PHILIP BERRIGAN'S public life was all about symbol: He took a hammer to war planes, beating them symbolically into plowshares. He poured blood on government documents, burned draft records with homemade napalm and served a total of 11 years in prison for crimes against authority.

But it was a life of substance and deep spirituality as well. The former Josephite priest who died Friday and whose funeral was yesterday witnessed for peace long after his "actions" lost their shock value.

He was the most famous member of the Catonsville Nine, a group of otherwise law-abiding Americans who grabbed draft records and burned them outside a Selective Service office in Catonsville in 1968.

From that day forward, Philip Francis Berrigan sought out demonstrations against military power - and particularly nuclear weapons. He welcomed the prison terms he earned, saying that only there could he truly identify with the poor.

He led Bible study classes for inmates and helped them with educational and legal problems. On the outside, he painted houses for a living and gave his money away. He criticized his church for being hostile to the poor.

His superiors in the Baltimore chancery worried in 1968 that civil disobedience of the sort practiced that day in Catonsville would "alienate a great number of sincere men in the cause of a just peace." He hoped a group of middle-class citizens and clergy might trigger a broader and more powerful movement against the war. He was at least partially right - something that seems to have given him little solace in the face of incessant war or war planning. His death seems more poignant, coming as it does with the nation preparing for war yet again.

In his own heart, he confessed, he worried about giving up, of ending his campaign against war. "I hope that I can keep going until ... until I die," he said. Surely, he did.

In a last statement of belief, he wrote, "I die with the conviction, held since 1968 and Catonsville, that nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth ... a curse against God, the human family and the earth itself."

Because of "myopic leadership," "greed for possessions" and a public "chained to corporate media," he concluded, the nation has scarcely responded to the nuclear threat.

However one might view his politics or his view of the world, he lived a life of rare commitment to conscience and belief.

Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun

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