Three Passionate People by Joe McVeigh

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These are three people I admire a great deal for their contribution to making the world we live in a better, a more humane place. They are now dead but their legacy remains. They all lived in the United States and became active in the movement for peace and civil rights which spread through America in the 1960s and 70s. Martin Luther King Jnr. was ordained a Lutheran minister; Daniel Berrigan was a Jesuit priest. Dorothy Day was a woman who was married and had a child before being married. I admire each one of them for their passion for justice and truth, their courage in taking on the oppressive political system and, above all, for their deep humanity and humility.

I did not know him personally but I admire Martin Luther King Jnr. because he was a brilliant and fearless leader in the United States during the civil rights campaign in the early 1960s. There is no doubt that he influenced many here to become involved in civil rights work. He was the voice of the voiceless in the USA leading his people, the African- Americans, out of slavery to the promised land of freedom, justice and equality. He urged human beings especially those called Christian to have ‘hard heads and soft hearts’. He inspired many others throughout the world to organise for justice and civil rights including women and men in the north of Ireland. He was assassinated in Memphis in 1968. Most of all I liked Martin Luther King because he was human with all the foibles and weaknesses that goes with being human. I liked him for his flaws and vulnerability and that he was not perfect.

The second man I admire is Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit priest and war protester, who was a dear friend for the last 30 years of his life. He died earlier this year (2016). I admired him because he was a visionary and a wonderful writer and poet and because, along with his brothers and friends, he was courageous in taking on the US government. He was totally opposed to nuclear weapons and to the US involvement in Vietnam and in wars all over the world. He took a stand and spent years in prison. But most of all I liked Daniel Berrigan because he was human with all the passion, warmth and weaknesses that go with being human. I liked him because he was not perfect and because he did not feign holiness.

The third person I admire is Dorothy Day (1897-1980). She was born into a poor family in Brooklyn but the father a sports journalist moved to Chicago. She was baptised in the Episcopal church but her interest in the church soon faded. In her youth in Chicago she spent much of her time with socialists, anarchists and Communists and considered herself one of them. She lived a bohemian lifestyle, frequenting the bars and at parties and in some unhappy love affairs. She became pregnant and had an abortion. The turning point in her life was when she moved to New York and became pregnant again. She had now become a Catholic. This time she kept the baby and when the father would not agree to having the baby baptised she left him and reared the child on her own. She founded the Catholic Worker house in New York for the homeless and the hungry.  She shocked her liberal friends when she joined the Catholic Church. Her friends saw the church as the bastion of conservative prelates who were allied with wealth and power. Dorothy did not try to deny these charges but she believed that, for all its sins, it was also the church of the poor and dispossessed. In the Gospels she learned that God had walked among the poor and she found this appealing. She found in the Gospels an understanding of human liberation, a sense of community and solidarity much larger than politics alone could provide. She used her skills as a journalist to edit the Catholic Worker newspaper which she founded with French native, Peter Maurin. She wrote many articles on spirituality and politics and wrote a number of books including ‘The Long Loneliness’. Catholic Worker houses spread throughout America. When Dorothy died in 1980, she was described in Commonweal by historian, David O’Brien, as “the most significant, interesting and influential person in the history of American Catholicism.”

These three lived the faith of the Gospel and shone a light on the darkness of injustice and racism and homelessness. They were passionate about the truth. They will forever be remembered by those seeking justice and peace throughout the world.

 

One Response to Three Passionate People by Joe McVeigh

  1. Patrick Fahy December 21, 2016 at 9:57 am #

    Father Joe,
    They are the kind of people the world so badly needs, but they are few and far between.