Father Philip Berrigan, S.S.J., said most officials of the American Catholic Church are silent on the war in Vietnam because of a “bad theology of patriotism.”

The Josephite father said in an interview that bishops historically have supported the government and urged their flocks to fight. “Catholics have had exemplary war records,” he said.

Father Berrigan, pastor of St. Peter Claver Church in Baltimore, Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, professor of religion at Stanford University and Rabbi Abraham Feingberg of Toronto, Canada, spoke last Thursday to an anti-war meeting at Glenn Memorial Methodist Church on the Emory campus.

The Church was an immigrant church and had to be accepted in American society. That meant playing along with the status quo,” Father Berrigan said.

“But the reason is different now. We have a bad theology of patriotism and the Church is now one of the major institutions in American society,” he said.

‘The Catholic Church’s buying power is second only to the federal government’s. It often has interests parallel to the government and it is hard for it to oppose the government in this war.”

The priest said the hierarchy “has sort of abandoned leadership on the question of peace. The hierarchy in its statement on war and peace last November said substantially the question is to be resolved in the individual Catholic conscience.

They said the matter was too complex for them.”

However, the priest said there was a growing peace movement among priests, nuns and laymen. “More that 40 per cent of the conscientious objectors against the war have been Catholics,” he said.

But there are still dioceses in this county where a priest is up for grabs if he speaks against the war.

“Peter Riga still cannot speak freely on the war. Many dioceses will permit a man coming in from the outside to speak on the question to avoid national publicity, but as far as local men speaking out on the question—that’s a different thing.”

Father Berrigan also said that America has lost its revolutionary tradition. “The law is becoming a sacrosanct thing. People will accept unjust laws as long as middle-class America is protected. The draft law is one of these laws, but since it favors the middle class it remains silent.”

At the anti-war meeting, Dr. Brown said U.S. churches and synagogues may have waited too long to speak out against U.S. policy in Vietnam.

“Perhaps we could have averted the deaths of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Asiatics,” he said.

Dr. Brown said America’s religious community must play a role in maintaining the right to dissent. “We must be willing to die for the right before we surrender it to a war in which we do not believe.

“If there is a conflict between what man calls on us to do and what God demands of us, we must obey God.’

The well-known theologian said the religious community must not only uphold the right of dissent, “it must be a practitioner of dissent.’ He said the Americans remain silent as the German churches in the Nazi era.

He said it will be hard for churches and synagogues to condone and encourage illegal acts, but “if you believe what we’re doing in South Vietnam is wrong, then you cannot remain silent.”

Dr. Brown said it is not enough for religious leaders to counsel students to refuse induction, which would result in five years imprisonment. He said they must also “counsel, aid, and abet” students in refusing induction. By doing this, he said, religious leaders also would be subject to possible imprisonment.

Rabbi Feinberg, who visited North Vietnam and talked with Ho Chi Minh, said, “many people are beginning to suspect that those who are shaping our policy in Vietnam are interested in negotiation, but are dominated by military minds.

“Aside from the destruction of human life and property and the leveling of villages, one of the results of U.S. bombing in North Vietnam has been to stiffen resistance,’ he said.

The rabbi said there were many avenues to peace open which must be pursued, along with a rejection of military victory.

In his talk, Father Berringan said that 72 per cent of the U.S. tax dollar goes for war. “Our foreign policy is a creation of economic and military power.”

He declared that America is a radically sick society and any talk of reforming it without revolution was nonsense. He said revolution will come because a welfare-warfare state cannot continue to exist unchallenged.

Sponsors of the meeting at Emory were Quaker House, Atlantans for Peace, American Friends Service Committee and the Emory Christian Movement.