She took a special interest in the plight of 14 prisoners who were young teens when they were handed over by bounty hunters to US forces and imprisoned indefinitely, without charges, in Guantanamo. The treatment of one, in particular, moves her: "Mohamed el Gharani was fourteen when he was arrested in an October 2001 raid on a religious school in Pakistan. Transferred to Guanta'namo a few months later, he was subjected to routine abuse. According to his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, the Chad-born teenager had been singled out for mistreatment because he vocally objected to being called "n*gger." This should be a Code Red for America.
I feel a strong personal resonance in response to this narrative. Long before American secular Jews kidnapped me in childhood and turned me into a punchy little humanist, my young yearning soul belonged to the Jesuits of Boston and the brothers of LaSallette. The Catholic clergy were a force to be reckoned with in the Sixties, leading protests against the general carnage in Viet Nam, leading non-violent marches for social justice, and keeping the Church in crisis for nearly a decade with their flock rousing. Priests were being excommunicated left and right, only inflating their value to communities grateful for leaders willing to risk everything to sustain fragile human values.
One of the strongest memories of my childhood is an image of a virile and disconsolate LaSallette brother Chick, weeping on a bench in the summer camp kitchen after being told that a regular at the drop-in center he'd started had overdosed on heroin. And if all that her book represented was a reminiscence of those glory days of Catholic activism, and walking the gospel of Jesus, rather than merely talking the Talk, it would still be a worthwhile read for its refreshing splashes of honesty, plain-speak, historical insight, and genuine sense of jubilation.
What Berrigan demonstrates is that you needn't be part of a Marxist intellectual hierarchy, steeped in dialectics, in order to commit to action that will help change the world for the better; that most things that need changing require simple and direct actions, not nuances of ideology. And that you can raise your children to be "morally cheerful" (glad to help) and to "play a part in resolving, rather than exacerbating, the problems of the world." A lovely book, with a genuine smile.
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