September 2011 Philadelphia Chapter of Pax Christi U.S.A.
The Passing of a Peacemaker Monsignor Francis X. Meehan
With the death of Fran Meehan on July 22, Catholic Peace Fellowship lost a good friend. Much has already been said about Fran Meehan’s ability as a teacher, his work in Spiritual Direction, his weekly column, and his capacity for friendship. Sometimes in the midst of such well deserved encomiums a specific and concrete story can be the perfect finish. So here goes:
Years ago at the height of the Vietnam War in the Arms Race we all woke up one morning to the news that Dan and Phil Berrigan and a Plowshares Group had entered what was then General Electric in King of Prussia and did symbolic damage to whatever parts of nuclear warheads were manufactured there.
That news was quickly followed by the surprise of an opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Fran Meehan, then Professor of Moral Theology at Saint Charles Seminary. Surprise upon surprise. Saint Charles Seminary was a quiet place. The teachers not given to controversial statements on matters as controversial as wars and weapons. Fran suggested that the situation in Southeast Asia was questionable enough and violent enough to warrant the dramatic symbolic action of the Plowshares Group, the first of many such actions even unto now.
Fran’s opinion piece was well received and not so well received. Peace activists welcomed the opinion of a teacher of Catholic Ethics. Catholics who were of another persuasion expressed outrage that a priest, a distinguished priest and teacher of Moral Theology, would approve of such statements and methods.
Close enough upon this published opinion to allow a connection to be made, Fran was removed from the Seminary and assigned as a Theology Professor at a local Catholic college, which is to say that he went from teaching students whose purpose was most of all the study of theology to students who were required, grudgingly often, to take a religious studies course or two in their four years. The move came to Fran so unexpectedly that he respectfully asked some explanation and the only explanation offered was that it was simply a lateral move. A reasonable conclusion was that the Archbishop at the time, someone with little tolerance for activism, decided that he did not want that spirit or élan.
Fr. John P. McNamee
Fr. McNamee is a member of CPF
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