![\"St.](\"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/thomas-aquinas-300x300.jpg\")
<\/a>St. Thomas Aquinas, a theologian of the Thirteenth Century.<\/p><\/div>\n
After all the many troubling disclosures \u2014 from\u00a0torture to\u00a0\u201dextraordinary renditions\u201d to aggressive war under false pretenses to\u00a0warrantless wiretaps to\u00a0lethal drone strikes to\u00a0whistleblowers prosecutions to\u00a0the\u00a0expanded \u201csurveillance state\u201d\u00a0\u2013 it might be\u00a0time to take a moment\u00a0for what the Germans call \u201ceine Denkpause<\/i>,\u201d\u00a0a \u201cthinking break.\u201d And it is high time to heed and honor the Noah Principle: \u201cNo more awards for predicting rain; awards only for building arks.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is our summer of discontent.\u00a0The question we need to ask ourselves is whether that discontent will move us to action. Never in my lifetime have there been such serious challenges to whether the Republic established by the Founders will survive. Immediately after the Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin told a questioner that the new structure created \u201ca Republic, if you can keep it.\u201d He was right, of course; it is up to us.<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s face it.\u00a0The Obama White House and its co-conspirators in Congress and the Judiciary have thrown the gauntlet down at our feet.\u00a0It turned out that we are the ones we\u2019ve been waiting for. As Annie Dillard, one of my favorite theologians, has put it, \u201cThere is only us; there never has been any other.\u201d\u00a0And as one of my favorite activists\/prophets continued to insist, \u201cDo not say there are not enough of us.\u00a0There ARE enough of us!\u201d<\/p>\n
Besides threats to basic constitutional rights and gross\u00a0violations of international law, there are\u00a0other pressing\u00a0issues for Americans, especially the obscene, growing chasm between the very rich and the jobless (and often homeless) poor.\u00a0There is widespread reluctance, even so, to ask the key questions?<\/p>\n
Is it right to fire teachers, police and firefighters; to close libraries; leave students in permanent debt; gut safety-net programs \u2013 all by feigning lack of money?\u00a0Yet, simultaneously, is it moral to squander on the Pentagon and military contractors half of the country\u2019s discretionary income from taxes \u2013 an outlay equivalent to what the whole rest of the world put together spends for defense?<\/p>\n
It seems we are guided far more by profits than by prophets.\u00a0And without prophetic vision, the people perish.<\/p>\n
Profit Margin<\/b><\/p>\n
America\u2019s lucrative war-making industry operates within a fiendishly self-perpetuating business model: U.S. military interventions around the world (including security arrangements to prop up unpopular allies and thus to thwart the will of large segments of national populations) guarantee an inexhaustible supply of \u201cmilitants, insurgents, terrorists or simply \u2018bad guys\u2019\u201d \u2013 a list that sometimes comes to include American citizens.<\/p>\n
These troublemakers must be hunted down and vaporized by our remote killing machines, which\u00a0inflict enough destruction and stir up enough outrage to generate even more \u201cmilitants, insurgents, terrorists or simply \u2018bad guys.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
And, in turn, the blowback toward the United States \u2014 the occasional terrorist attack \u2014 creates enough fear at home to \u201cjustify\u201d the introduction of draconian Third Reich-style \u201cEnabling Act\u201d legislation not very different from the unconstitutional laws ushering in the abuses in Germany 80 years ago.<\/p>\n
With only muted murmur from \u201cprogressive\u201d supporters, the Obama administration has continued much of the post-9\/11 assault on constitutional rights begun by George W. Bush \u2013 and in regard to Barack Obama\u2019s\u00a0aggressive prosecutorial\u00a0campaign against \u201cleakers,\u201d Obama has taken these transgressions even further.<\/p>\n
Are we to look on, like the proverbial \u201cobedient Germans,\u201d as Establishment Washington validates the truth of James Madison\u2019s warning: \u201cIf Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet, while countless billions of dollars are spent on \u201csecurity\u201d against \u201cterrorism,\u201d little attention is devoted to the truly existential threat from global warming. Can we adults in good conscience continue to shun the dire implications of climate change?<\/p>\n
This question was again brought home to me personally on Aug. 6, as our ninth grandchild pushed her way out into a world with challenges undreamed of just decades ago.\u00a0When she is my age, will she rue joining us last Tuesday?\u00a0I can only hope she will forgive me and my generation for not having the guts to face down those whose unconscionable greed continues to rape what seemed to be a rather pure and pleasant planet when I made my appearance seven short decades ago.<\/p>\n
Prophets on the Margin
\n<\/b>
\nAnd, then there is the worship of \u201cfree market\u201d idolatry which has savaged America\u2019s Great Middle Class and expanded the ranks of the desperate poor. The late Rabbi Abraham Heschel had challenging words for us:\u00a0Decrying the agony of the \u201cplundered poor,\u201d Heschel insisted that wherever injustice takes place, \u201cfew are guilty, but all are responsible.\u201d\u00a0He added that, \u201cIndifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., warned: \u201cA time comes when silence is betrayal \u2026 We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak\u2026. There is such a thing as being too late\u2026. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost opportunity\u2026. Over the bleached bones of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: \u2018Too late.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Amid these daunting challenges \u2013 endless war, encroachment on liberties, environmental devastation and economic disparity \u2013 there is also the question: Are our churches riding shotgun for the System.<\/p>\n
As truly historic events unfold in our country and abroad, I often think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who founded the Confessing Church as an alternative to the overwhelming number of Catholics and Lutherans who gave priority to protecting themselves by going along with Hitler. How deeply disappointed Bonhoeffer was at the failure of the institutional church in Germany to put itself \u201cwhere the battle rages.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is the phrase Martin Luther himself used centuries before: \u201cIf, I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing him. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved and to be steady on all the battlefield, except there, is mere flight and disgrace if one flinches at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n
No one has put it better than a precious new friend I met on a \u201ccruise\u201d in June\/July 2011 hoping to reach Gaza \u2013 author and poet Alice Walker \u2013 who said: \u201cActivism is my rent for living on this planet.\u201d<\/p>\n
As some of you know, that attitude found her a passenger on \u201cThe Audacity of Hope\u201d \u2014 the U.S. Boat to Gaza.\u00a0On July 1, 2011, we made an activist break for the open sea and Gaza but were able to sail only nine nautical miles out of Athens before the Greek government, under strong pressure from the White House, ordered its Coast Guard to intercept us, bring us back to port, and impound our boat.<\/p>\n
Okay to be Angry?
\n<\/b>
\nRecalling the anger I felt at the time, I was reminded that, all too often, people are conflicted about whether or not to allow themselves to be angry at such injustice \u2013 whether it be in Gaza, on the Aegean, or elsewhere. I had been in that category of doubt, until I remembered learning that none other than Thomas Aquinas had something very useful to say about anger.<\/p>\n
In the Thirteenth Century, Aquinas wrote a lot about virtue and got quite angry when he realized there was no word in Latin for just the right amount of anger \u2014 for the virtue of anger. He had to go back to what Fourth-Century Doctor of the Church John Chrysostom said on the subject: \u201cHe or she who is not angry, when there is just cause for anger, sins.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why? Because as John Chrysostom put it, \u201cAnger respicit bonum justitiae<\/i>, anger looks to the good of Justice, and if you can live amid injustice without anger you are unjust.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aquinas added his own corollary; he railed against what he called \u201cunreasoned patience,\u201d which, he said, \u201csows the seeds of vice, nourishes negligence, and persuades not only evil people but good people to do evil.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frankly, I have not thought of us activists being virtuous \u2014 but maybe we are, at least in our willingness to channel our anger into challenging and changing the many injustices here and around the world. There should be no room these days for \u201cunreasoned patience.\u201d<\/p>\n
One saving grace peculiar not only to the ancient prophets and theologians but to the Alice Walkers and Medea Benjamins of today is that they did not get hung up on the all-too-familiar drive for success.\u00a0That drive, I think, is a distinctly American trait. We generally do not want to embark on some significant course of action without there being a reasonable prospect of success, do we? Who enjoys becoming the object of ridicule?<\/p>\n
The felt imperative to be \u201csuccessful\u201d can be a real impediment to acting for Justice. One prophet\/activist from whom I have drawn inspiration is Dan Berrigan. I\u2019d like to share some of the wisdom that seeps through his autobiography, To Dwell in Peace<\/i>.
\nBerrigan writes that after he, his brother Phil, and a small group of others had used homemade napalm to burn draft cards in Catonsville, Maryland, in May 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War, Dan mused about why he took such a risk:<\/p>\n
\u201cI came upon a precious insight. \u2026 Something like this: presupposing integrity and discipline, one is justified in entering upon a large risk; not indeed because the outcome is assured, but because the integrity and value of the act have spoken aloud. \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cSuccess or efficiency are placed where they belong: in the background. They are not irrelevant, but they are far from central. I was in need of such reflections as we faced the public after our crime. \u2026 All sides agreed \u2014 we were fools or renegades or plain crazy. \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cOne had very little to go on; and one went ahead nonetheless. \u2026 The act was let go, its truth and goodness were entrusted to the four winds. Indeed, good consequences were of small matter to me, compared with the integrity of the action, the need responded to, the spirits lifted.\u201d<\/p>\n
The more recent prophets and activists I have known have generally been able to do this \u2014 to release the truth of the act to the four winds. And I am sure that helps them avoid taking themselves too seriously.<\/p>\n
Anticipate the Jut-Jaw
\n<\/b>
\nHere\u2019s how Dan Berrigan recounts the immediate aftermath of the action at Catonsville:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe sat in custody in the back room of the Catonsville Post Office, weak with relief. \u2026\u00a0 Three or four FBI honchos entered portentously. Their leader, a jut-jawed paradigm, surveyed us from the doorway. His eagle-eye lit on Philip. He roared out: \u2018Him again! Good God, I\u2019m changing my religion!\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI could think of no greater tribute to my brother.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Berrigans help affirm for me that this God of ours is a God of laughter, and we are the entertainment. And that\u2019s just one reason a light touch seems to be required. Will we be successful? Wrong question. The right one is will we be faithful?\u00a0Will we dare to go with the Berrigans to where the battle rages.<\/p>\n
I am very much looking forward to being able to refresh my spirit, and also my sense of humor, with some later-day prophets at the upcoming Conference on the Moral Imperative of Activism, Aug. 16-17, at the National Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine in Fonda, New York.<\/p>\n
Let me close with a poem written by the German writer Peter Gan in 1935 during the Third Reich.\u00a0I think it summons us in a thoughtful way to contemplate who we are and what we are called to do \u2013 today.<\/p>\n
But first the most important thing:
\n\u201cWhat are you doing in these great times?<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cGreat, I say, for times seem great
\nto me, when each man driven
\nhalf to death by the era\u2019s hate,
\nand standing in the place he\u2019s given,<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cMust willy-nilly contemplate
\nno less a thing than his own BEING!
\nA little breath, a second\u2019s wait
\nMay well suffice \u2013 you catch my meaning?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
______________________<\/i><\/p>\n
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical church of the Savior in inner-city Washington, and teaches and learns at its Servant Leadership School.\u00a0McGovern was an Army officer and a CIA analyst for 30 years, and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).\u00a0 His Web site is raymcgovern.com.\u00a0<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n