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My day in court

 |  On the Road to Peace

"You are a renegade priest and a renegade citizen. Many people think you're a hero of nonviolence, but you're a phony. You're a fraud. You are a person of violence because you used a hammer on one of our nuclear weapons! You're a coward. You're afraid. You are no Gandhi. I will not join your cause, but I will not make a martyr out of you so that the world thinks you are the heir of Gandhi."

These were the words of the federal judge last week as he sentenced me for an antiwar protest. (For background see:

In my speech, I quoted Gandhi and suggested that the judge either renounce his verdict and join our campaign to end the ongoing evil U.S. war on Iraq, or if he really believed in the system that is killing Iraqi children and maintaining weapons of mass destruction, give me the maximum sentence.


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I'm grateful for the prayers, blessings and support of friends near and far. One said to me in the courtroom afterwards, "You should just do the sentence and move on. It's been a year and a half since you were arrested in the elevator. It isn't worth all this trouble." In many ways I agree. The government should never have arrested us, prosecuted us, tried us and sentenced us. But now, why not get it over with?

One big reason is that the war goes on, even though it doesn't get much media coverage. In the political campaigns and primaries, the war is barely mentioned (neither is the environmental crisis, global poverty, nuclear weapons, the death penalty, or other urgent crises).

Few politicians, pundits or priests speak about the war. Dennis Kucinich talked about this glaring cover up as he bowed out of the race last Friday. "We asked for jobs," he said, "we get war. We asked for healthcare, we get war. We asked for funds for education, we get war. We ask for a clean environment, we get war. It is time to end this war. It is time to end war as policy and have the government start taking care of things here at home."



The pursuit of peace, I believe, doesn't necessarily make us feel better and bring us consolation. It often leads to misunderstandings, attacks, hate mail, insults, and legal jeopardy -- to the cross. But this seems to be the way the struggle has always gone -- from Jesus and the early Christians to Mahatma Gandhi and Dorothy Day.




If I want to enter his story, share his life, and follow his lead, I have to enter the fray and resist the empire, too, and that's a messy and complicated business. Still, it's a blessing to be misunderstood, insulted and in legal jeopardy for one's pursuit of God's reign of peace. As I left the courthouse, I remembered the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are you when they insult you…Rejoice and be glad!"

This week marks the 60th anniversary of Gandhi's assassination. Gandhi maintained that the pursuit of truth and the practice of active nonviolence require public confrontation with the system of injustice, trusting that the acceptance of suffering in love and truth will win out in the long run.

"Nonviolence in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering," Gandhi wrote. "It does not mean meek submission to the will of the evildoer, but it means the pitting of one's whole soul against the will of the tyrant. Working under this law of our being, it is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save his honor, his religion, his soul and lay the foundation for that empire's fall."

"Nonviolence means courage of the highest order and therefore readiness to suffer," Gandhi wrote. "Let those who believe in nonviolence as the only method of achieving real freedom, keep the lamp of nonviolence burning bright in the midst of the present impenetrable gloom. The truth of a few will count, the untruth of millions will vanish even like chaff before a whiff of wind."


Fr. Dear is scheduled to lead a Lenten retreat Feb. 22-24, "The Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Nonviolent Jesus," at the Kirkridge Center in Bangor, Pa. ( The DVD, "The Narrow Path," featuring his teachings on Gospel nonviolence, is available from To attend one of his speaking events, or to host him later this fall for a reading from his forthcoming autobiography, see:

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