Toward Martyrdom

The chase had to end soon, and the hunted as well as the hunters knew it. For four months Father Daniel Berrigan, the self-designated "peace criminal," refused to surrender to the "war criminals," as he describes the Government. He had drawn a 31-year jail sentence for his part in destroying Selective Service records, and to him, that penalty was as "illegal" as the Viet Nam War itself.

The fugitive Jesuit gave interviews, wrote articles and even made two public speeches while managing to elude the FBI. Last week Berrigan's luck ran out. Twelve agents, posing as bird watchers, arrested him at the Block Island summer home of William Stringfellow, a lawyer and Episcopal lay theologian, and Anthony Towne, a poet.

Collective Jeopardy. The end of the pursuit raised some of the same questions--moral and law-enforcement--as the original act. In joining a group of protesters to burn draft records at Catonsville, Md., Berrigan clearly broke the law. His defenders argue, however, that others have committed similar acts without being arrested and that the authorities may be singling out the more prominent offenders.

How the Government treats those who aid the perpetrators of illegal acts also raises doubts. In a couple of recent cases, no charges have been lodged. But last week the U.S. Attorney's office in Providence said it was seriously considering action against Stringfellow and Towne. They base their defense on moral rather than legal grounds. They knowingly harbored a convicted felon; indeed, they freely admitted it after Berrigan was taken. But they did so for what seemed to them just and noble motives. Stringfellow seemed undisturbed at the prospect of criminal proceedings. "I suppose," he remarked, "that everybody is in jeopardy nowadays."

Collective jeopardy, in fact, became a favorite Berrigan theme during his underground career, and one that is evoking some response. Just a few days before the capture, more than 300 of Berrigan's supporters gathered in Wilmington, Del. There they proclaimed their "responsibility" for a series of raids on Selective Service and National Guard facilities last June. A statement bearing 320 names was sent to the Justice Department. Eighty clergymen, nuns and brothers and M.I.T. Professor Noam Chomsky were among the signers. Said Chomsky: "We want to create an atmosphere in which direct resistance to the war can be taken."

For lawmen, the statement presented a problem. Clearly some of the self-indicted were innocent. Only a handful were even from Delaware. But it was possible that a few did participate in criminal acts. And again, there were ambiguities. On the face of it, the "Delaware 300" were bearing false witness --apparently, in part, for the purpose of obstructing law-enforcement agencies. The participants and their sympathizers, of course, see the issue differently. Sister Jogues Egan, a former provincial of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, and a strong Berrigan supporter, suggested that the Delaware statement was in the spirit of the defiance displayed by Denmark's King Christian in World War II: he wore a yellow Star of David when the Nazis ordered Danish Jews to so identify themselves.

He Lives. For Berrigan there was no question. Addressing the Wilmington rally by means of a taped statement, which proved to be the last before his capture, he praised the participants for joining "a community of peace and decency and life and hope and, the times being what they are, a community of resistance." He made a final exhortation: "Let us do that one thing which in principle and by common and cowardly agreement is forbidden to Americans today--let us be men!"

As he was taken from Rhode Island to the Federal Penitentiary at Danbury, Conn., 150 of Berrigan's followers gathered at the federal courthouse in Manhattan. There they washed the American flag, presumably to cleanse it of the stigma of both the war and Berrigan's imprisonment. A button worn by some of the demonstrators bore the single letter Z (meaning "He lives"), a borrowing from the movie about right-wing repression in Greece (TIME, Aug. 17). However arguable Berrigan's decision to fight as an outlaw, his strategy contains the stuff of martyrdom.

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