Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist

328 Pages·2011·1.68 MB·English

Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist
by Ammon Hennacy
CATHOLIC WORKER BOOKS1
223 Chrystie Street, New York 2, N.Y.
1This publication is a 2007 transcription of the 1954 printing. Please distribute
freely.
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Christian Anarchism
Christian Anarchism is based upon the answer of Jesus to the Pharisees when
He said that he without sin was to cast the (cid:28)rst stone; and upon the Sermon on
the Mount which advises the return of good for evil and the turning of the other
cheek. Therefore when we take any part in government by voting for legislative,
judicial and executive o(cid:30)cials we make these men our arm by which we cast a
stone and deny the Sermon of the Mount.
The dictionary de(cid:28)nition of a Christian is: one who follows Christ; kind,
kindly, Christ-like. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation for good, with the right
of secession. A Christian Anarchist is therefore one who turns the other cheek;
overturns the tables of the money-changers, and who does not need a cop to
tell him how to behave. A Christian Anarchist does not depend upon bullets
or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One Man
Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused and dying world.
(In this book this message is repeated many times. It is worthwhile repeat-
ing and studying. At the Catholic Worker in New York City in 1952 I met a
Columbiagraduateholdingprospectsofa(cid:28)nejob; anddoingpostgraduatework.
He praised my anti-tax articles. In conversation a few minutes later he said,
(cid:16)whyeveryonepaystaxes; theyarewithheld; youpaytaxes; Dorothy paystaxes.(cid:17)
Hehadreadmynon-taxpayingarticlesforyearsandstilldidn’tknowwhatIwas
doing. LikewiseinPhoenixaneducatedwomanhadreadmylea(cid:29)etsandarticles
for years and did not know that I really paid no taxes. So, if I repeat myself
time after time please remember that I think it is necessary. I have never paid
a federal income tax.)
There are indirect taxes that everyone pays. As I raise nearly all that I need
in my garden I do not need to buy much. As the saying goes I live in this man’s
world and if I am going to travel and do propaganda I have to pay tax on the
bus. Perhaps twice in ten years I have been the occasion of a friend paying my
way to see a good movie and paying a tax. I do not use tobacco or liquor so pay
no taxes. I buy Indian articles from the Indians rather than from stores and
thus need not pay a tax. To not pay taxes is not my whole message but is part
of the life of a rebel which I choose to act upon. For despite all talk you either
pay taxes or you don’t.
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Introduction
Feast of St. Matthew, 1953
Father Vincent McNabb, the Great Dominican of England who died a few
years ago, said once in an essay which dealt with (cid:28)rst principles, that in regard
to work, St. Peter could return to his nets and (cid:28)shing after Good Friday, but
St. Matthew, the tax gatherer, could not return to his occupation. It was not
an honorable one, this service of Caesar. (St. Hilary said that the less we had
of Caesar’s the less we would have to render to him.)
It is a good day to write the introduction to this autobiography of Ammon
Hennacy, the Catholic anarchist, whose anarchism means that he will also seek
to govern himself rather than others, that he (cid:16)will be subject to every living
creature(cid:17) rather than to the State, that he will so try to abound in goodness
and service, love of God and fellows, that for (cid:16)such there is no law.(cid:17) His is the
libertyofthechildrenofGod,thebrothersofChrist. Hisloveoffreedommeans
that he has put himself in bondage to hard manual labor for a lifetime, not to
build up a place for himself in this world where he has no lasting city, but in
ordertoful(cid:28)lthelawofGod,andearnhislivingbythesweatofhisbrowrather
than the sweat of somebody else’s. His love and peace means rejection of the
greatmodernState,andobediencetotheneedsofhisimmediatecommunityand
to the job. His refusal to pay Federal income tax does not mean disobedience
since he is ready and has always proved himself to be ready to go to jail, to
accept the alternative for his convictions. He is open and frank in his dealings
with all men and far from skulking and hiding in fear, he proclaims his point of
view by letter, by article, by picketing, and by public fasting. Many of his (cid:16)tax
statements(cid:17) appearinthisbook,andmanyanaccountofhispicketings. Hehas
done it so often now since the last war, that his fellow workers, Dave Dellinger
and I, have begged him to condense, to combine, to shorten, not only to save
paper and type, but also to save the reader. He has not done much of it, it is
true. The book, from the standpoint of writing, is a sprawling discursive a(cid:27)air,
writteninsparemoments,betweenhoursofhardmanuallabor,ortravelling,or
talking to visitors in The Catholic Worker o(cid:30)ce. But he has the genius of the
true teacher. If it is necessary to repeat, he repeats, and perhaps when he has
repeated his fast in penance for Hiroshima, repeated his picketing, repeated his
statement forty times, forty days, -he will have put on Christ to such an extent
that people will see more clearly Christ in him, and follow more in his steps.
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That is our job here, to put on Christ, and to put o(cid:27) the old man, so I am not
talking of an excessively religious person, an unbalanced person when I talk of
Ammon so living that year by year, he (cid:16)puts on Christ.(cid:17) We are told by our
Lord Jesus, after all, to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, not just as
St. Francis, St. Benedict, St. Dominic, are perfect.
Ammon has not always been a Catholic, though there is the Catholic strain
a few generations back. Surrounded by upright Protestants from his earliest
years, he was struck always by the divergence between belief and practice. He
distrustedtheemotionalismofreligiousbelieftoo. Soitwashisearlyyearsthat
he rejected religious faith. He loved his fellows, he loved this good world which
God made, though he was not thinking of it as a created world, then, but as
something which had evolved. He loved and longed for the good, and he felt
the solidarity of man. He knew that an injury to one is an injury to all, so he
early had a sense of the body of Christ, of which we are all a part, potentially,
or actually. He served Christ, though he denied him.
This service took him to the Socialist Party, to an opposition to war, which
brought him to prison. The story of his prison days will rank, I think, with the
great writings of the world of prisons. He had nothing to read there but the
Bible, and he turned to that with an anxious, hungry mind, a mind that was
tortured by inactivity. Ironically enough, in this so called Christian country,
when guards, saw his avid interest in the Bible they replaced the one he had,
which had good type, with a small type edition. Prison, after all, is to punish
men, not to bring them to penitence.
Apenitentiaryisaplaceofdarkness,notoflightthesedaysofman’scruelty
to man. But Ammon saw light, lived in light, those days of his solitary con(cid:28)ne-
ment in Atlanta Penitentiary, so great a light, Monsignor Hillenbrand once said
to me, that it seemed to blind him. He got no further for the time, than an
acceptance of religion and the Sermon of the Mount. He came out of prison a
philosophical anarchist like Tolstoi, in rebellion still against Church and State.
IalwaysrememberthosewordsofMonsignorHillenbrandbecausetheywere
to me encouraging words. Ammon, in his articles, sometimes blasted organized
religion, as he called it in such as way as to belabor the Church, Holy Mother
Church, and that hurt me as though the blows fell on my own body, as indeed
theydid. Organizedreligionwasonething,buttheChurchwasanother. Itried
to moderate these strong statements of his so that he would be attacking what
needed to be attack, the human element in the Church. But if it had not been
forMonsignorHillenbrand’sdeepunderstandingandencouragementatthetime
(and the Monsignor is not a paci(cid:28)st nor an anarchist by any means, though a
greatloveroffreedom)Iwouldperhapshavediscouragedfromprintingsomany
of Ammon’s articles. For by that time, Ammon was a regular contributor to
The Catholic Worker, of which I am the editor. Every month his article came
in, and every month I am sure, each of us members of the sta(cid:27), were shamed
by his consistence, his true life of poverty and hard work, his utterly consistent
paci(cid:28)sm.
He loved peace, he worked for peace, and he did not do any work which
contributed to war. From the time time of the second draft, he worked at the
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back breaking laborof an agricultural migrant. He worked in dairies, andwhen
the withholding tax meant that he would be contributing, though unwillingly
tothewarbudget, hewentfartherwestandsouthanddiddaylabor, collecting
his pay in advance, so that no Treasury agent could catch up with him.
And with the strange inconsistency of us Americans, army men, tax men,
were among those who hired him, and with the understanding that they would
help him evade paying income tax.
Hehasledthislifeofdailylaborformanyyearsnow. Thecommunityaround
Phoenix, Arizona has come more and more to accept him. Their hostility has
grown into love and friendship. Like Gandhi, he calls all men his brothers,
wherevertheymaybe,incastlesorhovels,inbanksoronskidrow. Heis,what
he attempting to be, a one-man-revolution.
Ammon was baptized on the feast of St. Gregory the Wonder worker, 1952,
by Father Marion Casey, of the diocese of St. Paul. He is typically midwestern,
tall, lank, long nosed and long faced, thin mouth and warm eyes, enduring
rather than strong. He is the average American, and as pioneers before him, he
stands pretty much alone. Next year, he will transfer his activities to Denver,
the capitol of the west, where the president has his summer White House. He
willbeginagaintopicket,tofast,toworkathardlaborinhisnewsurroundings,
reachingthemaninthestreetbygoingtothemanonthestreet. Hewillstillbe
an editor of The Catholic Worker, an editor continually on pilgrimage, a roving
editor, doing the work, the speaking and writing that he can do while he earns
his living by the sweat of his brow.
And what is he accomplishing, in this one-man-revolution of his? Does he
expect to change the world? When asked this last question once he said with
characteristicwit,(cid:16)Imaynotchangetheworld,butI’llworksotheworldwon’t
change me.(cid:17)
He told me a story the other day about a Chinese family who were digging
a salt mine. The father did not expect to get this done in his life time, the son
did not expect to get it done in his, and perhaps the grandson did not expect
to get it done in his. But if they kept at it, one day it would be dug.
Ammon is a man of vision, of which there are too few. Sometimes he may
seem to be hoping against hope, but I prefer to remember that other quotation
ofSt. Paul’s. Hehasthecharitythat(cid:16)rejoicethinthetruth, bearethallthings,
believethallthings, hopethallthings, endurethallthings.(cid:17) Letuspraythathe
will abound in Charity which (cid:16)never falleth away, whether prophesies shall be
made void, or tongues shall cease, or knowledge shall be destroyed.(cid:17) God bless
him.
Dorothy Day
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TheauthorwishestoexpressthanksfortheuseofquotationsfromKarlJung,
andfromthepoetsRobertFrost,LillianSpencerandVachelLindsay;alsoforthe
material quoted in book reviews, as printed originally in the Industrial Worker,
from books published by Harpers, Rutgers University Press, and Charles Kerr
Co.
1
Thanksalsotothefollowingartistsforchapterillustrations : FritzEichenberg(cid:21)
coverdrawingandchapters4,6,7&8;LowellNaeve(cid:22)chapter2;AdeBethune(cid:21)
chapters 3, 5 & 9-12; and to Rik Anderson for the photograph opposite chapter
1.
1Theseareomittedinthisreprintduetocopyright.
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(cid:16)But Peter and the apostles answered and said, ’We must obey
God rather than men.(cid:17)’.
(Acts V, 29-30)
(cid:16)Such problems [our war-torn world] are never solved by legisla-
tion or tricks. They are only solved by a general change in attitude.
And the change does not begin with propaganda and mass meetings
and violence. It begins with a change in individuals. The accumula-
tion of such changes will produce a collective solution.(cid:17)
Carl Jung.
(cid:16)You see the beauty of my proposal is it needn’t wait on general
revolution. I bid you to the one man revolution(cid:21)The only revolution
that is coming.(cid:17)
Robert Frost in Build Soil,
A Political Pastoral.