Great Throughts Treasury

"Love or perish; it is not a new commandment but its full impact was hidden from us, because we had not known, up to the recent past, that we were capable of mass murder and even of cosmic murder."

"History tells us that the pendulum of time is sweeping to extremes of subjectivism, to cults of selfishness and savage irresponsibility. We must bring it back to balance by taking up the burdens of mankind as our own, with an entirely new vision and confidence. And we must do this perhaps as a condition for continued existence itself."

"The church is a major bureaucracy, and major bureaucracies are disobedient to the gospel"

"Wars are waged in defiance of all international laws, with bestial ferocity... In practice, then, it will never be lawful to declare war."

"If it means the outlawry of the Church, persecution... the Lord spoke of that too: 'The time will come when those who kill you will think they are doing a service to God.'"

"Prison is designed to silence dissent. We savage people in order to make them better citizens. We torture men and women to make them kinder and more productive. We execute human beings, in order to teach our children respect for human life."

"The Biblical view of the law, the courts, and the state is profoundly radical. The Bible looks upon the state as a kind of rebellious artifice; it is spurious, a human creation in rebellion against God."

"The state holds together through police power, against the citizenry. The state, conceived in violence, and backed by violence, will never achieve true peace."

"The Catholic priest in America--and in the West generally--is more of a cultural phenomenon than he is a Gospel man. He is nationalistic, white supremacist, and uncritical toward affluence and its source. His training reflects nuances of these cultural fixations, but, beyond that, it schools him merely in neutrality toward life. By that I mean, he tends to take a purely institutional view of threats to life, whether they be its abuse or destruction."

"My confusion, egotism, competitiveness, and impatience led to eruptions and quarrels within our community. Feelings were hurt, there were painful silences, bitter recriminations. We were experimenting with human interaction, and we discovered that we were loving, jealous, caring, bossy, cooperative, and competitive. After 23 years of living within community, I'm a good deal mellower. I've discovered something about forgiveness, mercy, and tolerance. Not as much, perhaps as I should have learned, but more than I knew before. I can accept the deficiencies of other people, just as I can live with my own deficiencies, which, believe me, are legion."

"Peter wanted a fellowship with Christ without consequence--official reprisal, ostracism, torture, execution. We want citizenship in the empire and its attendant goodies--a 'deterrent' nuclear blanket and the 'right' to consume seven times our share of the world's output, without consequences--war, ecological devastation, death in the Third and Fourth Worlds. We Christians forget (if we ever learned) that attempts to redress real or imagined injustice by violent means are merely another exercise in denial--denial of God and her nonviolence towards us, denial of love of neighbor, denial of laws essential to our being. 'I do not know the man' takes many forms, suffers many translations. But all end the same--a denial of our humanity, our daughtership or sonship in God."

"In the Old Testament, when the first state is proposed in the person of Saul, the first King of Israel, God tells the prophet Samuel that this project spells rejection of God. The state and its legislature are in rebellion against, or rejection of, God. Its courts are a human fabrication, cannot promote justice and peace; they are founded in violence, and legalize violence."

"Nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself."

"Peacemaking is not only a central characteristic of the Gospel, peacemaking is the greatest need of the world today. We are the daughters and sons of God, and that means we are called to be peacemakers."

"A revolution is interesting insofar as it avoids like the plague the plague it promised to heal."

"I don't have to prove my life. I just have to live."

"According to a University of South Carolina study, violence in America rose 42 percent during the Vietnam War. This is hardly surprising. Our leaders are lawless, so why not we? If the government threatens other countries with the bomb, why not threaten one another with handguns? If our leaders are raping the planet, why not our neighbors? Our leaders create a climate of fear and violence. Why do they appear shocked when Americans kill, rob, and maim one another?"

"Because success is such a weasel word anyway, it's such a horribly American word, and it's such a vamp and, I think it's a death trap."

"There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake."

"You just have to do what you know is right."

"A formal prayer, and we formed into a procession to General Electric?s Aerospace division at 32nd and Chestnut. A young girl handed out white candles, which flickered in the wind. Dan, John Schuchardt, Molly Rush, and I stood at the entrance to G.E., holding a banner that read: GENERAL ELECTRIC?THE CRIME IS HERE."

"A million prison walls can?t protect us, because the real dangers?militarism, greed, economic inequality, fascism, police brutality?lie outside, not inside, prison walls. The war in Vietnam is over; the war we wage on ourselves is escalating."

"A nonviolent revolution might save us, but it is hard to be optimistic. Our country has the richest tradition of nonviolence in the world, yet we lack the vision and discipline to initiate a nonviolent revolution."

"A superficial view of nonviolence would argue that you have to take the consequences of your actions. We?ve always done that, but sometimes there is a larger point that needs to be made. By going underground, we were rejecting, totally and unequivocally, the ?justice system.? We did not respect, and we could not obey, laws that condoned and courts that supported genocide."

"A rough parallel now exists between two communities?the African-American and White Middle Class. The traditional oppression of African-Americans by dominant Whites drove blacks to turn against one another. Now, the same trend asserts itself among whites. The oppression of a non-representative government armed with thermonuclear weapons, a government which is patron of the 1% superrich controlling 40% of American wealth, a government which has infested the planet with war and weaponry as no other has?this increasingly fascist, terroristic apparatus is driving whites into the denial of fratricide. The American empire oppresses people everywhere, but especially its own. And they, with no clear perception of this complex, pervasive monolith called government, turn on one another?judges, road workers, forest service rangers, the innocent in Oklahoma City. The drama of Christ?s last days directed us during Holy Week to reject denial, to put up the sword, to identify with Christ the victim, to embrace the Cross, and to stand at its foot with the women. That led us to the sites of oppression?The World Bank on Holy Thursday, the Pentagon on Good Friday, and the White House on Holy Saturday."

"According to the United States Constitution, these treaties supersede federal or local law. We were not talking about theory, and we were not expressing our opinion. We were talking about law that federal judges resist, continually overlook, nullify, and sweep into the trash bin."

"After three centuries of brutal experience, blacks knew what needed to be done. It was not up to them to understand us. They didn?t need to ask for guidance. It was up to us to start loving them, before it was too late."

"Albert Camus wrote that ?beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.?"

"All of this is in some contrast for Christians, who must recall Christ before Pilate. ?Reentering the Praetorium, Pilate said to Jesus, ?Where do you come from?? But Jesus made no answer, Pilate then said to him, ?Are you refusing to speak to me? Surely you know that I have the power to release you and I have power to crucify you?? ?You would have no power over me,? replied Jesus, ?if it had not been given you from above; that is why the one who handed me over to you has the greater guilt.? (John 19:10?11) Which is a profoundly tactful way of saying, ?You have no power over me at all!??since your power doesn?t come from God; your power isn?t moral."

"All one can do is fumble with a few critical questions, and then labor with the complications of response. The Catholic priest in America?and in the West generally? is more of a cultural phenomenon than he is a Gospel man. He is nationalistic, white supremacist, and uncritical toward affluence and its source. His training reflects nuances of these cultural fixations, but, beyond that, it schools him merely in neutrality toward life. By that I mean, he tends to take a purely institutional view of threats to life, whether they be its abuse or destruction. Indeed, if he is sensitive, he will go through immense pretensions to escape such brutalities. Or if he is hardened, he will advocate them, or remain casual in face of them."

"American Christians?even like yourselves?need to take a firm public stand against killing?killing in war, killing from Death Row, killing the elderly and unborn. Such a stand could save the planet and its people from war and poison, and could bring humankind to rebirth into the kin-dom of God."

"And only two or three Bishops have visited Catholic resisters in jail, at least two of them virtually apologizing for their action: ?This visit is a spiritual work of mercy, which I would perform for any of my flock.? More to the point would be an explanation of why they themselves were not in jail."

"And the test might be couched in events like the atomizing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or genocide in Vietnam, or US leadership of the Doomsday Race, or the Desert Storm ?turkey shoot,? or extracting profit from our addiction to violence and war. ?Surely you are one of them? terrifies us as it did Peter. Worse still, it finds us numb. ?I do not know the man? takes the form of silence before power, paying for war with taxes, income from war-making, or sacrificing our children to Mars."

"And yet the Church they lead, like the Savior, is come ?to give life, and to give it more abundantly.? What a gross irony!"

"And, Judge Munson, Liz continued, ?this has all been done ?legally,? and it amounts to a congressionally established religion. ?Congress will make no law with respect to the establishment of religion. . . .? Yet Congress has passed laws approving and funding the Manhattan Project, the continued arms race including the first strike arsenal of cruise, MX, Trident; the new scenario for winning a nuclear war. It requires that our taxes fmance these projects. The bomb and nuclearism have been protected too by laws concerning national security, restrictions on free speech by government employees, loyalty and secrecy oaths required for security clearances. And now the laws of sabotage, laws that protect government property from destruction, and the conspiracy laws are used to punish and prosecute those who, from a perspective of conscience and Christian witness, would speak the truth, would resist the evil of nuclearism and the idolatry of nuclear violence. To so use these laws is to prohibit the free exercise of religion and violates the constitutional guarantee of this freedom.?"

"Anyone with knowledge of crimes of state has a responsibility to prevent these crimes. People do not, indeed must not, follow orders that will lead to indiscriminate killing."

"Apologia for Cat written in Allentown federal penitentiary, 1968: ?Humanity is skin deep in most of these guys?you?d better believe it!? The guard spoke with conviction, and?I must admit?a certain authority... There was something in his remark, however, that was deeper than observation?resentment at the thankless, sterile job of a policeman. (American GIs in Vietnam have essentially similar feelings about themselves.) Even if he did not explain the interplay of forces, he sensed that police are caught in a frightening no-man? s-land between rulers and ruled; exhorted and criticized by one side, they are hated and resisted by the other; their defense of the rulers is at the same time oppression of the ruled."

"Armies will be disbanded and war outlawed. Cities will decline as people become less dependent on buying and selling. Economics will be revolutionized. Needs, rather than wants, will be paramount. In a capitalist society, economics defines life. In a just society, justice, love, caring, cooperation, will prevail. Politics and religion, the same thing, will strive for the regeneration of the human family. In this new order, racism and sexism will disappear. Women,. become equal partners with men, will no longer be objects of male lust. This vision, and this reality, will embrace community as the only human grouping not subject to domination, power, or violence."

"As Christians, and as peace activists, we needed a new vision in which to ground our actions. Something deeper than political analysis. Increasingly, we were taking our inspiration from the gospels, and from war resisters like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Franz Jagerstaetzer, and other courageous Germans who refused to cooperate with Hitler, even when their resistance meant certain death. We didn?t see ourselves as martyrs or heroes, but as ordinary men and women who were called to give our lives to peace and social justice."

"Apparently they take lightly the admonition of a witness like Paul: ?Bear the burdens of one another, and you will have fulfilled the law of Christ.?"

"Armed rebellions broke out, the most famous of which was led by Daniel Shays, a veteran of Lexington, Bunker Hill, and Saratoga. Shays led more than seven hundred armed farmers to Springfield, Massachusetts, where they paraded through town. Samuel Adams, hero of the rebellion against the British, helped draw up a Riot Act, and a resolution suspending habeas corpus. Shays army was defeated, captured rebels put on trial, some of them sentenced to death. Two centuries have passed, but little has changed. The ruling elite still uses violence and intimidation to control the American people. Those who resist the state are vilified, hounded, jailed, and murdered. The FBI, CIA, and other agents of state power wage relentless war against those who resist the evil empire."

"At Jonah House, our faith in God helps us control our fear. We are saying no to our government?s atrocious war-making. We are trying to be just; the effort flows from God?s enjoining justice upon us, and our knowing that God is just. Faith in God, and in the ultimate goodness of other human beings, helps us control our fears."

"As for the impending deliberations on world justice and peace, I have anguished questions about them. Do the American Bishops accept the implications of their country?s control over one-half the world?s productive capacity and finance? Do they realize that, despite our affluence, we have institutionalized poverty for perhaps one-quarter of our own people, plus millions in the developing world? Will they admit that these appalling realities are not accident, but cold calculation; that they follow the logic of profit and policy? Can they comprehend that war, particularly modern war, decides what nation or ?security bloc? will control the profits, and that on the success or failure of the Indochinese war hinges the American Open Door to the developing world? (Policy-makers fear that if the Indochinese force us out, certainty will spread among the world?s poor that wars of liberation can succeed.) Do they understand that a few hundred American corporations, with hundreds of billions in assets and international holdings, are empires in their own right, exerting political and economic dominion wherever they are? To deliberate justice and peace while overlooking such realities would be both ignorant and dishonest. Just as it would be dishonest to deny that while most men starve, most Bishops live in comfort and affluence, welcome the dividends of offending corporations, and remain discreetly silent before the excesses of capitalism."

"At Holy Cross College and in the seminary, I learned that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. But no one ever encouraged me to examine my own racism. I was a racist when I arrived at St. Augustine?s, because to live in America is to be a racist, either by commission or omission. Our government?s domestic and foreign policies are determined, to a large extent, by racist assumptions. Racism influences where we live, whom we choose to have for friends, whom we marry, where our children go to school, where we work and worship. Racism fills our morgues, every day, with murdered black children. It jams our prisons with black men and women, crowds our death rows, and keeps the executioners busy. It poisons the hopes and kills the dreams of poor, disempowered Americans. I didn?t know these things when my superiors transferred me to New Orleans. I just wanted to be a good priest and a good teacher, to serve God, and to help where and when I could. The students of St. Augustine continued my education. Gently, but firmly, healing my blindness. And the more I learned from my black friends and students, the more outrage I felt. Outrage and a deep sense of betrayal. I was brought up to respect authority."

"As for myself, I continue to resist because there is no alternative. I will not join the establishment. That would be deeply repugnant to me. I intend to stay here, witnessing against violence and madness, obsession with property and glorification of privilege"

"Before every action, Plowshare activists grapple with their doubts. Fear speaks to us, attempting to beguile us with the many rewards of silence. Just acquiesce, says fear, and things will be fine. Don?t rock the boat. Don?t upset the apple cart. Play it safe. Accept a life of quiet desperation."

"Being constantly ready to commit the nation and the planet to a war of annihilation in a matter of minutes created a variety of structural necessities that contradict the spirit and substance of democratic government: secrecy, lack of accountability, permanent emergency, concentration of authority, peacetime militarism, plus an extensive apparatus of state intelligence and police."

"But I committed civil disobedience and waited for arrest twice in Baltimore and at Catonsville, not because I hoped that destroying draft files would arrest the American war machine, but because it was the only convincing way of saying that what we did to the Indochinese, we did to ourselves?as we ruined their environment, we polluted our own; as we killed their young, we killed our own at Kent State, Jackson State, and at Attica; as we drove the Indochinese from their homes, so also we drove our young men into exile, or underground."

"But I changed, as people must change, under stress of conscience and event. I discussed with people as agonized as myself the resistance of Socrates, of Christ, of Henry David Thoreau, of Gandhi and King and Muste. They all emphasized obedience to the higher law of God; they made clear distinctions between the rights of responsible conscience and the rights of the State. They called for, and did, non-violent resistance to government; not as conspiracy or subversion, but to assert the democratic ideal of government of, for, and by the people; an ideal seldom reduced to concreteness by men in power."

"But if one accepts this autocratic logic, what happens to the kin-dom of God? Not the King-dom, but the kin-dom of God. What happens to real justice, to the possibility that human beings will be guaranteed justice and love and real freedom?"