Hoover’s announcement marked the start of an important—and now largely forgotten—episode that shaped the trajectory of both antiwar politics and twentieth-century Catholic politics for years to come. The Harrisburg Seven trial revealed the depth of the federal government’s commitment to suppressing the antiwar effort. But it also gave the Berrigans and their movement of nonviolent civil disobedience their most visible platform, introducing millions of Americans to their unique mode of political struggle. As American foreign-policy institutions progressively absorbed the ethos of permanent military adventurism, as symbolized by Kissinger, the Berrigans’ lessons never faded from relevance. Indeed, they’re arguably more important today than ever before.
The Berrigan brothers’ idiosyncratic engagement with the world bucked the norms of both the institutional Church and American society. In 1965, Daniel’s antiwar advocacy landed him in South America, where he had been sent for three months into quasi-exile by Cardinal Francis Spellman, who served as archbishop of New York from 1939 until his death in 1967. Politically, the Berrigans rejected the violent practices espoused by certain segments of the New Left, such as the Weather Underground, and opted instead for methods of nonviolent civil disobedience.
The Berrigans situated themselves in a long lineage of Catholic activists fighting injustice, a tradition dating back to Jesus Christ himself. Figures such as Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton served as more immediate inspirations, though the Berrigans’ willingness to break into draft-board offices and destroy draft files alienated some of the more orthodox pacifists affiliated with the Catholic Worker movement. Still, they all saw themselves as allies with the same purpose—halting the American-led slaughter of civilians in Southeast Asia.
The antiwar priests had been targets of the FBI since the mid-1960s—and especially since their first draft-board raid in 1967. The Baltimore Four, led by Philip that October, brought the national spotlight onto this insurgent strand of Catholic antiwar activism. They justified their call for an immediate end to American involvement in Vietnam by appealing to the gospels and to the life of Jesus Christ. In May of 1968, both brothers raided another draft-board office in Catonsville, Maryland. Their trials dragged on for nearly two years, and they were finally set to begin their sentences on April 9, 1970. But on that day, neither reported to prison.
In the following weeks, hordes of FBI agents tried to track the priests down. Philip would be caught after twelve days, but his older brother Daniel continued to evade authorities for months. He would surface at antiwar rallies and meetings across the Northeast, occasionally even stopping by to deliver a sermon at a church with a sympathetic pastor. A vast network of antiwar advocates, student activists, academics, and clergy members sheltered him from FBI detection. On multiple occasions, federal agents narrowly missed Berrigan, sometimes by just a few minutes.