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Prophets without Honor
A Requiem for Moral Patriotism

William Strabala
Michael Palecek

Reviews Table of Contents Introduction «Back

About the Author

William M. Strabala was born in Iowa City, Iowa, during the Great Depression, the fifth of 13 children. He has lived in Colorado since graduating from the University of Iowa in 1962 with a Master's degree in journalism. Now retired, in his communication career he worked for The Denver Post, the Rocky Mountain News, IBM, several public relations firms and Public Service Company of Colorado. He is author of several other books, reams of poetry, and dozens of songs, all unpublished. When not sculpting in wood, or words, he continues work on a musical production. Bill also holds two U.S. patents in the arena of environmentally sound energy-saving building materials. He is founder-president of Midway Environmental Associates, Inc. He and his wife, Rosalind, live in Arvada, Colorado. They have three sons and five grandchildren.

Michael J. Palecek. 44, was born in Norfolk, Nebraska, and lives with his wife, Ruth, and two children, Sam and Emily, in Sheldon, Iowa. A devotee of small-town life, Mike says of himself, "I have been to federal prison and the O'Brien County Fair." In his communications career he has worked as a weekly newspaper reporter and award-winning editor-publisher in Minnesota. His jail experience stems from his peaceful anti-war protests at the Offutt Air Base near Omaha. Regardless, the people of Iowa's Fifth Congressional District selected him as their candidate for the U.S. House on the Democrat ticket in 2000 with a campaign fund of just $6,000. He lost the race with one-third of the vote, but he is running again in 2002 on the Green Party ticket. Mike's first book, KGB, was recently published by AmErica House, Baltimore.

About the Book

"Radical priests" laid it on the line, challenging government, corporations and the Church. Some were jailed; some were killed. Personal accounts tell why they had to do it - and...

"Radical priests" laid it on the line, challenging government, corporations and the Church. Some were jailed; some were killed. Personal accounts tell why they had to do it - and why governments and the Church fought so hard to stop them.

The book tells the story of a group of American men who happen to be priests - who happen to have served decades in American prisons - and the stalwart women who helped them form an international movement called Plowshares. In so doing, the book tells the morally patriotic story of America, a story told before only from behind an open hand across the face, like a football coach talking to his spotters in full view of a national television audience, afraid someone might see.

Darrell Rupiper, Larry Rosebaugh and Carl Kabat are Oblate missionary priests. Frank Cordaro is a diocesan priest from Des Moines. Roy Bourgeois is a Maryknoll priest. Charlie Liteky is an ex-Trinitarian priest.

Rupiper was in the national spotlight during the Iran hostage crisis. He traveled to Iran as part of team of clerics hoping to gain the release of the hostages. Rosebaugh now lives with the poor in El Salvador. He was a member of the Milwaukee 14, a group that burned draft records in accord with the example set by the Berrigan brothers at Catonsville, Maryland in 1968.

Kabat has served over 16 years in United States federal and state prisons since 1980 as a result of his anti-military actions. Cordaro has served half a dozen federal prison terms for his anti-nuclear activities. He has also given sanctuary to a manure spreader in support of Iowa farmers. During the Carter presidency Cordaro found himself on the front page of the Washington Post after he stood in front of Carter during a press conference to tell the world the truth about the SALT treaty.

Bourgeois, from the deep south and a former military officer who served in Vietnam, recently made his own front-page news [NY Times, Washington Post, others] as leader of the massive protests at Fort Benning, Georgia calling for the closing of the School of the Americas. Bourgeois and Rosebaugh also served prison terms in the 1980s when they sneaked into Fort Benning, climbed a tree and played a tape outside the Salvadoran soldiers' barracks of the last sermon given by slain archbishop Oscar Romero.

Liteky is a former chaplain who served in Vietnam. He received the Congressional Medal of Honor, and later surrendered it, challenging General Abrams and President Nixon in the process.

With the exception of Cordaro, all of these men began their clerical careers as missionaries, in Brazil, the Philippines, Bolivia and Vietnam, and discovered America in the process.

They discovered that the trail of the poor leads through such countries directly back to America. It leads directly to Rupiper's home in Carroll, Iowa; to Rosebaugh and Kabat's roots in rural Illinois; to Cordaro's Des Moines Italian household, and to the nation's capital, where Liteky was born. They also discovered that the America they grew up in never existed. They read history and learned about America's militarism, its attempts at global hegemony, and they felt they must resist. They wanted with all their hearts for their childhood America to be made real - a just and loving America - even if that meant they must spend years behind prison walls.

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Table of Contents

Introduction Historical Prologue: Prophetic Words Borrowed from Berrigan and Gorbachev 1. Prophets Hearing Voices from Hist

Excerpt

Strabala and Palecek are natural coauthors: both ex-seminarians, both ex-newspapermen, both friends of the heroes of this book, both peace activists from Midwestern America.

Recounting the as-yet untold story of these American heroes, the book weaves with a consistent thread the American story, a story of political protest grounded in historical...