Peacemakers from across the country and world gathered on Ft. Benning Road this weekend Nov. 22-24 for the SOA Watch Vigil.
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| Photos by Bob Watkins |
Representing our ARCWP community with the Progressive Catholic Coalition were Kay Akers, Katy Zatsick, Diane Doughtery, Barbara Ann Duff and
Janice Sevre-Duszynska. Jack Wentland and from WOC were also at the PCC Table. Peg Bowen helped design the theme of harvest abundance of our Loving God.
Roy Bourgeois was honored on Friday night Nov. 22. Thirty years ago he and a few friends took part in an action outside the barracks at the U.S. Army School of the Americas. Wearing an Oscar Romero shirt and army pants, Roy scaled a 30 foot tree with a boom box. When he was ordered down, he turned it on and it played Romero's last homily ordering soldiers to obey the law of God and remember "Thou shall not kill." Over the years the movement grew and 300 people crossed the line. Altogether they have spent 100 years in prison to close the SOA.
On Saturday night over 350 gathered for the inclusive Liturgy of the Beatitudes led by ARCWP women priests.
The liturgy was provided by ARCWP priest Mary Theresa Streck and written by her late husband and Jan Phillips. Ann Tiffany and Ed Kinane of Syracuse, New York read the Gospel of the Beatitudes. Ed Kinane gave a powerful homily about how justice comes before peace. Folksinger Charlie King provided music and song.
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| Katy Zatsick, ARCWP, Priest co-presides at SOA Vigil Liturgy |
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| Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests: (left to right: Barbara Duff, Janice Sevre-Duszynska, and Katy Zatsick_ |
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| Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests (left to right) Barbara Duff, Janice Sevre Duszynska, Katy Zatsick, Diane Dougherty and Jack Wentland, priest    |
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| ARCWP Priest Diane Dougherty participates in Puppista Program at SOA Vigil |
On Sunday the solemn procession remembering those who have suffered and died took place on Ft. Benning Rd., with peacemakers carrying white crosses and singing "Presente" to the spirits of our Latin American sisters and brothers who have been tortured and killed by those trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas. Today the SOA is also training drone pilots.
Homily by Ed Kinane:
let me begin by expressing
my immense respect for the
essential and courageous path
janice and other women priests are taking.
and my immense respect for father roy
for aiding and abetting that path.
both janice and roy -- and the beatitudes
which ann and i have just read embody
what our movement here at ft. benning
is all about.
back in the day,
back in my parochial school days,
reciting and memorizing those beatitudes
were part of the curriculum.
i know now that the key legacy
of my catholic upbringing was its
frequent emphasis on conscience --
rendered poetically in these beatitudes.
conscience has been for me a rudder
in a morally bewildering world,
the beacon of my activism.
so, let us just reflect on several
of those beatitudes this evening.
***
blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.
tomorrow as thousands of our voices
are raised hundreds of times
in the cry of "presente"
we'll mourn the loss -- the wholesale loss
-- of life in latin america.
this loss has been perpetrated by
graduates of the school of the americas.
as we respond "presente,"
we gain strength from our unanimity
and from our sorrow.
***
blessed are those
who hunger and thirst for justice,
for they shall be satisfied.
here let me invoke the tens of thousands
of us who over the years
have come to protest
at the gates of ft. benning.
many of us do so repeatedly, faithfully,
with a kind of relentless persistence.
and are we not rewarded
with that rich satisfaction
of community and solidarity?
and with the knowledge that
over the years this heinous
school of the americas
has been severely jolted and
seriously thrown off its arrogant
imperial stride.
***
blessed are the peacemakers
for they shall be called
children of god.
we all come to the gates of Benning
to live and spread and install
and perpetuate peace.
another way to say
we are peacemakers is to say
we are anti-militarists.
in fact i prefer to call myself an anti-militarist
instead of the more positive-sounding
peacemaker.
too often, it seems, the quest for peace
can become a substitute for
the quest for justice.
the quest for peace can be a distraction,
or even a subversion
of the quest for justice.
...now, about peacemakers,
or better, peace and justice makers
being called "children of god":
for me, if that three-letter syllable
"god" refers to the creative --
or maybe even the female,
generative power of the universe --
then aren't those striving for justice and peace
all sisters and brothers --
that is, children of god?
but aren't we even more fully
children of god insofar as,
in our work for peace and justice,
we strive to include ALL life
in our divine sibling hood?
to be more concrete about it,
for me that means no more
U.S. EXCEPTIONALISM,
no more prioritizing our wants and whims
over the needs of others --
whether in honduras or colombia,
or in all nations terrorized by the
christian crusader weaponized drones:
iraq, afghanistan, northwest pakistan,
or yemen or somalia.
a U.S. life,
we must come to believe,
is no more valuable,
no more sacred than a
latin american life
or a muslim life.
***
blessed are those who are
persecuted for righteousness sake.
this last of our beatitude sample
seems tailor-made
for those arrested crossing the line at benning.
while our persecution is negligible
compared to that of latin americans,
our "court witness"
and our "prison witness"
count as persecution
for righteousness sake.
decades ago we parochial school students
would sometimes be told that
"the blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the church."
of course, we've seen how
roy's several years in prison
and the many years of prison time
of soa watch prisoners of conscience
have been the motor behind the
growth of soa watch.
***
before closing i want mention
another anti-militarism struggle
some of us here are also involved in:
exposing the war crimes of U.S. reaper drones,
those killer robots terrorizing the oil lands of the east.
our regional group – upstate drone action --
focuses on the reaper drone crimes in afghanistan and elsewhere
originating at hanock air base outside syracuse, new york.
at hancock the nonviolent, protracted, court-witnessing,
prison-witnessing soa watch campaign here at benning
is our template.
it is our way of exposing and impeding the imperium.
so far at hancock we’ve had over 150 arrests.
we’ve had our trials...and jailings...and our persistent corps
of people of faith and conscience.
for me the beatitudes are alive and shimmering
in our resistance to both hancock and benning.
ed kinane
23 november 2013
progressive catholic coalition
soaw annual convergence, ballroom C
columbus, georgia convention center
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