new Pentecost to his people, as a refugee from governmental repression testified: “When they killed Monseñor Romero, we were very sad because we thought everything had ended.. But later we saw that his spirit gave us strength to resist oppression. For that reason we also believe more now in Jesus Christ” (Carta a las Iglesias, San Salvador, UCA Editores, 1981- , No. 89).

END

Reflections on the Autobiography of Chicano Poet Jimmy Santiago Baca

2007-04-09T16:57:00.000-07:00

A Place to Stand
Reflections on the Autobiography of Chicano Poet Jimmy Santiago Baca
by
Joseph E. Mulligan, S.J.

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The following is a chapter of a journal I wrote while I was in two county jails from late January to late April, 2004, serving a 90-day sentence for “crossing the line” onto Ft. Benning, Ga., in a November 2003 protest against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA). The School, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), has trained thousands of Latin American soldiers, some of whom have returned to their countries to be notorious torturers, assassins, and other human-rights violators.
For more information: www.soaw.org

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The prison counselor assured the inmate that if he stayed out of trouble, he could go to school and get a better job for the remainder of his sentence. “Implicit in his encouragement was that it was up to me to decide my fate, but it wasn’t really like that. Others had a lot to do with whether you did good or bad.”
In his autobiography, A Place to Stand (New York: Grove Press, 2001), the highly-acclaimed Chicano poet Jimmy Santiago Baca tells of many “others” who had a damaging effect on him in his childhood and adolescence. In an Arizona state prison other inmates were out to do him serious bodily harm, and he responded in what he saw as self-defense by attacking them first. This naturally marred his prison record, and so the warden denied him the chance to begin high-school classes.
Baca responded to this indignity by initiating a personal work strike, which brought down heavier punishment but also provided him an opportunity for serious reflection. After teaching himself to read and write, he learned about his Chicano roots and discovered his ability to compose poetry; this helped him to accept and esteem himself, forgive others, and gain a new and positive attitude toward life.

CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE

His father, an alcoholic, had constantly abused the family but sometimes showed kindness to Jimmy. The boy longed for a closer relationship with his father but never found it. His mother finally threw her husband out for good and then entered into a relationship with a wealthy gringo who belittled her Hispanic background and the Chicano culture of her kids.
When Jimmy was five years old, his mother and the gringo suddenly deposited the kids at their paternal grandparents’ home and sped off -- for good. Jimmy’s relationship with his grandparents was a happy one; but when Grandpa died, Jimmy, seven years old, and his brother Mieyo, eight, were taken to an orphanage in Albuquerque.
Later Baca remembered “the screams of my father and my drunken uncles, the tight-lipped scolding of my mother, the shrill reprimands of the nuns at St. Anthony’s orphanage, the finger-pointing adults who told me I didn’t belong, I didn’t fit in, I was a deviant.”
At the orphanage Mieyo started beating Jimmy up “for nothing” and became “cagey and manipulative. I think he learned to dislike himself.” Because of his habit of running away, Jimmy at 13 found himself in a boys’ detention center. “The bars weren’t there to keep us in so much as to remind us that we weren’t really wanted anywhere else.” The director told Jimmy: “Remember, you’re not here because you did something wrong. It’s only because you don’t have a home” (p. 20). Jimmy later reflected: “in the end, as always, a cell is the only place they have for kids without families” (p. 174).
Jimmy felt that if he stayed long enough at the detention center he would be trained to feel nothing. “After being stripped of everything, all these kids had left was pride -- a pride that was distorted, maimed, twisted, and turned against them, a defiant pride that did not allow them to admit that they were human beings and had been hurt” (p. 21).
Jimmy’s cellmate, “a big muscled Chicano whose fighting abilities were renowned,” advised him of the necessary behavior in the institution: “If anybody looks at you wrong, tries to touch you, mess him up.” Years later, in state prison, Jimmy would receive similar counsel and act on it.

Jimmy’s program included classes at the local junior high school. Since this only deepened his self-doubt, he pretended to be sick in order to avoid school. He was ashamed not only of his old patched clothes but also of his inability to follow what the teachers were talking about. He couldn’t talk to the kids “because they were so much smarter than I was. They were the kind of kids my mother pointed to, saying I should be like them. I already half believed that I was a sinner and they were not; at least the nuns had told me so” (p. 24).
And because of all the trouble in his family -- lack of parents, the alcoholism, the fights -- “I also believed there was something basically wrong with me.”
Not surprisingly Jimmy felt more at home at the detention center, where he and his homeboys talked about “doing time, stealing stuff, recalling things that people had done to us and what we were going to do to pay them back.”
Jimmy excelled as a fullback, “trampling opponents with relish.” But when the coach, a nice unprejudiced gringo, invited Jimmy to spend a weekend with his family, it was a torment for the Chicano boy. “These were the people I’d assumed didn’t care about us street kids. They were a part of the white world that had helped to destroy my family, made my father suffer, made my grandpa and grandma work in their fields dawn to dusk.”
Jimmy had a premonition that the visit might be a prelude to a longer stay -- adoption. He felt that, if he lived with them, he might be betraying his family and cultural background. “I decided that not all white people were the same, but it still didn’t make my stay any more comfortable.”
He had begun to feel that “the state and society at large considered me a stain on their illusion of a perfect America. In the American dream there weren’t supposed to be children going hungry or sleeping under bridges.... I felt like a nuisance” (p. 29).
His grandfather had always prided himself on his loyalty to his customs and traditions and people. Jimmy felt: “I’d rather live on the streets and keep my loyalty, my memories and stories, than take on the gringo’s way of living, which tried to make me forget where I came from, and sometimes even put down my culture and ridiculed my grandparents as lazy foreigners.”
In spite of his “terror of being alone in the world,” Jimmy returned to the detention center, never to stay again with the coach and his family. He couldn’t give any explanation. “I wasn’t strong enough to admit that I felt worthless and was nothing but a troublemaker. I quit school the next day” (p. 30).

Baca’s story has special meaning to me as I read it here in jail. To what extent does his experience coincide with that of many inmates here? I asked “Paul,” one of my cellmates, to estimate the percentage of prison and jail inmates who spent their childhood or adolescence in orphanages or detention centers. “About 60% have been in reformatories as kids,” he opined, but probably not very many in orphanages.
The problem, in Paul’s view, “is that of single-parent families rather than totally abandoned children. It’s very hard for a woman alone to raise boys. They need a positive male image, who can discipline them when necessary and also believe in them and encourage them to achieve.”

“PROCESS OF CRIMINALIZATION”

At 14 Jimmy split from the detention center and lived with Mieyo and their father in a shack in Albuquerque, fearful of getting a beating from their father whenever he came home drunk. Now Jimmy began some petty criminal activity. He’d steal a bicycle or a tire and resell it, or earn enough -- digging ditches for a plumbing contractor, cleaning yards, painting -- “to put something in our stomachs and then party” (p. 31). Jimmy followed Mieyo’s example in drinking. “Soon there were other things: LSD, pot, harder stuff.”
Cruising, looking for action, petty theft, odd jobs, partying, drinking, dope, jail -- this was the pattern for Jimmy and Mieyo and many other teenage school dropouts.
Baca later saw that his process of “criminalization” had begun when his mother dropped him and Mieyo and their sister off at their grandparents’ home. It was reinforced at the orphanage and the detention center. It was at the latter institution that he first learned how to intimidate others with his stare, how to lie to the authorities with a smile, how to join a group and “think of myself as me against the others” (p. 32).
There he first came to know boys who were already well on their way to becoming criminals, “whose friendship taught me I was more like them than like the boys outside the cells, living in a society that would never accept me, in a world made of parents, nice clothes, and loving care.”
He could see the narrowing of life’s possibilities “in the cold, challenging eyes of the homeboys in the detention center” and the numbing of their hearts “in their swaggering postures. All of them had been wounded, hurt, abused, ignored; aggression was in their talk, in the way they let off steam over their disappointments, in the way they expressed themselves. It was all they allowed themselves to express, for each of them knew they could be hurt again if they tried anything different. So instead they refined what they did know to its own kind of perfection.”

Jimmy learned that he would have to fight if he wanted to get by in the center and on the streets. When Mieyo revealed that he had been raped by two white men who had picked him up on the street and taken him home, Jimmy adopted a stance of “violent engagement” toward the world. He was not going to let the world trample his brother and him down like dogs in the street. His faith in the goodness of people “began to tremble around the edges until it shattered like glass subjected to a high-pitched sound. My hope that society would one day invite us in was gone. The world was against us. Rather than let the world beat us down, I had to fight back, and I did, on the day Mieyo finally came to get me.”

“A KIND OF GANG”

Jimmy got involved in “a kind of gang -- just a bunch of us boys who had already been cast off and who didn’t have much else to do but cruise around together and get in trouble” (p. 33). As Jimmy developed his skill at fighting, fueled by his “rage at the world,” his reputation for toughness grew. “And somewhere along the line I started fighting just for the sake of fighting, because I was good at it and it felt good to beat other people up” (p. 34). (This kind of pleasure in inflicting violence is undoubtedly part of the motivation of many soldiers as well, who find in war an official, “acceptable” outlet for their aggression.)
At fifteen Jimmy was accountable to no one. All he had to do was avoid getting caught doing petty crimes, and he could “continue to wander with no direction, going along on a day-to-day basis with any suggestion or impulse a friend might come up with. It wasn’t so bad. Each day was a new adventure” (p. 35).
But Jimmy found hard times, too -- “waking up on the ground with nothing but a stubbed-out cigarette, a half-finished beer warming in the morning sun, and a full, absolutely empty day before me. I felt as lost and useless as I ever had before or have since.” (This emptiness, lack of direction, spontaneous movement, and sense of uselessness also characterize many middle and upper-class youth who may be graduating from a fine high school or prestigious college or even earning phenomenal money as young professionals and executives. These, however, will suffer an inner anxiety and pain but will probably not end up in jail or prison.)
The young Chicano took up some odd jobs but never lasted long on them. “I resented the way I was treated, and when someone would call me a dumb spic or insult me another way, I’d storm off or get in a fight” (p. 36).

His first serious relationship with a girl also ended in rejection. Theresa had been impressed by his fighting ability. Jimmy wanted a deeper relationship: “I didn’t know how to nurture a friendship, let alone love” (p. 39). They didn’t have much in common except violence and drinking. “Our conversations were usually superficial and glib, and I was shy around her. My silence annoyed her, but it frustrated me even more because for the first time I could sense the possibility of a real closeness, however elusive.”
But Theresa simply wanted sex, not love with any attachment or commitment. Her fear of intimacy made the kind of relationship Jimmy wanted impossible, and so they parted; but it would be years before Theresa ceased being part of his life. When Theresa left him, Jimmy bloodied his arm by putting it through the windshield.

At 17 Jimmy was picked up and booked on suspicion of murder. Since there was absolutely no evidence against him, he was released after four months. Long waits in jail before a trial or even a hearing are one of the most galling injustices which inmates, usually indigent ones, have to undergo. “The police always accused me and my friends of crimes we didn’t commit,” Jimmy reflected. “With no money for a lawyer, and no family to challenge the injustice, we were easy targets for the police to hang something on” (p. 37).
It was actually a close call for Jimmy, as it is for many in his position. If the police and prosecutor had really wanted to pin the charge on him, a court-appointed attorney probably would have urged him to plead guilty to try to get a life sentence without parole rather than the death penalty.

An encounter with his mother also ended in rejection for Jimmy. When she returned to Albuquerque after 11 years in California, Jimmy went to visit her. “When the door opened and my still-attractive mother looked from me to the two children clinging to her, she introduced me to them as a friend, shattering the hope that I’d allowed to grow in my heart” (p. 44).

CALIFORNIA AND DRUGS

After his release Jimmy drove west from Albuquerque in a stolen T-bird, hoping that traveling would help shake off the past. There was so much he couldn’t explain about what was happening, “but one thing was certain: no one wanted me around. I was falling apart” (p. 43).
Walking the beaches of San Diego, he met Marcos, a lanky Italian dude from Michigan. They hung out on the beach, drinking wine, smoking weed, and eating hot dogs. Jimmy got a job with a plumbing repair outfit. “I was living day-to-day, meeting chicks and guys who left as easily as they appeared” (p. 50). Trying not to think so much about the past and inspired by Marcos to enjoy life, “I exerted myself in the moment, not planning for tomorrow or saving up for the future. I’d meet a chick and go her way or she’d go mine, never knowing where we might end up or what we might do.”
On a house call Jimmy caused a small garage fire with his acetylene torch and got fired. He applied for a number of plumbing jobs, with no success. “I was better than most plumbers but I didn’t have a California license” (p. 52). He was offered jackhammer labor and “minimum wage bullshit.” Low on money, he and Marcos decided to invest what remained in marijuana “to sell to Marcos’s friends in Michigan. We were going to ship the weed on the bus. It was only a pound but it would double our investment and get us by until something else came our way.”
Thus Jimmy’s failure to find employment led to what he intended to be a one-time venture into selling drugs. While packing the box for Michigan, several friends dropped by and bought a few hundred dollars’ worth; but the weed never even got on board the Greyhound. On handing the package to the bus company clerk, Jimmy and Marcos were busted by narcotics agents.
While serving 30 days in jail, they met a drug-dealer named “Owl,” who boasted that his monthly earnings amounted to a five-digit figure. But Jimmy turned down Owl’s offer to make them salesmen. “After our last experience I wanted to avoid drugs. I was looking forward to life again without having to be looking over my shoulder or worrying about being thrown in jail” (p. 55).

Upon release Jimmy and Marcos went to a hotel where they could use the vouchers the jail had given them. There they found “a squalid dope fiend’s den and seedy whorehouse with ex-cons sitting on lumpy, ragged sofas watching soaps on television in a foul-smelling, dingy lobby” (p. 56). After a quick look around, they left, with Marcos reading his friend’s thoughts when he whispered: “This is where they send them to rehabilitate?”
Now on the street, Jimmy called Owl and set up a deal. “It wasn’t like we were going to be big dealers or anything, it was a temporary but convenient jump start, to help us get on our feet. The judge had sentenced us to a couple of months of community service, but this ended up by helping us sell more” (p. 57).
Their community service job consisted of working on a truck delivering food to welfare food banks. At each stop the two sold their clandestine commodity in generic macaroni boxes! Rolling in dough, they rented a nice pad on the beach.
Jimmy met Lonnie, a Chicana, around a pool table in a sports bar, and the relationship deepened. Close friends, the three moved to Yuma, Arizona, and lived together. Their surroundings reminded Jimmy of Estancia, where he had lived with his grandparents as a boy. He talked about his brother and sister for the first time and how their parents had abandoned them. “Closer to me than my own family had ever been, Marcos and Lonnie brought out the best in me and were the most accepting people I’d ever been with” (p. 61).
They considered Jimmy someone they could rely on, who was strong and who had a clear idea of what they should do. “But I didn’t trust myself, nor did I tell them that I was searching for something to make me feel more a part of the world, and while they helped me in that search, I couldn’t share with anyone the pain that still drove my exploration to find a place to stand (italics mine) comfortably in my skin” (p. 62).
Having been hurt so often and so deeply, Jimmy knew deep down that he needed affection and wanted to love, but his fear of further pain did not allow him to express what he felt.

Jimmy and Marcos got an old truck which became the Handyman Express. They did various home repair jobs until a state agent informed them that they needed a contractor’s license. Intending to apply for that, they decided that their immediate task was to pick up a load of tile in San Luis, Mexico, where it was sold cheap.
After a short ride south of the border, they stopped at a cantina for a few beers They recalled that Owl had told them of a big dealer named Galvan in San Luis. After the bartender put them in touch with one of Galvan’s men, Marcos encouraged Jimmy to go ahead with the venture: “Chill, Jimmy. You remember that boat we seen docked in Marina del Sol in San Diego, its name was ONE TIME? Remember? You said, Yeah, that would be nice, a one-time score that would put us over the top. This is Tecolote’s (Owl’s) main connect! This is the man!” (pp. 68-69).
Connecting with Galvan, they asked for a hundred pounds of marijuana, on credit. This was not worth the big dealer’s time, so he insisted they commit to receiving a ton! A sample of 50 pounds for a trial run would be delivered to them in Yuma the next day. “It represented money, easy money” (p. 70).

“Paul,” my conversation partner here in jail, agreed that selling drugs is easy -- “they sell themselves,” he said. “Kids in ghettos see three options for getting rich: becoming a basketball star, a big-time rap musician, or a drug dealer.” He agreed with my observation that the first two options are limited to the few who have innate talent and the opportunities to develop it to make it pay off. So that leaves drug-dealing as an equal-opportunity field of employment, even for young people without education or technical skills.
Paul did note that this kind of enterprise requires some business skills (keeping accounts in order, paying and collecting debts, etc.), some organizational ability (“employing” and coordinating others), and some ability as an amateur chemist (mixing drugs, cutting them, making paste). But these can be acquired easily as an apprentice.
This state of Georgia has been hit especially hard by closings of industrial plants, and a large information-processing company in Columbus recently eliminated 250 good jobs. Teens and young adults may be able to get a minimum-wage, dead-end job flipping hamburgers in our increasingly service-oriented economy. But low-wage labor pales in glamor and earning power when compared to the drug option, which promises and delivers “fabulous wealth,” says Paul -- e.g., “five grand or so a week.” He also explained that smaller cities can get higher prices before the market gets saturated.

In the process of sealing the deal with Galvan, there was a point when Jimmy “quit thinking -- my mental circuits closed down, and I was compelled to do whatever the circumstances required. It was as if there were something beyond my will driving me on” (p. 71). He was hoping the chance to deal dope again would never come “but wishing it would, dreading it and wanting it simultaneously.” Now he felt compelled to go through with it. “Drugs were the way, providing the only opportunity at hand to make money quickly.”
He knew he didn’t have the patience to work for years at landscaping -- “it was too repetitive and, most importantly, did not meet my dream of living an exciting life.” Jimmy feared getting stuck with doing landscaping all his life and having to work years to save enough for a house. He wanted more than “going to work at dawn, busting my ass all day, and getting home so tired I fell right to sleep. So I was going to make the best of dealing drugs: get in and get out as fast as possible.”
Though still ambivalent, he decided to go ahead with it. “With the IRS shutting us down, this deal gave me an opportunity to turn some fast cash.” They would have the money to get a license, put their business on a firm footing, and hire others to do the menial labor while Lonnie and Jimmy would travel.

In addition to the practical financial calculations, Jimmy also felt a “high” in getting big-time into this business. “Despite the obvious hazards of working with a man [Galvan] who killed people when things didn’t go his way, the electric jolt of the deal counteracted the dulling anesthetic effects of normal life. The sun shone brighter, the day felt more adventurous, and I sensed a multitude of exciting possibilities.” The dealer gets a high from engaging in a forbidden but immensely lucrative business. “Dealing was hard to get out of the blood, and I stepped right back into it as if I’d never left” (p. 72).
This emotional factor probably plays a part in the motivation of many dealers and users. While teenagers and young adults in the wealthy suburbs can tool around in Mommy or Daddy’s sports car or SUV, their counterparts in the inner city can get around only by bus or subway or on foot. While suburban youth can participate in a wide variety of exciting sports and other extra-curricular activities, poor kids can get high on basketball and stickball. While the rich can travel widely and luxuriously during spring break or summer vacation, poor and working-class youngsters may be lucky to get to summer camp.
Upper-class kids can drink, smoke a variety of things, and inject to their heart’s content, without having to steal to support their desires or habits, without having to face serious odds of getting caught, and, if caught by the police, without too much worry of receiving a harsh sentence. After all, these are “good kids” with such a promising future who just made a little mistake. But how does this picture look for poor and minority youth?
My point is not that the latter should have “equal opportunity” to ruin their minds and bodies with impunity. I am simply saying it is no wonder that some young people without legal opportunities to have fun and to burn off their energy in constructive ways may turn to the “electric jolt of the deal” to escape the “dulling anesthetic effects of normal life.”

Carey, their part-time helper in the home-repair business, was an army serviceman living off base. He quickly sold 50 pounds.
Galvan assured Jimmy that the local police and court officials in Yuma were eating out of his hand. Lonnie, alarmed by the five-thousand-dollar piles of money stuffed in pillowcases, thought they were moving too fast. “Every knock on the door, every phone call, took on a whole different meaning” (p. 73). Jimmy reassured her “it was only temporary and promised to quit after we had saved enough to move back to New Mexico.”
It was 1972, “the weed business was just starting to boom, and we were at the right place at the right time. As the quantity and profit escalated, Jimmy would sometimes tell Lonnie “how poor we were when I was a child” (p. 74). He recalled one situation where they had an outhouse, cold running water, and one bed. There was not enough of whatever was needed to go around. He saw poverty as in part the cause of the fights, the worry, and even his parents’ breaking up.

With his imagination in high gear, Jimmy told of the positive things he could accomplish with the drug money: how he wanted to buy Grandma a new stove and phone “and get her the best medical help money could buy because she was blind and arthritic. I’d buy my brother a new truck and my sister a new car once we got home. I’d like to put my dad in the hospital to get him to stop drinking and then buy him his own house and car.”
In Paul’s view, dealers feel good about being able to help their families to pay rent and medical and other bills. “And they can be a Robin Hood in the community, helping people in need. The business also employs people in the neighborhood and helps the small-scale local economy. So the dealer gets a sense of power and feels looked up to.” Drug entrepreneurs have probably heard that a similar rationale is put forth by liquor and tobacco producers and sellers, by the owners of the booming private prisons and the wardens of public ones, and by the authorities at military bases and the CEOs of the arms industry.

Jimmy and his two friends/partners went to San Diego on vacation, leaving Carey in charge. There they locked in “Cadillac Cuz” and “Big Tommy,” a biker the two guys had met in jail, for a large weekly quantity. Back in Yuma, they were dealing up to 1,000 pounds a month. Jimmy and Marcos took care of the paperwork and returned to some landscaping while Carey did the transport and delivery and Lonnie kept the books. “Things were getting crazier, faster, reeling out of control. There was no structure to my life,” Jimmy felt. “After six months it was getting to my nerves” (p. 78).
At a lake outside Yuma one Sunday, after coming out of a “PCP nightmare,” Jimmy and Lonnie decided to quit the business, get married, and have a family in Albuquerque. Jimmy and Marcos told Galvan they were quitting; and, after a 3-month stay in a horrid Mexican jail on trumped-up charges of petty theft in a bar, they returned to Yuma. Marcos went back to live in Michigan.

THE BIG BUST

While Jimmy and Lonnie were in the midst of packing, Rick, Carey’s roommate, dropped in to convey Carey’s invitation to come over for a glass of wine. Jimmy and Lonnie drove to Rick and Carey’s trailer the next day, in the evening. During the previous hours Jimmy had noticed some alarming signs -- unmarked DEA cars around, a guy in a suit who had slowed his car to point at Jimmy. But he thought it was just jittery nerves. It wasn’t.
While they were sipping wine with Carey, someone knocked; Rick came out of the back bedroom and went to the door. Jimmy heard Rick and a man whispering and also heard movement in the bushes outside. Carey said Rick was selling to a customer.
Entering the living room, Jimmy saw Rick weighing out an ounce of heroin for the guy. “Everything’s cool; this is Wade,” Rick smiled. But Jimmy announced “the guy’s a narc” and asked someone to hand him a pistol. “That’s crazy, I’ve known him for years,” Rick lied. Jimmy shoved the guy against the wall, but the narc escaped his grasp and went out with Rick to his car, saying that’s where the money was.
Carey, pistol in hand, was behind Jimmy in the house, while Lonnie sat at a table, “her eyes wide with fright” (p. 84). Pulling a rifle out of his vehicle, the narc shouted: “This is a bust! Federal agents!” Rick hit the ground, begging “don’t shoot.” The place lit up with spotlights and gunfire from agents’ cars and helicopters.
Jimmy leaped out of the doorway into the yard and received a slight bullet wound; but he would have been killed by an agent aiming at him from behind to shoot him in the head, “when Carey blasted the agent, tearing his arm off.”
Jimmy ran into an orchard at the side of the trailer, with agents in hot pursuit. Knowing that his friends had been captured, he continued on and reached the road. After spending the night in the home of a small-time client, Jimmy read an article in the morning paper about how he was a drug kingpin, now with a felony warrant. “A reward was being offered to anyone with information leading to my capture. Of the many lies it contained, it claimed that I had tried to murder an FBI agent. One of them had been shot and was seriously wounded” (p. 86).
Jimmy’s sister came to pick him up and drive him to Albuquerque, where he learned that the FBI had issued an all-points bulletin for his arrest. Before turning himself in, Jimmy hotwired a car and drove to the mountains to think about his situation. “Now everybody could point and say, I knew it. I told you. He’s no good. He’s nothing but a criminal. It hurt to admit they were right” (p. 88).
Still, he wanted to explain to someone that it was all a mistake. “All I ever wanted was to have what others had. I didn’t want sympathy or pity. I just wanted a fair go at the things they had. But to get those opportunities, I had to go outside the law. Now I just wanted peace.”

Now Jimmy learned that Lonnie and Carey had fallen in love when he and Marcos were in jail in Mexico. Having turned himself in in Albuquerque, Jimmy called his sister Martina, but she refused to lend him money for a lawyer. In a letter Lonnie said she was sorry for the way things had turned out, explaining that the police had found Jimmy’s wallet, with his I.D., in her purse.
Without money to pay for competent counsel, Jimmy was stuck with a “court-appointed lackey” (p. 91), a blue-eyed, blond-haired man who offered Jimmy a Mormon bible on his first visit. Then he advised his client bluntly: “Plead guilty to the charges and they’ll go easy. Don’t, and you haven’t a prayer in hell. This is what they want.” Handing Jimmy a list of the charges, the lawyer explained the situation. “You picked the wrong time to get busted. It’s reelection time, and you’re the judge’s ride to a second term.... With all the play you got in the papers, you’re going to be made an example, put behind bars, so voters’ll feel safer from criminals like you” (p. 92). Jimmy told the lawyer to do whatever he thought best.
Jimmy had turned himself in “believing that the misunderstanding would be cleared up. I was willing to describe ... the shootout, ready to explain that I hadn’t done anything, I was just sitting in the place when the deal went down.” Several detectives kicked and pistol-whipped him, before interrogation, and later they beat him in a car and almost threw him out to his death. “They were extra hard on me because they thought I had set up the FBI agent, and even though the agent wounded in the shootout hadn’t died, he was still in serious condition in the hospital” (p. 93).
A judge granted Arizona’s request for extradition after seeing a sworn statement in which Rick testified under oath “that I had sold him drugs, that I was a big heroin dealer, and that I’d masterminded the deal the night of the shootout” (p. 95). The truth was “I’d only met him a few times when I had gone to pick up Carey, and I had never given him so much as a seed of marijuana” (p. 96).
After the extradition hearing Jimmy was driven to the Yuma County Jail. “The rusting bunk was anchored to a shit-smeared wall, and the putrid commode was barely attached to the wall with rotten bolts. Every time someone in another cell flushed their toilet, particles of sewage bubbled up from my commode and puddled on the floor.”

Jimmy soon changed his original plea from innocent to a plea bargain of guilty of possession of heroin with intent to distribute. His public defender had been in a hurry “for me to agree so he could leave right away. By the chummy way he laughed and talked with the prosecutor, it was obvious they were good buddies and the least of their concerns was a twenty-one-year-old illiterate Chicano kid” (p. 98).
Jimmy pilfered a college textbook from the desk of a jail clerk and began to sound out the letters, understanding something but very little. But this was the beginning of his love affair with words and the making of the poet.
Before passing sentence the judge asked the convicted Jimmy whether he had anything to say, but he remained silent. “I felt ashamed because I was the first one in my family to go to prison. I’d sold drugs only to get back to Albuquerque, to be with someone I loved, to be respected, to be part of a community. I didn’t want to be like Galvan or these lawyers, earning money by screwing people” (pp. 101-2). It is hard to imagine a more scalding indictment of many lawyers and other professionals and business executives.
The judge sentenced him to a mandatory no-parole five to ten years, “with five years flat, day for day, in a maximum-security state prison.” He received credit for the six months he had already served. He was 21 years old. “It was no surprise that the judge had given me the harshest sentence allowed by law. The nuns had always said I was a bad boy, and here was the judge making the same condemnation. I was sure I was convicted mostly because of who I was, expunged from a society that didn’t want people like me in it.”

FLORENCE STATE PRISON

Jimmy was transported from Yuma to the Florence State Prison in a car with Wedo, a tall, wiry, nineteen-year-old Chicano who harassed, badgered, and insulted the marshals for the whole trip.
Some inmates I have been with in these Georgia jails seem to have this attitude. Perhaps because of a history of rejection by family and by the “authorities” of society, they seem to have a visceral antipathy toward police and guards, as Baca pointed out with regard to his fellow inmates in the juvenile detention center. Wedo’s attitude would not have been softened by the marshal’s threats that he would get screwed in prison or by the marshal’s hitting him in the mouth at the prison door.
When Jimmy first entered the prison, “every eye in the block checked me out. I felt vulnerable, with nothing to hide behind, veil my confusion, or conceal my fear” (p. 109). When cons looked at him he would turn away, “not wanting to provoke a confrontation by returning an icy glare back. But I felt their eyes on my back, gauging my walk and gestures, searching for anything that might expose a weakness, looking to detect the most insignificant sign that would give me away. Nothing went unnoticed by them. It was useless to try and fake my way through this world where the weak were devoured” (p. 110).
The new prisoner looked forward to working in the institution; with his meager pay (12 cents an hour) he could buy cigarettes, toiletries, and candy. He also hoped to learn a trade, get his GED, or even go to college.

He started rapping to Macaron, the con in the next cell, who soon invited Jimmy to sit at his table in the dining room. “This was a big deal -- it meant I was being accepted” (p. 112). Macaron had dropped out in eighth grade, got into drugs, and spent most of his youth in institutions. “It was the same story we all had....”
One night two “bangers” from the “Mexican mafia” cut Wedo on the soles of his feet as he slept with his feet near the cell bars. Macaron explained to Jimmy that they had been trying to get Wedo to pay protection.
The next morning at breakfast Wedo passed by Jimmy and Macaron’s table but then unexpectedly went left, “heading straight for the table where the two bangers were sitting. He pulled something from his waistline and plunged it into the back of one of them” (p. 115). Guards blew whistles as the bangers fought and Wedo kept stabbing them. Goons rushed into the mess hall, clubbing Wedo and dragging him away. “All the way out, Mad Dog Madril kept whipping Wedo’s head and body with a flat leather paddle.”

Jimmy was encouraged by his first interview with his counselor, who told him that if he behaved well he’d be allowed to go to school. But about three months into his sentence, Jimmy noticed a huge, burly black prisoner watching him and smiling for a few days in a row, giving indications of his sexual intentions while offering him cigarettes and coffee. “Guys thinking they could beat me up weren’t new to me; I could handle that. But a guy wanting to rape me got under my skin in the worst way” (p. 118).
Macaron’s advice was clear: “Take him down, you don’t want to get turned out. You can’t pretend it’s not happening.” He pointed out that the menacing prisoner was a four-time loser. “You can fight with your fists, but you have to use a shank, too. He’ll have one” (p. 119). Macaron explained the convict code: “fight or get punked, step out or be turned out, cash in the wolf tickets or be eaten -- it’s real.... Word’ll get out that you’re a stand-up dude, and you got no more problems.”
That evening Macaron handed Jimmy a piece of sharpened plastic about six inches long, a “shank.” The next day Jimmy attacked the prisoner who had threatened him. The man was at his job, wearing welding goggles and “smoothing the end of a leg length of cot pipe at a grinding wheel... Startled by seeing me, he dropped the pipe.... He crouched to pick it up but I quickly picked a piece of angle iron from the trash can between us and hit him on the head. Stunned, he staggered back and turned his face right into the whirring grinding wheel. The blade ripped his goggles in half and cut into his cheek and eye” (p. 122).
Jimmy again hit the bleeding man, who fell to the floor. “A voice inside my head kept yelling the whole time I was hitting him that I was doing this for Theresa, whose father had raped her, and for my brother, who’d been raped by those two white guys.”
Guards descended on Jimmy like an avalanche and took him to a pitch-black five-by-nine foot isolation cell. “I had proven myself, I thought, and I was proud, but I also felt bad because instead of changing for the better, I was becoming more violent” (p. 124). In the hole Jimmy experienced “frenzied periods of paranoia.”
Emerging from isolation, Jimmy was glad to learn that his victim was still alive. “I was led to the Reclassification Committee, where I pled guilty to assault and was given an extra six months. My new beginning had a real sweetness to it; I was eager to start doing my time from a whole different vantage point. I had respect now” (p. 126).

One day Jimmy saw Carey, his former assistant in dealing, in the chow line. “Galvan has a contract on Rick,” Carey stated. “Rick’s got to get out of the walls or he’s dead. The counselor in Yuma smuggled in Rick’s court transcripts on a client visit. Warn Rick, tell him to roll up and get out of the walls” (p. 127).
Jimmy felt that Carey had done him right. “Even if he fell in love with Lonnie, he had never ripped me off, and I owed him for saving my life the night that narc stepped out to blow me away. If Carey hadn’t shot him, I’d be dead. Carey got fifty years for pulling the trigger.”
Macaron helped Jimmy to find out that Rick was in minimum security and attending school, and Jimmy delivered the alarming message to him. For this, Jimmy was now in deep trouble with two prisoners -- “soldiers” from the La eMe gang who wanted to collect the two grand that was on Rick’s head for his act of snitching.
After shadowing Jimmy everywhere, a hit squad of two Mexicans with shanks cornered him where he was working in the kitchen. Jimmy leaped up and grabbed the butcher knife the chef was using. “I was behind the table, and one of them jumped over it. Unable to stop his forward momentum, he came on me from above and I slit his stomach.... The other one stopped dead in his tracks and dashed out” (p. 129).
When Jimmy returned to his cell, he found that a guy named “Brujo” and twenty other Mexicans wanted to carry out the execution which the two in the kitchen had unsuccessfully attempted. “Snitches are no good,” Brujo said. “We’re in prison because of them; we’ve lost our families, our lives, our freedom because of them.... You dare to insult us by protecting one of them? No, no, we will take you and them down into the pain we live in every day and make you pay for every hour of it” (p. 130). The Mexicans moved along, for the moment.
Jimmy told Macaron what had happened, lamenting that he had probably ruined his chance of going to school and getting a GED. Macaron recognized disappointment as the very stuff of prison life: “I was like you -- hoping for a better life, working to do right -- but that time passed. I remember when it happened. I was standing in front of the gates with the chain gang; we were going out to pick potatoes. Suddenly I lost hope, and I could never get it back again. My soul broke. It died. That day, I became a criminal. That day I had no more hope. I knew when the punishment was enough, and then it kept going on and on, and from that point it made no sense” (p. 130).
After a pause, Macaron continued: “It happens to all of us who stay here past a certain time. You do your time; then you do more and more, and the hurt in the heart turns to bitterness, freedom turns to vengeance, and you look forward to getting out, not to resume your life but to hurt people the way they hurt you, for punishment that made no sense, for the hurting and hurting, for the day when you couldn’t take it anymore but you had to and lost your humanity, lost your reason for wanting to be a human being. The day you just fell into line, knowing this is where you’d live and die.”

Some of my fellow inmates here in Harris County Jail face prison sentences of ten years or more. I cannot grasp what that means or how it would feel. Even when I was sentenced in 1970 to five years in prison plus five on probation, I knew that I and the others in the “Chicago 15" had a good chance of getting out on parole after one third and that we would probably not “get violated” (sent back to prison) later on probation, as many do. Indeed, I was released from prison in 1972 and returned to Chicago, where I spent three months in a half-way house before rejoining my Jesuit community at the seminary.
I served the remaining three years on parole -- after the first of which I was granted permission to go to Detroit to be ordained a priest! -- and then started on the five years of probation. But after one year I was released from the remaining four.
A very significant difference between my experience and that of Baca is that I was in a medium-security federal prison and experienced nothing of the heavy intimidation and violence of the state prison Baca endured for five years.
A twenty-year-old man here is facing a probable sentence of ten years or more in a state prison; others face even longer sentences. They are among a group of about 30 inmates who attend the sessions with various preachers who visit the jail. The preachers beseech us to repent, to leave the past behind, to begin a new life -- and many inmates nod their heads up and down, saying “Amen.” If they can live a new life, with the Lord’s help, they will have to live it in a state prison for at least the next ten years! I don’t know how they can deal with that prospect. As Macaron said: “I knew when the punishment was enough, and then it kept going on and on, and from that point it made no sense.”

How could one live the gospel of love if conditions are as threatening as Macaron describes? “The mind can’t accept being in a six-by-nine cell for years, but the heart understands it has to be done. The mind says, There’s no way I can live in prison for years, but the heart says, Deal with it and shut the fuck up. The mind senses your growing brutality, but the heart ignores it. Forget freedom, the heart commands” (p. 131).
By heart Baca seems to mean a basic instinct for survival. If an inmate has a parole board hearing in the afternoon and someone threatens or attacks him, “you fuck them up, and if you get more time, you get more time.... When the mind says, I am human, the heart growls, I am an animal. When you wish to scream, the heart says, Be silent. When you feel hurt, you numb yourself. When you’re lonely, you push it aside. Strip yourself of every trace of the streets, because it will hurt you here....Forget everything except survival. Don’t ask why -- there are no reasons. There is no future, no past, only the moment; you will do what you have to do. The only thought that drives you on is to be alive at the end of the day, and to be a man, or die fighting proving you are a man. That’s the code of the warrior.”
The goons in riot gear, led by Mad Dog Madril and Five Hundred, took Jimmy from his cell to isolation. “I had blood on my clothes. Who was I becoming? I felt lost, a stranger even to myself” (p. 132).

In the hole for 30 days, Jimmy developed his power of imagination, revisiting places and people from his past -- especially his grandparents with whom he had lived happily as a small boy. Finally he was brought into the office of Warden Howard, who glanced with anger at Jimmy. Howard had come from a prison in Ohio, where he was warden when inmates took over his institution. “He had driven a National Guard tank into the compound and blasted away at cell blocks, blowing up both cons and hostages” (p. 156).
Arizona officials then hired Howard for Florence, where there had been a string of gang killings and two guards murdered. He restored order by allowing guards “to beat cons for any disciplinary infraction. Then he segregated the gang bangers. He ruled through intimidation, beatings, and lockdowns, and by taking away time served and imposing his own sentences.” Since he could not be sued for breaking laws, he “did what he wanted and flaunted his authority.”
He told Jimmy that his job was to run the prison so that citizens could sleep well at night and go about their business without fear. Staring coldly at Jimmy, he came around the desk, “carrying himself as if ready to fight.... Shoving his face in mine, he shouted, `You understand that?́” Jimmy flinched but managed to stare straight ahead, not showing his fear. “Flecks of spittle” sprayed Jimmy’s face.
The warden growled: “Since you rolled in you been nothing but a pain in the ass. A malingerer. A troublemaking malingering sonofabitch.” After Jimmy said that he was not trying to cause trouble, Howard continued: “I run this place. I own your ass.... You fuck with me ... and you don’t know what I can put you through.” He accused Jimmy of being a gang member, which the prisoner denied.
“Don’t play stupid! You want to collect the contract on Rick because Rick snitched, and a dealer laid two grand to take him out! You’re no slicker than the rest of the scumbags I’ve nailed. I’m taking away your good time and you’re starting your sentence over” (p. 158). Jimmy tried to explain that he was not out for the contract, but the warden said sharply: “I don’t need proof. What I believe is enough.... Get in line or I’ll hand you your balls.”
The warden evidently believed that Jimmy had planned to kill Rick for the contract money and had stabbed the Mexican because he considered him a rival assassin.

For the next few months Jimmy did clean-up in the kitchen (which happened to be my assigned work at Sandstone!), still menaced by the Mexican mafia. He was feeling strong and hopeful when he was called to his reclassification hearing. At the start of the session the counselor mentioned “you’ve had problems adjusting.” A captain asked, “You in a gang?” “No sir, never.”
The counselor asked in an accusatory tone: “You think it’s time you took responsibility for your actions?” Jimmy started to respond: “Yes, sir, when it’s mine....” Before Jimmy could continue, the black sergeant pitched in: “You’re in for a violent crime. You’re a menace to society. An FBI agent was shot; you escaped. Don’t tell me your record isn’t bad.” And the counselor chimed in: “Because you don’t have a long rap sheet only means you’ve gotten away with a lot of things.”
Jimmy was confused. “What could I say or do to convince them I was earnestly trying to do as they wanted, when every time I tried they put me back two steps” (p. 162). The committee’s decision: probationary period of six months. The request for schooling would be considered after that.
Jimmy blurted to the counselor: “You promised -- you stood in front of my cell telling me how great I was doing!” The counselor leaned forward: “It’s a fucking prison and don’t you forget it! You’re here to be punished.”
“But the fights; I had to do what I did.You know what’s going on. I was defending myself.”
Mad Dog Madril snarled: “Three-two-five-eight-one, you’re dismissed.” Filling up with pain and despair, Jimmy couldn’t move. When two guards grabbed him and stood him up, he yelled: “I know what I was! But I’m trying to change! I’m just asking for a fucking chance.” But Jimmy realized they had the power of life and death over him. “And I truly thought they were going to keep me in prison forever.”

HIS PERSONAL WORK STRIKE

Back in his cell, Jimmy wasn’t the same after the hearing. The next day he simply stayed in his cell, without showering or speaking, trying to understand his behavior. “I tried to look at it from different ways, feeling the greatest desolation and hoping to understand why I just sat there. When the intercom crackled out my number at dawn for work, the cell opened but I didn’t fall out. I had already blown my opportunity to go to school and I didn’t even have a clue as to why. I had always been able to endure anything.... What was wrong? I had no answers then, but looking back today, I know what happened: I knew in my soul that if I had gone along with their classifying me as they wished, simply ignoring my request for school, that I would still be in prison today” (p. 164).
During the first week Jimmy received two disciplinary write-ups for not going to work. He also refused to stand for count time. His seemingly small act of resistance had powerful effects in himself and others. “To this day, it still amazes me how taking myself out of the system and refusing to work had everybody in an upheaval, from my friends to the guards. The more I did nothing, the more aggravated everyone became. It was the first time I felt I was accomplishing something, even though I couldn’t see why. Regardless of what little my life meant in the larger scheme of things, at least for the moment it was mine and not the warden’s, despite what he had shouted at me. It didn’t belong to the state, the judge, the guards, or the cons either. They’d told me all my life what to do, and I had obeyed. But I couldn’t take it anymore” (p. 166).
As the guards took Jimmy to the hole, he felt that by standing up for himself he had done something completely new. “I was feeling a sense of my own worth that I had never felt before. I knew that I was no longer a twenty-two-year-old illiterate brown man, not just another con with a number who was going to submit to degradation. Something had altered in me. I felt tremendous pride in having taken this one little step. I now knew I had wanted to take it for a long time” (p. 168).
Jimmy had found a new and more constructive way to respond to injustice. “I thought how even as a kid I’d had no options except to take the hurt that came my way. As I grew a little older, I learned to strike back. It has been the quickest way to get rid of the pain, a way to show people I was alive. Until now. This time I didn’t lash out, which short-circuited everyone’s expectation of how a con was supposed to act.... Not doing what everyone expected turned out to be the most powerful thing I ever did.”
In the darkness of his isolation cell a revelation struck him: “I knew why I couldn’t get out of the chair, why I refused to work, why I stayed in my cell -- in every muscle and bone of my body a tortured voice cried out that I could never again tolerate the betrayals that had marked my life, stretching back to my earliest years” (p. 175).

After a month in isolation, having done two years in prison, Jimmy was taken to the warden’s office. “He yelled how I had failed to heed his warnings about not getting into trouble. I needed a lesson. Insubordination before a Reclassification Committee and refusing to work were serious institutional infractions” (p. 176). Jimmy was marched into the dungeon, “a dark subterranean sewer under CB3, the highest level of security detention, with warring gang soldiers and death row on the east side and rival gangs on the west side.”

THE GIFT OF LITERACY

One day in the “dungeon” Jimmy received a letter from Harry, who had picked Jimmy’s name “during a Christmas mass from a church list of inmates who had no family and no one writing them” (p. 183). Jimmy was eager to communicate with someone to alleviate the boredom. “I started writing in the morning, and almost all my attempts ended in crumpled paper wads on the floor. But by dinnertime I’d managed to put together a page.”
Harry’s letters, “although replete with religious principles, conveyed not only empathy for my situation but also an optimistic faith that I could make a better human being of myself” (p. 186). But when the inmate started to raise questions about God, Harry felt uneasy. He “kept avoiding my experiences, denying that injustice existed at all. I told him God hadn’t done a thing for me. That God sat back while I lost my family and everything that went with having a family. That justice was abused by the rich; as proof, this prison had 90% poor Chicanos in it. I went on about poverty, violence, murder, abuse, and greed. We had been having a good correspondence until he wrote that my letters were troubling him” (p. 187).
After seven months Harry wrote one last letter, saying he would not write again. He did not like Jimmy’s questioning God. But their parting was based on respect despite their differences. “He had made me feel like my opinions meant something, and to this day I feel a great sense of gratitude to him” (p. 189).

Jimmy’s developing skill at writing began to include sentimental poems. “In return for cigarettes and coffee, I’d write chicks for the cons in the dungeon.” Bonafide was a steady client, and Jimmy felt that he was not the psycho everyone claimed he was. Bonafide revealed his fury, however, when a tall inmate was put into his cell and evidently tried to rape him. Bonafide “pulverized” and raped the man. “I couldn’t believe that lurking within Bonafide was a monster that had just devoured a human being.... Had he not done what he did, it would have been done to him” (p. 190).
The rage that came out of Bonafide “was the kind of rage that can only be created in prison. The seeds of that rage are nourished by prison brutality and fertilized by fear and the law of survival of the fittest. It grows and grows, hidden deep in souls that have died from too many beatings, too many jail cells, and bottomless despair, contained like a ticking bomb. And this kind of firestorm wrath crushed even the divine rules of Harry’s God, because once a man has it in him, the man, when the rage comes out, becomes god” (p. 191).
Little by little, Jimmy was gaining a critical perspective on that rage and violence. “After this, I wanted to find refuge in something, or at least find a place where I felt safe and could believe the world wasn’t crazy all the time. Maybe faith and reverence for human life were the answers. I would have liked to preach and believe in a doctrine of peace, but I knew prison wouldn’t allow that. Harry’s world had nothing to do with me. But neither did Bonafide’s.”

When Jimmy was called back to the Reclassification Committee and ordered to work, he held fast to his commitment: “I refuse, unless I’m allowed to....” (p. 192). Back in the dungeon, he felt he was doing the right thing. Yes, he missed being in general population and the freedom that went with it. “But in the dungeon I had my own cell, and I enjoyed my privacy and the time I had to write and read. Because of drastic overpopulation, few cons in the prison had their own cells, and hundreds were sleeping on the floor in dormitories.”
(At Sandstone most of us lived in large dormitories -- some completely open, some with curtains or light partitions around the bunks. There was actually a waiting list of prisoners, including myself, who wanted to be in a private cell! But for me a much better situation -- release on parole -- came up first.)

When his brother Mieyo and his girlfriend Lori visited, Jimmy asked him to send in an old secondhand typewriter and to ask Theresa to visit. The typewriter soon arrived, along with an acoustic guitar. “All I did was type and play the guitar. I was in heaven. Poetry and music blocked out all other life. I was in my own world, swirling in the magic of language and imagination. Days, weeks, and months went by, but I hardly recognized them. Only my writing marked the passage of time” (p. 197).
When Theresa visited, Jimmy saw that “her eyes were glazed with drugs. She was high.” He professed his love to her but she was unresponsive. “When you get out, you’ll find somebody who will love you the way you want. I can’t do it. I’m not the woman for you” (p. 198). Then in a tone of anger she said: “The warden says you refuse to follow the rules. How do you ever expect to get out of here if you don’t follow the rules?” She said good-bye and was gone.

A letter from Lori brought the news that Mieyo, after the visit, had gotten wildly drunk and ruined their plans for visiting her parents in San Francisco. This destroyed their relationship, even though she still loved Mieyo. “The news was difficult to accept. I wanted Mieyo to have someone love him, but he knew nothing about love and sustaining a relationship, or about honesty and commitment. He was motivated by one dream -- to be rich” (p. 200). He would talk about his plans to buy race cars and a mansion, “but he never talked about what he felt about the past or our parents. Since becoming a drunk at the age of nine, he had developed lots of secrets, and he was good at keeping them.”
Jimmy felt that at heart he and his brother were both decent men, “famished for affection and eager to live in a decent manner. And while I was slowly rebuilding my life with books and writing, Mieyo, on the other hand, was casting himself out into deeper and deeper isolation, into a place where I could not help him as a kid brother” (p.201).
Around Christmas time a photographer came to take Polaroid pictures of each inmate, which he could send home. Jimmy hardly recognized himself in the photo. “I was almost twenty-five years old, and the three-plus years I had done in prison showed on my features -- I had an impenetrable indifference, an impudent disdain. My brown eyes were antagonistic, my stance confrontational.” Jimmy couldn’t send the photo to anyone. “You could see the anger in my face. But it would serve as a reminder to me to fight against what prison was doing.”

One day Boxer, a “solid and muscled Chicano,” arrived with his box of belongings in front of Jimmy’s cell. Initially Jimmy did not want anyone to intrude into his privacy, but he relented. But Boxer said he was bothered by the typing, the radio channel, and Jimmy’s reading lamp, and he stood at the bars talking with other cons about drugs and money.
The next day in the exercise cage, Jimmy said to Boxer: “I want you out of my cell.” When Boxer cursed him in reply and said that he wanted Jimmy to move out of the cell, Jimmy started beating him brutally, cracking a cheekbone. “He took out a shank he’d hidden beneath his sock and I grabbed it....” Jimmy was ready to use the shank on Boxer when “for a second, every horrible thing that had happened to me in my life exploded to the surface.... While the desire to murder him was strong, so were the voices of Neruda and Lorca that passed through my mind, praising life as sacred and challenging me: How can you kill and still be a poet? How can you ever write another poem if you disregard life in this manner? Do you know you will forever be changed by this act? It will haunt you to your dying breath” (p. 206).
Someone pulled him back from Boxer and he “slowly emerged back into a conscious place and time and dropped the knife.” The “riot goons” quickly subdued Jimmy and took Boxer to the county hospital. Back in the dungeon, Jimmy was relieved when two cons in cells near his refused to be part of the Mexican mafia’s schemes to kill him.
Jimmy kept thinking about the fight. “He was down and I towered over him like an animal with a survival instinct to kill. In that one jeweled moment I felt I was God, deciding whether he would live or die” (p. 209). That feeling of power nearly compensated for everything that had gone wrong in his life. But as intoxicating as it was, something stopped his hand. “In that instant of indecision, standing over him and staring into his bloody face, I saw a man with a mother and father, siblings, a human being with dreams and feelings and loves. Thankful that I had not killed him, shocked I had even considered it for one shining moment, I was relieved to be leaving. If I had stayed longer in the dungeon, who knows what kind of person I might have become.”

Jimmy was not taken to isolation this time but to Nut Run, which was reserved for severely medicated cons. “Maybe the warden thought I was going crazy and moved me for security reasons. Still, to my mind, these reasons didn’t justify assigning me to Nut Run. It seemed obvious to me that the warden was classifying me as a mental case just for harassment” (p. 210).
The prison psychologist asked Jimmy to come to his office for a chat and offered him Valium, but Jimmy rebuffed him: “I’m not playing your bullshit game.”
Capt. “Mad Dog” Madril “ran Nut Run with impunity, a tyrant accountable to no one. Baca describes how Madril intimidated the mentally ill cons and even abused them sexually. Once he suddenly pulled the tooth of an inmate who complained of a toothache.
Reading books became Jimmy’s “line of defense against the madness. I began writing poems for cons in exchange for books.... I would get up every morning and write for a few hours after breakfast. Then I would read for an hour, take a nap, have lunch, and read some more” (p. 214).

Suddenly Jimmy began to get very tired, for no apparent reason. His thinking was muddied, and he had trouble controlling his muscles and began to hallucinate. When the guards called him to the yard, he shuffled out “like an invalid old man,” drooling at the mouth. He could see the other cons’ mouths moving but couldn’t hear or understand what they were saying, nor could he talk. Macaron looked worried.
Jimmy unsuccessfully struggled to say: “They are not breaking me; they can’t, they won’t, I am okay, I’m fine” (p. 215). Jimmy noticed blood on his shirt; he had chewed his tongue. In the infirmary he was fed intravenously.
What had caused this severe altering of his physical and mental state? “Elvis told me they were putting medication in my food to make me lethargic. He said he’d seen them do it before, so that prisoners would go along with the program. Unable to think clearly, had they continued, I probably would have gone along with anything they wanted. I would have been a good prisoner, had it not been for my need to speak” (p. 216). (Footnote One)

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FOOTNOTE ONE IS AT END OF THIS ESSAY.

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In the late summer of 1977, Jimmy was on the Administrative Segregation unit for still refusing to work and had less than a year to do. “Because of mandatory laws for drug possession, many more young prisoners were coming in with longer sentences, and the prison population had exploded, doubling in the last couple of years and far exceeding prison capacity. Nobody was single-celling” (p. 217). Thus even Jimmy had a cell mate, with whom he got along fairly well until the man died of “complications with his intestines.”
In writing a letter to his father in San Francisco, Jimmy “became a little boy again, hoping for love and affection” and assuring his father he loved him. “Writing him gave me hope, and I dreamed of leaving prison and living with him some day” (p. 219). Jimmy’s father managed to write a short reply from a detox center, “conveying his love.”

Jimmy became friends with Chelo, “a Chicano gangster.” From him Jimmy learned Chicano slang, “Mexican/Indian words originating from Mayans, Olmecs, Aztecs” which created “our own distinct Chicano language, a language truer to expressing and describing my experience” (p. 223). The many tattoos Chelo sported were “like a walking library.” Chelo explained the significance of the turquoise Quetzal bird, an Aztec sacred bird, and of other animals.
Jimmy knew almost nothing about his own culture and was surprised by Chelo’s knowledge. “I wear my culture on my skin,” Chelo said in reference to his tattoos. “They want to make me forget who I am, the beauty of my people and my heritage, but to do it they got to peel my skin off. And if they ever do that, they’ll kill me doing it -- and that’s good, because once they make you forget the language and history, they’ve killed you anyway. I’m alive and free, no matter how many bars they put me behind.”
Chelo’s point about freedom is echoed by Camilo Mejía, the Nicaraguan resident of the U.S. who saw combat in Iraq as a sergeant in the U.S. Army, who witnessed the killing of civilians by his own squad and the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, and who decided that in good conscience he could not return to Iraq from a short leave in the U.S. (Camilo is the son of Nicaragua’s most famous composer and musician, Carlos Mejía Godoy, author of the Nicaraguan Peasant Mass which asks the “God of the poor” to take sides with the “oppressed” against the “oppressor class which squeezes and devours” the poor.) The U.S. military has not yet decided on Camilo’s application for conscientious objector status but is holding him at Ft. Stewart here in Georgia pending special court martial. Camilo has stated, like Chelo, that even if he is put behind bars he will be a free man because he is following his conscience. (Footnote Two)

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FOOTNOTE TWO

In May 2004 Camilo was found guilty of desertion and sentenced to one year in prison.

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Jimmy reflected a lot on Chelo’s stories, learning from him that the primary cause of death among their people is a “broken heart.” Jimmy began to wonder whether his grandfather had not died of a broken heart. “Certainly my father drank because of a broken heart. When their dreams had been crushed, when their prayers seemed never to be answered, when life seemed to cheat them out of every glimmer of happiness, their hearts broke. And then alcoholism and despair set in” (p. 224).
Jimmy began to feel that “it was from thousands of broken hearts, and an attempt to mend them, that gangs started.” According to Chelo, prison gangs had originated in the early fifties with a guy named Cheyenne from Los Angeles, who formed a group of Chicanos in a youth detention facility. Their purpose was “to study, educate themselves, stick together for protection, and help every young Chicano coming through the gates. He raised money to build small satellite educational sites throughout California where cons could meet and learn.”
But the State of California considered the meetings gang gatherings and stopped them. The meetings continued to be held wherever Chicanos could gather in the prison compound. “Within a few years, ten to fifteen thousand Chicano inmates were part of self-help groups designed to help each one succeed in life.”
Chelo saw drugs as the destroyer of individuals and the community. “I seen guys kill their brothers for a fucking gram.... Twenty-five years I been doing time, and instead of getting together we kill our own. It was some rival gang that took Cheyenne out because he wouldn’t have anything to do with drugs.”
Jimmy was excited and encouraged to learn the history of his people. “I’d grown up in an American society filled with stereotypical labels that discredited my people as inferior and lesser in moral character. Chelo went back to the beginnings, telling me that our people, the indigenous people of this continent ... were hundreds of years ahead of the Europeans in mathematics, agriculture, astronomy, literature, medicine, engineering, and aqueduct systems” (p. 225). Little by little the avid student began to see “who I was in a new context, with a deeper sense of responsibility and love for my people.”
What better form of “rehabilitation” and character-building could there be than enabling inmates from downtrodden minorities to see the real reasons for their people’s oppression and poverty and thus to gain a more adequate sense of their own personal and group identity? This would be equally true for the “rednecks” and other poor whites behind bars; if books like Howard Zinn’s The People’s History of the United States were available in all prison libraries, surely many poor and middle-class whites as well as people of color would learn how the rich rulers of this country have severely limited their equal opportunity and right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Virginia, who had started a correspondence with Jimmy, kept sending him history and poetry books. “The more I read about my ancestors, the more significant I felt. I was making their history mine as well; I began to feel myself fused to thousands of years of culture. It was as if this new knowledge was peeling off layers of wax paper from my eyes. I had a clarity of thought and feeling I’d never experienced” (p. 238).
Writing poetry changed his outlook on life: “Language placed my life experiences in a new context, freeing me for the moment to become with air as air, with clouds as clouds, from which new associations arose to engage me in present life in a more purposeful way” (p. 240).

Jimmy found a new way to react to conflict situations. One day on the cafeteria line, someone whistled, and Jimmy assumed the fellow was whistling at him. He flung his tray at the suspected whistler, who said, “I wasn’t whistling at you” (p. 242). Jimmy responded: “I don’t care. Don’t whistle when I’m around.”
Jimmy was surprised at his own behavior, “but it happened, and no convict lets disrespect go unchallenged.” He found three of the kitchen servers waiting for him outside, who thought he had a shank in his pocket. “It was a showdown. I stared at them and they stared at me. Suddenly, staring at them, I saw ... into their hearts; I saw them as infants, their parents addicted to drugs, screaming and drinking. I wanted to tell them something of what I just saw of their childhood, but instead I walked down the stairwell and into my cell.”

Preparing to move to a new unit in the prison, Jimmy packed his stuff into a box, which he saw as a symbol. “Packed boxes had haunted me since childhood. Everywhere I went, I arrived and left with a box; it reminded me that I had no place in this world, that no one wanted me” (p. 243). The box reminded him how paltry his life was.
And yet he was rising above his immediate material circumstances. “Still, I was comforted by the thought that I was bigger than my box. I was what mattered, not the box. I lived out of a box, not in one. I was a witness, not a victim” (p 244). He was a witness for those who for one reason or another “would never have a place of their own, would never have an opportunity to make their lives stable enough because resources weren’t available or because they just could not get it together. My job was to witness and record the `it́ of their lives, to celebrate those who don’t have a place in this world to stand and call home. For those people, my journals, poems, and writings are home.”
He felt that his pen and heart chronicled “their hopes, doubts, regrets, loves, despairs, and dreams. I do this partly out of selfishness, because it helps to heal my own impermanence, my own despair. My role as witness is to give voice to the voiceless and hope to the hopeless, of which I am one.”
After many years of rejection and frustration, Jimmy was finding success in publishing. “Two small presses had each asked for a small collection of poems to publish as a chapbook. This filled me with tremendous excitement and self-esteem” (p. 248).

RELEASE

Jimmy’s release date finally arrived. “In many respects I was not ready for freedom; I didn’t know what to expect, how to live in the world. But as far as having changed, and being proud of what I had accomplished here, I was okay with it. I felt like a star in the sky, glowing, with darkness all around me” (p. 257). Unfortunately, most convicts upon release have no sense of accomplishment, as Jimmy did, but only anxiety as to how they will live in free society.
Some years after his release Jimmy received a visit from his mother. Weeping, she told Jimmy that she had been raped as a young woman “and her brothers had made fun of her when she was young for being overweight. That was why she kept herself so attractive, because it was what men wanted. If you were pretty, she had learned, men would give you anything you wanted” (p. 261).
Her husband Richard had forbidden her to tell their children about her ethnic identity. “All my life I’ve had to hide who I am, because Richard’s parents wouldn’t let him marry a Hispanic. But I’m going to tell them... and I’m going to tell my kids the truth too. I’m leaving him. I can’t stand him, or the lies I’m living. I’m filing for divorce.” She then took some pills, saying she couldn’t live without drugs.
A few weeks later Jimmy’s mother told him that Richard threatened to kill her if she tried to leave him, but she was still determined to get away from him and from the web of lies. She told her children the truth about Jimmy and his siblings, she informed Richard’s parents that she was Hispanic, and she planned to see a lawyer about a divorce. “I found out later that she was in her kitchen polishing her nails, preparing to go dancing, when Richard came into the kitchen and shot her in the face five times with a .45. Then he put the pistol to his temple and killed himself” (p. 262).

Mieyo never got over it. He plummeted into alcohol and crack cocaine, but after moving to Florida he got off the drugs and found a good job. Then he relapsed and was found dead in an alley, “a bloody galvanized pipe next to his crushed skull” (p. 263). At the funeral what went through Jimmy’s mind was how Mieyo “had never been able to express himself. Like my father, he was shut down emotionally.” The three most important people in Jimmy’s life had “no linguistic skill to express themselves. They lived in shame. They lived with guilt. And then my father choked to death when he came out of a treatment center, my mother was shot to death when she was about to start living her life, and my brother, trying so hard to stay clean, relapsing, but always trying to stay clean, was bludgeoned to death in an alley.”
It took Jimmy a long time to understand “how so much injustice could happen to such good people. Why had my family gone through so much tragedy? Why had they met with such horrible deaths? They were three people trying to regain their self-esteem, after being considered too brown, after being raped, after being abandoned. They kept trying to make a comeback and heal themselves. But they couldn’t seem to get past the pain.”

Months later, Jimmy stood in front of the cathedral in Santa Fe, where he had been baptized. “On one side were Indios, on the other side parishioners.... I asked this lady next to me what the special event was and she said the pope had proclaimed that this evening every Catholic church was formally to ask for forgiveness from the indigenous people, the Indios, for the atrocities perpetrated on them in the name of God by Catholics. In essence, the church was apologizing for its acts of genocide.”
Jimmy felt “okay with that” and stayed for the entire service. A young couple approached the altar -- “he looked just like my father and she just like my mother when they were both young. They were holding a brown baby that looked just like me in the photographs my sister had shown me. They were my parents and I was the baby they were preparing to baptize. I saw them exactly as I must have been here once with my parents, innocent, my whole life ahead of me, they with their dreams still intact” (p. 264).
Suddenly Jimmy began to forgive his parents “for what they had done or not done. I forgave myself for all my mistakes and for all I had done to hurt others. I forgave the world for how it had treated us.” Later he walked down a deserted street, “feeling an overwhelming relief from giving and accepting forgiveness. I felt it was a new beginning.... I was that child, free to begin life over and to make my life one that they would all bless and be proud of. I was truly free at last.”

Jimmy initiated his personal rebirth in prison -- not because of prison, but in spite of its threats, violence, and the administration’s mind games. He came to believe in himself as a poet, a Chicano, and a man capable of relating to people (even those who had rejected him) and to the beautiful and mysterious universe.
In his book his prose is richly descriptive and his dialogues lively and real. He weaves his narrative with great skill.
In this review/essay I have tried to summarize Baca’s story, excerpting his personal reflections while leaving his descriptions to delight the reader when she/he takes up the book itself.
As I serve my little ninety-day sentence in this county jail, I have found A Place to Stand an inspiration and something of a touchstone for my own experiences -- even though they are far less dramatic and drastic than Baca’s.
END

FOOTNOTE ONE

The May 2004 issue of Harper’s Magazine presents excerpts from interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch researchers in Pakistan and by Vivian White, a reporter for the BBC, with recently released prisoners of Camp X-Ray, the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Alif Khan reported that in Cuba he had been gagged, chained, and injected.
K.M., arrested by Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan in late October 2001, was held at Kandahar. He reported: “They gave us pills that made us feel numb or made us drunk.”
S.M.A., also arrested in Afghanistan, was shipped to Cuba. “Other countries torture prisoners with electric shocks,” he told an interviewer, “but they tortured me with injections. After I received an injection, my eyes would remain fixed upward, and my muscles would get stiff. I would stay like that for a day and sometimes longer, until I was given another injection, which would relax me, and then I could move my eyes and muscles again. Sometimes they would give me pills after the first injection. I saw other prisoners receive injections as well....
“I tried committing suicide again two months later. The injections were the reason I did it.”
Putting together the drugging of Jimmy and the injecting of war prisoners held by the U.S. Army, it is clear that techniques of control and punishment used in U.S. prisons have been exported to the Middle East and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Other techniques come to light when we consider a pattern of abuse committed by American corrections officials who were later commissioned to set up the Iraqi prison system.

In Utah Michael Valent, a schizophrenic prisoner, stripped naked and shackled to a chair for 16 hours because he refused to take a pillowcase off his head, died of a blood clot in his leg. (This was a common method of restraining mentally ill prisoners.) The event, which happened to be videotaped, resulted in a successful lawsuit by the victim’s family and the resignation of the director of the state Department of Corrections, Lane McCotter, who then went to work for a private prison corporation, MTC, which the U.S. Department of Justice later cited for inhumane conditions at a New Mexico jail.
Shortly after Valent's family went to court, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against three Utah DOC doctors, this time for binding a mentally ill man, naked save his underwear, to a stainless steel pallet called `the board́ for eighty-five straight days,” Dan Frosch continued in “Exporting America's Prison Problems” (The Nation, May 12, 2004). Meanwhile, the Ontario provincial government “is currently investigating an inmate death at MTC's Canadian prison on May 5, and inquests into three other mysterious deaths over the past year are expected, according to an article in the Barrie Examiner.”
But in 2003 McCotter and another former director of Utah’s Department of Corrections, Gary DeLand, were chosen by the U.S. Department of Justice to be advisors in the reconstruction of the now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where forced nudity was a common practice. While McCotter left Iraq shortly before the current scandal at Abu Ghraib began and says he had nothing to do with the MPs who committed the atrocities, his very presence there raises serious questions about US handling of the Iraqi prison system,” Frosch concluded.

Other corrections officials of ill repute joined them in Iraq. As Amy Goodman reported on “Democracy Now” (June 2, 2004), in a program entitled “It Happened Here First: Exporting America's Most Notorious Prison Officials to Abu Ghraib,” one man, McCotter, ran a prison system in Utah “where a 29-year-old schizophrenic died after he was stripped naked and strapped to a restraining chair for 16 hours. Another man ran the system in Arizona where 14 women were raped, sodomized or assaulted by prison guards. Another ran Connecticut's prison system where at least two people died after being severely beaten.”
All of these men were forced out of their jobs “by lawsuits or political controversy. But rather than being sent to prison themselves, these men were sent to Iraq by the US government to set up the prisons there. Actually, one prison - Abu Ghraib. John Armstrong was the former director of the Connecticut Department of Corrections. Terrry Stewart had served as director of the Arizona Department of Corrections; his top deputy was Chuck Ryan.
Mayor Rocky Anderson, mayor of Salt Lake City and the lead counsel in the 1997 lawsuit brought by the mother of Michael Valent, told Democracy Now that the Valent case “turns out not to have been a rare instance at all. We obtained affidavits of a number of inmates, many of them suffering from mental illness who were subjected to restraint in the chair, some of them for a number of days, and also other inmates who were strapped down on a metal board, they call it the board. It's four-pointed. They had their wrists and ankles tied down. Some of them were tied for a number of days also. In some of the instances, it was reported to us that the inmates were held completely naked and left either sitting or lying in their own feces and urine.”
The mayor also criticized DeLand’s management of the Utah prison system, citing the case of Littlefield versus Deland, “a case out of the United States Court of Appeals for the tenth circuit where the court describes what I think could be characterized as absolutely medieval treatment of a mentally ill inmate at the Salt Lake county jail while Gary Deland was commander of the jail. An inmate held naked without any bedding, without even a blanket left lying naked on the concrete floor in his cell for 56 days without ever a hearing, and without any medical treatment.”

Another guest on Amy Goodman’s radio program was Mark Donatelli, a Santa Fe, New Mexico-based attorney who specializes in criminal justice issues. While McCotter was in charge of the Santa Fe County Jail, Donatelli said, “we had numerous lawsuits filed, particularly by female prisoners who had been abused both by staff and other prisoners, male prisoners were allowed to go into female living units and sexually assault female prisoners.”

Finally, Dan Frosch reported on Terry Stewart, the former Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections who also went to Iraq: “Mr. Stewart was a long-time Arizona D.O.C. veteran, and I believe he was appointed as Director of the D.O.C. in 1995. That same year, the U.S. Department of Justice began an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, and abuse, and rape on the part of the guards, regarding the Arizona women's prison.” The inquiry concluded “that indeed this misconduct was happening at a very disturbing level, and that the D.O.C. officials were not doing anything about it.”
(See also “Iraq torture prison planned by U.S. prison official with tortured past,” New York Times, May 8, 2004.)

When the pictures of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib were published, I wondered where this tactic of stripping prisoners naked and subjecting them to sexual abuse had come from. Now we know some of its precedents.

My “Conversation” in Jail with Thoreau

2007-04-04T13:32:00.000-07:00

My “Conversation” in Jail with Thoreau
by
Joe Mulligan, S.J.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The following is a chapter of a journal I wrote while I was in two county jails from late January to late April, 2004, serving a 90-day sentence for “crossing the line” onto Ft. Benning, Ga., in a November 2003 protest against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA). The School, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), has trained thousands of Latin American soldiers, some of whom have returned to their countries to be notorious torturers, assassins, and other human-rights violators.
For more information: www.soaw.org

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Today I am re-reading Henry David Thoreau’s essay, “Civil Disobedience” (Civil Disobedience and Other Essays, Dover Publications, 1993), and reflecting on his observations about and experiences in jail, beginning with the well-known sentence: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”
I would add: “if that is a necessary consequence of struggling in the most effective way possible to free those unjustly imprisoned and to right other wrongs.” Is that not what the victims of injustice would ask of us, rather than simply to accompany them in jail? I believe Thoreau would accept my little friendly amendment to his famous line.

FREEDOM AND HOPE BEHIND BARS

He continues: “The proper place to-day, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles.” I agree that principled dissidents are the state’s “freer and less desponding spirits.” Even though behind bars, they are freer than many other citizens because their minds have been liberated from the tunnel-vision imposed by schools, churches, media, and government and because their hearts have been freed from indifference and apathy and from the fear of persecution.
Prisoners of conscience are also “less desponding” than many of their neighbors. Their vision of a possible future beckoned them to take action, and that deed itself nourishes their hope.
In church parlance it is said that one “excommunicates oneself” by any act which ipso facto results in exclusion from the community. Similarly, Thoreau is saying that resisters, by their principled action, remove themselves from society as it exists under state control; incarceration ratifies that removal and gives physical expression to it, even though the resister is locked up by the state government.

SOLIDARITY WITH THE OPPRESSED

“It is there [in jail] that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race, should find them.” Once again, I would say that these and other victims may prefer to find their sympathizers and allies in a house where they can safely hide the fugitive, or in the U.S. Congress opposing the Mexican War, or demonstrating in front of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. If such solidarity with the oppressed lands one in jail, then she would feel that she is in a proper place to meet the people whose cause she has championed as effectively as possible on the outside.
This, indeed, is how I would have felt here in jail if I had met any “illegals” who had fled from U.S.-sponsored repression in Latin America, or Iraqis seeking refuge from the terror inflicted on their country by the occupation forces, or American soldiers being detained for their conscientious refusal to fight in Iraq.

Jailed dissenters occupy, according to Thoreau, “that separate, but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with her but against her, -- the only house in a slave-state in which a free man can abide with honor.” Honorable? Yes. More honorable? It depends on whether good alternatives have been evaluated in serious strategizing. A free woman in a slave state could abide with honor in a church, school, legislature, or editorial office where she could vigorously promote abolition; if in these arenas or in violating the Fugitive Slave Act, for instance, she was arrested, then the jail too would be an honorable abode.

EFFECTIVENESS IN JAIL

Indeed, Thoreau saw possibilities for ongoing effectiveness there: “If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.”
A prisoner can “afflict the state” (usually to a limited degree, to be sure) by raising the political consciousness of fellow inmates, by participating in or getting coverage for some protest within the institution, or by writing: letters to friends and relatives, letters to the editor and articles (where these are not prohibited or otherwise effectively discouraged), and books (if manuscripts can be safeguarded and carried out upon release -- or sent out piecemeal with letters to friends).
Even where these forms of expression are precluded, or where the inmate chooses not to use them as tools of protest and affliction, it is true that she is in jail “as an enemy” within the state’s walls. I became aware of this as I was discerning about the SOA/WHINSEC action: I began to feel that just being a federal prisoner constituted a 24/7 statement of resistance against the violence of the federal government.
The degree to which that resistance is felt by the government and by society depends on (1) who the prisoner is and (2) how loudly she can raise her voice. Obviously, prisoners like Thoreau, Gandhi, Dorothy Day, and King can afflict their opponents more sharply than the average John Doe inmate.
Nevertheless, as Thoreau stresses, we usually cannot predict “by how much truth is stronger than error” and how effective may be the satyagraha (truth-force) of Jane Doe among her particular public, small in size though it may be, like the mustard seed and the yeast.
I agree with Thoreau that a personal experience of even a little injustice in the form of imprisonment can help the ex-prisoner to combat a variety of injustices more eloquently and more effectively. More eloquently, because his protest stems from his personal experience of being oppressed; more effectively, for the same reason, and also because as an ex-prisoner he may have a wider and more attentive audience.
Thanks to my own experience of two years in prison for resistance to the Vietnam war, I was able to feel a deeper solidarity with people who had suffered under U.S. policies and particularly with those who had experienced severe restrictions on their rights and freedoms; and I felt that I could speak more authentically of injustices affecting me and others.
Thoreau urges us to express our commitment not merely by “a strip of paper” in occasional elections but also by weighing in with the influence of our whole life and work. We can do this in many ways other than prison, ready to include incarceration when necessary.
Those of us whose personal circumstances and interior lights have led us on the path of civil disobedience must be on guard against our particular occupational hazard or temptation, namely, to consider our way the only or the best one for all.

CLOGGING THE MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT

As a civil disobedience movement grows, it can “clog” the state machinery: “A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.” Gandhi and King mobilized sufficient numbers to clog the courts and jails, thus afflicting, inconveniencing, and pressuring the state, which then chose to yield, at least partly, to some of their demands.
Significant numbers, sufficient to exert pressure, do not alter the non-violent nature of the movement: “If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.” With our current military budget hovering over $400 billion, plus more than $100 billion for our military occupation of Iraq and dangerous increments for research on new varieties of nuclear weapons, the blood on our income-tax returns is quite visible.
“This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution,” Thoreau continued, “if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, ‘But what shall I do?’ my answer is, ‘If you really wish to do any thing, resign your office.’” If I want to help the person dying on the roadside, I must first get my boot off his neck.
“When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.” Thoreau had an acute awareness that the innocent blood shed by the state stains the hands of taxpayers. When the subject and the official refuse to continue in their respective violent roles, “the revolution is accomplished” -- a very profound, life-changing, and costly revolution in those two lives which can be the seed of the larger “peaceable revolution” with broad social impact.
Thoreau foresees the possibility of bloodshed in some instances -- evidently referring to the wounds which may be inflicted on the non-violent resister: “But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man’s real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.” Revolutionary non-cooperation prevents the bloody wounding of the person’s conscience.

JAIL AS WAREHOUSE

Thoreau describes his jail experience: “I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up.” (Someone paid his tax the next day.)
Jails simply lock up the body, without further pretense. They are, theoretically, holding stations for relatively short-term detention -- until the defendant is released on bond or goes to trial. If convicted, she may serve a short sentence in the jail or be sent to a prison for a longer term.
In jail there is no rhetoric about “rehabilitation,” except perhaps in the preachers’ sermons if these are permitted.
But the injustice and waste are evident in the fact that, contrary to theory, many inmates spend inordinately long periods of time in jail if they cannot afford to be released on bond before trial or if, as is common here, they are awaiting disposition of their alleged probation or parole violation. While their jail time counts toward the eventual sentence they will receive if convicted, the time itself is slow and unproductive. Inmates in jails as distinct from prisons usually have no work assignments or educational or recreational opportunities (except perhaps forty minutes or so on sunny days in a small well-enclosed yard).
It is a maximum-security institution for all its inmates, whereas prisons are of various security gradations. “Cabin fever,” with the tension it builds up, is an inherent problem. Jail food usually reflects the fact that, again theoretically, it is meant to be for temporary sustenance. Thus it is not surprising that Thoreau found himself handled like a sack of merchandise in jail.

REHABILITATION

Prisons, on the other hand, where inmates serve their sentences, are much larger, have more facilities and activities, and generally have at least a stated intention of “rehabilitating” their residents. The word penitentiary refers to a place where a convict is supposed to repent and do penance as a step toward conversion and leading a new life in the future.
I can hear the guffaws and colorful language already! With over two million people behind bars, the U.S. has an enormous problem in the failure of the criminal-justice system to achieve its proclaimed goals. Sentences are long, recidivism high.
The mystery of true repentance and conversion can occur at any point in the prisoneŕs experience, but if she is facing many more years behind bars and away from family, and if she sees no possibilities for training while in prison for a decent job upon release, then the conversion seems to be crushed by the weight and meaninglessness of her remaining years in the penitentiary.
Neither one night in jail nor ninety can provide any approximation of this devastating experience of looking down such a long, dark, and cold tunnel with only uncertainty and more self-doubt at the other end.
Rehabilitation, if it is to mean anything, must be eminently practical. Occasional platitudes by the caseworker or the chaplain’s fervent denunciation of sin and call to conversion ring hollow if the inmate cannot see himself engaging in a practical educational and job-training program in prison leading to real and adequate employment possibilities upon release.
If these fundamental needs were at least on the road to being satisfied, then an occasional conversation with the caseworker or counselor or chaplain and participation in group life-goals sessions and religious programs would be grounded in reality and might bear some fruit.
Moreover, social and political consciousness-raising through history, sociology, and literature courses or discussions can sharpen the inmate’s analysis of society and thus help to elevate her self-esteem and commitment to struggle not only for a better personal future but also for her people.

COMMUNITY SERVICE

Thoreau wondered that the institution “should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way.” Perhaps today he would have been among the very few who are sentenced to community service instead of a jail term.
According to an article in our local newspaper, Georgia’s Corrections Commissioner James Donald reported that it costs $17.5 million a year to operate a 1,000-bed prison. With the prison population skyrocketing and with recidivism at an alarmingly high rate, Donald and others are looking for constructive alternatives to incarceration, such as diversion programs and day reporting centers. “For $17.5 million we can open and operate 34 day reporting centers,” said Donald’s executive assistant.

BREADTH OF PERCEPTION

As he peered out of his cell, he saw that his neighbors on the outside were also confined in some ways: “if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.” Liberation for his fellow townspeople would require their deliverance from their tunnel-vision, irresponsible indifference, and fearful conformism.
Thoreau described how his cellmate “occupied one window, and I the other; and I saw that, if one stayed there long, his principal business would be to look out the window.” Here it has not been a priority interest for me to look out our very narrow window, although I have enjoyed an occasional glance. The scene -- fence, field, house, trees, sky -- never changes; there is no wildlife or human life to be seen.
Our plexiglas window, sunk about five inches into the steel frame, affords a 90-degree view of the surrounding environment. But many people in “free society” also see only about one fourth of their world -- home, suburb, expressway, office -- speeding (or crawling) through corridors of the city without ever really seeing it. Similarly, even if they travel the world, they perceive only a small sector of it, the tourist realm which is kept as similar to home as possible; and they understand even less.
Others in free society, especially the elderly, are confined physically to their barred and locked homes, particularly after dark. This unit of the jail is approximately the size of a small, two-story American house -- home for 24 inmates.
Here we see no roses, no art, no birds, and we hear no beautiful music; but many on the outside, in their partly self-made and partly imposed jails of busy-ness and routine, never allow themselves to have contemplative contact with such beauty, to take time to smell the roses.
Even Thoreau had to make an effort to free himself up to be in nature with his whole self, as we can see in his essay on “Walking” (published in 1862, 13 years after “Civil Disobedience”): “I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head, and I am not where my body is -- I am out of my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?”

His jailers “thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hinderance [sic], and they were really all that was dangerous.”
Like Thoreau, I didn’t make it my chief desire to stay out of jail, although I would have preferred it; my top desire was to struggle effectively to close the SOA/WHINSEC, to contribute a little toward changing U.S. foreign policy, to help get the U.S. out of Iraq. The means I chose led to jail.
Since jail is a maximum-security institution, the doors are always locked “industriously” on us, as on Thoreau. But our meditations too, some of which could be considered “dangerous” by the Bush administration (to the extent that they contemplate resistance to its unjust and violent policies), pass like ghosts through the steel doors, bars, plexiglas windows, and coiled razor-wire. My meditations have been fed by the “subversive” writings of Gandhi, King, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Alfred Delp, Thoreau himself, and others, as well as by articles sent in by friends from the Nation, the Progressive, National Catholic Reporter, and other critical publications.
Many “free” people are too fearful or too apathetic to allow themselves sufficient intellectual liberty to open their minds to such a breadth of theological and political thought.
I have sent out some of my written meditations in the form of articles, letters to the editor, and letters to friends through the ordinary postal procedure here. Many on the outside confine their dangerous thoughts to the vault of their own head for fear of losing job, promotion, or social “acceptability.” Who, then, is in jail?

As a Catholic priest and Jesuit, I have chosen to accept certain limitations on my individual freedom. But are we not overly confined in the Church today by the stones and doors of unnecessary restrictions and prohibitions? The concrete and iron seem too thick and heavy -- especially after the doors and windows were unlocked by Vatican II. Not only are there prohibitions against the ordination of women and married men and a persistent discrimination against gays, but even the public discussion of such issues is discouraged. Let us pray and work that the windows and doors of our Church will be opened once again to the fresh breezes of the Spirit.
Authority in the Church, based on Jesus’ attitude of humble service, should never ape the way, in Thoreau’s view, it is exercised by the state, which “never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced.”
In our trial the prosecutor, never willing to engage the real issues which had to do with the intent of our action, focused narrowly on whether our bodies had crossed the property line. And with its superior physical strength the state jailed our bodies. (The judge made a slight effort to enter into dialogue with some defendants but always, of course, from his position of superior physical strength.)

In jail it seemed to Thoreau that he “never had heard the town-clock strike before, nor the evening sounds of the village; for we slept with the windows open, which were inside the grating... It was a closer view of my native town. I was fairly inside of it. I never had seen its institutions before. This is one of its peculiar institutions.”
Viewing this “peculiar institution” as a participant-observer gives one not only a truer understanding of it but also a closer and more inside view of the society which runs it. This perspective from the bottom is usually jarring and disturbing, to say the least; but soon the new explorer in these environs becomes grateful for the enriching if painful learning experience.
“In the morning, our breakfasts were put through the hole in the door, in small oblong-square tin pans, made to fit, and holding a pint of chocolate, with brown bread, and an iron spoon.” Muscogee County Jail is still putting the trays through the lower slot in the door -- not into the six-man cells but to the inmates on line in the dayroom. Instead of a pint of chocolate, however, something hardly recognizable as either chocolate or coffee is presented. Brown bread would be a real treat; the spoon is plastic.

RELEASE

Emerging after just one night, Thoreau naturally did not expect to perceive any great changes on the common. “And yet a change had to my eyes come over the scene -- the town, and State, and country -- greater than any that mere time could effect. I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived.” Released prisoners have not only a new and different perspective on the state but often a gut-level outrage over its bureaucratic inefficiency and injustice. How salvific it is, for the newly freed person and for society, when that energy can be channeled into constructive struggle.
Thoreau was disappointed that his neighbors had not rallied or protested in his defense (though he must have recognized that the one who paid his taxes so soon had allowed them little time to organize!).

He also saw more keenly, or at least felt more strongly, “that they did not greatly purpose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as the Chinamen and Malays are; that, in their sacrifices to humanity, they ran no risks, not even to their property; that, after all, they were not so noble but they treated the thief as he had treated them, and hoped, by a certain outward observance and a few prayers, and by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time to time, to save their souls. This may be to judge my neighbors harshly; for I believe that most of them are not aware that they have such an institution as the jail in their village.”
Perhaps a good number did “greatly purpose to do right” but were unaware of certain injustices or chose means which were not his. Perhaps Thoreau’s circumstances in life allowed him to run more risks than others, and some might have considered one night in jail not comparable to the more severe consequences they would face.

He described a quaint custom in his village: “it was formerly the custom ..., when a poor debtor came out of jail, for his acquaintances to salute him, looking through their fingers, which were crossed to represent the grating of a jail window, `How do ye do?́ My neighbors did not thus salute me, but first looked at me, and then at one another, as if I had returned from a long journey.” Fortunately this graphic salute has not been revived.
It is not clear what he really wants to say about his reception or lack of it by his neighbors. In his vagueness about this aspect of his experience Thoreau is rather representative of a number of ex-prisoners who have difficulty in understanding or describing the relationships they are resuming.
Prison experiences, like “immersions” in Third World or inner-city or reservation realities, and perhaps like war experiences, are hard to describe to those who have never been near those places and perhaps do not want to get close to them, even vicariously through returning friends. (I personally have not been sharply affected in this way, but I believe that others have been.)

“I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker’s to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour... was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off; and then the State was nowhere to be seen.”
As Thoreau continued on his errand, I plan to resume mine! On April 23 Fr. Roy Bourgeois, M.M., founder of School of the Americas Watch, who will be home in nearby Columbus at the time, will take me and Mike from here right back to the main gate of Ft. Benning to continue the protest of last Nov. 23 -- this time maintaining a safe distance from “the line” and emphasizing our message to the U.S. and Latin American troops to analyze the war in Iraq and to consider applying for conscientious objector status if they cannot justify participating in combat.
Then there will be huckleberry picking, and the SOA/WHINSEC and foreign policy will recede, temporarily, from sight.
END

Prison Writings of Fr. Delp -- Meditation By a Fellow Jesuit in Jail

2007-03-30T15:35:00.000-07:00

The Prison Writings of Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J. --
A Meditation By a Fellow Jesuit in Jail

by

Joseph E. Mulligan, S.J.

*****************************************************
The following is a chapter of a journal I wrote while I was in two county jails from late January to late April, 2004, serving a 90-day sentence for “crossing the line” onto Ft. Benning, Ga., in a November 2003 protest against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA). The School, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), has trained thousands of Latin American soldiers, some of whom have returned to their countries to be notorious torturers, assassins, and other human-rights violators.
For more information: www.soaw.org
******************************************************

INTRODUCTION

During this past week (March 23-30, 2004), I feel that I have not merely read the Prison Writings of Alfred Delp, S.J., but have found a new “friend in the Lord” in this fellow Jesuit who spent 6 months in a Nazi prison before being executed on Feb. 2, 1945, for his opposition to Hitler’s regime.
Of course, I cannot fathom the experience of anyone who is facing the death penalty; but, as a Jesuit in jail for resisting the repressive and imperialistic policies of my government, I do feel a kinship with Fr. Delp. From now on I will refer to him as Alfred since, if we had ever met in life, we would be on a first-name basis.

The first entry in his prison diary, for Dec. 28, 1944 (feast of the Holy Innocents), provides a glimpse of the profound experience he was having behind bars. “In the course of these last long weeks life has become suddenly much less rigid. A great deal that was once quite simple and ordinary seems to have taken on a new dimension. Things seem clearer and at the same time more profound; one sees all sorts of unexpected angles. And above all God has become almost tangible. Things I have always known and believed now seem so concrete; I believe them but I also live them” (Alfred Delp, S.J. -- Prison Writings, Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2004, p. 1).
He goes on to reflect on how he used to mouth the words “hope” and “trust.” But now he knows their meaning and power in the fire of death row, and he can look beyond the bars and the crumbling Third Reich to a new human future.

Perhaps this small first sample of Alfred’s writings can indicate why he has made a deep impact on me. During my 3-month sentence, I have been fortunate to have some deep, inspiring, and thought-provoking material to read: e.g., some writings of Dorothy Day, Gandhi, Thomas Merton, Thich Nhat Hanh, and others who write from the heart of their experience. Some of these books I have read twice, reflecting on certain paragraphs, making notes, and bracketing off some parts for a return visit.
Alfred’s journal, however, I have read in this careful way three times, bracketing off about 75% of the text! I return to those sections in meditation and prayer; this is why I feel I have come to know him.

(In regard to reading, one of the blessings in these jails is that the distractions are mainly external: the shouting and hollering of the inmates, the noise and chatter of the TV, etc. One can learn to focus quite well on the book in hand, especially if it is gripping and well-written. On the outside distractions can be more difficult because they enter into our heart and mind: anxiety about a meeting or some task or deadline, anticipation of some big event, need to plan tomorrow’s agenda, etc.)
Alfred’s narratives and reflections have a certain sacred quality about them, not only because of the extremely harrowing circumstances in which they were written but also due to their personal depth and, in a sense, their simplicity. After reading the first few pages I realized that this material demanded careful personal attention, and I felt invited into a dialogue with the author.

In his introduction to the 1963 edition of the book, The Prison Meditations of Fr. Alfred Delp (Herder & Herder), Thomas Merton described this captivating quality of Alfred’s prose: “Written by a man literally in chains, condemned to be executed as a traitor to his country in time of war, these pages are completely free from the myopic platitudes and the insensitive complacencies of routine piety.... These are new and often shocking insights into realities which we sometimes discuss academically but which are here experienced in their naked, uncompromising truth” (Prison Writings, p. xxi). (Merton’s introduction is included in the recent Orbis edition.)
For Merton, “these meditations `in face of death́ have a sustained, formidable seriousness unequalled in any spiritual book of our time. This imposes upon us the duty to listen to what he has said with something of the same seriousness, the same humility and the same courage” (p. xxxii).
Alfred’s spirituality and theology are the best of the first half of the 20th century, without the frills and jargon to which we have become accustomed in spiritual writing. Indeed, it is based on the best -- the most solid and literally edifying -- of our entire Christian tradition. His personal insights, written in a clear and sometimes but not always exciting prose, are traditional and fundamental -- but appropriated to his own situation and applied to his environment in a very real and direct way. If this sustained him and elevated his spirits in the Nazi prison, it invites us to assimilate its truth for our own nourishment in our struggles.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Alfred was ordained in Munich in 1937 at the age of 30. In 1939 he “joined the staff of the Jesuit opinion journal, Stimmen der Zeit. He was the editor for social and political matters, and he wrote on a wide range of topics, some that directly challenged National Socialism” (biographical preface by Alan C. Mitchell, Prison Writings, p. x).
When the Gestapo shut down the journal in 1941, Alfred became the pastor of St. George’s church in Munich-Bogenhausen, where an important part of his work “was to help Jews, by collecting food and money for them and by aiding their escape to Switzerland” (p. xi).
During this time Alfred became “an instrumental member of a resistance group that had been established by Helmuth James von Moltke and Peter Yorck von Wartenberg. The group met in Kreisau in Silesia, and would later, in 1944, be designated the Kreisau Circle by the Gestapo. The group’s purpose was to prepare for the day that National Socialism fell apart, so that it could reconstruct a just society in its place.” (1)

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FOOTNOTE ONE

Biographer Mary Frances Coady, in her book which I read shortly after my release, notes that the details of the Jesuit’s decision to join the Kreisau “friends” are not known, but several months earlier he had indicated his attitude toward resistance: “Whoever doesn’t have the courage to make history,” he wrote, “is doomed to become its object. We have to take action” (With Bound Hands: A Jesuit in Nazi Germany, Chicago: Loyola Press, 2003, p. 48).
In June 1944 Alfred made a clandestine visit to Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, who was on a few days’ leave from his job as chief of staff in the General Army Office in Berlin. The Kreisau members, knowing that Stauffenberg had connections with other resistance groups, had tried in 1943 to enlist his help in their work. It is not clear just why Alfred chose to contact him again at this time.
“The two spent an hour in discussion until Delp left to catch the train to Munich at half past eleven. Later, in his own deposition, Delp wrote that they talked in general terms about the state of Germany, the concerns of the bishops, and the relationship between the Church and the government” (Coady, p. 65). They may also have talked about the long-awaited Allied invasion of Normandy, which had started early that morning.
“Stauffenberg, who, like most of the resisters, knew to reveal only what was absolutely necessary, almost certainly did not inform Delp about what was foremost in his own mind -- that another plan to assassinate Hitler was in the works, and that he himself was to be the assassin.”
(All footnotes in this article were written after my release from jail.)

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Alfred was arrested by Gestapo agents on July 28, 1944, and within ten days was taken to Berlin. There were three phases to Alfred’s imprisonment. First “he was placed in a Gestapo prison on Lehrter Street. It was a harsh and hard place, and doubtless he was beaten there, as the blood stains on one of the shirts collected with his laundry would indicate” (Prison Writings, p. xiii).(2)

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FOOTNOTE TWO

Coady observes that in his prison writings Alfred spoke obliquely of being beaten. In one letter he described one of the lowest points in his prison experience. “After beating and humiliating him repeatedly, reducing their Jesuit captive to the helpless state of a wounded animal, his interrogators had thrown him back into his cell, jeering, `You’re not going to be able to sleep tonight. You’ll pray, but there’ll be no God and no angel to deliver you. But we’ll sleep well and tomorrow morning we’ll have our strength back to give you another thrashinǵ” (p. 76).
Alfred was able to pinpoint this as the moment when he first “let go of his misery and heaved himself into God’s care.... An abyss lay before him; the way across did not depend on his own prowess as it might have done in the heroic stories of his youth, but rather the complete opposite: what was demanded of him now was nothing less than a total surrender to the loving mercy of God.” He found comfort, Coady notes, in the gospel figure of Peter, “who flailed about in the water whenever he relied on his own strength and who walked in safety only when he surrendered himself in trust” (p. 103).

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Second, in September he was moved to a prison in the Tegel section of Berlin. “The conditions were somewhat better there, and his friends could receive more news about him, since the Lutheran chaplain ... was a member of the Kreisau Circle. He actually saw to it that Delp had hosts and wine with which to offer Mass. Delp remained there through his trial” (Prison Meditations, p. xiii). (3)

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FOOTNOTE THREE

Alfred “shared Tegel prison with Dietrich Bonhoeffer for the last twelve days of the latter’s stay there; Bonhoeffer’s cell was in another part of the prison where more privileges were granted, so the two most likely never met” (Coady, p. 78).

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“Third, on Jan. 31, 1945, he was transferred to the execution site in the prison at Berlin-Plötzensee. The present volume of writings comes from those months in prison, as he reflected on the Advent season and wrote letters to his friends, as well as other meditations and reflections” (Prison Meditations, p. xiii).

Alfred pronounced his final vows as a Jesuit in jail on Dec. 8, 1944. His vow of obedience -- to God as discerned in the Jesuit order as part of the Church -- must have taken on special poignancy as he realized that he would soon be tried and probably executed for obeying “God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29). -- i.e., for giving his ultimate allegiance to God rather than to the Führer. He joked that the vow formula would be a “fitting substitute for the letter he would have written asking to leave the Jesuits, had he followed the advice of the Gestapo. They had offered him a deal that he could go free in exchange for his exit from the Society of Jesus” (p. xv).
In prison he was usually bound with handcuffs, but sometimes the jailer would loosen them so Alfred could remove one hand and thus be able to write and celebrate Mass. (I have not been in handcuffs -- except at the moments when we were arrested in November, taken into custody at the end of January, and then transferred to this jail in February. I have not had the wherewithal to celebrate Mass, except when I have concelebrated with the visiting pastor.)
Alfred was accused essentially of participating in the Kreisau resistance group, of having prior knowledge of the July 20 attempt on Hitler’s life, and of having a general attitude critical of National Socialism. (4)

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FOOTNOTE FOUR

Coady explains that “the most incriminating charge against Delp was that he knew about the plot against Hitler’s life. Franz Sperr, the Bavarian leader of the Sperr Circle that Delp had kept in touch with, had visited Stauffenberg the same day as Delp and had apparently been aware of the plot. Under interrogation, he stated that Delp had been told about the plot as well. Nikolaus Gross, from the Cologne Catholic workers’ association, was also in custody and had made a similar statement about Delp. Knowing of the assassination plot and not reporting it to authorities was sufficient to incur the death penalty” (p. 78).

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The trial, which ran from Jan. 9 to11, 1945, was “high theater. The chief judge, Roland Freisler, notorious for his hatred of priests, especially Jesuits, was ruthless and mean-spirited. At one moment he expressed his contempt for Jesuits in an outburst of venom, claiming that he disliked them so much that, if he came to a town or a city and discovered a Jesuit Provincial were there, he would leave it immediately.
“In the end Delp was not found to have known of or to have participated in the July 20 assassination attempt. What it all came down to was his association with von Moltke and the fact that he was a Jesuit. All other charges were of no interest to Freisler. His mind had already been made up about Delp.... Freisler condemned him to death. The day after Delp’s execution, Freisler himself was killed in a bombing raid” (Prison Writings, p. xvi). (5)

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FOOTNOTE FIVE

A July 21, 2004 article in Pravda about the commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the July 20, 1944 plot against Hitler describes Judge Freisler: “More than 5,000 death sentences for state treason were brought down from 1934 to 1945. Freisler signed almost all of them. Hitler was benevolently watching his career. The Nazi leader entrusted the case of the attempted coup to Freisler. He would sit at table against the background of the scarlet banner with swastika in the middle. The judge would yell at exhausted and tortured people, the death sentences of whom he signed personally. He would feel Hitler's look with the back of his head: the bronze head of the Nazi leader was standing behind him on a tall pedestal.
“Hitler developed the execution procedure himself. He wanted the plotters to be hanged like slaughtered cattle. They were hanged on steel hooks in a prison cell. The execution was photographed and filmed for Hitler, who watched the tape in the evening.”

In a letter of January 10, 1945 to Franz Tattenbach, S.J., Alfred wrote: “The trial was a big farce. From an objective point of view, the main charges -- relationship to July 20 and Stauffenberg -- weren’t raised at all. Sperr had corrected his statement very well. It was a gross insult to the Church and the Society. A Jesuit is and remains a degenerate. It was all a retaliation for Rösch’s disappearance and my refusal to renounce my vows” (Coady, p. 166).
Augustin Rösch, Alfred’s provincial superior, had become a member of the Kreisau group, as had another Jesuit, Lothar König. It seems that Rösch asked Alfred to join the group as an expert on Catholic social teaching. By the time Alfred was arrested, both Rösch and König were living clandestinely as fugitives from the Gestapo.

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After the verdict Alfred described the tight parameters of the trial process: “The only questions asked were those that suited the accusers’ purpose, and the findings, naturally, were in accordance. Our case was aimed at the destruction of von Moltke and myself, and all the rest was mere window dressing. I knew from the moment we began that my fate was already sealed. The questions were all prepared and followed a definite plan, and woe betide any answer that did not fit into the prearranged pattern” (Prison Writings, p. 156).

In our trial and other trials for civil disobedience in the U.S., the range of testimony permitted is also very limited. Prosecutors’ questions always have to do with the mere facts of the case. Defendants are sometimes granted a bit of leeway to present the issues and reasons behind the action, especially if it is not a jury trial, as was the case with us in Columbus, GA. However, it is almost always certain that the judge will not consider those aspects (e.g., constitutional or international law, Nuremberg principles) relevant to his/her verdict. In a jury trial such considerations will be ruled out from the start.

Alfred described the prejudices he was facing: “Scholasticism and Jesuitism were paraded as the real villains,” he wrote. “It is a common belief that a Jesuit commits a crime every time he draws breath” (pp. 156-7). Even Alfred’s new lawyer, replacing a previous one, was of no help: “As the new man became aware of the anti-Jesuit complex, he told me, while the proceedings were still in progress, that as a matter of fact he was against Jesuits too” (p. 159).
Toward the end of this journal entry, Alfred asked forgiveness from “those I have hurt” and from those “to whom I have been unloving.” And in a final “Letter to the Brethren” he again explained the verdict: “The actual reason for my condemnation was that I happened to be, and chose to remain, a Jesuit. There was nothing to show that I had any connection with the attempt on Hitler’s life, so I was acquitted on that count.... There was one underlying theme -- a Jesuit is a priori an enemy and betrayer of the Reich.... It was not justice -- it was simply the carrying out of the determination to destroy.
“May God shield you all. I ask for your prayers. And I will do my best to catch up, on the other side, with all that I have left undone here on earth.
“Towards noon I will celebrate Mass once more and then in God’s name take the road under his providence and guidance” (p. 163). (6)

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FOOTNOTE SIX

In a January 11 letter to two friends, Alfred summarized the “incriminating” evidence that was used against him: “The grounds for the charge boiled down to the following four incriminations:

1. Thinking about a future for Germany after a possible defeat (`We will all die together, the last German, the Nazi party, the Third Reich, and the German peoplé-- Judge Freisler).
2. The incompatibility between Nazism and Christianity. Thus my thinking was false and dangerous, because it was based on this conviction (the `re-Christianizing ideá that they’ve accused Moltke of is an `attack against Germaný).
3. The Society of Jesus is a threat and any Jesuit is a degenerate. We’re fundamentally an enemy of Germany.
4. Catholic teaching on iustitia socialis [social justice] as the basis for a future socialism” (Coady, p. 170).

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In my trial I expressed my love for the U.S., its people, and its best traditions and values. Protest looks toward correcting the deviations and betrayals, toward forming a more just and human cultural and political entity. My fellow dissidents share the same vision and hope. And so we can make our own Alfred’s profession of hope in his people, making the obvious distinctions and qualifications: “So farewell. My offense is that I believed in Germany and her eventual emergence from this dark hour of error and distress, that I refused to accept that accumulation of arrogance, pride and force that is the Nazi way of life, and that I did this as a Christian and a Jesuit. These are the values for which I am here now on the brink waiting for the thrust that will send me over.
“Germany will be reborn, once this time has passed, in a new form based on reality with Christ and his Church recognized again as being the answer to the secret yearning of this earth and its people, with the Order the home of proved men -- men who today are hated because they are misunderstood in their voluntary dedication or feared as a reproach in the prevailing state of pathetic, immeasurable human bondage. These are the thoughts with which I go to my death” (pp. 161-2).
Some may be offended and incredulous at the mere suggestion of any analogy between the enormous, hideous evil which Alfred and other resisters in Nazi Germany were facing and the contemporary policies and realities of the U.S. system. It is indeed important, not only for the sake of accuracy but also for the sake of effective communication and therapy, to avoid overly facile and imprecise applications of terms like “nazism,” “fascism,” “totalitarian Gestapo tactics,” etc.
And yet alarming similarities, or at least disturbing parallels, between Hitler’s empire and ours suggest themselves and demand critical consideration:

1) FOREIGN POLICY. In terms of foreign policy, each system shows a history of invasions and occupations of other countries -- Nazi Germany’s invasions of some countries during a relatively short period, our invasions of many countries during at least a century (and still counting).
In some cases, after invading, we have set up a truly fascist regime in the image of Nazism. In other instances we have supported such regimes because, under the banner of anti-communism, they have protected and fostered our capitalist interests.
It is also noteworthy that a powerful military-industrial complex can be discerned as the driving force of both Nazi and U.S. militarism.

2) GENOCIDE. Hitler committed a holocaust against millions of Jews and eliminated other political and ethnic minorities. The U.S. committed genocide against the Indian peoples and, in World War II, against German and Japanese cities, slaughtering their civilian populations; in the Vietnam War we machine-gunned and bombed vast sectors of the civilian population; in various military incursions, such as the present one in Iraq, we have taken an inordinate number of innocent lives and called it “collateral damage.”
Moreover, how many millions of innocent lives have been wiped out not by our bombs and bullets but by the heartless, selfish economic policies and structures which we and our capitalist allies put in place and enforce?
We are also seeing how bigotry can be used to support such violence against peoples, as it was in Nazi Germany. Racist and ethnic prejudice, which has a long and stubborn American tradition, can be stirred up to harmful proportions in sectors of our population taking their cue from governmental language and actions.

3) FASCISM. The word “fascism” (coming from fasces, the bundle of rods which symbolized Roman power) characterized the absolute, arrogant power of the Nazis in ignoring civil and legal rights. In the post-Sept. 11 era in the U.S., we are becoming accustomed to the word “authoritarian” (not yet totalitarian) to describe the suspension of civil liberties and constitutional guarantees. While this transformation of American traditions is carried out, and accepted by many, as a necessary weapon in the “war against terrorism,” many see it also as providing the mechanisms of social control which may be needed in the galloping war against the poor in this country.
Fascism commonly strips prisoners of all rights, even subjecting them to torture. My cellmate, Mike Walli, pointed out in our conversation today that the U.S. government not only has admitted teaching torture to Latin American soldiers (at SOA/WHINSEC and other training centers) but is now subjecting hundreds of Muslim prisoners to severe conditions at Guantanamo, Cuba, while they are being interrogated and denied due process. Whether this is torture or “robust” coercion is a matter of definition and degree.
It is common knowledge, however, that outright torture is performed by some governments and that the U.S. turns over certain detainees to these regimes for interrogation. And in at least one instance a U.S. officer, Lt. Col. Allen B. West, threatened to beat and shoot an Iraqi detainee who was suspected of having information about terrorist intentions. When the U.S. Army initiated disciplinary action against this officer, the case became known publicly; and some American leaders expressed considerable sympathy with and support for the accused officer.
This one case became known. How many others have not been brought to light or justice? This is a matter of deep personal concern to Mike, since a nephew of his is fighting in Iraq. If his nephew or other Americans are captured by Iraqi resisters, wouldn’t they have a better chance of being treated with some basic respect if their government were respecting the rights of prisoners?
As for the treatment of prisoners in the U.S., the International Court of Justice (World Court) has ruled that the U.S. violated the rights of 51 Mexicans now on death row by not informing them they could receive help from their government. The Court said that the U.S. should provide meaningful review of the convictions and sentencing of the Mexicans.

4) RELATIONSHIP TO RELIGION. As Alfred brings out clearly, the Nazis found an anti-religious element in modern western civilization and carried it to an extreme, absolutizing the state as a new idol in place of God. Using a thin veneer of Christian talk, they also co-opted the churches into their anti-communism and pacified them into quiet collaborationism.
The idolatry of super-nationalism in the U.S. avoids a frontal attack on religion. Indeed, it co-opts the churches to reduce them to spiritual and ideological servants of the government’s purposes.

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FOUR FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN ISSUES

I would like to indicate Alfred’s thought and recommendations concerning four fundamental human issues: 1) his diagnosis of the ills of modern Western society, exemplified particularly though not exclusively by Nazi Germany; 2) his recommendations on the role of Christians in healing society as it lies prostrate and bleeding on the side of the road; 3) the need for committed and loving action in this response; and (4) the wellsprings where hope can be found in this daunting task. In this I will limit myself (with great difficulty) to only a small sampling of his passages on each of these themes.
In a nutshell Alfred saw humankind as mortally wounded, cut off from God and thus alienated from its true self, incapable of love and hope, and enslaved to tyrannical idolatries. In response, Christians should first immerse themselves in this reality in order to understand the sickness and then proclaim the way of Christ in all its radicality as the road to temporal and eternal salvation. In this Christians would dedicate themselves to the struggle for a more human society, showing the active love of the Good Samaritan for the beaten humanity on the side of the road.
Finally, Alfred saw hope as part of the presence and life of God in the world; only in receptive contact and faithful union with God could people find hope reawakening in their hearts.

1. Diagnosis of the Ills of Society

By cutting themselves off from God and from God’s universal order, people become slaves: “Hunted and driven and bewitched, we are no longer masters of our own fate, no longer free” (p. 30).
And this loss of freedom and order affects not only individuals but also collectivities: “That is the way a race, a nation, an individual, wandering in the wilderness, can go to hell in a life without happiness. One terrifying factor about such a state of affairs is that it gets progressively worse. People grow to hate one another, all creation is disrupted and the harmony of the spheres is shattered by an orgy of violence and destruction” (pp. 30-31).
Noting that modern liberty for many means libertine self-centeredness, he speaks of “the undisciplined passions and forces which, in our name and by bemusing us with delight in our own ego, have made us what we are. This is not a disparagement of passions. Woe to the person who tries to live without any -- that is the way to disintegration. Humanity must take itself as it is with all the undercurrents and the fire of its nature. But the destructive element in passions, the element which knows neither limit nor restraint, must be brought under control or it will tear us to pieces and destroy us. Our passionate preoccupation with self must be subordinated; we must retain all the strength and fire of devoted human love but without the blindness, the irresponsibility ... that makes it destructive.
“Humans want to be happy and it is right that they should. But by thinking only in terms of self we destroy ourselves.... We need other people to give us a sense of completeness; we need the community. We need the world and the duty of serving it. We need eternity, or rather we need the eternal, the infinite. And there we come to the new, God-conscious humanism” (pp. 86-7).

Here perhaps Alfred was thinking of St. Paul’s caution about selfishness masquerading as freedom: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another” (Gal 5:13-15).
Failing to recognize our bonds with one another in God’s order of things, we become wolves to each other: “We attack one another in enmity, deliberately and thoughtlessly, through greed, through indifference, through hatred and sometimes through love. There is no end to the wounds we can inflict on each other....” (p. 141).
Analyzing the “middle-class style of life,” Alfred points out that at one time “it had its virtues and served a purpose,” but it was always a potential danger “because it allied itself with human weakness and ran the risk that the possessions people hoarded, and which they needed for their task and mission, would end by mastering them” (p. 148).
Alfred had made the 8-day Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius every year as a Jesuit, and in the novitiate and tertianship (a year of preparation for final vows) he had done the full 30-day version. Thus a key part of his spirituality was Ignatius’ exhortation to all Christians to become free of “inordinate attachments” especially to wealth and honors.
Alfred felt that for many the sense of duty had died out and what remained was “middle-class gluttony, idleness, comfort, ease and all that went with material possessions. Dividends, stock, shares, bank balances -- these were the symbols of respectability, the ideals men strived for.” A type of person developed “to whose hearts one might almost say God himself could find no access, because they were so hedged around with security and insurance. The type still flourishes. It laid down the lines on which our present progress is developing” (p. 148).
In this syndrome we can detect not only the collective egocentrism of the Nazi venture but also the destructive selfishness of capitalism today. Sixty years later we would add sexism and the human destruction of nature to the hostilities under examination.

2. The Healing Response by Christians to a Sick World

Alfred felt strongly, facing the enormous evil of the Nazi system which had destroyed so much and which would soon crush him as well, that the Church had to place a top priority on ministering to a world which was ruined both spiritually and physically.
All of us who have made the Exercises of St. Ignatius can recognize Alfred’s broad vision of world history as God’s perspective presented in the meditation on the Incarnation. Ignatius asks the retreatant to see the people on the earth in all their diversity: “some are white, some black; some at peace, and some at war; some weeping, some laughing; some well, some sick; some coming into the world, some dying; etc.” (The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, by Louis J. Puhl, S.J. -- Westminster, Md., The Newman Press, 1957, p. 50.).
The Trinity, beholding “all nations in great blindness, going down to death and descending into hell,” decides to work the redemption of the human race.
After considering what the persons on the face of the earth do, “for example, wound, kill, and go down to hell,” the retreatant then contemplates the Incarnation and begs for the grace to join in this mission of the Lord. It is not a trivial task, but rather an attempt to change history and human persons.
This call to constructive engagement with the world should take precedence over concern for intra-mural reforms. Alfred felt he was condemning “present-day religious endeavors as sterile because they do not help humanity in the depths of need but merely skim the surface” (p. 94). He believed that none of the contemporary religious movements “take as their starting point the position of humankind as human beings.” Rather, they concentrate on the difficulties of the “religious minded person who still has religious leanings. They do not succeed in coordinating the forms of religion with a state of existence that no longer accepts its values.”
Efforts must be made to better humanity but not in order to acquire power. “For the next few centuries Europe is hardly likely to tolerate alliances between altars and any kind of throne.” Ministry should reach out to the “outcast lying by the wayside.” He or she is the one who must be restored to human dignity “by the release of his latent virtues and all the inherent good in his nature.” We must be concerned with a person’s reverence, devotion, love; “only when he is using these capacities is he a human being at all. We must direct our efforts toward reawakening love.”

In his Introduction written in 1962 Merton observed that “since 1945 other voices have joined themselves to Fr. Delp’s and have reiterated the same criticisms.... There is a widespread recognition of the fact that the Church is seriously out of contact with modern man and can in some sense be said to have failed in her duty to him” (p. xxxii). Merton points to the Second Vatican Council as a response, in the mind of John XXIII, to “precisely the situation which Fr. Delp described with an almost brutal forthrightness.”
Alfred was convinced that, in order to present God’s truth and love to the world, the Church needs a new birth. “The only thing that really matters” is not to regain the institutional power of a previous era but to develop “the inherent power of the Church as a religious force in the countries concerned.... Religious minded people must become more devout; their dedication must be extended and intensified” (p. 8).
He believed that religion had died, from various diseases, “and humanity died with it. Or perhaps it is truer to say that humanity died of great possessions, of modern development, of the pace of modern life and so on -- and religion died as humanity succumbed.” In this spiritual void, how can any word or act on the part of the Church “awaken the slightest echo in world affairs?” Along with nations and states and the western world in general, the Church shares responsibility to deal with human problems such as housing, food, and employment. “In other words we need social and economic regeneration ... and intellectual and religious regeneration.” These are problems for the world and the Church -- “far more so, for instance, than the question of liturgical forms. If these problems are solved without us, or to our disadvantage, then the whole of Europe will be lost to the Church, even if every altar faces the people and Gregorian chant is the rule in every parish.”
I didn’t know that the liturgical movement with its desire, for instance, for altars facing the people had been under way so long before Vatican II. Now that’s perseverance and hope! Changing the place of the altar and the position of the priest was in fact a very significant liturgical reform, with important implications for people’s participation in the Mass and for the fostering of communication and a sense of community. And yet Alfred, facing the stark realities of his world, knew that such intra-mural change was not the most urgent necessity for carrying out the fundamental mission of the Church. What would he think of today’s liturgical issues and their predominance in ecclesiastical assemblies and pronouncements? Would Merton consider such items as examples of “spiritual trifling” (a term he used in some talks to his fellow Trappist monks)?

If some ministers of the Good News to the world can get their priorities right and engage society in serious dialogue based on mutual respect and love, what is the healing and liberating message to be presented?
God’s Spirit can save the self-centered, isolated modern person “by rekindling the divine spark in his heart.... Present-day humanity’s incapacity for love, for reverence, for appreciation has its roots in arrogance and in this petrifying of existence” (p. 145).
People who rekindle their capacity to love others will be living in the world order established by God: “In all sincerity humans must loyally observe the rule of the road along which they are traveling.”
In this connection Alfred shares his own process of unfolding, of learning to love: “When I think back I realize how conceited I was about my own firmness. It was all self-deception and arrogance, this fine idea I had of my independence.... I had my suspicions about it even then, for I found that whenever I caused anyone pain that pain hurt me also” (p. 146).
Contact with God helped Alfred in those moments, and he noticed that the more honest that contact became “the more I was forced to give up my arrogant attitude and my unloving approach.” He saw the “overcoming of icy isolation, of lack of love and self-sufficiency” as “the task of the Holy Ghost in us.”

As I see it, the Spirit sensitizes us so that we can recognize when we have hurt others and so that we can be constructively conscience-stricken and repent, asking forgiveness. In this way I have recognized sin in my own life and in the behavior of institutions and structures of the U.S. and the Church for which I bear some responsibility.
Alfred also makes the interesting personal observation that he owes the quickening of his relationship with God chiefly to the intensifying of his relationship “with my fellow human beings” (p. 146). Each person has but one heart with which to love both God and neighbor.
He considered it beyond dispute that the culture of the west, “where documents and monuments are at present being rapidly destroyed, has frozen to death” (p. 147). One is only human, and great, “in so far as one is capable of loving. In the west it is long since humans loved greatly and had a passion for the absolute.” Things, power, authority, pleasure, and possessions have been the objects of people’s passions, but they have been incapable of a “genuine passion for humankind. Our hearts no longer trembled when we thought of ultimate realities like God, humanity, mission, and so on.”
This sickness of heart cannot be remedied by humans on their own. We must “pray for the fire from heaven” and open ourselves to this Spirit in repentance and trust. “The Holy Ghost is God’s passion for himself. Humanity must make contact with this passion, must play its part in completing the circuit. Then true love will reign again in the world, and humanity will be capable of living to the full” (p. 148).

Alfred enumerates 6 tasks which show the contours of the new society he hoped to see emerge from the rubble of the old:
1) “An `existence minimum,́ consisting of sufficient living space, stable law and order and adequate nourishment, is indispensable. The `socialism of the minimuḿ is not the last word on the subject but the essential first word, the start. No faith, no education, no government, no science, no art, no wisdom will help humankind if the unfailing certainty of the minimum is lacking.
2) “A minimum of honesty in every field is equally necessary.
3) “A minimum of personal standards and human solidarity is necessary.
4) “There must be a minimum of worldwide dedication and service....
5) “A minimum of transcendence is essential -- we must have something to look up to, to reach for, some kind of aspiration, if we are to be human at all.
6) “In addition to these minimum essentials there must be qualities to which one’s desire can be wakened, which one can feel oneself capable of attaining.
“All this is the `existence minimuḿ that I would like to sum up in the words respect, awe, devotion, love, freedom, law -- the words which, in my opinion, represent genuine fulfillment” (pp. 88-89).

In conclusion Alfred emphasized that the “existence minimum” will only work if all the essentials are “coordinated to work in harmony with each other. Individually this adds up to character; collectively it means the family, the community, the economy....”

3. Active Love and Service as the Heart of the Good News and Evidence of its Authenticity

First of all humanity must feel that the Church is genuinely concerned about its plight and sincerely committed to helping rather than condemning. “Humanity must feel that the concerns of the modern age and the problems of the new generations are not simply filed away as records but are matters of active and urgent concern to those who have assumed the task of dealing with them” (p. 95).
But many people do not consider the Church a potential dialogue partner and ally in the search for a more human way of life: “The new generation is separated from the clear conclusions of our traditional theology by a great mountain of boredom and disillusion thrown up by past experience. We have destroyed people’s confidence in us by the way we live. We cannot expect two thousand years of history to be unmixed blessing and recommendation -- history can be a handicap too.
“But recently the person turning to the Church for enlightenment has all too often found only a tired man to receive him -- a man who then had the dishonesty to hide his fatigue under pious words and fervent gestures.” Alfred predicts that “at some future date the honest historian will have some bitter things to say about the contribution made by the churches to the creation of the mass-mind, of collectivism, dictatorships and so on.”
If the Church is to “find its way to the heart of modern humanity,” it must strive for Christian unity and return “to the service of humanity in a way that conforms to human needs, not to private tastes or to the code of a privileged clergy. The Son of Man came to serve.... By this standard the realities of many religious institutions would be found wanting. No one will believe our message of salvation unless we work ourselves to the bone, physically, socially, economically or otherwise, in the service of ailing humanity. Modern humanity is sick....” (p. 96).
Real service must be done in the context of solidarity. We must meet the man in the street “on his own ground, in all circumstances, with a view to helping him to master them. That means walking by his side, accompanying him even into the depths of degradation and misery. `Go forth,́ our Lord said -- not `sit and wait for someone to come to yoú There is no sense in preparing a fine sermon while we are losing contact with the listeners and leaving them to their fate. I look on the spiritual encounter as a dialogue, not a monologue or an address, a monotonous drone of words” (pp. 96-7).

In another summary of the Church’s mission, Alfred presents 3 tasks: “First we must preach the divine order and center our hopes on it. Secondly we must restore human order and await a general improvement as a result. And thirdly we must bring order to the chaos of human living conditions and then trust to the emergence of a new human being” (pp. 90-91).
This new human being must be accompanied by more just conditions of life: “But if I preach till I am black in the face, trying with whatever skill I may possess to persuade humans to resume their proper status, yet as long as they have to exist in inhuman and unworthy conditions, the majority will succumb to them and nothing will make them either pray or think. Nothing short of a complete change of the conditions of life will have the least effect. The revolution of the twentieth century has need of an ultimate aim: it ought to be to guarantee every human being space to grow in.”
Education must show people “how to help themselves; they must be physically and spiritually strengthened in order to rise to full stature. This involves education toward self-reliance, responsibility, judgment, conscience; education that will instill good-neighborliness and eliminate the countless forms of superficial thinking and mass-mindedness; education toward transcendence, purposeful education toward perfect adulthood, education toward God.”
The development of a sense of responsibility, judgment, and conscience obviously militates against the conformist mass-mindedness of the Nazi Germany of Alfred’s era or of any other system which demands unthinking obedience from its subjects. Combined with promoting good-neighborliness toward all our human neighbors, this remains an important goal of Christian education today.
Teachers with such ideals must embody a sense of service and must be spiritually alive. In Alfred’s opinion “all the direct religious effort of the present time falls short as far as any permanent effects are concerned. As long as a person lies bleeding, beaten and robbed by the wayside, the person who tends and helps him will be the one who wins his heart -- not the one who passes by on the other side on the way to his holy offices because the person doesn’t concern him” (p. 93).
Alfred proposes a fuller and deeper Christian development of religion teachers who “already have the genuine kernel of religious knowledge in them.” They must be equipped so that they can “go to the rescue of the rest of humanity and cope with the task of healing them.” Humanity must be educated “to resume its proper human status” and religion must be taught “intensively by truly religious teachers. The profession has fallen into disrepute and it will have to be reestablished.” Alfred recommends that those chosen to teach should be truly religious and “ready to cooperate in all efforts for the betterment of humankind and human order.”
This recommendation is taken to heart today by teachers and administrators who, passionately in love with Christ and the world, participate in the anti-SOA/WHINSEC movement and other campaigns for justice and peace while encouraging students to analyze issues and join in the struggle.

4. Where Can Hope Be Found for Nourishment in this Challenging Task?

To put it briefly, both in his personal experience during life and “on the brink of the precipice” of the gallows, and in his understanding of the world’s hunger for hope for the renewal of society, Alfred located the source of hope firmly and simply in God. “How it will end, what still awaits me sitting here on the brink of the precipice, and how long I shall have to stay here before I must take the plunge, I have no idea. Nor do I know for certain that the gnawing worm within may not become active again. We must guard against every kind of false security -- only then will we find access to God’s great peace and omnipotence.... We have only God to fall back on in such a moment” (p. 114).
In getting acquainted with Alfred, I was especially interested to see whether and how he would deal with this question of hope. On death row, facing his own destruction and the devastation of his country in the final months of World War II, did life have any meaning for him? If so, what would he say about it?
I found no less than 22 passages where he discusses hope. In a few of these instances he talks about despair, but a despair conquered by its opposite.
Although there were moments in his 6 months in prison when he felt acquittal might be possible, these were fleeting fancies. Especially near the end he saw practically no earthly way out of his predicament.
A “living reality” for Alfred was “divine life within me as faith, hope and love” (p. 4). At Christmas “God lit an inner light in my soul and it has revived my hope.... Things still look very grim but I hope and pray. I have learned a great deal in the past year. God seems much nearer and more real.... I have just learned that the presiding judge is anti-Catholic and a priest hater; yet another reason for leaving everything in God’s hands. It always comes back to this -- only he can handle this situation ” (p. 11).
Although he was confident that “God will be with me during the proceedings” (p. 13), he also wrote on Jan. 6: “Sometimes I feel like going raving mad and I have to pull myself together. I have to remind myself of the courage of my friends.” He felt more afraid of the actual trial than its possible outcome. “Although literally everything is in the balance, I have complete confidence in life; and inwardly too I feel not the slightest temptation to despair.” Whether the outcome were acquittal or the death penalty, life would ultimately emerge victorious.
During Advent he had felt “true happiness” as a companion to hope “that all the promises hold good”: “It does happen, even under these circumstances, that every now and then my whole being is flooded with pulsating life and my heart can scarcely contain the delirious joy there is in it. Suddenly, without any cause that I can perceive, without knowing why or by what right, my spirits soar again and there is not a doubt in my mind that all the promises hold good” (p. 27).
He experienced this “sense of inner exaltation and comfort” in situations where “outwardly nothing is changed. The hopelessness of the situation remains only too obvious; yet one can face it undismayed..., content to leave everything in God’s hands. And that is the whole point. Happiness in this life is inextricably mixed with God.”
On Christmas Eve he reflected on his friendship with Christ: “I often kneel or sit before my silent Host and talk over with him the circumstances in which I am. Without this constant contact with him I should have despaired long ago” (p. 51).
In his reflections on his prayer to the Holy Spirit, he wrote that he knew “what the strength of God is even in the darkest and most hopeless situations” (p. 118). Through the Holy Spirit “we can be shaped to the likeness of the Son. He gives us new life and makes us capable of living. He heartens us, strengthens our will, heightens our understanding so that we may believe and hope and love -- that is so that we may draw nearer to God and live in unity with him” (p. 119).
And “through the power of this Spirit we are armed to meet and overcome our moments of despair. We have only to keep on believing and praying” (p. 122). Even in our darkest hours “we should never despair.... We should have this inner confidence, not mere self-reliance, but because we know beyond a shadow of doubt that God is sharing his life with us” (pp. 142-43).

After the delivery of the guilty verdict, Alfred wondered whether he should continue to hope for a release from the death sentence: “Ought I to resign myself to the inevitable, and is it cowardice not to do this and to go on hoping? Should I simply stand still, free and ready to take whatever God sends? I can’t yet see the way clear before me; I must go on praying for light and guidance” (p. 159).
In his final hours he, like Jesus, experienced the complex interweaving of hope and weakness: “I don’t know. Logically there is no hope at all. The atmosphere here, so far as I am concerned, is so hostile that an appeal has not the slightest chance of succeeding. So is it madness to hope -- or conceit, or cowardice, or grace? Often I just sit before God looking at him questioningly” (p. 160).
But all signs were pointing toward his impending death. “One thing is gradually becoming clear -- I must surrender myself completely. This is seed-time, not harvest. God sows the seed and some time or other he will do the reaping. The one thing I must do is to make sure the seed falls on fertile ground.
“And I must arm myself against the pain and depression that sometimes almost defeat me. If this is the way God has chosen -- and everything indicates that it is -- then I must willingly and without rancor make it my way. May others at some future time find it possible to have a better and happier life because we died in this hour of trial.”
He urged his friends to carry the torch and continue the struggle: “Do not give up, ever. Never cease to cherish the people in your hearts -- the poor forsaken and betrayed people who are so helpless. For in spite of all their outward display and loud self-assurance, deep down they are lonely and frightened. If through one person’s life there is a little more love and kindness, a little more light and truth in the world, then he will not have lived in vain” (p. 161). (7)

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FOOTNOTE SEVEN

In a January 16 letter he wrote: “Whoever isn’t able to accept death hasn’t lived right. Death isn’t an assault, a foreign power, but rather the last part of this life. The two are connected.
“Let’s keep on praying and hoping, no matter what God decrees.... God protect you. Good-bye” (Coady, p. 192).

___________________________________

A larger kind of hope also filled Alfred’s heart -- not just his own personal deliverance but a new dawn for the German people and for all humanity: “My offense is that I believed in Germany and her eventual emergence from this dark hour of error and distress.... Germany will be reborn, once this time has passed, in a new form based on reality with Christ and his Church recognized again as being the answer to the secret yearning of this earth and its people....” (Prison Writings, pp. 161-2).
Through the prism of hope a true picture of humanity can be seen: “Only someone who really believes and hopes and trusts can form any idea of humanity’s real status or catch a glimpse of the divine perspective” (p. 1).
During Advent he meditated on the redemption of the whole world, not just his own salvation: “Never have I entered on Advent so vitally and intensely alert as I am now. When I pace my cell, up and down, three paces one way and three the other, my hands manacled, an unknown fate in front of me, then the tidings of our Lord’s coming to redeem the world and deliver it have quite a different and much more vivid meaning” (p. 17).
Hope, or the “knowledge of the promises,” runs smack into the horror of the times: “It would be impossible to endure the horror of these times -- like the horror of life itself, could we only see it clearly enough -- if there were not this other knowledge which constantly buoys us up and gives us strength: the knowledge of the promises that have been given and fulfilled” (p. 18).
His prison cell symbolizes a humanity closed in upon itself: “May the time never come when men and women forget about the good tidings and promises, when, so immured within the four walls of their prison that their very eyes are dimmed, they see nothing but grey days through barred windows placed too high to see out of.”

Reflecting on Mary’s generous response to God’s design for redemption, Alfred challenges us to respond in order to bridge the gap between the possibility of the promised “better conditions” and the present reality in which we live: “What use are all the lessons learned through our suffering and misery if no bridge can be thrown from our side to the other shore? What is the point of our revulsion from error and fear if it brings no enlightenment, does not penetrate the darkness and dispel it? What use is it shuddering at the world’s coldness, which all the time grows more intense, if we cannot discover the grace to conjure up visions of better conditions?” (p. 19). Our practical response, like Mary’s, is necessary if the Good News is to become incarnate in the world.
The coming of Christ is not simply an experience in the individual heart but is a “symbol of the new order of things that affects the whole of our life and every phase of our being.... The world is greater than the burden it bears, and life is more than the sum-total of its grey days. The golden threads of reality are already shining through; if we look we can see them everywhere. Let us never forget this; we must be our own comforters. Those who promote hope are themselves people of promise, of whom much may be expected” (pp. 20-1).
Christian hope struggles within the history of this world. “Any attempt to escape history, to live outside it as it were, to run away from reality, only leads to illusion. Escapism and reaction have no place in real life” (p. 44). At the coming of the Light of the World, “from the imperial throne to the holy of holies the outlook was hopeless; even the priesthood had been corrupted by power politics, family egoism and narrow-minded bigotry.
“Hopeless -- that is the iron with which history often seeks to fetter healing hands, breaking the hearts of the enlightened few and reducing them to trembling hesitancy or cheap silence or tired resignation. As Christians we ought to recognize these shackles of history for what they are.” Alfred does not elaborate on this latter point here, but I believe that such shackles are made and imposed by human beings to prevent liberation; God calls us to break those handcuffs.
“Since the birth of our Lord we have been confirmed in the hope with which we turn to God’s throne for grace: God is on our side. But ... this does not mean that God has dethroned himself any more than it means that human life has been turned into a primrose path by that stupendous event” (p. 54). God, who is on the side of all humanity, is not an instrument for the self-exaltation of any one nation or race.
“Certainly God became man, a man among others; but nevertheless God, master of all creation. Therefore human beings must approach this God-made-man with reverence and adoration, subjugating themselves in order to find themselves -- it is the only way” (p. 55). Nations and races must find their true place in the community established by their Creator.

As Alfred peered out of his prison cell in the waning months of World War II, he saw his own imperialistic and idolatrous nation collapsing in ruin and entering its final decline. He hoped that upon the rubble of the old empire a new German community would arise and take its place in God’s family of nations.
Thus it seems he was able to discern the death phase of the paschal mystery as happening at that moment. Perhaps this quickened his hope in the near advent of God: “It may be in the very darkest hour -- as the fruit and the mystery of these terrible times” (p. 21). Perhaps he felt that the darkest moment had arrived, and so the first pale rays of light would be coming. Amid the rumble of destruction he could hear “the first tentative notes of jubilation.”
As we face the historical reality of our U.S. empire, we do not have the same indication or hint of a new dawn arising. Our empire has existed steadily, growing enormously through the centuries. We can’t even tell whether it is now at midnight and moving toward the darkest hour before dawn. Are we on the decline, or just entering a new century of a more overt, arrogant, and violent imperialism?
Some may discern signs of national crumbling in the Sept. 11 attacks and in other terrorist acts against us and our partners in imperialism; they may also perceive our weakness and morbidity in the course of events in Iraq, or even in our government’s recent commitment to develop a new variety of nuclear weapons, thus inviting further proliferation which could spell our own destruction and the ruination of much of the planet.

Curiously, some of the graphic images Alfred used in depicting the demise of Nazi Germany seem to want to superimpose themselves on our dreaded images of 9/11. On Dec. 31, 1944 Alfred wrote that hardship, hunger, and violence “have intensified and are all now more shattering than anyone could have imagined. The world lies in ruins round us. It is full of hatred and enmity. Everyone clings to their few miserable possessions because these are the last remaining things that they can really call their own.
“Spiritually we seem to be in an enormous vacuum. Humanly speaking there is the same burning question -- what is the point of it all? And in the end even that question sticks in one’s throat. Scarcely anyone can see, or even guess at, the connection between the corpse-strewn battlefields, the heaps of rubble we live in and the collapse of the spiritual cosmos of our views and principles, the tattered residue of our moral and religious convictions as revealed by our behavior” (pp. 4-5).
The spread of hunger, violence, and hatred in our own time rivals their devastating march in his. And spiritually we too are in an enormous vacuum, unable to discern any connection between the “heaps of rubble” of 9/11 and the “collapse” of our moral behavior as revealed in our unjust and arrogantly unilateral international behavior.
Very few, today as in 1944, are open to drawing from the facts a suggestion for change: “Even if the connection were fully understood it would be only a matter for academic interest, data to be noted and listed. No one would be shocked or deduce from the facts a need for reformation. We have already travelled so far in our progress toward anarchy and nihilism.”
Alfred used the verbs “to shake” and “to shatter” in his description of what humanity was undergoing, and he spoke of the necessity of a “deep emotional experience like this” (presumably, the fall of the Reich) to kindle the inner light: “Humanity is shaken to the very depths, so that we may wake up to the truth of ourselves.... A shattering awakening; that is the necessary preliminary. Life only begins when the whole framework is shaken” (p. 15).
Will we in the U.S. wake up to the truth of ourselves and let go of our arrogant and deceptive pretenses?
“Woe to any age in which the voice crying in the wilderness can no longer be heard because the noises of everyday life drown it -- or restrictions forbid it -- or it is lost in the hurry and turmoil of `progresś -- or simply stifled by authority, misled by fear and cowardice” (p. 16). Those “voices in the wilderness” which would offer the slightest suggestion that official U.S. perpetration of or support for terrorism has contributed to the hatred and violence of those who terrorize us are “restricted and stifled by authority” or by the often-violent defensive reaction of many people.
“Yet for all this, where are the voices that should ring out in protest and accusation? There should never be any lack of prophets like John the Baptist in the kaleidoscope of life at any period.... Such persons proclaim the message of healing and salvation. They warn us of our chance, because they can already feel the ground heaving beneath their feet, feel the beams cracking and the great mountains shuddering inwardly and the stars swinging in space. They cry out to us, urging us to save ourselves by a change of heart before the coming of the catastrophes threatening to overwhelm us” (pp. 16-17).

True prophets, motivated by love for their suffering people, denounce the injustice of the present and announce the possibility of a more human future. On 9/11 the “great mountains” shuddered and the people inside must have seen the sun “swinging in space” as the ground below heaved and rocked. Are we open to a change of heart? Are other catastrophes on the horizon?
Alfred prayed: “Oh God, surely enough people nowadays know what it means to clear away bomb dust and rubble of destruction, making the rough places smooth again. They will know it for many years to come with this labor weighing on them. Oh may the arresting voices in the wilderness ring out warning humankind in good time that ruin and devastation actually spread from within” (p. 17).
Continuing in this vein, Alfred cites the familiar verse, “the truth shall set you free” (Jn 8: 32). He considers this “the ultimate theme of life.... God helps us to find ourselves and then to get away from ourselves, back to him. Any attempt to live by other principles is bound to fail -- it is a living lie. This is the mistake we have made as a race and as a nation and are now paying for so bitterly” (p. 23). He emphasizes that this return to the truth must be done now.
The truth about U.S. behavior in the world can free us from our culpable and dangerous ignorance, from our conceited complacency and sense of national superiority, from our misplaced fears and anxieties; and this truth can help to free us from future catastrophes if we embrace it and act upon it.
Archbishop Romero urged the rich of El Salvador to give up their gold rings before they would be torn off their hands. Alfred saw the destruction of his country in a similar light: “We found it very hard to let go of beautiful things. But in the end we had to.... Our hands are empty -- more than empty. They are torn and bleeding because things literally had to be wrenched from their grasp” (p. 80).
But this bloody and grim scenario is meant to heal and save. “If in spite of everything we can hear and recognize the call, if we can discover the inner meaning of the grim experience through which we are passing and if in the midst of this frightfulness we can learn to pray, then this hell will bring forth a new human being and a blessed hour will strike for the troubled earth in the middle of the night -- as it has so often before.”
Alfred even used “towers” as a symbol of the arrogant empire and spoke of “senseless death” as a result of the “collapse”: “We trusted solely to our own strength, were bound only by our own laws, surrendered to our own whims and followed our own instincts. On those foundations we built our new towers” (p. 132).
This has resulted in “a pitiless age, an age of inexorable fate, a time of horror and violence, of worthless life and senseless death. And we who have been dragged down into the universal collapse -- which perhaps we did not try to prevent by every means in our power -- must in the midst of our destiny overcome that destiny, turning it into a cry for grace and mercy, for the healing waters of the Holy Ghost.... We are only truly human when we live in unity with God.”

The people of the U.S. comprise a small percentage of the world’s population but have a vastly disproportionate share of its wealth. Just three years after Alfred was hanged for opposing the Nazi empire, George F. Kennan of the U.S. State Department was explaining the “real tasks” of another:
“We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.
“....In the face of this situation we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the aspiration to `be liked́ or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and --for the Far East --unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.
“We should recognize that our influence in the Far Eastern area in the coming period is going to be primarily military and economic. We should make a careful study to see what parts of the Pacific and Far Eastern world are absolutely vital to our security, and we should concentrate our policy on seeing to it that those areas remain in hands which we can control or rely on” (PPS/23: “Review of Current Trends in U.S. Foreign Policy,” a Memorandum by George Kennan, Director of the Policy Planning Staff to the Secretary of State, as quoted by Noam Chomsky, Chomsky Reader, p 318).

Alfred wrote that God would be doing the rich young man in the gospel a kindness “in destroying his possessions before calling him to the last judgment. This paralysis in the realm of things, this fixation about property, riches, gold, jewels, art and good living was characteristic of the last century” (p. 144).
Sad to say, the “fixation” on property and riches continued to characterize the 20th century in its second half and still enslaves us today. Kennan’s analysis and recommendations were consonant with the previous history of U.S. foreign policy and served as its keystone in future decades -- whether under the banner of anti-communism or of today’s promotion of “free-market democracy.”
In the last part of this essay, I have not intended to draw tight, logical conclusions about the future of the U.S. empire, or about what stage we are at in the historical process. Much less have I wanted to put prescient meanings into the mind of a Jesuit social scientist and prophet executed in 1945.
If Alfred Delp had led a less risky life, he would not be the Alfred I have gotten to know this week. But if his life had been spared by an earlier fall of Hitler, he would have been 63 years young when I followed his footsteps and first went to prison in 1970 for destroying draft files (“Chicago 15" action against the Vietnam war). If we had somehow met or corresponded, what an interesting discussion we would have had about our respective empires, and about possibilities and strategies for creating a new history without imperial ambitions for domination and exploitation.

During my mini-sabbatical in these two county jails, with my scholarship from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, I have read other material by and about Jesuits. For instance, I have learned much from The Raft is Not the Shore (Orbis Books, 2002) -- conversations of Thich Nhat Hanh and my friend Dan Berrigan, S.J. Indeed, over many years, Dan’s writings and my personal friendship with him have influenced my thinking profoundly and have moved me to action. Dan and his late brother Phil assisted at my “deliverance into resistance” in the 1960s and have remained a source of inspiration and strength ever since.
Here I have also read chapters about Matteo Ricci, S.J., and John Courtney Murray, S.J., in Faithful Dissenters (Orbis Books, 2000) by Robert McClory. The former blazed new paths of “inculturation” in bringing the gospel to China in the late 16th century; a later reactionary move in the Church reversed his work. John Courtney Murray, another trailblazer, struggled theologically to get the Church to accept freedom of conscience in secular society; after many years of difficult work, during which he was censored by superiors, he finally saw the fruit of his labor in Vatican II’s declaration on religious freedom.
One can think of other creative and controversial Jesuits like Karl Rahner and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who also encountered misunderstanding and opposition. Indeed, the founder of the Society of Jesus was incarcerated briefly by the Inquisition while his theological views were examined (and finally recognized as orthodox).
The Nicaraguan Jesuit, Fernando Cardenal, felt called to support the Sandinista revolution in faithfulness to his Jesuit “option for the poor” and to continue as Minister of Education in the Sandinista government in spite of Church directives to leave his post. (The policy that priests may not hold high government positions also affected Fr. Robert Drinan, S.J., who opted not to continue in the U.S. Congress.) Fernando’s “conscientious objection” was respected by other Jesuits, including superior general Fr. Peter Hans Kolvenbach, even though Fernando was dismissed from the Society. He continued to live in the Jesuit community where he had been and where I had the pleasure of being his “compañero” for four years.
After the Sandinistas were voted out of office in 1990, he began the process of returning to membership in the Order and has now pronounced his final vows once again.
Many would say that these Jesuits and some others in particular are creative persons with a flair for critical and independent thinking and with the courage to remain steadfast in face of opposition. While this is true, I don’t believe it is the whole picture. What really moves such Jesuits is a deep love for the Church and for all people and a profound sense of personal responsibility for the contemporary Jesuit mission in which they share.

FOUR ADDITIONAL ASPECTS OF ALFRED DELP’S PERSONALITY AND THOUGHT

Today I would like to discuss four additional aspects of Alfred’s personality and thought: his love and forgiveness of his enemies, his analysis of his people’s acceptance of Nazi domination, his perspective on the relationship between the Church hierarchy (especially the Vatican) and the Nazi regime, and his Zen-like contemplative attitude.

1. Forgiveness of Enemies

In a meditation on Advent, Alfred wrote: “Let us pray for receptive and willing hearts that the warnings God sends us may penetrate our minds and help us to overcome the wilderness of this life. Let us have the courage to take the words of the Messenger to heart and not ignore them, lest those who are our executioners today may at some future time be our accusers for the suppression of truth” (p. 21).
Advent’s prophetic denunciation of evil, its call to repentance, and its heralding of hope must be presented courageously to our persecutors so that they will not have grounds to accuse us of failing in our responsibility to proclaim the truth to them. Love for enemies, and for all who collaborate with them, impels us to speak boldly and clearly to them in an effort to enlighten their minds and touch their hearts.
Perhaps in this regard Alfred was thinking of the prophet Ezekiel’s duty: “He said to me, Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me.... Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that there has been a prophet among them” (Ez 2:3-5).
Alfred spoke more explicitly of his forgiveness of his enemies in his reflections on the verse, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” from the Our Father: “God bids us to place our hope of mercy in the mercy we are prepared to show. The sins of the world must vanish with transcendental guilt so that the world now and then may breathe again” (p. 112).
What this meant for him was that “we must refrain from all bitterness against those who have wronged us. I bear them no grudge; I forgive even that charlatan who made such a travesty of German justice. They even arouse my pity.” Alfred spoke of “that charlatan”; Jesus spoke of “that fox” in an irreverent reference to the ruler Herod. Both used strong words adequate to the situation, but without hatred for or rejection of the person.
“But I pity still more the people who have delivered themselves and their holy spirit into the hands of such monsters. God help us.” Alfred’s pity seems similar to that of Jesus when he wept over Jerusalem: “As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace” (Lk 19:41-42). Jesus also showed this compassion when he met the wailing women on his way to Calvary: “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children” (Lk 23:28).
For Alfred, as might be inferred from his participation in the Kreisau resistance group, Christian love did not imply a naïve expectation that substantial political change could result from a series of individual conversions: “Where objective circumstances consequent on wrong decisions have become so hard and intolerable that they bow us down, it is no use waiting for a new order to emerge from a change of heart. Active steps must be taken to reorganize life in accordance with God’s law, even at the expense, if need be, of a real clash.
“This cannot be done without God’s help. May he stir our hearts and give the necessary vision and courage to make the decisive step” (p. 140).

2. The People as Happy Slaves

Why do people “deliver themselves” into the hands of slavemasters? Alfred observes that every so often someone emerges who “tries to impose his own plan on the rest of the world, either because he knows he has stumbled on a universal need or because he thinks he has and overestimates his own infallibility” (p. 2). Such people will never lack followers since so many people “long for a well-founded communal home to which they can feel they `belong.́ Time after time in the end they come to realize that the shelter offered is not all it purports to be -- it cannot keep out the wind and the weather.”
The followers gladly grant the leader his claim to infallibility, since this assures them that they too are in the right. And their need to belong to some collectivity in a shattered, lonely world is comfortably met -- until the shelter inevitably begins to leak and shake.
In his meditation on “hallowed be thy name,” Alfred discusses the human need to worship and the attendant danger of adoring false gods: “Unless they have something of supreme value, something at the center of their being which they can venerate, human beings gradually deteriorate. Human nature is so constituted that it must have something holy that it can worship, otherwise it becomes cramped and distorted and instead of a holy object of veneration something else will take its place” (pp. 104-5).
Many feel that the real problem today is not atheism or agnosticism but idolatry, with the most common idols being money and supernationalism.
These idols draw blood from their victims: “I ought to know for I have just emerged from a murderous dialogue with such a self-appointed object of veneration. These substitute values are far more autocratic and demanding than the living God himself. They have no idea of courtesy or of waiting for their turn, or of the blissful encounter, of voluntary persuasion, of gracious appeal. All they know is demand, compulsion, force, threats and liquidation. And woe to anyone who does not conform.”
They seek to be God, but a false one of threats and violence which is made in the image and likeness of the worst of people.
Our true selves as human beings require freedom, but we are deceived so easily into losing it: “As slaves, fettered and confined, humans are bound to deteriorate. We have spent a great deal of thought and time on external freedom; we have made serious efforts to secure our personal liberty and yet we have lost it again and again. The worst thing is that eventually humans come to accept the state of bondage -- it becomes habitual and they hardly notice it. The most abject slaves can be made to believe that the condition in which they are held is actually freedom” (p. 78).

This “flight from freedom,” analyzed in detail by Erich Fromm, is perhaps most prevalent in societies which glory in their tradition of “freedom” without really analyzing their situation and asking: What is freedom? How is it faring among us today?
One very precious and necessary form of freedom is the freedom of inquiry, the capacity to learn the truth about society in order to fulfill our civic duty. And yet it is obvious, or should be, that the mass media are giant corporations dependent on other corporations; thus they will not permit any systemic analysis critical of the corporate/government complex. A sign of this is the timidity and tentativeness with which we ask whether oil and other economic interests might have something to do with the occupation of Iraq and the rarity of any allusion to this question in the news.
Moreover, the dependence of universities on government (e.g., Department of Defense) and on corporations seriously restricts their intellectual freedom.
And in the wake of 9/11 the federal government itself has restricted constitutional rights, assuming for itself prerogatives which a conscious citizenry seriously committed to democracy would not yield easily.
Even in handcuffs and behind bars, Alfred could resist being made into an object or a number: “During these long weeks of confinement, I have learned by personal experience that a person is truly lost, is the victim of circumstances and oppression only when he is incapable of a great inner sense of depth and freedom. Anyone whose natural element is not an atmosphere of freedom, unassailable and unshakable whatever force may be put on it, is already lost; but such a person is not really a human being any more; he is merely an object, a number, a voting paper. And the inner freedom can only be attained if we have discovered the means of widening our own horizons” (p. 79). Service-learning programs in poverty-stricken areas of the U.S. or in other countries help students to widen their horizons, as do creative courses which enable students to get in touch with alternative sources of news and analysis.
Human nature contains an inner dynamism toward freedom which the Creator as Liberator calls forth: “Freedom is born in the moment of our contact with God. It is really unimportant whether God forces us out of our limits by the sheer distress of much suffering, coaxes us with visions of beauty and truth, or pricks us into action by the endless hunger and thirst for righteousness that possess our soul. What really matters is the fact that we are called and we must be sufficiently awake to hear the call.”
Alfred meditates on the Magi from the East as personifications of the freedom to be pilgrims persevering in their search for the Light: “When those worshippers knelt in homage on the floor of the humble stable with everything else put behind them -- their homes, the wilderness, the guiding star, the agony of the silent star, the palace of the king and the grandeur of the city -- when all these had lost their value and their impressiveness and the worshippers’ whole being was concentrated in the single act of adoration, the symbolic gesture of laying gifts before the manger signified the achievement of liberty. Then they were free.”
True freedom means giving our total allegiance only to the one true God, thus remaining outside the tyrannical grip of lesser entities.

3. The Relationship between the Church Hierarchy (especially the Vatican) and the Nazi Regime: the Limited Power of the Hierarchy

To the extent that German Christians had become “happy slaves,” in effect kneeling in homage before Hitler, the Church had lost its real power to confront effectively the Nazi machine. For Alfred, that “essential power” depends on the strength and depth of the religious dedication of its members, their commitment to Christ and to his Kingdom of justice.
While recognizing that the Vatican made pronouncements and performed humanitarian service, Alfred felt that its real influence was not sufficient to make a difference as far as the Nazis were concerned: “So far as concrete and visible influence goes the attitude of the Vatican is not what it was. It is not merely that it seems so because we get no information. Of course it will be shown eventually that the Pope did his duty and more, that he offered peace, that he explored all possibilities to bring about peace negotiations, that he proclaimed the spiritual conditions on which a just peace could be based, that he dispensed alms and was tireless in his work on behalf of prisoners of war, displaced persons, tracing missing relatives and so on....
“But to a large extent all this good work may be taken for granted and also to a large extent it leads nowhere and has no real hope of achieving anything” (p. 7, italics mine).
What was lacking? The “real root of the problem” was that “among all the protagonists in the tragic drama of the modern world there is not one who fundamentally cares in the least what the Church says or does. We overrated the Church’s political machine and let it run on long after its essential driving power had ceased to function. It makes absolutely no difference so far as the beneficial influence of the Church is concerned whether a state maintains diplomatic relations with the Vatican or not. The only thing that really matters is the inherent power of the Church as a religious force in the countries concerned” (pp. 7-8).
If I understand Alfred correctly, he is saying that, to the hard-nosed question -- “how many divisions does the pope command?” -- the entire Church as a people must be able to respond: “We have thousands of divisions, millions of soldiers of God under the flag of Christ, brandishing the `sword of the Spirit́ which is the Word of God. When we have a conflict of loyalties, we must obey God rather than human authorities.”
If the Church as the entire people of God were thus “mobilized” spiritually and morally, then the prophetic voice of its pastors would be heeded seriously in the halls of political power.

4. His Zen-like Sensitivity

Finally, I would like to share with you something of Alfred’s Zen-like sensitivity to the beauty of the world, especially of nature. He agreed that the world is “good,” as God had said in the creation, although he was all too cognizant of its ugliness and misery as well. He delighted intensely in nature’s splendor, opening his spirit to its uplifting energy, grateful to God for the capacity to recognize the good and accept it.
At the same time, his contemplation of created beauty led him to seek his perfect satisfaction in the radiance of God. He mentioned “the exciting kinds of happiness that can flood one’s whole being with nothing to stimulate it except the simple everyday gifts God in his goodness bestows upon us. Warm sun; the glint of light on moving water; the prodigal exuberance of spring flowers; meeting another human being who is sincere and with whom we have an immediate understanding” (p. 41).
He also mentioned “the emotional impulse that expresses itself in true love or true sorrow, the way in which both heaven and earth can give us cause for great and profound happiness.”
Alfred noted that he had not mentioned these aspects previously -- “I know very well that happiness can come from so many sources and that all of them can suddenly dry up.” Thud! Does the final clause negate the raptures of the preceding ones? Not at all. Alfred is simply noting that they can dry up; and at that moment, they had dried up for him, alone and cooped up in a dismal cell. Now he looks to the Source of all goodness and beauty: “I am only concerned with what has become now a familiar theme in my own life, the nearness of God and the divine order which alone can heal one’s mortal ills. It is this -- and only this -- that can both fit us for happiness and give us the means to be happy. To restore divine order and proclaim God’s presence -- these have been my vocation, the task to which my life is dedicated” (p. 42).
Finally, in his meditation on the Holy Spirit as “Blessed Light,” he wrote: “Humans are permitted to become conscious of God as a living reality that floods us with bliss. There are summer days when the light seems to envelop us like a tangible blessing. It can happen in a lovely alpine meadow or a rippling field of ripening grain or floating silently in a boat on a beautiful lake. Our consciousness is intensified and we feel at one with nature and have a marvelous cognition of the ripening, healing and sanctifying powers the cosmos contains” (pp. 129-30).
Alfred observed that “only a receptive, reverent and observant person can experience this.” Zen seeks to form such persons.
As created beauty lifts our hearts and points to its Source, we are enabled to endure long days in the desert. The intensified consciousness and sensitivity Alfred spoke of is a “faint reflection of the saint’s experience of blessed light -- an awareness that there are times when God enfolds his children in waves of tenderness flooding their hearts and filling their whole being with the blessed current of divine life.... We are only conscious of this in rare moments of contact but such moments are sufficient to see us through long days in the wilderness and long, hopeless nights, because once we have been vouchsafed such an overwhelming experience the impression never leaves us. Thereafter we can detect God’s quiet smile in all things and in all conditions and circumstances” (p. 130).
This modern prophet exemplified the Ignatian capacity to “find God in all things.” And as a contemplative in action, he also fulfilled what the Society of Jesus in its General Congregation 32 (1975) defined as the mission of all Jesuits: “the service of the faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement.” (8)

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FOOTNOTE EIGHT

General Congregation 34 (1995) put it this way: “The aim [of the Church] is the realization of the Kingdom of God in the whole of human society, not only in the life to come but also in this life. We exercise our Jesuit mission within the total evangelizing mission of the Church.... Within this framework ... the contemporary Jesuit mission is the service of faith and the promotion in society of ‘that justice of the Gospel which is the embodiment of God’s love and saving mercy..’” (The internal quote is from General Congregation 33.)
In 1971 the Synod of Bishops, meeting in Rome, had made an important contribution with its statement on “justice in the world,” emphasizing that work for justice is an integral part of evangelization – “Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation.”

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POSTSCRIPT (written after my release from jail)

In her biography, Coady records some important details of Alfred’s last days.
On January 23 he learned that a son had been born to Ernst Kessler and his wife in Munich and that they had named the baby Alfred Sebastian. In his letter to the newborn child, one of his last writings, Alfred explained the significance of the name “Sebastian,” who was “a courageous officer of both the emperor and God. But since the emperor didn’t want to know anything about God, in his foolishness he fashioned sharp arrows of hate and mistrust, and gave leave to have the officer shot with them.
“Sebastian regained consciousness with a battered body but an unbroken spirit. He reproached the emperor for his foolishness, and for his honesty the emperor had him killed.”

Alfred also shared a “legacy” with the newborn boy: “You also bear my name. And I’d like you to understand what I have wanted, just in case we don’t become suitably acquainted with each other in this life; that is, the purpose to which I have placed my life -- or better, to which it has been placed: to increase the praise and adoration of God; to help prove that people can live according to God’s order and in the freedom of God, and that this is how to be human.
“I wanted to help, and want to help, find a way out of the great misery which we humans have gotten into and in which we have lost the right to be human. Only in adoration, in love, in living according to God’s order, is a person free and capable of life. So here I’ve told you something of the insight and work and mission I desire for you.
“Dear Alfred Sebastian, one must accomplish a lot in one’s life. Flesh and blood alone can’t manage it. If I were in Munich now, I’d be baptizing you one of these days -- that is, I’d be giving you a share in the divine dignity to which we are all called. God’s love, once in us, ennobles and transforms us. We are from then on more than human beings. God’s strength is at our disposal. God lives our life with us, and, my child, it should remain like this and become even more so. In this process also hangs the question of a person’s final value. He becomes a person without price....
Your godfather, Alfred Delp

“PS: I’ve written this with my hands in fetters; I’m not bequeathing these bound hands to you; rather, may freedom, which endures the fetters and in which one remains true to oneself, be given to you more beautifully, more tenderly, and more securely” (Coady, pp. 201-2).

Knowing that the days or months of the Third Reich were numbered, Alfred, in a January 24 letter to Franz von Tattenbach, S.J., imagined: “If only we could make world history run faster. We can certainly see where it’s going. Why not a couple of weeks ahead of time? I’ll see you again, one place or the other” (p. 204).
In a letter two days later to another friend, he wrote: “All the best, dear one. And at the same time, a good Sunday. Only seventy days to Easter and the prayer, pro tui nominis gloria misericorditer liberemur [for the glory of your name may we be mercifully set free]. God bless you” (p. 206).
His last written words were scratched on a prison order form on January 30 and sent to two friends: “Pray and have faith. Thank you. Dp.”
On January 30 he was taken to the Plötzensee Prison and placed in a cell in the wing known as the “House of the Dead,” where he received communion.
On February 2 the Catholic chaplain, having received word that Alfred would be executed that day, went to his cell. “Delp’s gaunt face then lit up with the playful smile of a child. `In half an hour,́ he said, `I’ll know more than you dó” (Coady, p. 207).
The usual procedure was no doubt followed, including stripping the condemned man of his clothes. Alfred was executed by hanging around 3 p.m.
The bodies of those executed at Plötzensee were customarily burned. Orders had been given after the July 20 attempt on Hitler’s life “that the ashes of those implicated in the assassination plot be strewn over sewage waste. No record exists of exactly what happened to Delp’s cremated remains, and it is presumed that they were disposed of in the same way as the ashes of all the others” (p. 208).

On July 20, 2004, the sixtieth anniversary of the assassination attempt on Hitler, German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder presided over an official event celebrating the courage of the plotters. Radio Netherlands reported: “Each year, the occasion is marked with the swearing in of a new batch of recruits to Germany's armed forces, the aim being to make it clear to the assembled men and women that the military rule `Befehl ist Befehĺ (orders are orders) should not always be followed blindly. `Soldiers must follow their consciencé is the message conveyed to the new recruits on this special day.”
Also at the ceremony was Freya von Moltke, the widow of Helmuth James von Moltke, the leader of the Kreisau Circle, who was arrested before the Stauffenberg attempt and executed in 1945. “At the high point of Hitler’s success, that’s when the circle began,” the spry white-haired 93-year-old told a crowd at a Berlin church Monday. “I’m proud.... Even though we had no success and even though we were weak, we kept European humanity alive in Germany -- and I mean all who stood against Hitler,” she told the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung newspaper (Associated Press, July 21, 2004).
Just a few days before July 20, 1944 and his own death, von Stauffenberg had said: “It is time to do something. The one who actually does something has got to face the fact that he might well enter history as a betrayer. But if he omitted the deed, he would be a betrayer in front of his own conscience" (cited by Alexander Krabbe, OhmyNews, July 21, 2004).
Another conspirator, Major General Henning von Treschkow, once said: "The moral value of a human being just begins where he is willing to risk his own life for his convictions" (ibid.).
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Joe Mulligan is a Jesuit priest of the Detroit Province who has been working since 1986 in Nicaragua with Christian Base Communities and as in-country coordinator of Jesuit Volunteers International. He is the author of The Nicaraguan Church and the Revolution (1991) and Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador (1994). He also works with the Global Call for Non-violent Civil Resistance to End the U.S. Occupation of Iraq – www.globalcalliraq.blogspot.com