U.S. Anti-War Prisoner on Con Air & Other Resistance Updates!

by SP4 - Catholic Worker Mon Jun 05, 2006 07:47

The St.Patricks Four (3 of who attended the first Pit Stop Ploughshares Trial in Dublin March'05) have been serving sentences for their St Patricks Day '03 occupation and blood pouring at their loical Ithaca NY Military Recruitment Centre.

Teresa Grady has just been released after serving 4 months in County Jails and a Fed Insitiutuion. Peter DeMott has just completed 4 months at a Fed Detention Centre and has been moved to a half way house in Binghampton to serve the remaining 4 months of his sentence.

Danny Burns and Clare Grady remain in Fed Met, Detention Centres (in Brroklyn & Philly respectively) thery have a another 2 months to serve.

Check the following website for addresses to send solidairity mail & updates....
www.stpatricksfour.org

by OZ Mon Jun 05, 2006 22:03

Four of the Pine Gap 6 will receive a trial date this week for their Citizens Inspection of the U.S. N.S.A.. facility last December. Pine Gap, located near the isolated town of Alice Sprrings in the centre of the Australian continent plays a siginificant targetting role for the U.S. military in its bombing campaign over Iraq.

The four face maximum sentences of 7 years if convicted of charges under the Defence Act.

A website has been established giving background on the nonviolent anti-war action and updated info on the upcoming trial.

Please check it out

www.pinegap6.org

by Ciaron - Cathholic Worker/Ploughshares Sat Jun 10, 2006 08:58

Fr Daniel Berrigan SJ turns 85. His birthday is being celebrated today in NYC as a fundraiser for imprisoned anti-war resisters. Pete Seeger, Natallie Merchant & others are perfroming at a gathering which will probably see "one of the largest gathering of convicted felons outside the U.S. Prison system!" (as Amy Goodman previously described Phil Berrigan's funeral).

Dan Berrigan once part of the elite Kennedy circle began a trajectory of downward mobility & holy criminality with the draft board raids during the Vietnam War, making J Edgar Hoovber's top ten as he led the FBI on a merry chase underground. He was captured a served two years imprisonment. With his borther Phil (a WW2 combat vet & former Josephite priest) he and 6 others carried out the first plowshares action ion 1980. an act of nonviolent direct disarmament. There have been 100 actions since (see www.plowsharesactions.org for a chronology) with the courts reponding with anything from acquittals to 18 year sentences.

The Pit Stop Ploughshares (www.peaceontrial.com) await a thrid trial at the Four Courts on July 5th. for their disarmament action at Shannon Airport in Feb '03.

In 2002 Dan Berrigan addressed a public meeting in Dublin organised by the Catholic Worker & Afri, over 1,000 people turned up!

So check out the link below for archival photos of Dan Berrigan has he hits the bg 8 5....

http://www.jonahhouse.org/pics67-73.htm

by Frank - Des Moines Catholic Worker (Iin Custody Yankton Fed Pen) Sun Jun 11, 2006 08:42

Corpus Christi Sunday June 18, 2006
Exodus 24:3-8
Mark 14:12-16, 22-26

"THIS IS THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT THAT THE LORD HAS MADE WITH YOU IN
ACCORDANCE WITH ALL THESE WORDS OF HIS" (Exod 24:8)
After Moses had received the law from God on Mount Sinai he called all
the Jewish people together and "related all the words and ordinances
of the Lord" (Exod 24:3). All the people said in one voice, "we will
do everything that the Lord has told us" (Exod 24:3). Then Moses
spent the day writing "down all the words of the Lord" (Ex 24:4) and
the next day "he erected at the foot of the mountain an altar and
twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel" (Exod 24:4). Then
Moses had young bulls slaughtered "as peace offerings to the Lord"
(Exod 24:5). Moses called all the people to the site of the altar and
he put half the bulls' blood in bowls on the altar and half he
splashed on the altar. Then he read what he had written "the book of
the covenant" aloud to the people and they answered, "All that the
Lord has said we will heed and do" (Exod 24:7).
Then Moses sealed the deal by taking the blood in the bowls on the
altar and sprinkling it on the people. This is the way contracts were
signed between two parties in the ancient world. The blood symbolized
what was at stake. The parties of the contract pledged their lives to
keep the contract. If either side failed to keep their side of the
contract, they forfeited their lives.

"WHERE DO YOU WANT US TO GO AND PREPARE FOR YOU TO EAT THE PASSOVER?"
(Mark 14:12)
This week's gospel from Mark takes us back to the last night of
Jesus' life. The week before Jesus' death, he and his disciples spent
their days in the Temple confronting and debating the Temple
establishment. Their nights were spent outside Jerusalem for fear of
the authorities. On the day the Passover meal was to be eaten Jesus'
disciples asked him where he wanted to eat the Passover meal. The
surprise here is that they had to ask Jesus where the meal would take
place; they did not know.

FOLLOW THE MAN CARRYING A JUG OF WATER?
Jesus tells two of his disciples to go into Jerusalem where they will
meet a man "carrying a jar of water" (Mk 14:13). Jesus tells them to
follow that man to a house. They are then to say to the master of
that house, "The teacher says 'where is my guest room where I may eat
the Passover with my disciples?'" Jesus tells his disciples the
master will show them an upper room where everything they need will be
provided. The two disciples went into the city and found everything
as Jesus instructed.
The city of Jerusalem is no small town and there were thousands of
extra people in the city for the Passover celebration. Even if the
two disciples were given a specific street corner to meet the
mysterious water carrier, how would they know which water carrier to
follow? Carrying water jars in Jerusalem was as common as carrying a
bag of groceries in NYC except this was a man carrying the jar of
water and water carrying was women's work. A man carrying a jar of
water would have been easy to pick out of a crowd.

MARK 14:17-21 – THE MISSING VERSES
More importantly, the clandestine nature in which Jesus must act
within his own circle of disciples is most revealing and is explained
in this week's missing verses from our Gospel. Mark 14:17-21 reports
how Jesus exposed the betraying disciple Judas at the Last Supper.
In Mark 14:17 we are told Jesus shows up for the Passover meal with
his select twelve disciples. The significance of the twelve disciples
is that they, like the 12 pillars that Moses erected before the altar
in this week's first reading from Exodus, represent the twelve tribes
of Israel in Jesus' new covenant. Even though we are told that the
select twelve disciples accompanied Jesus to this last Passover meal
it does not exclude the probability of others being in attendance
also.

THIS IS MY BLOOD OF THE COVENANT WHICH WILL BE SHED FOR MANY (Mark
14:24)
In the midst of eating the Passover meal Jesus initiates a whole new
blood covenant that he will seal on the cross and complete Easter
morning. First, Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave
it to his disciples saying, "Take it; this is my body" (Mark 14:22).
Then he took a cup of wine, gave thanks, gave it to his disciples and
said, "This is my blood of the covenant which will be shed for many."
This years Corpus Christi lectionary readings highlight the blood
aspect of the New Covenant made with Jesus' death on the cross and our
participation in the Eucharist. Jesus' New Covenant of love was
sealed on his part with his blood shed on the cross. Like all blood
contracts, there are two parties. Jesus lived up to his side of the
blood contract. Each time we partake of the Eucharist and drink from
the cup, we are pledging our life's blood to follow the kingdom ways
that Jesus lived and taught in the Gospels.

THE FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI
The feast of Corpus Christi was established to help bring the
Eucharist into the everyday lives of regular Catholics. At the end of
the 19th century the lay Catholic rarely received Holy Communion at
mass. The eucharistic theology in practice emphasized the sacred and
divine at the expense of the common and communal. In practice the
people were separated and distanced from what was happening at the
altar. An altar rail served as a physical barrier between the priest
and the people. The mass was celebrated in Latin, a language few
understood. The priest's back was to the people and the worshipping
congregation was treated more as spectators than active participants.
Those who received communion regularly were few.
I remember my grandfather Frank Sposeto, my mother's father. He was
an immigrant from Italy, a father of ten and a truck farmer. He
farmed with horses all the way to the 1960's before he died. He went
to mass every Sunday but only received communion once a year
fulfilling his Easter obligation. The Easter obligation was something
the church did to make sure Catholics received the sacraments of
reconciliation and Holy Communion at least once a year during the
Easter season. (Of course the sacrament of reconciliation used to be
called confession then.)
My father George belonged to the Holy Name Society, a men's group at
our parish that met once a month on Sunday morning. They started
their meetings by attending 8 a.m. mass and receiving Holy Communion
as a group. Then they had an eggs, sausage and pancake breakfast in
the church basement and a speaker afterwards. The breakfasts are what
I liked most about the Hoy Name Society because every once in awhile
the men were allowed to bring their sons with them for mass and
breakfast. The Holy Name Society was a Catholic Men's group meant to
get men to receive Holy Communion at least once a month.
The feast of Corpus Christi was a big deal in my home parish of St.
Anthony's when I was a kid. The big event was the Corpus Christi
procession in which hundreds of people participated. Every group and
organization in the Church was part of the procession with floats and
bands. The priest and the Blessed Host were always at the end of the
procession which always ended back in the church with a special
devotion. The idea behind the procession was to show how our worship
at Mass was supposed to flow out of the church building into our
neighborhoods and be a part of our every day lives.
With Vatican II lots of changes took place in the Catholic Church
most of them for the better. The changes that touched the lives of
all Catholics were in the liturgy and how we celebrated mass. Our
Eucharistic theology shifted from a holy, other worldly emphasis to a
community, people based emphasis. The altar rail was eliminated and
the priest turned around and celebrated Mass facing the people. The
Mass was celebrated in the language of the people. In the United
States that meant English. The lay people were no longer spectators
of a distant other worldly ritual but active and necessary
participants in a communal worship. Perhaps the most important change
was how we rediscovered the importance of scripture in the celebration
of the Eucharist, seeing the "liturgy of the word" as equally
important as the "liturgy of Eucharist prayer." After Vatican II lay
Catholics were encouraged to receive the Eucharist weekly and if
possible every day through weekday masses. People were encouraged to
receive the blessed host in the hands instead of the tongue and
partake in the blessed cup.
All of these efforts — the feast of Corpus Christi, the Easter
obligation, the Holy Name Societies and the Liturgical Reforms of
Vatican II — seemed to have accomplished what the Church set out to do
100 years ago, which was to bring the celebration of the Eucharist
into the every day lives of ordinary Catholics. We now have a
practicing Eucharistic faith community. It's one of the greatest
gifts and assets the Catholic Church has today. It's kind of a shame
we seem to be putting the last 100 years of Eucharistic development at
risk by our continued insistence on an exclusive all male celibate
priesthood, don't you think?