'Love Multiplies When It Is Shared': Remembering Tom Gumbleton
Plus: An appeal for a Gazan family; excerpt from new Phil Berrigan book; St. Louis CW gets its house; Masses for Peace; and Dorothy addresses the Eucharistic Congress.
Welcome to Sunday
Welcome to Sunday, everyone—this will be Roundtable’s new delivery day, reflecting a slight preference among readers…and a better editorial schedule on our end, we hope.
We have a very full newsletter again, so let’s get right to it. If you missed our special coverage of the Midwest Catholic Worker Faith and Resistance action at the Kansas City National Security Campus, you can find it on the CatholicWorker.org website here.
Jerry
FEATURED
‘Love Is the Only Thing That Multiplies When It Is Shared’: House of Grace, Kay Lasante Remember Bishop Gumbleton
As we briefly reported in our last issue, House of Grace Catholic Worker (Philadelphia) had a special connection with Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, who passed away earlier this month. Bishop Gumbleton worked with House of Grace and a local parish in Haiti to found the Kay Lasante Clinic there. In a heartfelt note to community members, his friends at both House of Grace and Kay Lasante Clinic remembered him fondly. Here’s an excerpt:
For us, and for the House of Grace, Tom Gumbleton was not only a partner, but also a beloved friend and spiritual mentor. While this news did not come as a total shock, the reality of losing someone so important to our path and critical to our work has deep and profound impact.
We write with hearts full of sadness, but filled with deep gratitude for his presence in our community and our lives.
Tom believed in healing. He did that through his powerful witness to peace and his ongoing thirst for justice. A primary incarnation of that belief was his partnership with us in founding the Kay Lasante Clinic in Port Au Prince, Haiti. Over the past 20 years, we have worked closely with Tom and the community in Haiti to keep this clinic open and thriving. Even in the midst of extreme political turmoil and unimaginable violence, the clinic keeps doors open as it can. Along with us, the community in Haiti feels Tom’s loss acutely. (Please comments below from a few clinic staff members).
Tom accompanied the clinic with constant presence. He was present at the founding of Kay Lasante and present to visit Fr. Jean Juste, their parish priest, when he was unjustly imprisoned. Tom was there to offer him the anointing of the sick shortly before Fr. Jean Juste died. He was present during the devastating earthquake to continue to nurture the clinic’s growth. It is in part due to his conviction and relentless hope that the clinic has become what it is–a beacon of caring and compassion for that community.
Tom was so pleased when Kay Lasante Clinic merged with WhatIf Foundation. Both organizations were founded by Fr. Jean Juste, who Tom admired and was deeply inspired by. Johanna and Tom had visited What If’s projects many times. It was, to him, a beautiful coming together of organizations.
Yet our work and collaboration with Tom Gumbleton has much deeper roots. He was a tireless supporter of the House of Grace and the broader Catholic Worker movement. He worked with us as part of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, Pax Christi, and the anti-war movement. He brought the gospel message of love to all he did. He was passionate about peace and uncompromising about justice.
His presence touched our own house. Everyone in our household remembers his rising at 5:30 AM every day to sit and pray. At the House of Grace, he offered retreats and presided at liturgies–particularly memorable is one at St. Malachy’s Church, where he vehemently denounced the war in Iraq. He worked with Voices in the Wilderness and House of Grace to call for an end to the sanctions in Iraq, traveling with us to break the embargo and bring medicines to suffering children.
He baptized both Jimmy and Junnell, and confirmed Junnell here at the House of Grace.
Perhaps most precious was his balanced, hopeful witness. Tom was never just all work. He spoke about the middle way. He loved a good laugh, a good movie, and a good meal. He loved baseball and going to games. He took care of his body the way he took care of his spirit. He made time to swim at least three times a week.
In the midst of his busy days and concerns for the hurting world, he loved the opportunity to relax. More than anything, he loved to sit quietly, have a cup of coffee, and read.
Tom knew and lived within God’s boundless embrace. In one of the last conversations we had, Johanna asked him: “Tom, what are you doing?”
“I am just sitting here letting God love me.”
It is a beautiful thing to know that the embrace of God has carried him home.
As we share our loss with you, however, somehow it also kindles our hope and our resolve for the work ahead. Never giving up. Being faithful to what is demanded in order to bear the light.
Tom embodied this work, and now we carry on. He taught us so well. He was, and we are, deeply grateful for your faithful support and participation with House of Grace.
In peace,
Johanna Berrigan, Mary Beth Appel, and Katie Huynh
. . . . .
Reflection of Dr. Belfort Jean Fefnay, Kay Lasante Clinic Medical Director
It is with a feeling of sadness I express my deepestc ondolences to all the board members, the family and all other people that the death of Bishop Tom may affect. Bishop was a great human being with a good heart. I will never forget that answer once he gave me when I was asking him: What motivates you to come here in Haiti, and in other places around the world despite your age, with not a good health condition?
He smiled and said: LOVE is the only thing that multiplies when it is shared. My mission is to share LOVE and PEACE as much as I can. I will never forget those words of him. I hope that the seeds of LOVE that Bishop Tom has shown throughout the world will continue to grow up and the peace and Serenity that his presence transmitted will remain in the spirit of all the people who had the opportunity to know and meet him. May your soul rest in peace Bishop Tom.
Read the remembrance, including many more testimonials from Kay Lasante staff, at CatholicWorker.org.
Philip Berrigan Confronts the Ancient Young Warrior
Philip Berrigan (1923-2002) was a Catholic priest, author, and anti-war activist. He and his brother, Daniel Berrigan (also a Catholic priest), were deeply influenced by the Catholic Worker Movement—and their actions, in turn, deeply influenced the Catholic Worker Movement and the Catholic peace movement in the United States.
The following excerpt is from the new book A Ministry of Risk: The Collected Writings of Philip Berrigan, a collection of the writings of Philip Berrigan compiled and edited by Brad Wolf. In this excerpt, Berrigan reflects on his time as a patriotic young soldier fighting in World War II, and how he eventually came to unmask the myths surrounding his participation in state-sanctioned violence.
My brother Tom was a First Lieutenant in the 29th infantry, and he began noticing our unit’s trucks, so he ordered his driver to catch up with one, found out where we were located, and drove into our camp one day. I hadn't seen him in two and a half years, but I knew he had been through hell, fighting all the way from the beaches of Normandy into Belgium. We shook hands and hugged, nearly in tears, trying to catch up on all the news, knowing that this might be the last time we would see one another alive.
I went with him to the front where American troops were dug in on a very wide arc, fully expecting to be overrun because they didn't have enough men. Two regiments were spread over a 20-mile front; they were very sparse. It wouldn't have taken much for the Germans to breakthrough those lines, and then come for us. Our unit had been under mortar fire. We lived through bombing attacks and were pounded by the Germans’ terrifying 88-millimeter antitank gun, an excellent, highly accurate weapon. We took some casualties, but I was still a reckless kid who thought he could stroll, unscathed, through the valley of death. I had come to Europe to do a job that, I thought, would involve great danger. The more death I faced, the better off the world would be. I needed to keep proving that I wasn't just an ordinary soldier. I was Philip the Bold, son of Thomas the Brave, toughest Irish American kid on the block. More ignorant, I know now, than brave.
I helped free the world from Hitler's reign of terror. I served my country in war time because I thought that's what patriots do. God may tell us not to kill, but when the state calls, we must obey. We must become skilled, remorseless killers, willing to use any means to defeat the enemy.
Years after my return from the killing fields, I looked into the mirror of my own violence. What I saw there forced me to rethink and redefine the meaning of sanity. I realized that while I considered Adolph Eichmann a war criminal and despised him for participating in the Holocaust, we actually had a few things in common. Like him, I had only been following orders. Like him, I was sane enough to do my duty, and do it well. Like him, I believed that wars are fought for noble reasons. We were both true believers, one a mass murderer, the other a killer on a smaller scale.
When I first started to think about these things, my heart turned to stone, my head swam with clouds of confusion. Examining my own responsibility for the death of 70 million people in World War II, it occurred to me that the United States government, and I as a soldier, had adopted some of the worst aspects of Nazism. The Luftwaffe bombed London, so we had the right to firebomb Dresden. The Germans murdered civilians en masse, so we were entitled to slaughter their women and children. Our actions were not crimes against humanity, they were retaliating for their crimes. Their actions were barbaric, our reactions were just. I vacillated between feeling betrayed, in the sense that I was betraying some sacred trust, some sacrosanct ideal.
My world began to shift, rather slowly at first, more dramatically as I read and thought and prayed, seeking for answers in a nation that condemned its warriors to the silence of agreement. Seventy million dead. Hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. Physical and psychological and spiritual wounds that would never heal. And after the war, my country helping high ranking Nazis find safe-haven from justice, protecting the very people against whom I and my brothers fought.
No, such things were not compatible with reason or sanity.
Then what, I wondered, did it all mean? Eventually, but not until the early 60s, I would conclude that war is the big lie, subordinated to, and entrenched by, lots of little lies.
For many years I clung to my own set of lies, hiding within the shell of collective agreement. In time, that shell began to crack. Light streamed in, forcing me to reexamine killing, making me take a hard, non-rhetorical, look at war. I saw a boy standing on the field of battle, bristling with weapons, preparing to shed his blood, and spill the blood of his enemies, for his king, his emperor, his state, some grand, everlasting, ideal. An ancient figure, stooped with the knowledge that the killing had gone on for centuries, and could well continue until the end of time.
The boy took off his helmet, and I could see the pain in his eyes, see that he wanted to lay down his sword and shield, but that he feared the consequences. It was one thing to die on the field of battle, quite another to be banished to the realm of cowards. I reached out to him, and found myself. We walked together, this ancient young warrior and I, knowing that the road we were taking would be lonely, even more dangerous than the battlefield had been. No one would recognize us when we returned home. There would be no welcome for traitors who break their swords into pieces, leaving their armor and their weapons “down by the riverside.”
Read the entire excerpt at CatholicWorker.org.
Who Is ‘My’ Property For, Anyway?
In his continuing series of articles for The Catholic Citizen, Colin Miller reflects on the Church’s social teaching that property is only legitimately “mine” when it is used for the common good. Lawsuits, insurance, risk, property codes, a money economy, liability, consumer culture, single-use-disposable containers—all of this and much more help make a world where every item belongs “absolutely” to someone, rather than “loosely” as a trust for the purpose of building community.
In the February edition of the Catholic Citizen I wrote about a neighbor boy, Sam, who helped make concrete for me the Church’s social teaching that property is only legitimately “mine” when it is used for the common good. We hold property not “absolutely”—to use and abuse it however we want—but for the sake of our communities.
Sam had been borrowing one of our bikes as he played with my kids, and, when it was time for us to go in for naps that afternoon, my first instinct was to think, “OK Sam, that’s my bike, and so it’s time for you to stop riding it.” But this, I eventually realized, hardly squared with the ideal that property is for the common good, and so I changed my mind and let him keep using it.
But no sooner had I closed the door when the common worry hit me: “Oh no, all this high idealism just means Sam’s going to hurt himself riding my bike on my sidewalk, and then we are going to get sued.”
And this led me to further reflection. For it occurred to me, in a rare moment of clarity, that this kind of worry is itself part of the way that our culture’s “absolute” notion of property becomes deeply engrained in each of our lives. What do I have in mind?
Let’s consider what went into making me think it was “my” bike—in the absolute sense—in the first place. That idea didn’t just fall out of thin air; it was shaped in me by a variety of common cultural experiences like this one. In other words, it was at least as much my worry about being sued, and the ever-present reality of lawsuits that stood behind it, that produced my idea of property, as it was the other way around. The practice of suing itself has, as part of its internal logic, a notion of property as “absolutely” belonging to one person and not another. So, when I think “I’m going to get sued because that’s my bike,” to use the word “sued” in this way must, at the same time, be to use “my bike” in a particular way—the absolute way. We receive many of our beliefs from our cultural environment in this way, even when we’re not conscious of it.
But this means that we inevitably come to believe all kinds of things—some true, some false—simply by participating in common social practices. In this case, Sam helped me realize, the simple existence of lawsuits, and worrying about lawsuits, “train” me over time to see the bike as “my bike” in an “absolute” way. An unchristian way of viewing property is, in other words, like those Russian tea dolls, embedded within the common cultural practice of suing, and worrying about being sued. And this was as much a cause of my view of property as it was an effect.
Then I realized just how many more unconscious influences there are on my view of property. To live in a society where we regularly sue each other for just about anything is also inevitably to live in a society where we take out insurance policies on just about everything. This means that the logic of insurance increasingly reaches into the far corners of our lives, determining what we can and can’t do, what we can and can’t have, and sometimes even who we can associate with and when. Under these conditions, as sociologists have remarked, “risk” has for the first time in history become a dominant social category—even a sort of “entity” that we think we “see” in the world.
Lawsuits, insurance, risk—and we could add to this any number of other things like property codes, a money economy, liability, consumer culture, single-use-disposable containers—all of this and much more do not only reflect an idea of property, but also produce it. For they help make a world where every item belongs “absolutely” to someone, rather than “loosely” as a trust for the purpose of building community. I realized that day with Sam that my life was woven into a network of such practices that made that view of the world seem “natural” to me.
And so, finally, Sam helped me realize yet another reason the Scriptures insist so strongly on Church community. For in the same way the broader secular community makes one view of property seem “natural,” so too, if we want to live Catholically regarding property, we are going to have to have a Catholic community in which to realize it. The Church tells us that property is for the common good, for others, and for our communities, and that it is really only “ours” for this purpose. But if we want to actually come to see the world in this way, and to live this truth—to make it seem “natural”—we are going to have to embed those ideas in real material practices with real flesh and blood people. And this, of course, is just what the early Church did in the Acts of the Apostles. Their sharing of life, of possessions, of daily prayer, of meals, so that they had “all things in common,” were a means of training themselves into a brand-new way, God’s way, of seeing their “stuff.” The Scriptures and the more recent social teaching of the Church, call us to the same task. But we can only start, obviously, from where we are. Most of us live nothing like the early Church did. But the good news is that we don’t have to get there all at once. We just have to put one baby step in front of another. Let’s not worry about what we can’t do, and just get on with what we can do. We can share meals with friends more regularly. We can start to pray together. We can share a car with our spouse, or a lawnmower with a neighbor. We can, as I realized, just let Sam keep riding the bike, because it’s for him as much as it’s for me. Things like this go just a little way towards making the line between “mine” and “yours” just a little blurrier. And that’s how it should be.
Chicken Attends MCWFRR
THE ROUNDUP
Noel House is urgently raising money to help a former community member, Adel, evacuate his family from Gaza. The family has lost its home and is currently residing in Rafah. Adel has been granted refugee status in Greece but exit visas for his family will cost $12,500. For details or to help, visit the family’s GoFundMe page; or call Frits of Noel House at +31 6 3029 5461.
Invoking the words of Dorothy Day that “one impulse of grace is of infinitely more power than a cobalt bomb,” the Staten Island Catholic Worker has launched a project to have 100 Masses said for the intention of peace. “Our goal is 100 Masses celebrated anywhere at any time for the intention of peace so that our offering and prayers will be heard and answered by the King and Queen of Peace!” according to the Staten Island CW website. Anyone who requests a Mass to be said for this intention can send an email to sicatholicworker@gmail.com with the subject “Masses for Peace.” The Mass will be added to the list on the community’s website.
Cherith Brook Catholic Worker (Kansas City, Missouri) founders Rev. Eric and Jodi Garbison will be stepping down from leadership roles by the end of July, making way for new leadership within the community. Their April newsletter reports that the community is doing well, with several strong layers of leadership. Meanwhile, a $150,000 construction project is well underway, requiring some adjustments to hospitality. The project will put in storefront windows, improve energy efficiency, create an accessible entrance, and restore brickwork. The community continues its mission of hospitality, open two mornings a week and hosting a community meal every Thursday night. And engagement in local and national peacemaking activities is ramping up, including involvement in the Poor People’s Campaign and hosting the recent Midwest Catholic Worker Retreat.
Abolishing the veto power of the five permanent security council nations would strengthen the effectiveness of the United Nations in preventing and ending war, said William Nolan, archbishop of Glasgow, as reported by Flourish, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Glasgow. Nolan was speaking at a recent summit of Catholic peace organizations that was convened to hear the insights of Martha and Kate Hennessy, the granddaughters of Dorothy Day, during their recent tour of Scotland. Nolan called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Ukraine, saying that the invading powers had failed to achieve their aims. “Israel is waging war ‘to protect its security’ but in their actions they are encouraging violence and planting the seeds for future versions of Hamas,” he said. “A more effective UN is needed but that requires nations to cede some of their sovereignty in favour of international peacekeeping.” Find additional coverage of the Hennessys’ tour in The Tablet and Independent Catholic News.
Martha Hennessy was reportedly denied an invitation to speak at this summer’s 10th National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, according to a recent report in The Black Catholic Messenger, even though her grandmother, Dorothy Day, spoke at the 1976 Eucharistic Congress. However, Martha Hennessy tells Roundtable that, following the Messenger article, the National Eucharistic Congress reached out to her, and she will in fact speak there. The Congress will take place between July 17 – 21.
CALENDAR
April 13 | The Center at Mariandale, Ossining, New York
Revolution of the Heart: The Spirituality of Dorothy Day
April 27 | South Bend, Indiana
Catholic Worker Dance Party
April 28 | Staten Island, New York
Dorothy Day Art Show & Craft Fundraiser
May 8 - May 12 | Kent, Great Britain
European Catholic Worker Gathering 2024
June 3 - June 7 | Cuba City, Wisconsin
Stories of the Land: Decolonization, Earth Regeneration, & Spiritual Ecology
A FEW GOOD WORDS
Address to the 1976 Eucharistic Congress
The text of Dorothy Day’s speech to the 1976 Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia appeared in The Catholic Worker, September 1976. The following excerpt comes from the text recently published in The Black Catholic Messenger.
I would like to stress my own experience again. My conversion began many years ago, at a time when the material world around me began to speak in my heart of the love of God. There is a beautiful passage in St. Augustine, whose “Confessions” I read at this time.
“What is it I love when I love Thee,” it begins, and goes on to list all the material beauty and enjoyment to be found in the life of the senses. The sea, which surrounded us, rather, it was a bay leading out to sea, provided food, fish, and shellfish in abundance, even the seaweeds, which a Japanese friend told me were part of the food of her people. Our garden grew vegetables; the fields, berries; the trees, fruits. Everything spoke to me of a Creator who satisfied all our hungers.
It was also the physical aspect of the Church which attracted me. Bread and wine, water (all water is made holy since Christ was baptized in the Jordan), incense, the sound of waves and wind. All nature cried out to me.
My love and gratitude to the Church have grown through the years. She was my mother and nourished me, and taught me. She taught me the crowning love of the life of the Spirit. But she also taught me that “before we bring our gifts of service, of gratitude, to the altar,—if our brother have anything against us, we must hesitate to approach the altar to receive the Eucharist.”
“Unless you do penance, you shall all perish.” Penance comes before the Eucharist. Otherwise, we partake of the Sacrament unworthily.
And here we are on August 6, the day the first atomic bomb was dropped, which ended the Second World War. There had been holocausts before—massacres, after the First World War, of the Armenians, all but forgotten now, and the holocaust of the Jews, God’s chosen people. When he came to earth as man, he chose them. And he told us “All men are brothers,” and that it was His will that all men be saved. Japanese, Jew, Armenian.
It is a fearful thought, that unless we do penance, we will perish.
Our Creator gave us life, and the Eucharist to sustain our life, but we gave the world instruments of death of inconceivable magnitude.
Today, we are celebrating—how strange to use such a word—a Mass for the military, the “armed forces.” No one in charge of the Eucharistic Congress had remembered what August 6 means in the minds of all who are dedicated to the work of peace.
Why not a Mass for the military on some other day? Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a flyer in World War II and the author of “Wind, Sand and Stars,” tells of the feeling men at war have for each other—the sense of being united in a common cause, “a readiness to give all, to lay down one’s life.” Such expressions are used in all sincerity. And who does not love bands, and the discipline of marching men, and the banners!
. . . . .
I plead, in this short paper, that we will regard that military Mass, and all our Masses today, as an act of penance, begging God to forgive us.
Read the entire speech in The Black Catholic Messenger.
A version of this speech appeared in The Catholic Worker, September 1976, 1, 5.