Thus, in 1953, Daniel Berrigan was sent to a Jesuit study center in Paray-le-Monial, near Lyons, France. Preparation for ordination within the Jesuit Order is long, and persons undertake learning experiences in different countries. It became a teaching order, reaching out to the elite who might be tempted by Protestant ideas.

One had to fight fire with fire, was the Jesuit doctrine. De Loyola and Jean Calvin had attended the same Paris law faculty a couple of years apart, and both men advocated a legalistic, intellectual doctrine. The Jesuits were founded by Ignatius de Loyola in 1534 to be the soldiers of the Counter-Reformation.

He decided to join the Society of Jesus - the Jesuits. As he was finishing high school, he wrote to various religious orders for information. Dan and his brothers attended Catholic schools, where some of the students were thinking of becoming priests. Unlike Day and Merton, who became Catholics in adulthood and so were able to select those parts of Catholic thought which spoke to them, Daniel Berrigan was born into a Roman Catholic family, with a mother who was devoted to the Virgin Mary and a father active in Catholic social movements. “Dan Berrigan spent much of his life in various lions’ dens - at home as a child when his father was in a rage, in paddy wagons and prisons, in demonstrations that were targets of violent attack, in a city under bombardment, in urban areas police would describe as hazardous - yet remarkably he lived to be ninety-four, dying peacefully in bed, though he bore many invisible scars and scratches.” The events of the world can be symbolized by the biblical account of the prophet Daniel placed in the lion’s den. His latest entry follows All Is Grace on Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, and Living With Wisdom on Thomas Merton, Trappist monk but concerned with the events of the world. A Biography and Memoir of Daniel Berrigan (Orbis Books, 2017) his biographies of persons with whom he interacted in Roman Catholic nonviolent efforts. Jim Forest continues here in At Play in the Lion’s Den. Life and gentleness and community and unselfishness are the only order we recognize.” (The Trial of the Catonville Nine )

In a time of death, some men, the resisters, those who work hardily for social change, those who preach and embrace the truth, such men overcome death, their lives are bathed in the light of the resurrection, the truth has set them free… We say: Killing is disorder.

All Is Grace by Jim Forest