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Promoting the Cause of Franz Jägerstätter The Blessed Franz Jägerstätter story needs no introduction for readers of the CPF newsletter, which has featured several articles about the blessed martyr. Many of us read In Solitary Witness by Gordon Zahn, a founder of Pax Christi. St. Malachy has hosted two events celebrating the good life and hard death of Franz. Father Dan Berrigan spoke each time. In October 2007 at St. Malachy, CPF celebrated the beatification of Franz with a choir-concert and Father Dan’s meditative reflection. Johanna Berrigan of the Catholic Worker -House of Grace was present there in Austria for the beatification event. Some years earlier, Ailene and Bob McGovern had traveled with Father John McNamee to the Jägerstätter home village where they visited with the widow, Francesca, now in her nineties. The other Sunday at Mass, Father Kevin Lawrence mentioned the wooden statue of Franz located in the sanctuary at St. Malachy. Father Dan Berrigan had commissioned the carving, and Bob McGovern crafted it. It was Gordon Zahn, a founding member of Pax Christi, who came across the story of the obscure, unknown peasant who died for refusing to take the soldier’s oath of absolute obedience to Hitler. Zahn visited and got details from the widow, who for many years had kept Franz’s letters hidden under her mattress. Zahn published In Solitary Witness in 1964 and in 1986 wrote in the foreword to the revised edition: “At the Second Vatican Council an English Archbishop submitted an intervention devoted entirely to the Jägerstätter story. He called upon his fellow bishops, assembled from the entire world, ‘to consider this man and his sacrifice in a spirit of gratitude’ and let his example ‘inspire our deliberations’ on the document which would become The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.” Zahn continued: “There is no way of knowing what, if any, influence his plea may have had upon the Council’s affirmation of the legitimacy of conscientious objection. What can be said with absolute confidence is that Jägerstätter has provided such inspiration to an untold number of individuals faced with the same moral challenge that led to his martyrdom. In the United States, opponents of the war in Vietnam linked their protests and acts of resistance to the example he set in his refusal to serve in a war his conscience told him was unjust and immoral. None were called upon to suffer the penalty of death, of course, but many accepted prison as the price for following in his footsteps. It is
not too much to suggest that this humble peasant changed the course of our
history a generation later and an ocean away. On several occasions, speaking
to college audiences, Daniel Ellsberg has revealed that this account of moral
resistance unto death was one of the factors leading to his decision to
release the Pentagon Papers. There is little doubt that this If today there is reason to fear that the memory of Vietnam and all it meant has faded to the point where many now forget its shame and tragedy and regard the whole experience in a more “heroic” light; if, worse still, this nation’s leaders seem intent upon risking similar adventures in Central America, it is well that we turn again to the Jägerstätter story and the lesson it teaches. Simply stated, it is this: no matter how hopeless the situation or seemingly futile the effort, the Christian need not and must not despair. Instead, the believer can and should be prepared to accept and assert moral responsibility for his or her actions. If nothing else, as Jägerstätter wrote, it is always possible to save one’s own soul and perhaps some others as well by bearing individual witness against evil. We may take some comfort in knowing the lesson has been learned, at least in part. In his 1965 intervention to the Council Fathers, Archbishop Roberts described what he regarded as “the major scandal of Christianity,” namely “that almost every national hierarchy in almost every war has allowed itself to become the moral arm of its own government, even in wars later recognized as palpably unjust.” It would be foolhardy to assume this pattern no longer holds or that the Archbishop’s criticism has lost its force. Nevertheless the promise is there that future wars will find the Church less susceptible to nationalism’s appeals. Indeed, the 1983 pastoral letter of the U.S. hierarchy may be read as a fulfillment of Roberts’ plea: “Let us break with this tragic past by making a clear and unambiguous affirmation of the right and the obligation of each Christian to obey the voice of his informed conscience before and during a time of war.” Frank McGinty |
act and its effect upon public opinion
hastened the end of this nation’s involvement in that inglorious struggle.