The Vietnam War ended twenty-five years ago this week. This anniversary of an event that roiled American society and changed so many lives cannot pass without mov-ing me to memory and reflection. Looking back on this time of turmoil, I recall myself as caught up, for the first time, in a struggle against the policies of my own national gov-ernment and moved, with others, to take previously undreamed of action to reverse those policies.

Until the war heated up in the middle 1960s and the United States became more and more deeply embroiled, our national involvement in Vietnam seemed to me a matter of only slight concern. Since the mid-point of the century, after all,  my life had been caught up with the search for God and the service of the church.

What did this spiritual quest have to do with political and military matters, no matter how pressing? During much of the previous war, that in Korea, I had been living in monastic seclusion and, literally, did not even know that the war was going on!

From a vary different vantage point, however, namely that of a university chap-lain, I began to look at American politics in an entirely new way. Now the connections between my religious faith and the actions of my government started to emerge more clearly. Prodded by students, colleagues, and others for whom those connections were already clear, I saw the Bible and the teachings of the church as a call to take a stand against an unjust war.

So I joined others in demonstrations and used my position as a platform for speak-ing out against bombing and other military measures that seemed to me in violation of basic morality and the teachings of Christ. I remember sitting down in the streets of Bos-ton outside a marine recruiting center in protest; another time I sat outside the Kennedy Building, along with thousands of others, barely escaping  arrest and the Mace used against many of my fellow protestors.

I also went to Washington more than once for mass demonstrations against the policies of Johnson and Nixon. The latter’s decision to continue bombing of North Viet-nam during Christmas of 1972 especially stirred me to righteous indignation. This action seemed to me clearly to violate principles of justice and peace proclaimed by the church at the Second Vatican Council concluded only a few years before.

At this time I published an article blasting a fellow Jesuit, John McLaughlin, who was one of President Nixon’s assistants. He had attempted a religious justification of Nixon’s bombings of dikes in North Vietnam in a way that I judged outrageous.

In 1971, I made a decision that amounted to the most radical action of my life. I accepted an invitation to go with a group of forty religious war protesters to Paris in order to talk with leaders of the Viet Cong and North Vietnam governments. Only later, after my return, did a lawyer friend inform me that what we did was in violation of United States law and made us liable to prosecution and prison sentences.

While in Paris we did discuss peace with our “enemies” and took part with them in religious services. A photo of me with two Vietnamese priests was widely circulated and I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times which quoted them about the freedom of religion promised them by their government.

I also carried with me to Paris a secret plan from the then governor of Massachu-setts to propose to the North Vietnamese that, if their government agreed to release pris-oners from Massachusetts,  the Commonwealth would not send any more of its citizens to fight in Vietnam. My instructions from a staff person in the governor’s office were to wait for a signal to proceed with this proposal.

In fact, the go-ahead did come and I passed the word on to a delegation member. However, nothing further happened: the North Vietnamese presumably decided it not worth pursuing. This is the first time I have revealed the plan, one that even to me now seems highly unlikely.

As I look back on this series of adventures into new territory, religious and politi-cal, I cannot help but feel mixed. My younger self was admittedly somewhat naïve. I knew little or nothing about the world of power politics. The Paris expedition in particular now strikes me as a mixture of zeal and simplicity.

However, I feel gratified about having taken decisive action in accordance with my faith convictions about non-violence and peace, convictions that still mean much to me. The cause was just and my friends and I had acted in the great American tradition of civil disobedience. With all the ambiguities that are involved in great public events, our protest may have helped change our nation and bring to an end a conflict that our nation should not have been fighting in the first place.

Richard Griffin