Friday, May 9, 2025

It is the 9th of May 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

In years of doing this program, looking at dates and almanacs and obituaries, I have found that there are certain characters I have pushed aside and passed over for various reasons.  

As you may know, on this show, we are not gatekeeping. Rather, it is my goal to introduce you to the whole panoply of figures from the Christian church that you might consider orthodox or heterodox. I’ll let you draw the line where you will. But, for good or ill, the characters on this show have been inspired by the Christian faith to change the world—either in preaching, writing, or activism.

And if you are famous enough to make it onto the almanac (or remembered by history in general) you are likely going to have both ardent fans and critics. And, the closer we are to someone's life, the more likely we are to find critics with certain biases that are sometimes smoothed out over time. Martin Luther King Jr, for instance, was not universally popular in his day, but over time, many have been able to separate particular political or social concerns from the heart of what he was teaching and preaching (more on him on this weekend’s show as we look at popular modern sermons and speeches).

All of this is an introduction to one of the most controversial and radical American Catholics of the 20th century. One so famous that he would be interviewed by Dick Cavett, put on the cover of Time magazine and immortalized in Paul Simon’s “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” in the line “now the radical priest come to get me released and we were all on the cover of Newsweek”- that “radical priest” was none other than Daniel Berrigan born on this, the 9th of May in 1921 in Virginia Minnesota.

He was the fourth of six sons, born with bad ankles he helped his mother around the house instead of on the farm with his brothers. By the time he graduated high school he had decided to join the Jesuits and received a bachelors from a Jesuit seminary and a masters from Woodstock College in Baltimore before being ordained in 1952.

He would come to fame, and infamy, in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., amidst the social unrest and riots surrounding the Vietnam War. Nine Catholic activists, led by Daniel and his brother Phillip, broke into a building used by the draft board in Catonsville, Maryland. They removed the draft records, took them to the parking lot, and set them on fire with homemade napalm. Daniel handed out a printed response for those media gathered: “Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, for the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.”

He and the others would be found guilty of the offense to which they were charged and go underground before being put in jail. Upon being released, he would keep up his nonviolent but aggressive approach to peace. As part of the “plowshares” movement, he and others would go to the General Electric headquarters in Pennsylvania, where they would hammer on unarmed nuclear weapons. They were arrested and again, in 1981, with the pointedness of a prophet, Berrigan said in his trial transcripts:

“The only message I have to the world is: We are not allowed to kill innocent people. We are not allowed to be complicit in murder. We are not allowed to be silent while preparations for mass murder proceed in our name, with our money, secretly … It’s terrible for me to live in a time where I have nothing to say to human beings except, “Stop killing.” There are other beautiful things that I would love to be saying to people. There are other projects I could be very helpful at. And I can’t do them. I cannot.”

He would spend the rest of his life as an agitator for peace, as a burr in the saddle of those who might expect no resistance to what he would call “war mongering” and arguing against the Catholic doctrine of “just war” theory (he was a pacifist who saw that as doing philosophical gymnastics against the clear call to peace in the New Testament).

Daniel Berrigan- a radical priest indeed, made up part of a core of radical Catholics, including Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, as 20th-century agitators for peace and equality.  He would write sermons, poetry, and prose until his death in 2016. Born on the 9th of May in 1921, he was 94 years old.

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and the familiar Psalm 23: 

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
    He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,
    he refreshes my soul.


He guides me along the right paths

    for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk

    through the darkest valley,


I will fear no evil,

    for you are with me;


your rod and your staff,

    they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me

    in the presence of my enemies.


You anoint my head with oil;

    my cup overflows.

Surely your goodness and love will follow me

    all the days of my life,


and I will dwell in the house of the Lord

    forever.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 9th of May 2025 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man taking his time, but he doesn’t know where… goodbye to Rosie, the queen of Corona- he is Christopher Gillespie down by the Schoolyard. 

The show is written and read by a man who loves art, Picasso, and Garfunkel. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.