Peacemakers from all over U.S. at SOA Vigil, Women Priests-led Liturgy, Homily by Ed Kinane

by Janice Sevre-Duszynska, arcwp

Peacemakers from across the country and world gathered on Ft. Benning Road this weekend Nov. 22-24 for the SOA Watch Vigil.

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. 

Katy Zatsick, ARCWP, Priest co-presides at SOA Vigil Liturgy

Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests: (left to right:
Barbara Duff, Janice Sevre-Duszynska, and Katy Zatsick_

Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests
(left to right)
Barbara Duff, Janice Sevre Duszynska, Katy Zatsick, Diane Dougherty
and Jack Wentland, priest

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

edkinane@verizon.net

23 november 2013

progressive catholic coalition

soaw annual convergence, ballroom C

columbus, georgia convention center