Day of Reflection on Catholic Worker & Ploughshares Movements-Come to What You Can! RSVP

by DCW Sun May 08, 2005 18:24 dublincatholicworker at yahoo dot co dot uk Rialto 087 918 4552

The Catholic Worker movement is a 72 year old
experiment in radical Christianity. The word "radical"
is Latin for "returning to the roots". The early
Christian movement was criminal under the Roman state
and evicted by the established church bureaucrats of
their day. Radical Christianity has an anarchist
orientation towards power and a pacifist orientation
towards violence.

"Anarchy" (without exploitation) and "pacifism"
(without violence) are negative definitions - they
make much better Zen questions than tight rigid
answers! The radical Christian is one who wrestles
with the anarchist question - "How do I live a life
without exploitation?" and the pacifist question "How
do I live a life without violence?".

Living with these ethical questions and experimenting
with living answers/responses is a direct threat to
capitalism and imperialism. Pope Paul 6th. said "If
you want peace work for justice!" and the flipside is
also true - If you want to maintain exploitation you
best prepare for war! We live within an economic
system of global armed robbery. The poor line up in
the fields of Colombia, the Nike factories of
Indonesia, allow their resources to be plundered and
their children starve in despair not willingly - but
at the point of a gun! The robbery is secured and the
gun used - even when it is not fired. If the 3rd.
World poor organise and resist - they encounter
military escalation dominance - the Corporate/State
sponsored death squad, the U.S. trained national
military, B-52 bombardment, Cruise Missile attack and
maybe soon thermonuclear war.

Dorothy Day (a New York an
anarchist/activist/journalist who converted to
Catholicism) and Peter Maurin (a French peasant
street-philosopher) founded the Catholic Worker
movement in New York City on May Day 1933. They
started with a newspaper and a utopian program to
respond to the depression, war drums and the
totalitarian responses of the right and left. They
soon had people in need knocking on their door, a soup
kitchen, a hospitality house, conflict with church and
state. Later still there was draft resistance,
anti-nuke protests, draft board raids, ploughshare
disarmament actions and the consequences of jail,
ridicule, blacklisting, FBI/Special Branch raids,
frame-ups etc. etc.

There are now over 175 Catholic Worker communities in
Australia, Canada, England, Germany, Mexico, New
Zealand, Sweden & The Netherlands. Like us they are
experimenting with community-building, nonviolent
resistance to the war machine and the acts of mercy to
its victims. Many people who are not Catholics,
workers, anarchists or pacifists have supported the
movement down the years. Most of these wonderful folks
you may never hear of - some names you may be familiar
with are - Ramsey Clarke, Alex Cox, Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton, Ed Herman, Abbie Hoffman, Petra Kelly, Sr.
Helen Preajen, Martin Scorcese & Martin Sheen.

Dublin Catholic Worker is a recent expression of this
radical 72 year old tradition. We draw on personal
experiences of living and working with the homeless in
Brisbane, Dublin, London, Los Angeles, New York &
Haiti. We draw upon our own experiences of
imprisonment in Australia, Ireland and the United
States. We presently await trial on Oct 24th. at the
Four Courts for disarming a U.S. Navy war plane at
Shannon Airport en route to the invasion of Iraq. We
maintain an anti-war vigil at the GPO, every Monday
4pm-6pm. We have worked in solidarity
with Dublin's homeless and hope to open new
hospitality project soon.

We invite you to resist the desert temptations that
attempt to co-opt every dissident movement - status,
power and wealth. We invite you to connect with us on
this journey of community, nonviolent resistance and
hospitality.

Address: Dublin Catholic Worker 518 South Circular Rd.
Dublin 8

Email: dublincatholicworker@yahoo.co.uk

Mobile: 087 918 4552

by Ploughshares Sun May 08, 2005 18:28 087 918 4552

MisTrial Declared for Shannon Peace Activists

The trial of five Catholic Worker peace activists collapsed today at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court as Judge Frank O'Donnell discharged the jury. The five accused Deirdre Clancy, Nuin Dunlop, Karen Fallon, Ciaron O'Reilly, and Damien Moran were been charged with causing criminal damage to a US Navy Warplane at Shannon Airport on February 3rd 2003.

The defendants argued they were attempting to protect lives and property and to uphold the law by nonviolently resisting Irish participation ion the Iraq war.

Their trial began on Monday last March 7th but ran into difficulties on Friday last when the defence counsel requested the judge to discharge the jury.

Judge Frank O'Donnell said he could not reveal the reason for the move because he had to ensure that the retrial was fair and that justice was seen to be done.

The Director of Public Prosecutions must now decide whether to prosecute these five peace activists, who have been on strict bail conditions for over two years.

A substantial group of supporters applauded the activists as they left court. The defendants and their supporters then held a silent single file peace walk, in commemoration of the Iraq war dead, from the Four Courts to Dail Eireann. They were greeted at the Dail gates by John Gormley, Green Party TD; Finian McGrath, Independant TD; and Joe Costello, Labour TD.

The defendants submitted an appeal letter to the Taoiseach on behalf of Kelly Dougherty, former Military seargent with the National Guard Unit and co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against The War ( [ www.ivaw.net ] ). Dougherty came to Ireland to support the 'Pitstop Ploughshares' defendants and to testify to the brutality and criminality of the US occupation in Iraq.
Her letter called for an end to the use of Shannon Airport by the US MIlitary and requested the Irish government to offer asylum to military resisters.

Copy of Kelly Dougherty's letter to An Taoiseach can sent on request

For more information contact
Damien at 087 9638398
or Ciaron at 087 9184552

by Ciaron Tue May 10, 2005 13:43

To: Editor of the Catholic Mirror
From: Frank Cordaro, DMCW

March 7, 2005


Dear Editor;

I am writing in response to your Feb. 18, 2005, Catholic Mirror
story, "A Soldier Talks About Iraq". I am wondering if I am the only
one who feels scandalized by this story?

In the larger context of the current war, I am a
peace-minded American Catholic who has been discouraged and grief
stricken by our official USA Catholic Church’s virtual silence
regarding the morality of our role in these wars of aggression. At best
the public positions of our Catholic Church leadership have been
cowardly on this subject. At worst, those same leaders have publicly
acted as cheerleaders for the blind nationalistic spirit that is
fueling the pro-war sentiment which props up these unjust, immoral and
illegal military adventures. If there ever was a time that the American
Catholic Church was at risk of losing it’s connection with the larger,
universal Catholic Church and going its own American Nationalistic Way,
it is on this issue, and it is now.

Within that context, there arrives in my mail your story by Mike
Lapcheske, a DM Diocesan Catholic soldier serving his second term in
Iraq. Anyone reading the story can easily see its focus. It is a
personal account of a young man reconnecting with his Catholic Faith in
a most difficult situation, a war. It has the added connection to the
DM Diocese in the donation, by the Diocese, of several religious
items. Among the items sent to Iraq is a holy water font for a chapel
in the military facility where Mr Lapcheske was stationed.

On it's face, this was a fair story to be covered in our local
Catholic newspaper. That is, until we realize that the military
facility to which our DM Diocese gifted those religious items was Abu
Ghraib Prison. Abu Ghraib Prison is the prison reknowned throughout
the world for the human rights violations and the torture of Iraq
prisoners by the US Military. Regardless of one's position on the war,
all Americans were shamed and disgusted by the revelations of these
known human rights violations. That the Catholic Mirror would run Mr
Lapcheske’s story, without even mentioning the Abu Ghraib Prison shame,
is at best a gross journalistic oversight, at worse an indication of
the larger US Catholic Church’s ( and the DM Diocese) total disconnect
between its own moral obligation speak to the morality of these current
wars and it's apparent nationalistic desire to support our troops in
the field.

In addition to my desire to hear our local Catholic leadership
speak out against the immoralities of the war, in general, I would like
to see our Diocese recall the religious items we donated to the Abu
Ghraib Prison chapel, return them to Iowa for a Service of Repentance
for the US crimes against humanity committed there, and have them
re-blessed.

Frank Cordaro
Des Moines Catholic Worker

by Ciaron Tue May 10, 2005 13:52

Dear Friends,

Enclosed are March letters to the editor of the Catholic Mirror
responding to my letter, of March 7, 2005, cited below. My letter was
with regard to the placement of a Catholic holy water font at Abu Graib


April 15, 2005 Catholic Mirror
--------------------------------
From Front Cover Page:

"Readers made their opinions known in response to a letter to the
editor from Frank Cordaro in the March issue. Not all of the letters
could be printed due to lack of space. See what readers had to say on
page 7."


---------------------------------
Excerpts from Letters to the Editor from page 7:

"After several years of reading about the former priest, Frank Cordaro,
in the DM Register and other papers, radio and TV, I'm very unhappy to
still be reading his opinions in my Catholic Mirror. I do not feel we
Catholics should be providing him a vehicle to continue his rhetoric.
Enough is enough."
- Nick DePhillips, Grimes IA


"I am writing to convey my disgust that the Catholic Mirror would even
entertain the idea of acknowledging any correspondence from Frank
Cordaro, let alone publish it. This man is a disgrace to all Catholic
and American citizens"...

"The fanaticism of Cordaro is legendary, so why would our religious
publications allow him to continue to have a prominent voice for
non-religious ideals? As is always the case, Cordaro's views and
beliefs are contrary to those of American Catholics. Cordaro gives
approval to atrocities committed around the world by spitting in the
face of Americans trying to stop them."
- David Eastman, Altoona IA


""Frank Cordaro is no longer a priest in the Catholic Church for a good
reason. He is and always will be an anti-American far left wing
activist who does not represent the Catholic Church I know and love. It
is appalling to me The Catholic Mirror would find it suitable to
publish his clearly slanted anti-American views."

He uses words like unjust, immoral and illegal as if they were factual
statements about the US military when they couldn't be further from the
truth....."

"... The battle we have undertaken against those who commit the
atrocities is just, moral and without legal question...."
-Tom Finley, Johnston, IA

---------------------------------------------------

by dude Fri May 13, 2005 11:37

'Fraid you're wrong again.

The principal feast day of Saint Joseph is March 19, Saint Joseph's Day. But, to co-opt May Day, the Roman Catholic Church added another Saint Joseph's Day in 1955 that Christianized this holiday as the day of "Saint Joseph, the Worker".

by Mmmmmmmmmm Mon May 16, 2005 14:57

One man's co-option is another's affirmation. The USA of course (where May Day originated with the Haymarket Martyrs) scrapped May Day and imposed Labor Day later in the year, to avoid foreign lefty influences.

The original house of hopsitaltiy for the homeless on the Lower East Side of NYC is named St. Joseph's House. There is a old history of IWW/CW mixing in NYC. Dorothy Day founder of the CW was a card carrying member of the IWW.

by Ciaron Tue May 17, 2005 10:42 087 918 4552

Venue - YCW offices 11 Talbot St. (between Connoly
Station & Spire, opposite Easons on Talbot St., press
the buzzer & we'll come and get ya!)

by Ciaron - DCW/PSP Wed May 18, 2005 17:42 087 918 4552

Venue has been moved from YCW on Talbot to
TEACHERS CLUB
36 Parnell Square
Program Times as above

by Tapart News Editor and Artist - Tapart News and Art that Talks Sun May 22, 2005 21:04 tapsearch at core dot com Cleveland Ohio 216-671-6263

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So called Free Trade is not trade as historically defined. This new "trade" has workers as the commodity with production, farming and outsourcing made portable being moved to the cheapest labor markets of the world. Workers are left out of the decision making with banks, investors, elite groupings and interntional entities controlling the flow of wealth outside any real democratic consent of the workers involved.
Workers are put on a world trading block to compete with the lowest common denominator down to wages slave and even child labor.
The Free Enterpise system has been betrayed. It should be a simple process where something is made, grown and sold at a margin where all involved can enjoy the results . Today we have a new strange Capitalism based on a new "ism" hidden in Globalism. It is in place in Socialism, Communism , Totalitarism or Capitalism countries. It is based primarily on elite groupings of investors and bankers.
The smallest groups in any society are forced to bow to their dictates without any real checks and balances.
Destitute worker classes are used in the poorer nations while working poor classes are created in the more prosperous nations that have more consumers. However in the end, the working poor classes find it more difficult to afford even the cheaper imports while the destitute classes abroad can not even afford to buy the very things they make.
It is indeed a race to the bottom with no one winning in the end. It is a new kind of a wage slave trade.
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