Catholic Worker Pacifism: An Eyewitness to History
by Tom Cornell
Pacifism was not an issue within the Catholic Worker movement in the earliest years. We weren't at war. People came to the New York City center because they wanted to practice the works of mercy and to explore the "building of a new society within the shell of the old," as Peter Maurin put it, "in which it would be easier to be good."
Peter was a pacifist, but he didn't talk about it much. Dorothy Day was a pacifist to the marrow of her bones. She didn't need a rational framework for her revulsion from war and her determination not to cooperate with war-making. For her it was instinctual. In her pre-conversion days she spoke of war in the language of solidarity of the international working class, and of compassion for the suffering of war's victims. After her conversion she spoke of the rending of the Mystical Body of Christ, and of Christ's injunctions to the works of mercy. She pointed out that the works of mercy are the opposite of the works of war. But in those early years there was more than enough to do without fighting over just war theory or the vocation to peace-making.
Then came the Spanish Civil War. Almost all the Catholic press supported Franco and the fascist insurgents against the Republic, anti-clerical and Marxist-influenced as it was. Atrocities against priests and nuns were played up. The Catholic Worker paper put forward a different angle, not taking sides but denouncing injustices on both sides and calling for peace and reconciliation. The circulation of the paper plummeted. Pacifism became an issue within the movement as Axis power grew and general war in Europe seemed inevitable. Some independent Catholic Worker houses and groups around the country no longer claimed affiliation. Within the central community in New York, staff members argued long and without resolution. Pearl Harbor was the test. Dorothy Day was adamant. The Catholic Worker would continue its pacifist stance! Circulation plummeted again. One house burned its mailed bundle of the newspaper upon receipt!
Some Catholic Workers went willingly to war. Others went as conscientious objectors in the ambulance service. A few went to prison. Houses around the country closed for lack of staff. Only a few years before, the Catholic Worker was hailed by some progressive churchmen as an alternative to statism and revolutionary socialism on the one hand and laissez-faire capitalism on the other. Before World War II, national and world leaders stopped in at its headquarters. Catholic Worker leaders were invited to prestigious gatherings. But with the war all that changed. Now the Catholic Worker was thought to be on the "lunatic fringe," and Dorothy Day to be at least a "material, if not a formal heretic." For those strong enough to stay with the Catholic Worker, it was a time of harsh asceticism.
The immediate post-war years didn't see much of an improvement, but slowly the Worker was re-building. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was easier for many people to take another look at pacifism. Catholic college students re-emerged, graduated but without jobs, who were willing to spend a year or two or more living and working in the Bowery. Young people coming to the Worker in these years were much more likely to have examined the issue and to have taken a stand. The relationship of the Catholic Worker to Communism also changed in those years, because red-baiting had become a favorite weapon of reactionaries. The Catholic Worker stood up to McCarthyism by simply standing with the persecuted. Catholic Worker graduates exposed the blacklist.
It was an exciting time, though, if one looked close. New York in the 50s was something like Paris in the 20s. Jack Kerouac lived a few blocks north, and Allen Ginsberg, who first read his epic Kaddish in public at a Catholic Worker Friday Night meeting. Thomas Merton's old buddies were still around and active in publishing and the arts. The Living Theater, of Julian Beck and Judith Malina, gave us free tickets, as many as we wanted whenever we wanted - to swell the audience in a case a critic should show up!
The Civil Defense protests
The Korean War came at a time when we were still exhausted. There was no serious resistance . Ammon Hennacy, a noted home-grown radical anarchist-pacifist, who had refused to register for the draft in both World War I and World War II, had become a Catholic under Dorothy Day's influence, and had joined us in New York City. He energized the movement by his own regular work: speaking out against war in class room or street corner, selling the Catholic Worker paper on the streets on a regular schedule, and by joining with others in nonviolent direct action projects, protests, peace walks, and demonstrations, which gave us a sense of being part of the larger movement for justice and peace. Ammon had a habit of visiting the offices of peace groups such as the American Friends Service Committee, the War Resisters League, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Committee for Nonviolent Action. He would just schmooze with the people he found there, exchange ideas and even hatch one or two, like the Civil Defense protest in 1955.
The national Civil Defense held a series of exercises every year to help prepare for nuclear war. States and cities were urged to cooperate through local civil defense organizations. New York State made cooperation mandatory. At the sound of an alarm siren, everyone out of doors would be required to gather in designated shelters, as if crowding into a subway tunnel would save anyone from the effects of a nuclear bomb. Ammon was visiting the War Resisters League office. They were talking it over. This wasn't an exercise to save lives, it was psychological preparation for nuclear war!
Ammon said, "I'm not taking shelter. I'll sit on a bench in City Hall Park and let them arrest me." War Resisters League staff though that was a good idea. Ammon came home and told Dorothy Day about it. She said she would sit there too. In the event, about two dozen people sat in the City Hall Park protesting the lunacy and perversity of this "test." They were arrested, tried and given thirty days in jail. The next year a slightly smaller group did the same. Each year the group got smaller. But the times were changing, due to a number of factors. The Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy, a broad-based liberal group mounted a vigorous campaign against above-ground nuclear weapons testing and unleashed widespread but as yet uncoalesced fears of nuclear war. The annual CD drill brought out 2,000 protesters in 1961, and it was never mounted again! The peace movement has scored a success.
Gandhian principles informed Catholic Worker nonviolence from the beginning, as the writings of Dorothy Day, Ammon Hennacy, and Robert Ludlow in particular testify. These include "openness and truth." No project was ever undertaken that relied upon secrecy. Classic nonviolence involves submitting to legal process in cases of civil disobedience, admission of the facts of the matter at trial, and submission to legal punishment.
The first Viet Nam protest
Others were experimenting with Gandhian principles, foremost among them the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA). This small group included David Dellinger, Bayard Rustin, Bradford Lyttle, Marj and Bib Swann, and Barbara Deming. The Catholic Worker, by participating in its projects and by favorable review in the newspaper, aligned itself with practitioners of classic nonviolent action. Catholic Worker leaders Ammon Hennacy, Karl Meyer, and I became identified with CNVA by the late 50s.
The 60s were the time of the Catholic Worker's highest visibility since its founding because of the leading role the Worker took in protest against the Viet Nam war. It started in the summer of 1963. Carlotta Ribar, Chris Kearns and I were sitting in the editorial office when Bob Steed came in very agitated about the most recent of a string of self-immolations by Buddhist monks in South Viet Nam in protest against U.S. support of the Diem regime in Saigon. Bob insisted we had to do something. So I wrote a memo to leaders of peace groups in New York City. We would set a time and a place to meet to discuss a joint protest against U.S. policy in Viet Nam.
Then it occurred to me how frustrating this process could be. It might take weeks just to set a time and place to meet. There would be some who would say such an action was untimely, that it would be misunderstood, that Diem was not that bad anyway...So I decided to throw the memo into the wastebasket. Chris Kearns and I would just go to some spot identified with South Viet Nam and picket it. But what spot? There was no Viet Nam consulate in New York, no official airline. We found out where the Saigon Government Observer to the United Nations lived, and spread the word that the Catholic Worker would be picketing his apartment house for two hours each noon for ten days, and that on the tenth day we invited people from other peace groups to join us. About 250 did. We made national television coverage for the first Viet Nam war protest ever. It started with two people.
The Worker took part in planning mass demonstrations as they developed. But carefully organized acts of nonviolent civil disobedience were considered to be as important as mass actions in confronting the government's war policy. They "raise the ante", so to speak, by sharpening the edge of a protest movement. They indicate the depth of protest as mass actions indicate its breadth.
The draft card burnings
The August 23, 1965 issue of LIFE magazine featured a two page spread of photographs depicting the small but growing opposition to the war in Viet Nam. On the left was a black and white photo of an "all-American boy", crew cut hair and neat of dress, his eyes fixed on a draft card burning in his hand. Unidentified by LIFE, the young man was Christopher Kearns, associate editor of The Catholic Worker and a direct descendent of Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
On the opposite page was a color photo of a demonstration that had occurred two weeks earlier. About 1500 people had marched from the Washington Monument to the Capitol. As we marched peacefully, we were interrupted by an enraged right-winger. He threw a bucket of paint at our leaders, but we pressed on. This dramatic moment was immortalized by LIFE.
These photographs caught the attention of some conservative senators. They hastily framed a bill proposing to make draft card burning a felony punishable by five years in prison and $10,000 fine. The bill sailed through both houses with no debate and was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy.
It seemed to us at the Catholic Worker that the purpose of this legislation would be only one thing
-- intimidation and the suppression of dissent by the young. The September issue of The Catholic Worker suggested it was time for us to burn our draft cards.
A small group of us gathered to plan a draft card burning. David Miller was one of us. But David was asked to speak at a rally in mid-October. He decided to burn his draft card at the rally rather than in a group. The moment David ignited his card, something happened that none of us had experienced before. There was a hush -- hecklers, some 200 counter-demonstrators, fell silent and so did the supporters.
Our group met at the Federal Court House in Manhattan, with Dorothy Day and A.J. Muste as supporters, to burn our cards. We had notified the press but so many arrived that they were crowding and jostling Dorothy and A.J. and we feared they would be hurt, as they were getting on in years, so we called the demonstration off, much to the dismay of the press. Members of the press encouraged us to try again and gave us hints on how to organize it better next time.
On November 6, 1965, we gathered about 2,500 people in Union Square with a large number of police separating us from a smaller number of counter-demonstrators. The ceremony was dignified. Dorothy Day and A.J. Muste spoke, identifying with our "crime". Then Gordon Christianson, the chairman of the Committee for Nonviolent Action and a World War II combat veteran, struck a flame on his lighter and we submitted our cards to it. At that moment a stream of fluid arched toward us. A counter-demonstrator had smuggled a fire extinguisher into Union Square. Our cards were drenched, but like Elijah's sacrifice, they ignited and burned.
We were not immediately arrested but the police escorted us out of the square for our own protection. The counter-demonstrators were shouting, "Burn yourselves, not your draft cards!" I have always felt that this extreme public reaction was due to the fact that we had violated the civil religion of this country by desecrating one of its sacraments.
We chose a bench trial rather than a jury trial. We conceded the prosecution's case, even submitting a videotape taken of the action by a supporter, and made a defense under the First Amendment to the Constitution, arguing that the burning of draft cards in such a context as ours was an act of symbolic speech. The trial judge found us guilty and sentenced us to six months in federal prison.
By the time I got to serve my sentence, public support of the war in Viet Nam had soured. I watched the 1968 Democratic Convention on the prison T.V. in a Mafia dorm. The gangsters sided with the riot police. "Kill the [expletive deleted] hippies!" But they were good to me. It was a mark of respect. I hated every moment I spent behind bars, but it was a small price to pay.
Roger LaPorte
Just days after the group draft card burning, a Catholic Worker volunteer, Roger LaPorte, set himself afire at the United Nations in protest against the war. Minutes later, just before dawn, a reporter friend telephoned me to tell me what had happened. I waited a couple of hours to telephone Dorothy Day. She already knew. She commanded that Chris Kearns go immediately to the Catholic Worker headquarters on Chrystie Street and shoo any reporters away. She insisted that no one was to speak to the media, because she sensed, as I did too, that this was a crisis, not just for Roger, his family and his friends, but for our movement too. The danger was "copy cats", that others identified with the Catholic Worker would follow Roger's lead. Others in the larger peace movement communicated this same fear to us.
I shared an office with Jim Forest, for the Catholic Peace Fellowship, in a warren of peace offices that included the War Resisters League, A.J. Muste's office, the Student Peace Union, and CNVA. It was on the top floor of the 5 Beekman Street building, near City Hall, one floor above the last elevator stop.
Dorothy asked me to write a statement we could offer the press. By about ten a.m. I had something to read for her approval. She allowed me to speak to the media in a way, it was hoped, that would honor Roger's sacrifice, but steer people to other forms of protest and penance for our nation's crimes. Murray Kempton, now considered the dean of American journalists, dropped in as I was writing the statement for the press. I asked him to read it for me and tell me if it was all right. He encouraged me.
News crews came from all the media, T.V. equipment with heavy cables and huge cameras dragged up the narrow final staircase of 5 Beekman, to interview me, all day. Every now and then I had to turn aside and weep a little. Murray stayed with me all the while, until mid-afternoon. At about closing time, 5 p.m., I got a call from CBC in Montreal. During the interview, the CBC reporter said the lights just went out. The lights had just gone out in New York City too. It was the Great Black-Out, as Roger lay dying.
Jim Forest and I walked home in a city illumined only by automobile headlights. We stopped at the Worker headquarters on the way. It was crammed. Some volunteers and friends came home with us, as well as a couple of Jesuits from our local Nativity parish. We had a little beer, and lots of quiet talk. I learned, years later, that there were at least two young people there who might have taken Roger's lead. They did not. No one did. But the newspapers were full of stories, and headlines, about "The Human Burning Torch" at the U.N. Fr. Dan Berrigan said Mass for Roger, and us, at Nativity, a miracle of healing.
The Catholic Worker came through the Viet Nam period with respect regained due, without a doubt, to its constancy in its chosen work of direct service to the poorest of the poor and a sharing of their lives in communities of voluntary poverty, but especially to its unwavering, uncompromised adherence to the principles of nonviolence. I have no doubt but that this accounts for the recognition the American bishops have given the tradition of Christian nonviolence and pacifism in their 1983 Peace Pastoral, in which they cite as exemplars of nonviolence Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dorothy Day. It's not enough to be "right." Somehow the lessons learned have to be institutionalized, or they evanesce, disappear. We made a start.
Tom Cornell, now retired, was the editor of the Catholic Worker newspaper for many years. He has devoted his life to the Catholic Worker and peace and lives at the Peter Maurin Farm in New York with his wife, Monica. They have two children and one grandchild, with another on the way. Tom is a co-editor of A Penny a Copy: Readings from The Catholic Worker with Robert Ellsberg and Jim Forest (Orbis, 1995.)
Other articles by Tom Cornell on the Web: