{"id":13472,"date":"2025-07-03T14:00:21","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T20:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.library.depaul.press\/full-text\/?p=13472"},"modified":"2025-07-03T14:41:44","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T20:41:44","slug":"historical-catholic-resistance-to-war-the-berrigan-collections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.library.depaul.press\/full-text\/2025\/07\/03\/historical-catholic-resistance-to-war-the-berrigan-collections\/","title":{"rendered":"Historical Catholic Resistance to War: The Berrigan Collections"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of her Ellin M. Kelly internship within DePaul’s Special Collections and Archives, intern Kiara Ruiz reflects on her time spent “getting to know” the Berrigan brothers via their papers and personal library. The collections of Daniel Berrigan, Jerome Berrigan, and Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister represent only a portion of Special Collections and Archives’ collections on peace activism and the Catholic left.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cJesus taught us how 2 (love and how 2) die. He did not teach us how 2 kill.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0-Daniel Berrigan\u2019s Journal<\/strong><\/p>\n

Daniel and Philip Berrigan came from a family of six born in Two Harbors, Minnesota. Their Father, Thomas Berrigan, was a radical socialist and labor organizer. Their mother, Frida Fromhardt, was a German immigrant and devout Catholic. The two brothers were both ordained as Catholic priests, although Philip would later be excommunicated from the church due to his marriage to former nun and social activist Elizabeth McAlister. Their Catholic identity fueled their peace activism as they utilized teachings from the Bible to help organize their efforts. Similar to St. Vincent de Paul, the Berrigan brothers were able to politically and socially organize people based on the teachings of the bible.<\/p>\n

The two brothers were considered to have strong morals, but this did not preclude them from breaking the laws of the United States to follow their moral compass. The brothers participated in entirely non-violent activism that resulted in them serving time in prison. The Catonsville Nine was a group of Catholic social activists that participated in a protest on May 17, 1968, in a suburb of Baltimore. The Nine went to a Selective Service office in Catonsville, grabbed 378 draft records from the office, took them out to the parking lot, and burned them with homemade napalm. They used the napalm to represent the atrocities that the United States government was committing on the civilians of Vietnam. While the files were burning, they recited the Lord\u2019s Prayer. After this protest Daniel Berrigan was sentenced to three years in prison and his brother was sentenced to three and a half years.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The brothers also participated in the Plowshares Eight protest which resulted in them spending time in prison. The name of this protest is derived from the Bible, Isaiah 2:4, \u201cThey shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore\u201d.\u00a0 Eight protesters entered the General Electric Nuclear Missile Facility and poured vials of their own blood on blueprints and other documents. They also hammered on nose cones that would interfere with the missile\u2019s guidance system, effectively making the missiles inoperable.<\/p>\n

The Berrigan brothers were steadfast in their commitment to advocate against war. In Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary<\/em>, Philip Berrigan wrote \u201cWhen a people arbitrarily decides that this planet and its riches are to be divided unequally among equals, and that the only criterion for the division is the amount of naked power at its disposal, diplomacy tend to be essentially military, truth tends to be fiction, and the world tends to become a zoo without the benefit of cages. And war tends to be the ultimate rationality, because reason has been bankrupted of human alternatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As part of the Vincentian mission SPCA maintains archives with strong themes of anti-war, social justice, the Catholic Left and community activism. Additionally, SPCA holds a selection of books from the Berrigan Family\u2019s personal library that reflect Vincentian values. DePaul also recognizes the Berrigan\u2019s commitment to social activism annually with the Berrigan-McAlister award. This award is given to a person or organization that exemplifies the practice of active Christian nonviolence.\u00a0 To find out more about the Berrigan family you can research the Daniel Berrigan Papers<\/a>, Jerome Berrigan Papers<\/a>, and the Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister Papers<\/a>. To do more research on Peace activism you can also look at the Elmer Maas Plowshares Collection<\/a>, Murray Polner Collection<\/a>, and Collection on Peace Activism<\/a> in Special Collections and Archives!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Citations:<\/p>\n

Berrigan, Philip, and Vincent McGee. Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary<\/em>. [1st ed.]., Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.<\/p>\n

Murray Polner papers, [Box 1, Folder Influence on the Church (news clippings)], Special Collections and Archives, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois.<\/p>\n

Murray Polner papers, [Box 3, Folder Harrisburg FBI file 1 of 3], Special Collections and Archives, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois.<\/p>\n

Polner, Murray, and Jim O\u2019Grady. Disarmed and Dangerous\u202f: The Radical Lives and Times of Daniel and Philip Berrigan<\/em>. Pbk. ed., Westview Press, 1998.<\/p>\n

Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister papers, [Box 7, Folder 3], Special Collections and Archives, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois.<\/p>\n

Tropea, Joe, et al. Hit and Stay\u202f: A History of Faith and Resistance<\/em>. Brink Vision, 2014.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of her Ellin M. Kelly internship within DePaul’s Special Collections and Archives, intern Kiara Ruiz reflects on her time spent “getting to know” the Berrigan brothers via their papers and personal library. The collections of Daniel Berrigan, Jerome Berrigan, and Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister represent only a portion of Special Collections and <\/p>\n

continue reading<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":13381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-special-collections-and-archives"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8GMS7-3vi","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/news.library.depaul.press\/full-text\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/06\/Screenshot-2025-06-05-111306.jpg?fit=556%2C320&ssl=1&wsr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.library.depaul.press\/full-text\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.library.depaul.press\/full-text\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.library.depaul.press\/full-text\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.library.depaul.press\/full-text\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.library.depaul.press\/full-text\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13472"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/news.library.depaul.press\/full-text\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13507,"href":"https:\/\/news.library.depaul.press\/full-text\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13472\/revisions\/13507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.library.depaul.press\/full-text\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.library.depaul.press\/full-text\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.library.depaul.press\/full-text\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.library.depaul.press\/full-text\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}