A Franciscan in the Nuclear Age
by Jim Forest
Rosemary Lynch, 70 years old, has been a Franciscan sister since she was 17. For many years she lived in Rome, but since 1977 her home has been in Las Vegas, Nevada, 60 miles from the Nuclear Test Site. “I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona,” she recalls, “which at that time was just a small, unspoiled desert town. In moving to Las Vegas, I came home to the desert, back to my roots.”
Rosemary has spent countless hours standing in prayer on a highway adjacent to the Nuclear Test Site or meeting with Test Site employees. Ten years ago she helped initiate the Desert Witness. Since then many thousands of people have gathered outside the Nuclear Test Site during Lent and on the anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6-9, to fast and pray for an end to testing. Many have “crossed the white line” and been arrested — three times Rosemary has been among them. Among those arrested at the Test Site this year were two Catholic bishops, Thomas Gumbleton and Charles Buswell. It the first time members of the Catholic hierarchy had been arrested in peace demonstrations.
Participants in Test Site actions accept a Nonviolent Discipline with a distinctly Franciscan spirit: “We will harbor no anger but suffer the anger of the opponent. We will refuse to return the assaults of the opponent. We will refrain from insults or attack. If arrested, we will not resist [but] will behave in an exemplary manner. We will not evade the legal consequences of our actions…Our attitude as conveyed through words, symbols, and actions will be one of openness, friendliness, and respect toward all people we encounter, including police officers and Nevada Test Site workers. We will not damage any property…We will not run or use threatening motions…We will not engage in symbolic blood pouring.”
Rosemary has won the respect of a wide range of people. A few years ago both the Governor of Nevada and the Mayor of Las Vegas honored her with a special Rosemary Lynch Day. Not all the responses have been appreciative, however. In February, following her last arrest, the director of Catholic Community Services in Las Vegas, G. Thomas Miller, gave Rosemary the option either to give up her activity at the Nevada Test Site or lose her job with the agency. Reluctantly, she give up her job. “I have observed that the more deeply a person enters into this endeavor of peace-serving,” she wrote Miller, “the more the cost of discipleship goes up…For me to abandon my hours of prayer and fasting in the desert would be a betrayal of my own conscience…”
Her conscience had a good start. “In my family we had a deep sense of Franciscanism. Of course, as a child, I didn’t understand the theology, but there was a certain atmosphere. We had an understanding of that marvelous universality, that cosmic love, that integrity of creation that are at the heart of St. Francis. While we didn’t fully understand how radical Francis was and what a reformation he started, at least in our home, Francis hadn’t landed in the bird bath.”
I asked Rosemary what it that draws so many people to Francis. “He realized that he profoundly human,” Rosemary answered, “that he personified the love, the fears, the earthiness of humanity in a way that few saints do. Francis had a deep insight into the message of the gospel and was so joyful in his way of taking it out among all the people. He understood the unity of all things. In some way creation spoke back to him. So we have those marvelous traditions of the animals and birds understanding him, and Francis understanding them. The idea of cosmic harmony was deeply rooted in him. And with this was his love and understanding of Jesus not only as Lord and Savior but as a human being too. It is to Francis that we owe so much of our incarnational theology — our seeing Jesus not just as the majestic figure but as the child of Bethlehem, the child of Mary, the man of Galilee, the one who was crucified. It was Francis who originated the nativity creche — the presentation of Jesus’ humble birth in the stable. Francis approached the gospels on a very deep and personal level.”
But Rosemary, intent to rescue Francis from the bird bath, stresses a radical side to Francis that is still often overlooked. “Francis took a stand against war and killing. Not only were the brothers and sisters forbidden to have weapons or to use them for any reason, but so were the lay people who followed the rule he wrote for those living a family life. When Crusaders set out to kill the Moslems, Francis went too, but to meet the Moslems, not to kill them. He crossed the line of battle — just as we cross the line at the Test Site. In doing that, he too was committing civil disobedience, and also ecclesial disobedience. It was against the law, both civil and ecclesiastical, to have contact with the Moslems — the ‘infidels, the heathens, the enemy.’ But Francis, this poor man in poor clothes, felt compelled to go to the magnificent Moslem sultan, not as an enemy but as a brother. He and an unknown brother went together and actually reached the tent of the sultan and spent some days with him. We are told that ‘the two parted as brothers.’ And still you find echoes in the Arab world of that visit. Francis was able to appreciate the Moslems and was inspired by their wholehearted devotion to prayer.”
People who meet Rosemary are impressed with her enthusiasm. She has a radiant smile and often calls people, “Honey.” Though she is preoccupied with some of the most terrifying events in the world, she seems remarkably free of anxiety. This is a lifelong trait, she says. She recalls how, as a child, she misunderstood the words of a certain hymn. “The hymn started off, ‘Oh Lord, I am not worthy,’ but for years I thought the words were, ‘Oh Lord, I am not worried!’ And actually, in our home, that was our attitude toward the Lord and toward life. We weren’t worried — not about the Lord or anything else. So I suppose it was a natural step for me becoming a Franciscan.”
I asked her if 17 wasn’t too young an age to commit herself to a religious community. “Not at all. In those days we started just about everything younger. We took responsibility in our teens. It’s a pity that nowadays we seem to be developing a culture of permanent immaturity, permanent dependency. You find university students who haven’t the remotest idea what they want to do with their life. But when I was young, people had a goal that they were going toward. And this is what you still find among the refugee children.”
Rosemary has a Master’s Degree from Loyola University in Los Angeles, but she says her “real” education began later on. “I’ve had a broad but unconventional education. The most important part of it came when I was elected to serve at our Congregation’s headquarters in Rome. Lucky timing — I arrived in 1960, and was in Rome for all four sessions of the Vatican Council. What an experience it was! Anyone who can remember the America of the ’50s will understand what kind of person I was when I went to Rome. I had grown up with all of the illusions that Americans had in the post-war years — that sense of moral superiority. I went to Rome with a lot of innocence and ignorance, of which I fortunately began to be cured — a cure that still progresses daily.”
Rosemary remained in Rome for sixteen years. “That’s where I lived, but actually I was traveling a lot — months at a time. I would be visiting the different places where our sisters were working — Europe, North America, Mexico, Africa and Southeast Asia. I began to look at the world with different eyes. One of the main events of my first encounter with starvation. I happened to be in Tanzania during a drought. For the first time I was surrounded by starving children. It was a conversion experience — the realization that things were terribly out of place in the world. For months afterward, I could hardly enter a store in the consumer society of Rome and see all those non-essentials. I wanted to scream out loud, ‘Doesn’t anyone know that I saw a child die of hunger — and you are buying false eyelashes.’ Such experiences prepared me for the work which I was going to begin when I went back to the United States.”
How did she end up in a gambling capital like Las Vegas? “I wanted to go to a grassroots job after all those years in a position of authority. Another Franciscan sister, Sr. Klaryta Antoszewska, and I went together. The Las Vegas we live in isn’t the city of lights and roulette wheels and famous entertainers. We live in a black ghetto. My neighbors clean rooms in the casino hotels, work in laundries, clear tables, wash cars, wash dishes. Many of them don’t have any work at all.”
The two sisters link involvement with refugees with work for peace. “We try to do these things on two levels — to combine immediate necessary work in the community, and work to change structures that cause suffering. Working with refugees, we try to change the notion of the State Welfare Board which was denying refugees financial help. Visiting prisoners, we work for a pre-trial release program. Working for the peace movement, we assist in organizing the radiation victims so that they can be represented in Washington. We don’t want just to apply band-aids, but neither do we want to lose contact with people by becoming too abstract.”
The refugees they receive come from Central America, Southeast Asian countries, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, other African countries, and occasionally from Eastern Europe. Among the most memorable refugees in recent years was a young Russian couple and their son. “The man was a sculptor and graphics artist. The woman was a restorer of icons and an illustrator of children’s books. Sadly, these are not skills in demand in Las Vegas. In the man’s case it seemed Sr. Klaryta was lucky — she got him a job in a graphics studio. All that we could get for the woman was a job as a ‘bus person’ — clearing tables in a casino restaurant. It’s a humiliating job for a sensitive woman whose previous work was as a skilled artist. She accepted it, but it was very hard.
“The two of them often sought refuge with us, and we would make a pot of good strong tea and talk for hours. In both cases it soon became obvious, however, that they couldn’t continue with their jobs. It turned out that this ‘art studio’ wanted him to make posters for pornographic movies. But for him art is a sacred thing. This violated the nature of his being.
“In her case, crisis was caused by a state law requiring that any bread left on the table must be thrown out if it hasn’t been eaten. She came home one night completely broken, in tears, saying, ‘They make me throw away the body of Christ!’
“That night I finally understood something basic in Slavic culture. All bread is holy, all bread is linked to the body of Jesus, not just the bread consecrated on the altar. But in this degenerate society that we have, we don’t see this. Bread left on the table is thrown into the garbage.
“Our friend could no longer violate her heart and her spirit by throwing away the sacred bread that is the body of Jesus. So we told her, ‘You have to stop immediately.’ And she did. Finally Klaryta arranged for the family to go to New York, where there is a Russian community. It has never been very happy for them, but at least it’s better than it was.”
Rosemary’s main work is what she refers to as “the service of peace,” though nuclear weapons and disarmament weren’t at all in her thoughts when she agreed to move to Las Vegas. “In Nevada you can’t not think about what a nuclear war would mean. We have so many people suffering from all sorts of mental disorientation. There are all the new diseases that have come into the world. There is the pollution of our beautiful mother earth. These things have already created the victims of World War III. They are all around us.
“Some of them are the people working at the nuclear testing site, where the cancer rate among workers is much higher than the national average. Many employees at the Test Site have been radiated in nuclear accidents. In addition there are all those soldiers who were close to ground zero when there were above-ground tests. Many of them have died already. Many have had defective children — the greatest sorrow. It is such anguish to see a suffering child. The penalty is carried on into an innocent generation.
“And there are the ‘down-wind victims’ — all those who were in the path of the fallout clouds. People have lost their children, even several family members. Some died quite quickly after their exposure, some lingered for a long time, some are suffering today, and there are the genetic defects that are showing up. It is a terrible price. Recently Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, the Chairman of Pax Christi USA, said, ‘We have not yet found a name for the mortal sin we are committing — preparing for the destruction of the world.’ This is what Dr. Rosalie Bertell calls omnicide.”
Can protests at the Test Site have any effect? “We hope what we are doing will make it more likely that the day will come when there will be no testing. But what we are doing has another, deeper meaning — the recognition that we too, not only those making and testing nuclear weapons, are in need of conversion. The motto of our Desert Witness has always been, ‘Convert!’ What we are doing concerns conversion. We need to convert our own hearts. As long as the bombs are exploding there, we have little hope of even understanding what is going on in the world around us. We hope not only for our own conversion but for a communitarian conversion, a conversion that will lead our whole society in a new direction. The desert is a place linked to conversion. The desert has always been the classical place of spiritual solitude. The prophets of old searched for the voice of God in the desert. This is for us too. So we go out to the desert to fast and pray outside the Test Site which in the winter is often windy and frigid, but in the warmer seasons comes to life. You should see the desert at Easter time!”
The actions have stirred a deep response in some of the people working at the Test Site. “The people working at the Test Site are hostages of the bomb just as we are,” Rosemary comments. “From the very beginning we have tried to cultivate friendship and a congenial spirit with those working on the base. Many friendships have taken root, especially with guards and police. Many people working at the site wave to us. I remember one worker who brought us a box of fresh donuts. He said, ‘I may be in the other side but I have to admire your perseverance.’”
“We practice openness with the police and everyone concerned about what we are doing. We let them know when to expect civil disobedience. One consequence of this is that the police have always been gentle and courteous with us. They have even had a sense of the joy of the occasion. They try not to hurt us when they put on the handcuffs. They assist us getting into the police buses. It’s remarkable. People coming from other parts of the country say that it is a unique experience. They say that the spirit of the Desert Witness is something they want to bring into the peace work they are doing at home.”
Rosemary has developed a profound sympathy for those whose working at the Test Site, many of whom she has come to know personally. “With the economic situation in the country so bad, they’re glad to have a job no matter what it is. We never say to them, ‘You should quit.’ We don’t have the right. This is something you have to come to on your own. But some have left the Test Site, even at the cost of a lot of personal and family sacrifice. Many others just don’t see a way out. The pay is good. Many say, ‘I’ll work here for a while and then get out.’ And there are also those people, victims of a lifetime of propaganda, who say, ‘We have to stay ahead of the Russians. If we don’t have these weapons and if we don’t test them, it will be all over for the US.’ Even with these people, I often sense a deep spiritual conflict.”
I asked Rosemary what she says to those who object to protest involving civil disobedience. “The real evil is testing bombs that are destroying the earth, destroying human health, destroying our prospects for survival. Breaking a trespass law — crossing a white line in the road miles from the Test Site — respects the essence of civil law and is obedience to the higher law. Sometimes the law needs help. Of course you have to have a certain amount of openness and patience with people who don’t see this. Civil disobedience isn’t for everyone. It is a call, a vocation. I would never say to anyone, ‘You should do this.’ But I ask others to respect the force of conscience that compels us who commit civil disobedience.”
Rosemary believes that those committing civil disobedience do everything they can to open the minds of opponents. “It is our policy never to have the kind of blockade where people go limp and thereby compel the police to have to carry us away. We don’t want to call forth hostility in other people. Sometimes people kneel down in the roads to pray. Sometimes we hold up the cross. But when they ask us to stand up, we do so.”
Increasingly people are traveling long distances to join in acts of witness outside the Test Site. “One of the biggest events this year was on February 5th, two days after the first US nuclear test for this year and the test, we knew, that would mean the USSR would end its nuclear moratorium. About two-thousand people were there, including several famous actors and scientists. We said the Lord’s Prayer together and then crossed the line and were arrested.”
I asked Rosemary what she had learned from all these years talking to people who explode nuclear weapons for a living. “The main thing is not to fear approaching anyone. We need to learn to approach those whom we or others regard as our enemies, whether people in the Soviet Union or the White House or people anywhere in positions of political or religious leadership — people who have authority and power which could be used for the welfare of the human family. We need to think about the manner in which we approach them. If we can possibly imbibe a little of the spirit of St. Francis, it will help. He approached his opponents in humility but also perfectly confident that he should go. He had a very great simplicity, something that we tend to lack today. We are far too complicated. We need to approach those we are trained to hate or resent or fear, and to do it on a very human level, in a loving way, seeing them, as Francis saw the sultan, as a brother or sister given us by God. If we can do that, what can we not accomplish?”
[written in 1985]