Philip Berrigan

In the warm, comfortable living room of Jonah House, the "community of conscience" he calls home, 75-year-old Philip Berrigan greets a visitor, then settles back into a rocking chair. He looks for all the world like a fellow ready to simply sit and rock and whittle. He's not.Berrigan has spent half a lifetime fighting for what he calls "peace and justice." He's preached, protested, demonstrated and been arrested in myriad actions against war and nuclear weapons. He has no plans to stop now. Barely five months off a two-year prison stretch he did for an anti-war protest, what Berrigan wants to talk about this day is a demonstration that could land him right back in the federal pen.In the morning, he'll be out in front of a federal office building, protesting on behalf of members of the Jonah House community who have been barred from returning home by the federal probation system.

It was 30 years ago yesterday that a group of nine Catholic activists broke into the offices of the Selective Service on Frederick Road in Catonsville, seized draft records and burned them in the parking lot using homemade napalm.The action on May 17, 1968, by the Catonsville Nine, who were arrested and tried in federal court in Baltimore, became a nationwide cause celebre that led to as many as 100 similar actions in protest of the Vietnam War.The leaders were siblings who were Roman Catholic priests, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, who became known colloquially as the Berrigan brothers.

NEW YORK CITY -- Daniel Berrigan listens to the joyous throng sing Happy Birthday and then flashes the wry, wide smile that has illuminated nearly four decades of protest in America.Hard-earned lines crease his famous smile. But it is as bright and radiant as on that day in 1970 when he was led away to jail as one of the Catonsville Nine anti-war "conspirators."The Rev. Daniel Berrigan, poet-priest of the peace movement, turns 75 on Thursday. His hair is silver-gray and silken under his trademark black cap, his eyes deep-set and shadowed, but still warm and penetrating.

Philip Berrigan and 25 peace activists -- including two toddlers and his 14-year-old daughter, Kathleen -- breached the security perimeter of the super secret National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade yesterday to protest its role as "the brains of the military death machine."But they couldn't get themselves arrested.And their blizzard of press releases the night before didn't attract a single TV van.And, perhaps worst of all for this platoon of veteran protesters -- many of whom have done serious prison time over confrontations with cops and soldiers -- their grievances were fielded by a public relations man."

The date, April 30, 1975, means everything and nothing.Twenty years ago today, the only war America ever lost was ending officially and ignominiously. The image of U.S. helicopters taking off from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnamese clinging to the landing gear, became an image of defeat.Recalling that event, the nation's current leaders, its elder statesmen, its Vietnam veterans and their families may choose today to remember what the war meant to the nation and to them personally, as if they could ever for a moment forget.

Edenton, N.C.--At age 70, Philip Berrigan doesn't retire, he does jail time.Defrocked priest, civil rights activist, anti-war protester, constant thorn in the side of the American defense establishment, Berrigan deals in theology, symbolism and action.He will not be silenced, and he will not go away.So here he sits inside the Chowan County Detention Center on the banks of Albemarle Sound, serving part of a one-year sentence for taking hammer and blood to a fighter jet last Dec. 7 at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro.

Chicago. -- The end of the Cold War has taken the doomsday note out of our politics. We have relaxed a bit. We have begun to cut defense spending (but not enough). There is talk of bringing our troops home, from various places and at various stages.But one thing we tend to forget, until given sharp reminders from Ukraine or from North Korea, is that the world is still chock full of nuclear weaponry, and access to nuclear material and knowledge is growing fast. For instance, all those nuclear experts suddenly out of work behind what was once the Iron Curtain may want to do something with their investment of time and intellect in the creation of destructive implements.

It was a only a tiny fire on a Catonsville parking lot 25 years ago today, but it flared into a beacon that focused a divided nation's attention on anti-Vietnam War protests in Baltimore.Nine Catholic activists led by two priests, Philip and Daniel Berrigan, invaded a Selective Service Office on Frederick Road on May 17, 1968. Seizing a handful of draft records, they burned them with homemade napalm, then waited for police to arrest them.The "Catonsville Nine" and their dramatic trial brought thousands of anti-war protesters to Baltimore during a year of bitter fighting in Vietnam and growing protest at home.

It's 1993, more than two decades since the Black Panther Party, which disbanded in the 1970s, advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government; since a radical civil rights lawyer and his clients, known as the Chicago Seven, turned a courtroom into a theater of protest; since a Roman Catholic priest and nun were arrested and imprisoned for their anti-war/anti-nuclear activities.It's 1993 and MTV has as its slogan "The music revolution will be televised." Fashion designers are creating $1,000 versions of hippie garb.

Longtime Roman Catholic peace activist Philip Berrigan has been sentenced to five years in prison for contempt of court because he wouldn't apologize for a remark he made to a Howard County District Court judge.Mr. Berrigan, 68, a former Josephite priest and a leader in the peace movement since the Vietnam War, had accompanied eight of his colleagues to an Ellicott City courthouse for their trial yesterday on charges of trespassing at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Columbia.The charges against the protesters, from the Baltimore Emergency Response Network, stemmed from a Dec. 5 protest at the lab.Group members have been convicted several times for protesting at the lab.The group admitted entering the grounds of the lab to protest development of nuclear weapons systems.

Phyllis Brandt has a different take on the act of civil disobedience performed by the nine men and women who became known as the Catonsville Nine in 1968 after they destroyed and burned draft records with homemade napalm. Brandt - who was then Phyllis Morsberger - is the last survivor among the three clerks who were working May 17, 1968, when the Catonsville Selective Service Local Board No. 33 was raided by a group led by the Rev. Daniel Berrigan and his brother, Philip, a Josephite priest.

Forty years ago today, nine Catholic men and women - three of them priests - walked into a military draft office in Catonsville and seized the records of hundreds of young men likely to be summoned to fight in Vietnam. They burned the papers in the parking lot, using homemade napalm to start the blaze. As the flames rose, the nine solemnly recited the Lord's Prayer and stood around waiting for the police to arrest them. That day in the turbulent spring of 1968, the Catonsville Nine, as they became known, put the quiet Baltimore suburb on the map in a growing nationwide protest against the Vietnam War. The band of activists - whose dramatic trial drew hundreds of antiwar protesters to Baltimore that fall - inspired similar disruptions of draft offices around the country.

Philip Berrigan's grave sits inside an overgrown West Baltimore cemetery, giving inspiration to members of Jonah House who continue to protest war, violence and U.S. military spending from a house they built there. Eight years ago, Jonah House's war resisters, led by Berrigan and his wife, Elizabeth McAlister, became the official caretakers of St. Peter's graveyard, the final resting place of former parishioners of St. Peter the Apostle Roman Catholic Church, at Hollins and Poppleton streets.

THE YOUNG black woman, dressed in black jeans and a tattered Maryland Terrapins jacket that had its best days behind it, entered the doors of St. Peter Claver Church right after I did. Had she followed me? Perhaps. I had parked in the next block of Fremont Avenue shortly before 7 p.m. Sunday and trekked a short but frigid half-block to the church. It had been years since I'd been here. And now I confronted the woman with a look of desperation in her eyes. She was HIV positive, she told me. Homeless and hungry.

The mourners filled the street yesterday in West Baltimore because Philip Berrigan gave focus to the anti-war movement 40 years ago. They packed a black parish because Mr. Berrigan confronted racism and patriarchy and injustice long after the civil rights movement. They braved subfreezing temperatures to say farewell to an artilleryman and infantry lieutenant turned Roman Catholic priest, remembered as a husband, father, peace activist and prisoner. "I didn't know him, but I've been a longtime admirer of him, so I came here out of respect," said Michael Redmond, 50, who drove from Philadelphia to join several hundred mourners.

The mourners filled the street yesterday in West Baltimore because Philip Berrigan gave focus to the anti-war movement 40 years ago. They packed a black parish because Mr. Berrigan confronted racism and patriarchy and injustice long after the civil rights movement. They braved sub-freezing temperatures to say farewell to an artilleryman and infantry lieutenant turned Roman Catholic priest, remembered as a husband, father, peace activist and prisoner. "I didn't know him but I've been a longtime admirer of him so I came here out of respect," said Michael Redmond, 50, who drove from Philadelphia to join several hundred mourners.

Philip Berrigan, the patriarch of the Roman Catholic anti-war movement whose conscience collided with national policy for more than three decades, died last night of liver and kidney cancer. He was 79 and had lived at Jonah House on the grounds of a West Baltimore cemetery for much of the past decade. He led the Catonsville Nine, who staged one of the most dramatic protests of the 1960s. They doused homemade napalm on a small bonfire of draft records in a Catonsville parking lot and ignited a generation of anti-war dissent.

Philip Berrigan uses a walker to hobble slowly to the lectern in the library at West Chester University in southeastern Pennsylvania. He seems frail, but perhaps that's because he's always been so robust. He's lost weight and his hair is white and his voice soft and hollow when he begins to speak. Thinness has given his face a craggy, monumental look. His deep-set eyes are shadowed by the overhead lights in this elegant, wood-paneled library room. At 78, he has perhaps earned the face he deserves.

Peace activist is a peculiar target for a judicial crackdown Local jurists, battered by much criticism of alleged lenient sentencing practices, must be buoyed by a recent decision by one of their colleagues. Soft on crime? Not James T. Smith Jr. a Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge who demonstrated his machismo by sentencing activist Philip Berrigan to 30 months in the pokey for yet another of any peace protests ("Activist sent to prison for warplane damages," March 24). Even the prosecutor in the case suggested guidelines ranging from probation to one year, but the intent of the bench was clearly to remove this troublesome priest and his dedicated colleagues from our midst for a long while.

Philip Berrigan is the great enduring figure of resistance to his admirers, who gather at his trials like a vast extended family. He is the non-patriarchal patriarch of a clan whose totem might be the dove of peace. A kind of shudder ripples through his supporters in the courtroom when Judge James T. Smith sentences Berrigan to 30 months in prison with the crisp dispatch with which he imposes a life sentence on a murderer. Berrigan is 76 years old, so you ask Elizabeth McAlister, his wife of 31 years, if she's ever thought he might die in jail, perhaps alone.