Berrigan Accuses Government Of Assaulting American Minds

Father Daniel Berrigan said yesterday that the U.S. government's assault on the Vietnamese during the sixties has been transferred to "an assault on the minds of Americans in the seventies."

Berrigan told the congregation of the Community Church of Boston that one of the government's principal tools in this effort has been Cold War propaganda.

He cited as an example, the Nixon administration's handling of the Vietnam armistice. "While the government speaks in terms of peace and honor, we are really dealing with an agreement sealed in blood," he said.

Berrigan explained that the casual acceptance of such violence blunts the individual's consciousness and decreases his estimation of human life.

"Churches and universities, the institutions which could best defend us, were seduced by the government during the Vietnam war," he said, "and now they are too cowardly to provide meaningful opposition to the country's rulers."

"Traditionally the Church has entered into military conflicts only once all the fighting is done. It is time we worked to prevent such conflicts, instead of being a mop-up group," he said.

Berrigan said that the only church group which did not succumb to America's will is the Buddhist Church of Vietnam. "By their persistent opposition to war's violence the Buddhists provide the best example a concerned American can look to," he said.

He also criticized individuals who turn to the fundamentalist approach of the Jesus movement. "The truly religious person must take responsibility for his country's politics, he can't isolate himself," he said.

He added that there is a danger of abusing religion when it is mixed with politics.

"Billy Graham's neo-paganism is an old story," he said, "We have to make use of the Bible for positive political action."

Though he spent 18 months in a Danbury, Conn., prison for stealing draft files, Berrigan said he has no plans to work for penal reform: "I don't believe I can do anything significant with an institution that is so blatantly repressive." he said, "There is a need to deal with larger problems."

Berrigan has been free on parole since February 1972. During this time he has been teaching at Woodstock College in New York, and making a limited number of speeches throughout the country.

His most recent concern has been raising money to help rebuild the Bach Mai Hospital in North Vietnam, which was destroyed by U.S. bombs last December.

Berrigan has written "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine," and co-authored "The Geography of Faith" with Robert Coles, research psychiatrist to the UHS.