Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/81

CHAPTER 5. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—REFUSAL TO PAY INCOME TAX 68 It is Sunday morning. I get up at 5.45, eat a hurried breakfast, take my good clothing in a grip along with about 50 CATHOLIC WORKERS and go to the orchard to look over the situation of the water, which has been running all night. Here the water has gone into another row and missed half a dozen acres; there it is dammed up with weeds and a furrow. I channel the water in the proper places and look over the next row for potential breaks, and turn the water into this new row. I oil the pump, and then a dash of cold water livens me up. Change my clothes, and walk a mile down the road to the seminary chapel, where I give a CW to each person as they enter for 7.30 mass. Then I walk the the miles toward town. Many times a workman picks me up.

If I am early I visit Rev. Soker in his study for half an hour and give him a paper. Then I go in the rear of a large church and say my prayers. The old Irish priest here says what he thinks, his sermons being short and to the point. Some people know me as I stand in front of the church after mass with the CW, but most of them are busy with other affairs. As people go in for the 11 o'clock mass some get a paper from me. Then I hurriedly walk two miles to a church near the University. I have met this younger priest personally; he was a former social worker, so we have something in common. Here the people coming from the 11 o'clock mass and entering and leaving the noon mass can obtain papers from me if they like. Some military men eye my Gandhi cap warily as it bears a neat inscription in red, "Free India Now."

On my way home I leave a copy with my partly pacifist friend of the Christian denomination and chat with him a few minutes. Then I deposit a copy with my Jehovah Witness friends, to whom I have previously explained the mystery of one who is not a Catholic giving time and energy (as they give time and energy for their cause) to distribute a Catholic paper. The fact that I was in prison with Judge Rutherford in Atlanta in 1918 commands their respect. They see the pacifism of the CATHOLIC WORKER but it has the name "Catholic". How could that church be for "the Truth?" There must be something wrong! I have met the Jehovahs in other cities; they have courage, and that pardons much of their intolerance.

Coming home the other Sunday afternoon I stopped in to say hello to Lipa. Seeing me with a shirt and coat she asked, "Hennacy, you been to Ecclesia?" I said that I had. "You say Name of the Father?" "Not very much, but I say benefice for my honey," I replied. Quickly she took me into the bedroom and proudly pointed to two candles burning at either side of an image and said, "See Santo NinoNiño [sic]" (the Holy Child).

One other Sunday I sold papers at the church near the University and the priest said "every soldier who dies fighting for his country goes at once to eternal bliss." An old priest at the big downtown church saw me selling CWs and said "The Catholic church in all of its history has not lived up one jot or one tittle to the Sermon on the Mount. Come in and talk with me sometime." An Indian who was a guard of the German prisoners said to me after reading a CW, "Why does no one tell us about conscientious objectors except after the war is over?" I explained that we were getting them ready for the next war.