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THIS week there was news about the death of Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan. He epitomised the utopic thinking of the late 1960s and was well known to me personally. An activist till the end.  Jesuit Andrew Hamilton gave a personal tribute to Dan Berrigan in Eureka Street, including the following words:

“At a personal level I also found his actions both attractive and challenging. He displayed great integrity in his readiness to suffer imprisonment and abuse for his symbolic protests against the war. That expressed his rejection on ethical and Christian grounds of the war. I found attractive his peaceful protest and his acceptance of prison as acts of solidarity with the victims of war.

“He also provoked me to ask what and who I cared enough for to be ready to act and suffer as he did. This question broadened my focus from the internal life of the church to the world beyond it. Perhaps ironically I found a way of addressing the question Berrigan posed through my association with the victims of the Indochinese war and its aftermath in refugee camps and Australia.

“Berrigan continued this mission afterwards, turning his attention to nuclear weapons and to the links between corporations and defence projects. His protest against a society built around a large military budget and the readiness to launch military campaigns in distant nations with reckless disregard for the people affected by war and the longer term consequences of its actions seems all the more pertinent today. He was always alive, and believed in the seamless robe of life, engaging in campaigns to preserve life, whether threatened by war, capital punishment or abortion.”