General

On May 1, 1933, the first issue of The Catholic Worker went on sale in Manhattan’s Union Square for a penny a copy.

Dorothy Day, from that issue:

It’s time there was a Catholic paper printed for the unemployed.

The fundamental aim of most radical sheets is the conversion of its readers to radicalism and atheism.

Is it not possible to be radical and not atheist?

Is it not possible to protest, to expose, to complain, to point out abuses and demand reforms without desiring the overthrow of religion?

In an attempt to popularize and make known the encyclicals of the Popes in regard to social justice and the program put forth by the Church for the “reconstruction of the social order,” this news sheet, The Catholic Worker, is started.

[…]

This first number of The Catholic Worker was planned, written and edited in the kitchen of a tenement on Fifteenth Street, on subway platforms, on the “L,” the ferry. There is no editorial office, no overhead in the way of telephone or electricity, no salaries paid.

The money for the printing of the first issue was raised by begging small contributions from friends. A colored priest in Newark sent us ten dollars and the prayers of his congregation. A colored sister in New Jersey, garbed also in holy poverty, sent us a dollar. Another kindly and generous friend sent twenty-five. The rest of it the editors squeezed out of their own earnings, and at that they were using money necessary to pay milk bills, gas bills, electric light bills.

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Source: Catholic Worker e-mail list, sent by Tamar’s daughter Martha.

Please RSVP for the 2008 Catholic Worker gathering by February 14.

We’re trying to get a sense of how many people will be coming to Worcester, Massachusetts, for the event.

To RSVP, e-mail theresecw@gmail.com or call 508.753.3588.

More information about the gathering is here.

At the dawn of the First World War, New Zealand surveyed its draft-age men and asked if they would be willing to fight. One out of six said they would not. When it came down to a choice between joining the army and going to prison, many changed their minds, but many others spent the war in detention. Of those imprisoned, fourteen were deported to Europe, three of them brothers: John, Archibald, and Sandy Baxter.
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On October 9, the British rock band Radiohead shook up the music industry by offering its new album, “In Rainbows,” online for whatever fans wanted to pay. The next morning, The Boston Globe reported not only that tens of thousands of CDs had been downloaded under the risky plan, but that the album was pretty good to boot. On the BBC news, lan Youngs admitted: “I paid precisely £0.00 – for research purposes, just to see if it could be done. And it could – the ordering process skipped the credit card section and went straight to the confirmation screen. But soon my conscience was nagging me to be a bit more equitable and give them a fair price . . . . I decided to pay £9.82 because that was the average price paid for a CD in the UK in 2006.”

My son Patrick and I went online that night and paid £3.45 (about $6). We were listening to the album less than nine minutes later.

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I’m pleased to say that the Catholic Peace Fellowship is launching a new web project, We Go on Record: An Online Community of Conscience.

The site is both a database of conscientious objector statements from people who were in the military, and a place for people who object to war to publish their own statements of conscience. Some civilians publish CO statements so that if there is ever a draft, they will be able to establish that they’ve opposed war for some time, which is supposed to make it easier for the military to decide that you are, in fact, a conscientious objector to war.

You can send suggestions and bug reports to me at pieandcoffee@gmail.com. More CO statements will be added in the next few days.

Related:

• Archibald Baxter
• Catholic Peace Fellowshop conference podcast: Joshua Casteel, Jonathan Lace, Daniel Baker
• Warcast #4: Conscientious objection, Marinus, and the sword
• Memories of Joseph Zarrella

A Dark Day for the Church in the United States

by Robert Waldrop, Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House

Comes now the news that the Archbishop for Military Services, the Most Reverend Edwin O’Brien, has been appointed as the new Archbishop of Baltimore.

Is this a message from Rome to the Catholic peace movement: “Go to hell”?

O’Brien has been an key supporter of the unjust war on the people of Iraq from the beginning. He criticized Bishop Botean for his courageous statement that participation in the war on the people of Iraq was the moral equivalent of willing participation in an abortion.

As the Archbishop for Military Services, O’Brien preached a gospel of moral laxism and relativism, claiming that we should “trust” our leaders instead of judging the war by the criteria of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He gave tacit ecclesiastical permission for Catholic members of the armed forces to participate in a manifestly unjust war. To this day, he continues to call for a “responsible transition” and thus turns his back on the suffering people of Iraq, condemning them to more death, more suffering, more murder.

In his Memorial Day message this year (2007), Archbishop O’Brien says that “at no time has the Holy See or the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops cast doubt on the motives of our national leadership in the Executive or Congressional branches.” This is undoubtedly true, but should we trust the opinions of our bishops on issues of such consequence, given the extent that they themselves have embraced the culture of death? Ask the victims of the clergy sexual abuse crisis about the “judgement” of the U.S. Catholic bishops. Plenty of other people have rightfully questioned the motives of President Bush and the members of Congress who voted for this unjust war. But those pro-life opinions don’t count to the Archbishop of Baltimore.

In any event, hundreds of thousands of people are dead. Their blood is upon Archbishop O’Brien and upon all the other bishops who preached a false gospel of moral laxism and relativism and thus gave tacit permission to wage this unjust war. We should remember that unjust war is always and in every circumstance an objective evil.

The Catholic members of the Armed Forces of the United States of America, who are brave and generous in offering their lives in service to their country, deserved better than to be sold down the river with honeyed words of religious deceit from their own archbishop.

Now he has been seated upon the cathedra of the “mother church” of this country.

What a dark and dismal day this is for the Church in the United States.

“The road to hell is paved with the bones of priests and lined with the skulls of bishops.” St. John Chrysostom, 4th Century AD

“Meanwhile I saw wicked men approach and enter; and as they left the sacred place, they were praised in the city for what they had done. This also is vanity. Because the sentence against evildoers is not promptly executed, therefore the hearts of men are filled with the desire to commit evil – because the sinner does evil a hundred times and survives. Though indeed I know that it shall be well with those who fear God, for their reverence toward him; and that it shall not be well with the wicked man, and he shall not prolong his shadowy days, for his lack of reverence toward God. This is a vanity which occurs on earth: there are just men treated as though they had done evil and wicked men treated as though they had done justly. This, too, I say is vanity.” Ecclesiastes 8:10-14.

Robert Waldrop

Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House in Oklahoma City

www.justpeace.org/onpilgrimage.htm

Happy Fourth of July to Stateside readers.

I am glad that Alan Johnston is now released. I hope and pray that Íngrid Betancourt will also be freed soon.

Tony Blair has recently stepped down as the Prime Minister of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government. There is rumour that he might convert to Catholicism from the Church of England. Anyway, now he will become the envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East. In this connection, it will be instructive to read the end-of-mission report of a former envoy, Álvaro de Soto (thanks to Professor Hugh Robert MacMillan for this).

Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, is a son of the Manse in the Church of Scotland. Today, at Prime Minister’s Questions, he stated that he would like to “be in a position finance interfaith groups in every community” around here. (Official reports in the Hansard will be digested tomorrow.)

On last night’s Jeopardy!, the $1600 answer in the category “Rage Against the Machine” (all about people raging against machines, not about the band) was:

In a 1980 antiwar protest, these priest brothers, Daniel & Philip, attacked missile warheads at a G.E. plant.

Contestant Roy, a building inspector from Rancho Cucamonga, California, correctly, albeit ungrammatically, questioned, “What is Berrigan?”

Howdy folks. This Sunday, April 29, I’ll be participating in the Peninsula Harbor CROP Walk. This is a 10-km walk around the streets of fabulous San Pedro, California to raise funds for Church World Service’s interfaith efforts to fight world and local hunger. My sister is a high school teacher and is heading a team of some of her students called Team Jester (after the St. Joseph’s HS mascot). You can find out more about Church World Service here.

Donation is easy! Just follow this link and you will be taken to my personal donation page where you can make a secure online credit card donation. Donations of any amount are appreciated.

I used to do the Long Beach CROP Walk every year when I was a little kid and it was always a happy event.