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Wed, Jun 12, 2019
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I headed on out to Villanova University this past Sunday to hear writer and author Jim Forest talk about his new book, At Play in the Lions’ Den: A Biography and Memoir of Daniel Berrigan.
When I was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, the brothers Berrigan, Dan and Phil, both Jesuit priests, were heroes of mine. Never mind that in those days every Catholic I knew, including family members, were all “just war” types. Hardly any Catholic in my personal world then questioned authority. The concept of reading the gospels in an antiwar context was really foreign to the average Catholic parishioner. Good Catholic Irish boys did as they were told. If your country wanted you to serve in Vietnam, you went, you didn’t ask questions. When your draft notice arrived in the mail, you didn’t question the process but did as you were told, signed on the dotted line, and then willingly let yourself be shipped out to a war zone.
At age 19, I became a conscientious objector but not as a Catholic pacifist because at the time I was agnostic although in time I walked away from agnosticism and reentered the world of belief.
Jim Forest, born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1941, is the author of numerous books. At age 12 he became an Episcopalian. When he was in the US Navy he became a Roman Catholic and began working for the Catholic Worker Movement. He applied (and got) conscientious objector status while in the US Navy. He was arrested for burning draft cards at a Vietnam War protest. His Catholic Worker connections enabled him to get to meet and know Dan Berrigan, Dorothy Day and the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton.
The Catholic Worker Movement in New York was the central nerve of the Catholic peace and justice movement. As managing editor of the newspaper, The Catholic Worker, Forest had amazing access to all kinds of people.
In his book about Dan Berrigan, there are his photographs of Thomas Merton in his hermitage at Gethsemane, Kentucky.
In the 1980s, Forest spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union and became acquainted with the Orthodox Church. He became an Orthodox Christian in 1988, something that he says slightly confused Dan Berrigan but which Berrigan supported nevertheless. Berrigan’s Catholicism had Irish (family) cultural roots and could not be reconfigured. In my brief talk with Forest after the lecture, we both exchanged stories of our discontent with post Vatican II Catholicism and our switch to Orthodoxy) especially in liturgical matters. Forest continues his peace and justice work as secretary of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship.
At Villanova, Forest appeared with noted novelist and author, James Carroll, author of the award-winning book, An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us. Carroll, a Bostonian, was once a Paulist priest in Boston and part of the Boston Paulist Center, a place where I sometimes attended Catholic Mass when revisiting my old adopted city when staying with a friend there. My friend, a Catholic radical and a truly prophetic spiritual voice, saw the cutting-edge Paulist liturgy with its slide shows, rock music and heavily non-traditional features as a thoroughly fitting worship venue in the modern era. During our friendly debates, he would often call me a liturgical reactionary, a label that at first struck me as having ‘intellectually challenged’ roots but which I later came to embrace.
Forest began his talk with a warning to the audience that they might hear a tug or two of Parkinson ’s disease. In 2007, Forest had a kidney transplant donated by his wife. He lives in Amsterdam and is the father of six children. In a funny way, as I watched him speak and later sign books, in the great hall of Villanova’s nursing school, I could see that his face and general demeanor still retained much of its decades earlier twenty-something vigor.
James Carroll is currently in the throes of controversy thanks to a piece he wrote for The Atlantic in which he calls for the abolition of the Catholic priesthood. The former Paulist priest now lives with his writer wife in Boston.
“For the first time in my life,” he writes, “and without making a conscious decision, I simply stopped going to Mass. I embarked on an unwilled version of the Catholic tradition of ‘fast and abstinence’—in this case, fasting from the Eucharist and abstaining from the overt practice of my faith. I am not deluding myself that this response of mine has significance for anyone else—Who cares? It’s about time! —but for me the moment is a life marker. I have not been to Mass in months. I carry an ocean of grief in my heart.”
“Every sentence of James Carroll’s recent article in The Atlantic, “Abolish the Priesthood,” is theologically inept, historically anachronistic, self-referential, or all three. None of it is a surprise,” The National Catholic Reporter stated in response.
Carroll, an elegant speaker, has a captivating patrician air, especially when he looks at the audience over the rim of his reading glasses. His Catholic critics are many, however. Carroll is Swiss theologian Hans Kung on steroids.
Forest recounted many things about the life of Dan Berrigan, especially how Berrigan wanted to shape his life around The Beatitudes, advising Catholics “to get out of the tomb and make some gestures…a little act of civil disobedience.” Berrigan, Forest, said, “had powerful convictions but he was not self righteous.”
Forest recounted how Berrigan once handed him a check for $10,000 when the house that Forest was living in was in dire need of insulation.
He talked about Berrigan’s view of the ‘micro-gods’ that people have in society: obsessions related to gyms, work, sports or politics. According to Berrigan, “If you’re going to have a god, it might as well be God.”
He recounted how at one lecture somebody asked Berrigan how he deals with priestly celibacy. “I am so sorry I forgot to bring my celibacy slide show with me,” Bergiian responded.
Forest did not say much about Dorothy Day, although in one of his columns about her, he remembered her ‘Mass encounter’ with a radical priest.
“Pleased as she was when home Masses were allowed and the liturgy translated into English, she didn’t take kindly to smudging the border between the sacred and mundane. When a radical priest used a coffee cup for a chalice at a Mass celebrated in the soup kitchen on First Street, she afterward took the cup, kissed it, and buried it in the backyard. It was no longer suited for coffee-it had held the Blood of Christ. I learned more about the Eucharist that day than I had from any book or sermon. “
Note the emphasis on ‘a radical priest.’ Many of the radical priests in the 1970s and 80s went on to leave the priesthood. Certainly, at Philadelphia’s Saint Peter Claver Catholic Worker House (now defunct) where I used to often visit, there were many radical Masses, some celebrated by lay people, some celebrated by women, some celebrated by real priests although the liturgy was often a patchwork of put together contemporary songs, verses, though occasionally a traditional text was thrown in for tradition’s sake.
The Villanova event was organized by Sabina Clarke, Katharine Gilbert and Orbis Books of New York. Unfortunately, time constraints prevented a follow up Q and A although the event itself was quite spectacular and deserved a full auditorium. As a friend of mine noted, “If this event had taken place in New York City, every seat in the auditorium would have been filled but this is Philadelphia, where, after all, people just don’t seem to care.
When I was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, the brothers Berrigan, Dan and Phil, both Jesuit priests, were heroes of mine. Never mind that in those days every Catholic I knew, including family members, were all “just war” types. Hardly any Catholic in my personal world then questioned authority. The concept of reading the gospels in an antiwar context was really foreign to the average Catholic parishioner. Good Catholic Irish boys did as they were told. If your country wanted you to serve in Vietnam, you went, you didn’t ask questions. When your draft notice arrived in the mail, you didn’t question the process but did as you were told, signed on the dotted line, and then willingly let yourself be shipped out to a war zone.
At age 19, I became a conscientious objector but not as a Catholic pacifist because at the time I was agnostic although in time I walked away from agnosticism and reentered the world of belief.
Jim Forest, born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1941, is the author of numerous books. At age 12 he became an Episcopalian. When he was in the US Navy he became a Roman Catholic and began working for the Catholic Worker Movement. He applied (and got) conscientious objector status while in the US Navy. He was arrested for burning draft cards at a Vietnam War protest. His Catholic Worker connections enabled him to get to meet and know Dan Berrigan, Dorothy Day and the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton.
The Catholic Worker Movement in New York was the central nerve of the Catholic peace and justice movement. As managing editor of the newspaper, The Catholic Worker, Forest had amazing access to all kinds of people.
In his book about Dan Berrigan, there are his photographs of Thomas Merton in his hermitage at Gethsemane, Kentucky.
In the 1980s, Forest spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union and became acquainted with the Orthodox Church. He became an Orthodox Christian in 1988, something that he says slightly confused Dan Berrigan but which Berrigan supported nevertheless. Berrigan’s Catholicism had Irish (family) cultural roots and could not be reconfigured. In my brief talk with Forest after the lecture, we both exchanged stories of our discontent with post Vatican II Catholicism and our switch to Orthodoxy) especially in liturgical matters. Forest continues his peace and justice work as secretary of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship.
At Villanova, Forest appeared with noted novelist and author, James Carroll, author of the award-winning book, An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us. Carroll, a Bostonian, was once a Paulist priest in Boston and part of the Boston Paulist Center, a place where I sometimes attended Catholic Mass when revisiting my old adopted city when staying with a friend there. My friend, a Catholic radical and a truly prophetic spiritual voice, saw the cutting-edge Paulist liturgy with its slide shows, rock music and heavily non-traditional features as a thoroughly fitting worship venue in the modern era. During our friendly debates, he would often call me a liturgical reactionary, a label that at first struck me as having ‘intellectually challenged’ roots but which I later came to embrace.
Forest began his talk with a warning to the audience that they might hear a tug or two of Parkinson ’s disease. In 2007, Forest had a kidney transplant donated by his wife. He lives in Amsterdam and is the father of six children. In a funny way, as I watched him speak and later sign books, in the great hall of Villanova’s nursing school, I could see that his face and general demeanor still retained much of its decades earlier twenty-something vigor.
James Carroll is currently in the throes of controversy thanks to a piece he wrote for The Atlantic in which he calls for the abolition of the Catholic priesthood. The former Paulist priest now lives with his writer wife in Boston.
“For the first time in my life,” he writes, “and without making a conscious decision, I simply stopped going to Mass. I embarked on an unwilled version of the Catholic tradition of ‘fast and abstinence’—in this case, fasting from the Eucharist and abstaining from the overt practice of my faith. I am not deluding myself that this response of mine has significance for anyone else—Who cares? It’s about time! —but for me the moment is a life marker. I have not been to Mass in months. I carry an ocean of grief in my heart.”
“Every sentence of James Carroll’s recent article in The Atlantic, “Abolish the Priesthood,” is theologically inept, historically anachronistic, self-referential, or all three. None of it is a surprise,” The National Catholic Reporter stated in response.
Carroll, an elegant speaker, has a captivating patrician air, especially when he looks at the audience over the rim of his reading glasses. His Catholic critics are many, however. Carroll is Swiss theologian Hans Kung on steroids.
Forest recounted many things about the life of Dan Berrigan, especially how Berrigan wanted to shape his life around The Beatitudes, advising Catholics “to get out of the tomb and make some gestures…a little act of civil disobedience.” Berrigan, Forest, said, “had powerful convictions but he was not self righteous.”
Forest recounted how Berrigan once handed him a check for $10,000 when the house that Forest was living in was in dire need of insulation.
He talked about Berrigan’s view of the ‘micro-gods’ that people have in society: obsessions related to gyms, work, sports or politics. According to Berrigan, “If you’re going to have a god, it might as well be God.”
He recounted how at one lecture somebody asked Berrigan how he deals with priestly celibacy. “I am so sorry I forgot to bring my celibacy slide show with me,” Bergiian responded.
Forest did not say much about Dorothy Day, although in one of his columns about her, he remembered her ‘Mass encounter’ with a radical priest.
“Pleased as she was when home Masses were allowed and the liturgy translated into English, she didn’t take kindly to smudging the border between the sacred and mundane. When a radical priest used a coffee cup for a chalice at a Mass celebrated in the soup kitchen on First Street, she afterward took the cup, kissed it, and buried it in the backyard. It was no longer suited for coffee-it had held the Blood of Christ. I learned more about the Eucharist that day than I had from any book or sermon. “
Note the emphasis on ‘a radical priest.’ Many of the radical priests in the 1970s and 80s went on to leave the priesthood. Certainly, at Philadelphia’s Saint Peter Claver Catholic Worker House (now defunct) where I used to often visit, there were many radical Masses, some celebrated by lay people, some celebrated by women, some celebrated by real priests although the liturgy was often a patchwork of put together contemporary songs, verses, though occasionally a traditional text was thrown in for tradition’s sake.
The Villanova event was organized by Sabina Clarke, Katharine Gilbert and Orbis Books of New York. Unfortunately, time constraints prevented a follow up Q and A although the event itself was quite spectacular and deserved a full auditorium. As a friend of mine noted, “If this event had taken place in New York City, every seat in the auditorium would have been filled but this is Philadelphia, where, after all, people just don’t seem to care.
