Widen the Prison Gates: Writing from Jails, April 1970 - December 1972

Phillip Berrigan, a Catholic priest at the time of the "Catonsville Nine" incident in which Berrigan and his brother (who remained in the priesthood his entire life) broke into a Vietnam draft board, passed out copies of the New Testament, and set 74 draft files on fire in an act of civil disobedience. It's unfortunate that this very public act is all that is remembered about Berrigan by the average Catholic. He was a man who knew war intimately, having served in WWII during the bloodiest part of the Battle of the Bulge. The racism he experienced in boot camp in the Deep South would inform the rest of his work, in or out of prison. For the rest of his life he would be dead set against any war for any reason. Along with his brother and monk Thomas Merton he founded the Interfaith coalition against war. He spent two years in Harlem working in pretty rough areas for the people there, sometimes with the aid of the National Catholic Workers' Movement. "Widen the Prison Gates" stands up to anything written by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and many of the Saints. A chronicle of his imprisonment following the Catonsville Nine, Berrigan writes of prison life with an eye like a spiritual laser beam. Some of the most ludicrous "activists" appraoch Berrigan as though they were on his level of commitment; a young man who had spent three years robbing pay phones insists that he was doing this because of his fury at Nixon's criminal war. "I just couldn't find any other way to protest!", he exclaims when questioned by Berrigan about his methods. A local Bishop arrives at the prison--apparently sympathetic to Phillip and his brother--and insists on shooting the breeze with them. After a sermon in which he tells the prisoners about the spirit of Christ and St. Maximillian Kolbe and how moved he has been by the Holy Spirit, Berrigan and his brother (fortunately imprisoned together) tell the Bishop that he should spend time with the prisoners who actually need to see him. "I don't have the time, he insists." In his diaries, Berrigan poses a most poignant question about this that all Catholics should be reminded of. "While I have no doubt that both Christ and Kolbe's spirit has moved the Bishop, my question would be: where has it moved him? To what action and to what purpose has the Holy Spirit moved him?" Frida Berrigan, Phillip's daughter (also a peace activist), recalls a man approaching her father at a restaurant in Baltimore in tears. "You saved my life," he said. Taken aback, Berrigan asked how that was possible. "You burnt my draft file", he replied. "I was all set to go." This book has the "holy focus" and poetic precision only a man of iron constitution and absolute faith could produce. Unbelievable.

Father Berrigan captured the attention of the nation through a series of anti-war protests in the mid-60's--most famously, burning draft files at Catonsville Maryland. But his history goes far beyond those headlines. He worked as a priest in the heart of Baltimore's black ghetto at the height of the civil rights movement, and continued his work with the poor and his anti-war resistance until he died in December, 2002.This is in many ways a follow-up to Berrigan's earlier diaries of a Revolutionary Priest. The entries in this volume begin after Father Berrigan was captured by the FBI (he was living underground, refusing to voluntarily begin serving what he considered an illegal sentence) and end with his release on parole. In between, he chronicles the tragi-comedy of Hoover's vendetta, in which Father Berrigan and 7 others were charged and tried for a wide-ranging conspiracy, the heart of which was an alleged plot to blow up the utility tunnels serving government buildings in D.C., and to kidnap Henry Kissenger. Along the way, he significantly alters his view of lawyers (at least some of them) and the positive role they can play in "movement" cases. He also marries Sister Liz McAllister--a nun.Despite the age of this book, Father Berrigan's message remains vital for our times. With war on Iraq looming, Berrigan's opposition to the use of violence to enforce America's privileged status in the world should be read by every thinking citizen. With the Catholic Church in the midst of self-destruction, Berrigan's conscientious opposition to the Church heirarchy rings truer than ever. How anyone still believes that it was Philip Berrigan and Liz McAllister were wrong in marrying, might ask which was more immoral: two people who were committed to the movement against war, poverty and violence and to each other, or the Church heirarchy who were protecting child molesters at the same time they were condemning Berrigan?The world is worse off having lost such a powerful voice for peace and justice.