That was the question posed on Oct. 23 at “Keep Fracturing the Good Order: Daniel Berrigan, the Long Haul, and the Big Heart,” a lecture that celebrated the life of Daniel Berrigan, S.J., and advised on how to survive peacefully in today’s world.

Speaker Anna J. Brown, Ph.D., of St. Peter’s University in Jersey City, New Jersey, was a friend and colleague of Father Berrigan. She met him through the Kairos Community, a peace community Father Berrigan started in the late 1970s. She described him as a “human being who was deep in prayer, faith, and soul.”

“Dan spent his life fiercely committed to nonviolence, being genuinely loving to all and centered in faith and community,” said Brown. “He constantly worked for peace in the world.”

Father Berrigan is remembered as “sometimes an anarchist, always a pacifist” who spent his life protesting against violence and “American military imperialism.” As one of the Catonsville Nine Catholic activists, he became the first priest to be on the FBI’s most-wanted list, for burning military draft files. With others, he became a symbol of the anti-war movement during the United States’ involvement in Vietnam.

Father Berrigan served as Fordham’s poet-in-residence from 2000 until his death in April of this year, and often spoke to classes, in conjunction with the Peace and Justice Studies Program. He was a peace activist until his death.

“He participated in the Occupy Wall Street Movement when he was 90 years old,” said Brown. “He was so dedicated to peace and fairness, he gave everything he physically could.”

The lecture focused on key events, such as climate change, weapons dealing, war, and mass migration, that hamper the quest for peace. Brown invited those in attendance to join “the tribe of big hearted people” who act as bearers of light for the world.

“We, like Dan, must be the opposite of hyper-individualism,” said Brown. “We must root ourselves in a community that pulsates love and radiates life.”

The event marked the Tenth Annual Julio Burunat, Ph.D., Memorial Lecture. Burunat, a Fordham alumnus who received doctoral degrees in both philosophy and theology from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, lived Murray Weigel Hall on the Rose Hill campus as a Jesuit scholastic. Theology professor J. Patrick Hornbeck II, D.Phil., said the series hosts talks that “advance conversations about theology and religion that are both appreciative and critical.”

“We consider sharing these conversations with the broader world an obligation,” said Hornbeck. “We feel honored to extend these experiences to people who otherwise would not be able to have them.”

–Mary Awad

Father Berrigan, Fordham’s poet-in-residence since 2000, died at the Jesuit residence Murray-Weigel Hall on April 30 at age 94. He was an accomplished poet and co-founder, along with his brother Philip, of the Plowshares Movement, an anti-nuclear and Christian pacifist group.

“Dan Berrigan was a giant among us. Whatever one makes of his methods, his lifelong pursuit of peace and justice was both heartfelt and critically important,” said Joseph M. McShane, SJ, president of Fordham.

“He belongs not just to the Jesuits, but to a significant period in American history. His activism came from a poet’s heart—and indeed he was always a highly accomplished poet, a poet who drew his inspiration from the Prophets and the Gospel. His fluency never failed him, and we were blessed to have him for so long as Fordham’s poet-in-residence.”

The Plowshares group was active throughout the 1960s and 70s, and gained notoriety in 1968 when the Berrigans and seven others used homemade napalm to burn draft files in the parking lot of a U.S. Selective Service Office in Catonsville, Maryland, in protest of the Vietnam War. Father Berrigan was convicted of destroying government property and received a three-year sentence in federal prison.

In 1980, the Berrigans and six others broke into a General Electric nuclear facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, damaged nuclear warhead nose cones, and poured blood on documents in the facility. Their arrest and the legal battles that followed were chronicled in the 1982 film In The King of Prussia.

From 1970 to 1995, Father Berrigan spent an estimated seven years in prison for his peace activism, which included protests against the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In June 2012, he lent his support to the Occupy Wall Street movement with a visit to Zuccotti Park.

Father Berrigan was born in Virginia, Minnesota, in 1921, and entered into the Society of Jesus directly out of high school in 1939. He was ordained in 1952.

In addition to his activism, Father Berrigan was lauded for his writing. His first poem appeared in America Magazine in 1942 while he was a student at the Jesuit seminary St. Andrew-on-Hudson. His first book of poetry, Time Without Number, (The MacMillon Company, 1953), won the Lamont Poetry Prize in 1957. In all, he wrote more than 50 books and various articles and commentaries.

At the request of Father McShane, in 2006 Father Berrigan penned Ordina questo amore, O tu che m’ami: Recitative for Four Voices; Ignatius, Francis Xavier, Peter Faber and Chorus, timed for the Jesuit Jubilee Year. The 2007 performance piece, which was was set to music by  composer Elizabeth Swados, celebrated the genesis of the Society of Jesus, which was founded in 1541 by St. Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier and Peter Faber.

Robin Andersen, PhD, professor of communications and former head of Fordham’s peace and justice studies program, said Father Berrigan ran seminars for Fordham faculty on how to teach peace, and also taught courses for students such as Poems by Poets in Torment.

She said that he provided great comfort to students whose faith in peace was shaken by the events of 9/11.

“There were calls to bomb Afghanistan, and I remember one of his students asked him, ‘How can you still have a peace attitude after this?’ Father Berrigan told him ‘Well you know, being a peace activist between wars is kind of like being a vegetarian between meals,’” Andersen recalled.

His writing and activism occasionally intersected, as in The Dark Night of Resistance (Doubleday & Company, 1971), which he wrote in 1970 while he was in hiding from the FBI on federal charges.

In interviews, Father Berrigan credited Dorothy Day with piquing his initial interest in antiwar activism. He said, while he was teaching at Brooklyn Preparatory School, Day had sent a student pacifist to him who sought instruction in the Catholic faith and peace. The musings of John Cuthbert Ford, S.J. on the morality of saturation bombing—such as the firebombing of Dresden in World War II—further convinced him to oppose war.

In a 2012 interview for Faith, Resistance, and the Future: Daniel Berrigan’s Challenge to Catholic Social Thought (Fordham University Press 2012), Father Berrigan was asked to reflect on how things had changed in the 44 years since his arrest for the Catonsville event.

“The mass[es]of our people are victimized by politics and by the media,” Father Berrigan wrote. “We are called to be sensible and realistic about the state of our world without being completely absorbed into it, so that we have nothing to say about it, nothing to do about it.”

“I think, if we stop with just the analysis of how bad things are, we miss the point of the Gospel, which is saying to us in various ways [and]in all sorts of ways what is to be done.

“One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the U.S. around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better.”

The wake and funeral arrangements for Father Berrigan are as follows:
Thursday, May 5:
2-5 pm and 7-9 pm, Wake
Church of St Francis Xavier
46 W. 16th St., New York, NY
Friday, May 6:
7:30 am, Peace Witness and March to Xavier. Assemble at Mary House, 55 East Third St, New York NY
Mass at 10 am
Church of St Francis Xavier, 46 W. 16th St., New York, NY

Donations in his memory may be made to the Fr. Daniel Berrigan, SJ Fund for Social Ministries, Jesuits USA Northeast Province at sjnen.org/donate. The Province has also has created a memorial Peacemaking Fund, which will directly support peacemaking efforts at a wide range of Jesuit works along the entire eastern United States.

When Joseph McShane, S.J., president of Fordham University, commissioned Daniel Berrigan, S.J., to write about the three founders of the Jesuit Order, he asked for three poems—one on St. Ignatius Loyola, one on Francis Xavier and one on Peter Faber. Sensing a unique opportunity, Father Berrigan asked to shape the work into a performance piece, and Father McShane readily accepted.

The result was “Ordina questo amore, O tu che m’ami: Recitative With Four Voices: Ignatius, Francis Xavier, Peter Faber and Chorus,” which had its premiere on Dec. 10 at the University Church on the Rose Hill campus. The dramatic reading was directed by George Drance, S.J, artist-in-residence in the Department of Theatre and Visual Arts, performed by University students and featured an original musical score written by Elizabeth Swados, a five-time Tony Award nominee. An enthusiastic audience gave Father Berrigan, a dedicated peace activist, and University poet-in-residence, a standing ovation.

“Father Berrigan is the most accomplished Jesuit poet of our time, and everyone who was here had a sense that we had a historic moment,” said Father McShane. “I am confident that the piece will be one of the most important cultural artifacts to have been prepared for the [Jubilee] celebration.”

The performance poem recalls the genesis of the Society of Jesus, which was founded in 1541 by the three religious figures and which was celebrated in 2006, the Jesuit Jubilee Year. The three men faced skepticism, suspicion and persecution by the theologians of the day, eventually triumphing in their mission to form the Jesuits. In drawing from the tradition of the Greek classics, the poem enlisted a trio of women to portray Father Berrigan’s “chorus,” a voice that both compliments and counterbalances the dramatic transformations of the three main voices—Inigo (Jacob Martin), Francis Xavier (Ian Quinlan) and Pedro (Vincent Wagner).

“I wanted a feminine counter—a brake—to these three powerful men,” said Father Berrigan, “I wanted someone to show some skepticism—as the three women do—before embracing the trio’s beliefs.”

In directing, Father Drance said he conceived of the chorus as a bridge between centuries, a body whose self-discovery mirrors that of the founding Jesuits. The chorus consists of three contemporary students (Jessica DiGiovanni, Amber Hurst-Martin and Jayne Deely) who are college roommates (the founding Jesuits, “Inigo,” “Xavier” and “Pedro” were also roommates at the University of Paris). The women encounter the faith of the Jesuits for the first time in their studies, and, at first, don’t quite get it. They embody three voices: one that questions, one that mocks and one that affirms the teachings of the impassioned young men. At one point, they hastily scribble “I © Inigo,” “I © Pedro” on a blackboard, echoing their skepticism, irreverence and lack of faith.

“Their contemporary sensibility doesn’t understand the kenotic aspect of the vows that these three men took,” Father Drance said. (Kensois is the concept of self-emptying of one’s will and becoming fully receptive to God’s will.)

The Recitative also places special emphasis on the character of Pedro—Peter Faber—whose personal journey as a Jesuit was marked with self-doubt. Faber was the only one of the three men not canonized.

“Peter Faber lives in the shadow of the others,” Father Berrigan said. “He was not a mystic, he was a gentle man in the background, who spoke openly of his own sense of being below the heroic par. That was very affecting to me.”

“These men are… weren’t always welcomed,” Father Drance said. “We [the Jesuit order]were suspect, we were accused, we were maligned. We tried to echo in the sounds what goes on in a person full of self-doubt, coming from these kinds of experiences.”

The Recitative describes the genesis of the Order as “this trio, rhythm of life sprung free, intricate, brute beauty and valor and act . . . this godlike glance.” “Capturing the dramatic moment of the Society’s creation, Father Berrigan said, was “very specific, and dramatic, and personal to me.”

“They were heroic. There are heroic people today, too, all over the map, keeping things from being even more lethal and more final,” Father Berrigan said. “These three men recognized there is a bridge between the love of one another and God’s love for us, that asks for no separation. As we are loved, so let us love one another.”

Recitative With Four Voices will be performed again on the Lincoln Center campus on Feb. 1. Plans are underway for Fordham University Press to publish the poem.
J
oan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J., adjunct associate professor of theology at Fordham, has written a series of essays in celebration of the Jesuit Jubilee, available at FORDHAM magazine online:
www.fordham.edu/ignatianjubilee

– Janet Sassi

The performance is part of Ignatian Awareness Week, a series of events and celebrations on the Lincoln Center campus that promote the rich heritage of the Jesuits. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham University, commissioned Father Berrigan to write the recitative to commemorate the 2006 Jesuit Jubilee year; the poem had its premiere Dec. 10 at the University Church on the Rose Hill campus.

“Father Berrigan is the most accomplished Jesuit poet of our time,” said Father McShane. “I am confident that this poetic tribute to Saint Ignatius, Saint Francis Xavier and Blessed Peter Faber will long be remembered as the most significant artistic achievement of the Ignatian Year.”

The poem will be performed by six Fordham students and directed by George Drance, S.J., artist-in-residence in the Department of Theatre and Visual Arts. The original musical score was composed by Elizabeth Swados, a five-time Tony nominee who has written extensively for theater, television and film.

Father Berrigan has previously published 15 volumes of poetry. His first book of poems, Time Without Number (MacMillan, 1957) was nominated for the National Book Award.

– Janet Sassi

“This has been magnificent,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “Father Berrigan is the most accomplished Jesuit poet of our time, and everyone who was here had a sense that we had a historic moment. I am confident that this poetic tribute to Saint Ignatius, Saint Francis Xavier and Blessed Peter Faber will long be remembered as the most significant artistic achievement of the Ignatian Year.”

The poem was performed by six Fordham students and directed by George Drance, S.J., artist-in-residence in the Department of Theatre and Visual Arts. The original musical score was composed by Elizabeth Swados, a five-time Tony Award nominee who has written extensively for theater, television and film.

Father Berrigan received a standing ovation. Father Drance said the audience reponse “speaks to the power of these mysterious and beautiful words that you have given us today. The poem offers a beautiful reflection of the struggles for integrity against all odds and sings the praises of these three men.”

The original work was commissioned by Father McShane, who said that plans are underway to have it published. Father Berrigan has previously published 15 volumes of poetry. His first book of poems, Time Without Number (MacMillan, 1957), won the Lamont Poetry Award and was nominated for the National Book Award.

– Janet Sassi

“Fordham is fortunate to be able to celebrate the conclusion of the Ignatian Anniversary Year with the world premiere of a major work by Daniel Berrigan, S.J.,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “Since Father Berrigan is the most accomplished Jesuit poet of our time, I am confident that this poetic tribute to Saint Ignatius, Saint Francis Xavier and Blessed Peter Faber will long be remembered as the most significant artistic achievement of the Ignatian Year.”

Father Berrigan has combined his life as an outspoken, internationally renowned peace activist with a career as a teacher and prolific poet. He has published 15 volumes of poetry and his first book of poems,Time Without Number (MacMillan, 1957), won the prestigious Lamont Poetry Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was nominated for the National Book Award. In 1989, Father Berrigan received the Pax Christi USA Pope Paul VI Teacher of Peace Award for outstanding work in promoting the culture of peace and non-violence. His new poem commemorates three historic events in the Jesuit community: the 500th anniversary of the births of St. Francis Xavier and the Blessed Peter Faber, and the 450th anniversary of the death of St. Ignatius Loyola.

The dramatic production of Father Berrigan’s poem will be produced, directed, and acted by George Drance, S.J., artist-in-residence, Department of Theatre and Visual Arts.

– Janet Sassi