Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76Plough Quarterly • Summer 2015 39 The Future of Christian Nonviolence Should Every Church Be a Peace Church? F ifteen thousand US soldiers had already died in Vietnam when, on October 27, 1967, Father Philip Berrigan and three accomplices entered the Baltimore Selective Service headquarters carrying a pitcher of blood. Locating the cabinets containing the records of men eligible for the military draft, they poured the blood over the open files. The Baltimore Four, as they came to be known, were convicted six months later on felony charges. Days before they were to stand for sentencing, Philip Berrigan, together with his brother (and fellow Catholic priest) Daniel and seven others, entered the Selective Service offices in Catons- ville, Maryland, hauled hundreds of draft files out onto an adjacent parking lot, and inciner- ated them using ­ homemade napalm. On hearing of the Berrigans’ action, we at the Catholic Worker house in New York City were astounded by their escalation of tactics. Philip was a dear friend – he had baptized my daughter the year before – and now I admired his daring, wanting to believe that he had enlarged the boundaries of nonviolent action. Not everyone was so enthusiastic. Dorothy Day, the radical pacifist founder of the Catholic Worker, while not condemning the Berrigans, remarked pointedly: “These acts are not ours.” Property damage, in her view, was not part of the nonviolent arsenal. Burning one’s own draft card was one thing – Dorothy herself had publicly urged young American men to do just that. But destroying other people’s documents crossed a line. Tom Cornell, a veteran peace activist and Catholic Worker, lives with his wife, Monica, at the Peter Maurin Farm in Marlboro, New York. TOM CORNELL Above, detail from We Rise! Children, Trauma, and Resilience. This street mural from the City of Philadelphia ­Mural Arts Program was completed in 2013 with the participation of at-risk youth. Photo by Steve Weinik www.muralarts.org