Editor’s Note<\/h4>\n
Post #10 in an ongoing series<\/a> related to Michelle Nickerson\u2019s Spiritual Criminals. This is the final entry.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Michelle Nickerson\u2019s Spiritual Criminals<\/em> demonstrates the ongoing relevance of many of the book\u2019s topics to contemporary Catholicism. Some of the following have been added or highlighted by me, but they include: white privilege, church-state relations, Catholic Social Teachings, gender troubles (feminism, masculinity), pro-life politics, abortion, patriotism, individual conscience, the acceptable limits of public activism\/protest, and more.<\/p>\n The last one I want to propose for you is the orthodox-unorthodox dialectic in Catholicism. What are the questions, answers, and contradictions around both themes for Catholics? How are orthodox-unorthodox problems transcended? Which theses and antitheses remain in place? How does this all matter in relation to Camden-28 actors? I can\u2019t answer all of these questions fully, but I think Nickerson\u2019s story suggests some contours around orthodoxy-unorthodoxy issues.<\/p>\n As a newly active Christian, I sought to attach myself to something with broad appeal that would undermine conflicts and factionalism. I did not want my own Christianity to maximally alienate me from friends and family. I had grown up with Latter Day Saints on one side of my family. The other side were sort of \u2018cultural Christians\u2019\u2014but they also regularly undermined Christian claims by simplistically citing faith issues as \u201cthe cause of all wars.\u201d The consequence of this tension my parents avoiding their kids to any church. Their inactivity in that realm was undermined, however, by my participation in the Boy Scouts of America (now known as \u201cScouting America\u201d<\/a>). \u00a0Scouting encouraged growth in a faith, any faith, and I chose to minimally explore (and passively profess) Christianity for the sake of having a default answer when questioned by my Scout leaders. That \u2018default answer\u2019 become a reality in college, and with it a desire to profess something palatable to a wide range of people. Orthodoxy helped me somewhat (ironically) in that regard.<\/p>\n My enthusiasm for \u2018mere\u2019 Christianity or orthodoxy, however, enabled a disdain for anything that smacked of \u2018liberalism\u2019 in the faith. You can probably see where this was headed for me politically (i.e., conservatism). You can see also why I think the orthodox-unorthodox dialectic matters in Nickerson\u2019s story. If a certain cohort of present-day readers feel that the Camden-28 and other draft board raiders were just unorthodox Catholics\u2014or worse, lefties and liberals\u2014why bother attending to that history?<\/p>\n In the text of Spiritual Criminals<\/em>, the orthodox-unorthodox appears indirectly in Nickerson\u2019s discussion of traditional values in relation to, or in tension with, social progress and Catholic social teachings. As Nickerson notes: \u201cFor much of its long life, the Vatican had sought to insulate Catholics from transformational forces like science, technology, and capitalism as protection against possible corruption of the soul\u201d (p. 12). This meant, for feminists, that \u201cchurch authorities\u2026regarded developments like the women\u2019s movement and sexual liberation warily, as dangerous threats to traditional values\u201d (p. 13). Catholicism believed freedom to be in tension with tradition, even while teaching that Jesus helped to liberate the poor and downtrodden from the yoke of the rich or law-bound Pharisees.<\/p>\n How could modern mass America coexist with the Catholic ideal of a society of households? What does modernity and its liberalizing ethos do to religions that focus on a \u201ccentrality of and reverence for family life\u201d (p. 55)? What if making peace with repressive forces involved a separation from family? What if one\u2019s belief in the liberation of women caused a break with the masculine forces that infected Church hierarchy? What if the church\u2019s teachings about community seemed to reinforce calls for more liberal community structures? Nickerson touches on these topics in her set up for chapter three, appropriately titled \u201cOne Big Catholic Movement Family\u201d (pp. 55-74).<\/p>\n I appreciated Nickerson\u2019s story of this moment in the history of the U.S. Catholic Left because of its attempt at orthodox-unorthodox permeability. She speaks to the Catholic Left \u201cself-consciously adopt[ing] the church\u2019s communitarian traditions even as they challenged and pushed against its boundaries\u201d (p. 57). In the context of community, the Catholic Left \u201csought to create a theological opportunity for prophetic intervention, for the Holy Spirit to move through its non-conformers as another means of realizing justice goals\u201d (p. 57).<\/p>\n And now we are to the crux of things: prophecy. Traditionalists and so-called orthodox Catholics have the most trouble integrating prophecy into their theological perspective. Prophecy is, I believe, the synthesis between the orthodox-unorthodox\/thesis-antithesis dialectic. The \u2018orthodox\u2019, however, incorporate prophets only when they are either deep in history or when they have already made them outcasts\u2014after having hazed, reviled, and rejected them. Prophets are admitted into tradition only after their words, whether predictions, corrections, or jeremiads, are proven. How are they proven? Only after time and experience have vetted them.<\/p>\n This problem is well-documented, even in Catholicism\u2019s sacred texts and traditions. Of course the Christian Bible itself inveighs many times against \u201cfalse prophets\u201d<\/a> (New Revised Standard Version). Even so, it also warns, from Jesus himself, that \u201ca prophet has no honor in the prophet\u2019s own country\u201d (John 4:44). Jesus lamented for \u201cJerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!\u201d (Matthew, 23:37). The stories of Old Testament prophets are littered with rejection (Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Jeremiah, Isaiah). Many writings, moreover, of Catholicism\u2019s most prominent thinkers (and especially scientists) have been condemned or \u201cindexed\u201d (restricted)<\/a> before they are released (e.g., Descartes, Galileo). If I am recalling this correctly, Aquinas\u2019 writings were restricted for years before they became accepted. At a minimum Aquinas was denounced for some years after his works were first published (see \u201cCondemnation of 1277\u201d<\/a>).[1]<\/p>\n Traditionalists and the orthodox most often condemn novelty. They revile those who, in the present, proclaim (in an unsanctioned fashion) to speak for, or even in the spirit of, God.\u00a0 The \u2018unsanctioned\u2019 are those without credentials, or who have not been selected as priests or preachers. Traditionalists demand that only approved members of the community can interpret tradition. Most often, moreover, those interpreters are selected by traditionalists who disapprove of novelty, originality, and innovation. Freshness, nonconformity, and relevance are necessarily shunted aside. Prophets, and hence prophecy, are weeded out. Conformism is the order of the day.<\/p>\n Franz J\u00e4gerst\u00e4tter, 1907-1943 (undated)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Nickerson illustrates this in the case of the Austrian martyr Franz J\u00e4gerst\u00e4tter<\/a>. \u00a0Here is how the martyr is introduced as \u201cthe ultimate Catholic noncomformist\u201d of the midcentury:<\/p>\n The deeply religious peasant refused to fight on behalf of the Axis powers. He was, in most respects, the model parish family man, who joyously but quietly observed the rituals of country life in the alpine Catholic world of mid-twentieth-century Austria. After the Anschluss forced him into military training, J\u00e4gerst\u00e4tter decided his conscience, formed by the church\u2019s teachings, would not allow him to serve the Reich. With the tacit approval of Austria\u2019s cardinals and bishops, the Germans executed him by guillotine (p. 57)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Nickerson expands by noting that church officials attempted to censor the story, which of course backfired. A 1965 book about J\u00e4gerst\u00e4tter by Gordon Zahn, titled In Solitary Witness<\/em>, galvanized the Catholic Left. Nickerson notes that it \u201ccontributed to the zeal of prophetic witness\u201d in the mid-1960s (p. 57). It also drove a wedge between the patriotic American church fostered by Cardinal Spellman<\/a>.<\/p>\n It is important to note that \u2018prophetic\u2019 in this context meant something more immediate and less fantastical than \u2018foresight\u2019. It is not about seeing the literal future in the manner of a seer. Rather, prophecy, in the sense conveyed by Zahn about J\u00e4gerst\u00e4tter, meant something like \u2018extraordinary\u2019 or \u2018supernatural\u2019 insight. It is about observing something crucial that no one else sees in a situation or issue. It can also be about being ahead of one\u2019s times. This kind of sensibility about prophecy is beyond the common usage of the term in English. The plain meaning for many is simply about seeing the future. These insightful prophetic observations are very often unwelcome; they create discomfort or even violent reactions. Conservatives almost always reject these kinds of prophecy.<\/p>\n Nickerson\u2019s 1960s Catholic Leftists were inspired by Zahn and J\u00e4gerst\u00e4tter to be prophetic in relation to peacemaking. Their consciences demanded direct, dramatic, and unorthodox resistance action. They were inspired to go way beyond just speaking out\u2014to do something meaningful, at least with themselves. For instance, Gordon Zahn himself, then a professor at Loyola University Chicago for fourteen years, felt unwelcome at his institution for his work. He left to take a position in Massachusetts. He would go on to participate in the Milwaukee draft board raid in September of 1968. That action involved fourteen total raiders who destroyed, with homemade napalm, approximately 10,000 records (p. 57).[2]<\/p>\n Another unorthodox actor in Spiritual Criminals <\/em>was outlined in a prior post<\/a>: the priest and Camden 28 member, Michael Doyle. Doyle had \u201cused ashes on Ash Wednesday made \u2018by burning the Pentagon Papers\u2019 instead of the traditional ones made from palm leaves.\u201d He had \u201cinvited participants to see fully \u2018the death they symbolize and take upon ourselves the burden of guilt\u2019 that these ashes represent\u201d (pp. 134-136).<\/p>\n The term \u2018orthodox\u2019 arises in the text in relation to another person associated with, but not involved in, the Camden-28 action: Mary Schmelzer. Schmelzer was a college graduate, as well as married and with two children. Whether due to those factors or a less forward personality, she desired \u201cto be part of [the] Catholic Resistance but did not want to assume the risks associated with [dir<\/p>\n Michelle Nickerson, *Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial* (University of Chicago Press, 2024)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n ect action in] the draft board raids\u201d (p. 139). Nickerson sets up Schmelzer as having been raised in a Catholic family whose Catholicism was \u201cmore ritual\u201d and, in Schmelzer\u2019s words, \u201csimple, uncomplicated, [and] unsophisticated.\u201d Despite their habits, they were not \u201cespecially strict or orthodox in their devotion\u201d (p. 139). With the institutional church, her family supported the war in Vietnam. Mary\u2019s husband, John Schmelzer, was also a Catholic.<\/p>\n Nickerson relays that the Civil Rights Movement and antiwar actions \u201cradicalized\u201d the couple. Mary Schmelzer began reading works by Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan, and Dorothy Day. \u00a0She also become involved with a group called \u201cClergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam.\u201d Through classes she taught at the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science, Mary met a Camden-28 member, Cookie Ridolfi (introduced in this post<\/a>). Mary and Cookie became lifelong friends. Mary would assist the \u201cCamden 28 Defense Committee\u201d after the action members, including Cookie, were arrested (pp. 139-140).<\/p>\n Mary\u2019s journey from ritual-habitual traditional Catholicism to a nonconformist, activist position at odds with the institutional church (and her family) is exemplary of many Camden-28 action members. The state of things in the U.S. felt wrong to them. The struggles of the Civil Rights and antiwar movements exemplified disconnects with the ideals of the church, evident in its social teachings. The overall hypocrisy, bigotry, deception, and lies related to war and racism fostered a move toward unorthodoxy. The times demanded prophetic action\u2014an expansion of the possible in relation to church teachings.<\/p>\n The Catholic Left and Catholic Radicals were, then, unorthodox by necessity. Per the gospel of Mark, they knew that new wine demanded new wineskins. Pushing social, theological, familial, ethical, and legal boundaries caused, of course, reactions. The unorthodoxy of the Camden-28 had many negative social consequences, despite their eventual legal acquittal. Some have lived with the consequences of their \u2018spiritual criminality\u2019 for the rest of their lives. Nickerson does not find many regrets, however, by Camden-28 members in her study. Their consciences would have it no other way. Prophetic action was the synthesis that arose from the orthodox-unorthodox dialectic in 1960s Catholicism.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n [1] The Condemnation[s] of 1277, issued by Bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier, hit Aquinas both indirectly and directly. See sub-section #6 at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at this link<\/a> (accessed 1\/11\/2025).<\/p>\n [2] For more on some of the other Milwaukee 14 activists, see also Dennis Sadowski, \u201cAfter 50 years, draft board protesters insist what they did was right,\u201d National Catholic Reporter<\/em>, Sept. 1, 2018, available at this link<\/a>, accessed Jan. 8, 2025.<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/s-usih.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/CS-Lewis-Mere-Christianity-234x400.jpg\")
I confess a strong personal interest in the orthodox-unorthodox dialectic. When I became an active Christian in college, I fell into an intellectual crowd that concerned itself with lower-case orthodoxy. Granted, their concern (and mine) existed, at that time, in the context of Protestantism. It was an interest that flowed out of a shared reading of C.S. Lewis\u2019s Mere Christianity<\/em>. While I do not recall Lewis explicitly talking about lower-case \u2018orthodoxy\u2019 as a Christian ideal (checked: he does mention \u201cGreek Orthodoxy\u201d at one point in the text\u2019s Preface), it is no major logical jump to go from \u201cmere\u201d to orthodoxy.<\/p>\n![\"This](\"https:\/\/s-usih.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Franz-Jagerstatter.jpg\")
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