Early Days of National CPF

This account of the early days of the National Catholic Peace Fellowship is taken from the National Catholic Peace Fellowship Bulletin, February 1975.

In the Beginning

…there was an urgent need for Catholic pacifists to expand their efforts to reach out toward others in the Catholic community. The Catholic Worker did some of this, mainly through the paper, but it otherwise had very limited time to focus on such matters as counseling conscientious objectors, putting competent speakers on the road and doing the sort of organizing work that was so desperately needed if the Catholic community was to discover certain lost elements in its own tradition, particularly as regards conscience, vocation and peacemaking the gospel of the beatitudes.

…The FOR’s [Fellowship of Reconciliation’s] European trip in 1964 brought the CPF into formal existence; after it, in the fall, it was Phil Berrigan who finally talked me into giving up various plans and starting to work full-time, a decision realized on January 1, 1965. Tom Cornell quickly left his teaching job, and on it went, tremendously exciting.

The sacraments, the gospels, the stories of the saints, the ability of friends and strangers to risk everything rather than take part in murder, the friendship of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, the regular CPF masses and meals and long walks with Dan Berrigan…all these things helped to keep us going.

Jim Forest