New Blog Series: On Spiritual Criminals by Michelle Nickerson – Introduction

If I am recalling correctly, Professor Michelle Nickerson and I first became acquainted in early 2016. She had already been teaching in the History Department at Loyola University Chicago for several years when I wrote her about participating in an S-USIH Blog roundtable on Andrew Hartman’s 2015 book, A War for the Soul of America. Nickerson readily agreed and her post was one of several I gathered for Andrew’s work—no doubt solidifying its positive trajectory in our specialty community, and well beyond.

In 2018, Michelle and I communicated again in relation to that year’s Chicago S-USIH conference. I was the chair and Michelle offered some assistance. In the summer of that year, I was also approached by the Loyola History Department Chair to teach a class part-time. I accepted. Michelle and I have been departmental colleagues ever since. Being in the department has also given the chance to get to know her whip-smart husband, Benjamin Johnson. I am honored to count them both as friends.

Over the years I have had the chance to read some pieces of Michelle’s newest book, Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial (University of Chicago, 2024). I read some draft material with the S-USIH’s Midwestern Intellectual History Group (MIHG). On another occasion I attended a Newberry Library “Religion and Culture in the Americas” Scholarly Seminar when Michelle’s work was presented. These two engagements explain why I show up in the book’s acknowledgments (p. 204).

Apart from a friendly (and collegial) desire to read Spiritual Criminals, I have other personal and professional reasons to engage the book. What follows, today, is a brief reflection on those distinct but still intertwined reasons. They will help explain my approach to what will be a multi-part blog series here. You deserve to know my biases, interests, and subjectivities.

On personal interests, I am a Catholic convert. I came to Catholicism in 1995-96—individually and not because of marriage. I had been an Evangelical for 5-6 years prior, but had grown disenchanted with Protestantism (Evangelical and otherwise) on theological, social, and spiritual grounds. As related to Michelle’s book, however, through those years of conversion I maintained commitments to political conservatism. I had been a GOP voter (Bush 41, Dole, Bush 43) with philosophically shallow (i.e., reactionary) but strongly held beliefs about abortion control (of course), small government (ideal), taxes (bad), liberalism (evil), and the military (good). In all of my political articulations I would have never risked being perceived as unpatriotic.

In those years I also felt that the “worldly” political realm was distinct from my personal religious commitments. Some of that separation was a Protestant-like spiritualism rooted in individualism. As a Catholic, however, my early years were about a commitment to Catholic orthodoxy and traditions. I cared little for understanding the current political, social, and cultural context of American Catholicism—except to oppose elements of perceived liberalism and leftism that had infected it (i.e., liberation theology and, yes, even elements of Vatican Council II). My conversion was personal and internal.

Professionally speaking, my work on on the great books idea and Mortimer J. Adler demanded that I show some care and attention to religious and Catholic history in the United States. To understand Adler’s philosophical commitments, community of discourse, and audience, I had to understand the role of Catholicism in 1930s-1950s America. While I was committed to studying the historiography of culture, the history of education, and our intellectual life, I needed to know the flow of religion around Adler and Robert Hutchins’ peak years at the University of Chicago. That flow had downstream audience effects in my work (e.g., Fordham University Press reissuing two of Adler’s books in 1996, and Deal Hudson writing an introduction for one). Of course, that necessary professional understanding also helped me to better understand my own growing identity as an American Catholic.

Michelle’s book, then, brings together a number of my personal and professional interests. It is about a historical slice of “The Church”—i.e., the American Catholic Left—that I personally despised for many years as an early convert. In accordance with her title, I viewed the Berrigan Brothers, lapsed priests and nuns, and young 1960s Catholic political activists as misguided at best, or theological heretics and “spiritual criminals” at worst. My work on Adler, Hutchins, and the great books idea did not force an internal or professional confrontation with those elements. I side-stepped the plight of the 1960s and 1970s Catholicism’s radical elements to focus, professionally, on a midcentury American Catholicism concerned with showing its Americanism, pluralism, and patriotism. Also, as Michelle notes in her text (pp. 2-3), the historiography on these Catholic radicals is basically non-existent. This leaves history to amateurs, ideologues, and the aggrieved. The Catholic draft board raids existed, heretofore, in distorted memories.

What I call “Mid-1990s Tim” (or “Early Conversion Tim”) would have been just fine with the excommunication and imprisonment of Vietnam War protestors that damaged private or government property. To me that was “violence” and the perpetrators got their just deserts. Lawbreaking could not be tolerated in cases beyond the pursuit of racial civil rights, and that era was over—according to Mid-1990s Tim. All forms of lawbreaking and violence were criminal. As a new Catholic, and in accordance with midcentury Catholic patriots, I felt that the draft board raids were unAmerican. The participants’ history as public claimants to Catholicism was shameful to me—examples of what not to do. My newfound ethic of theological universalism had not yet matured, personally, into a commitment to cosmopolitanism, true inclusion, pacifism, and an ethic of the common good that mattered in politics.

I did not know it at the time, but by late 1996-97, “Mid-1990s Catholic Tim” was already changing. It would take another 4-5 years for those changes to fully manifest. By 2003-04, I was beginning to tentatively explore aspects of Catholic Social Teachings that bear on Michelle’s book. I had embraced Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo Anno (1931), and had growing curiosity about Dorothy Day and Catholic Workers.  I was not yet a ‘spiritual criminal’ relative to my conversion self, but my conservative friends already had their doubts about my trajectory. I made arguments for John Kerry in 2004 that bothered them. By 2008, I was fully on board with Obama and argued intensely with my old friends about Obama’s viability for Catholic pro-lifers. That was when those old friends saw me as a spiritual criminal. I no longer talk to any of them today.

Michelle’s book deals with Catholic Lefties in the late 1960s and early 1970s who were considered criminals on two fronts: in relation to American law and in light of Catholic morals and Canon Law. The members of the Camden 28, as well as those involved in many draft board actions by Catholics (Catonsville 9, Milwaukee 14, Boston 8, Baltimore 4, etc.), were rejected by their Catholic brethren—priests, parents, family members, and friends. The members of the Bishops Conference did not support them. Some members of the Catholic Left were former priests and nuns, adding layers to their outsider status. These people were considered criminals by the larger Church. They were hounded by law enforcement officials, the FBI, and politicians.

The book’s title invites deep questions about the law, politics, and moral commitments: What makes one a criminal? What happens when you do illegal things? What are the consequences? What actions make prison or incarceration beside the point? What makes it worth it to risk being labeled a criminal? If the pursuit of one’s highest moral and ethical ideals makes it worth it, what happens when your spiritual brethren reject you too?

In forthcoming posts I intend to explore these questions and topics, in 1960s and 1970s historical contexts, in relation to various parts of Michelle’s book. I will reflect on Catholic Social Teachings, white Catholic privilege, Catholic Workers, Catholic manhood, Catholic feminism, Thomas Merton, Cardinal Spellman, Catholic education, issues of conscience, secularism/unorthodoxy, and whatever else comes to mind.

All of these issues come together, in Spiritual Criminals, in such a fashion that it is easy to see how this story could make an interesting and exciting film.  It has everything: sex, betrayal, crime, informants, addiction, youth, legal intrigue, and compelling characters. A film studio should buy the story rights to Nickerson’s book.

Finally, a few caveats:

(1) None of these posts have been run by, or pre-approved by, Prof. Nickerson.
(2) All of the extensions of thought, and historical applications, in this series are mine alone. If there is any fault to be found in this series, all of it should come to me.
(3) I obviously hope Spiritual Criminals becomes a runaway bestseller for Michelle. She and her family deserve every professional and material gain that comes her way. That said, I am not being paid or rewarded by Michelle or Benjamin for anything published here. [Also, by the way, none of us are paid for these blog posts!]
(4) While I do know that I share some political views and interests with the author (and her spouse), all historical (or present-day) political musings that may occur here are also mine alone (per #1 above).