"Because Peter's program called for such practical things as houses of hospitality and farming communes or agronomic universities, we have often forgotten the first point in his program which was the need for clarification of thought, the need to clarify the 'theory of revolution'. He used to quote Lenin as saying, 'there can be no revolution without a theory of revolution'. But Peter's was the green revolution, a call for a return to the villages and the land 'to make that kind of society where it is easier for men to be good.' ...

Personalism, Anarchism, Libertarianism

His whole message was that everything began with one's self. He termed his message a personalist one, and was much averse to the word socialist, since it had always been associated with the idea of political action, the action of the city or the state. He wanted us all to be what we wanted the other fellow to be. If every man became poor there would not be any destitute, he said. If everyone became better, everyone would be better off. He wanted us all 'to quit passing the buck', and trying to pass on the work to George (i.e., "somebody else") to do. He loved using American slang, in his French peasant accent, which made it very funny, but it has kept his most popular essays from being appreciated in his native country, France.

Freedom

Above all it was in the name of man's freedom that Peter opposed all 'government ownership of the indigent', as one Bishop put it. Men who were truly brothers would share what they had and that was the beginning of simple community. 'Two "I's" make a "we"', he used to say, 'and "we" is a community and "they" is a crowd', a lonely crowd, he would have added if he had read Reisman's book. Men were free, and they were always rejecting their freedom which brought with it so many responsibilities. He wanted no organization, so The Catholic Worker groups have always been free associations of people who are working together to get out a paper, to run houses of hospitality for themselves and for others who come in 'off the road'.

No Class War

In addition to being opposed to international and civil wars he was opposed to race wars and class wars. He had taken to himself that new constitution, that new rule, of the Sermon on the Mount, and truly loved his enemies and wanted to do good to all men, including those who injured him or tried to enslave him. He literally believed in overcoming evil with good, hatred with love. He loved the rich as well as the poor, and he wanted to make the rich envy the poor who were so close to Christ, and to try to become closer to them by giving of their means to start these schools, farming communes and agronomic universities. Houses of hospitality are always run by the generosity of the poor who work in them and by the donations of the more comfortably off who send what they can to keep them going. But one realizes more and more that farmers and agronomists and craftsmen do not seek hospitality, do not 'come in off the road'. They might give a year or so of their lives if there were the tools to work with, even the houses to live in. It is a pitiful thing to house priests in chicken coops even though they have the privacy of one room, in these converted shelters. It is hard to expect a craftsman to work when he is cooped up in a dormitory and there is no space for his tools.

We Are All Greedy

No, another one of our mistakes in the past is that we have wanted to be all things, to do all things and while we have learned by doing, we have also learned what we cannot do. We can agitate, we can initiate, we can arouse the conscience but we cannot start a housing project for the destitute as Abbe Pierre has in Paris; or a model village, or an agronomic university either. Part of Abbe Pierre's great wisdom is that he limited himself to that most important work of the day, sheltering the harborless, without question, with the love of his fellow poor. He himself had gone out to sleep in the doorways, on the hard pavements, in order to give his bed to a destitute woman and child, and in reward for this folly of love, he had been enabled to arouse the people of France, so that in a brief year, more was accomplished than he had ever been able to accomplish by his seven years in the house of deputies in Paris. How Peter would have loved his single mindedness, his purity of vision!

We have had many with us who could not find their vocation. There have been the wandering monks that St. Benedict talked of. They want religious life and life in the world. They want to have families and to preach, not teach. They wanted so much, not recognizing it was God Himself they wanted, that they could not develop the talents God gave them, and wander year after year wondering what God wants them to do. Peter would tell them, 'first of all, earn a living by the sweat of your own brow, not some one else's. Choose a work that can be considered honorable, and can be classed under the heading of a work of mercy, serving your brothers, not exploiting them. Man's work is as important to him as bread, and by it he gains his bread. And by it he gains love too, because he serves his brother, and love is an exchange of gifts. How often I have seen people begin to love each other, because they worked together. They began to "know" each other through the work they shared.' (no close quote in original -- I've inserted it where I think it belongs -- ed.)"

"The detention of a prominent comedian (Maung Thura, stage name "Zargarnar") in Burma points to an ominous turn of events in the military-ruled country. It has reportedly become a 'crime' for individuals and civil society groups to provide emergency relief to the hundreds of thousands of cyclone victims. ...

'What Zargarnar's arrest has shown is that the SPDC [State Peace and Development Council] is not happy with the network of civil society groups that responded promptly to the cyclone,' says David Scott Mathieson, Burma consultant for Human Rights Watch. '[The junta] wants to contain the civil society response and take all the credit for the relief effort.'

Zargarnar has been one of the many prominent artists, writers and entertainers who have led the relief effort, consequently revealing 'the government's poor response,' he added in an interview. 'The effort Zargarnar led shows Burmese civil society trying to chart an independent course away from the regime, which only represents itself, and selected business elite.'

... The junta not only failed to use its state machinery to help the victims, but the scale of the country's worst natural disaster, affecting over 80,000 square km, was beyond its capacity. Moreover, the regime continued to place bureaucratic roadblocks in the way of international relief efforts, resulting in over one million people still having to get basic relief."