Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings
Modern Spiritual Masters
by John Dear
Why You'll Love This
A Jesuit priest burned draft files, went to prison, and called it an act of faith — and his writing makes you believe him.
- Great if you want: prophetic voices that fuse spirituality, poetry, and political courage
- The experience: contemplative but urgent — each excerpt demands you sit with it
- The writing: Berrigan's prose carries a poet's precision and a prophet's unnerving directness
- Skip if: you want biography over primary texts — this is Berrigan in his own words
About This Book
Daniel Berrigan spent decades saying out loud what most people were afraid to whisper — that war is a moral catastrophe, that faith demands action, and that the comfortable church has too often blessed the very violence it should resist. This carefully assembled collection draws from his poems, journals, homilies, and writings across five decades, tracing the arc of a life that moved from conventional Jesuit formation toward draft-file burnings, prison cells, and a relentless witness for peace. What emerges is not a saint's biography but something more honest: the portrait of a man working out, in public and at considerable personal cost, what it actually means to follow a conscience.
John Dear, himself a peace activist and Jesuit priest, brings an insider's understanding to his selection and framing. The arrangement is thematic and cumulative, allowing Berrigan's voice — sharp, poetic, often darkly funny — to build its own argument across genres and years. Dear's brief introductions illuminate context without crowding out Berrigan's singular prose, which carries the weight of lived conviction rather than pulpit abstraction. Readers who engage seriously with questions of faith, justice, or conscience will find this collection genuinely unsettling in the best possible way.