Introduction
Feast of St. Matthew, 1953
Father Vincent McNabb, the Great Dominican of England who died a few years ago, said once in an essay which dealt with first principles, that in regard to work, St. Peter could return to his nets and fishing after Good Friday, but St. Matthew, the tax gatherer, could not return to his occupation. It was not an honorable one, this service of Caesar. (St. Hilary said that the less we had of Caesar's the less we would have to render to him.)
It is a good day to write the introduction to this autobiography of Ammon Hennacy, the Catholic anarchist, whose anarchism means that he will also seek to govern himself rather than others, that he "will be subject to every living creature" rather than to the State, that he will so try to abound in goodness and service, love of God and fellows, that for "such there is no law." His is the liberty of the children of God, the brothers of Christ. His love of freedom means that he has put himself in bondage to hard manual labor for a lifetime, not to build up a place for himself in this world where he has no lasting city, but in order to fulfil the law of God, and earn his living by the sweat of his brow rather than the sweat of somebody else's. His love and peace means rejection of the great modern State, and obedience to the needs of his immediate community and to the job. His refusal to pay Federal income tax does not mean disobedience since he is ready and has always proved himself to be ready to go to jail, to accept the alternative for his convictions. He is open and frank in his dealings with all men and far from skulking and hiding in fear, he proclaims his point of view by letter, by article, by picketing, and by public fasting. Many of his "tax statements" appear in this book, and many an account of his picketings. He has done it so often now since the last war, that his fellow workers, Dave Dellinger and I, have begged him to condense, to combine, to shorten, not only to save paper and type, but also to save the reader. He has not done much of it, it is true. The book, from the standpoint of writing, is a sprawling discursive affair, written in spare moments, between hours of hard manual labor, or travelling, or talking to visitors in The Catholic Worker office. But he has the genius of the true teacher. If it is necessary to repeat, he repeats, and perhaps when he has repeated his fast in penance for Hiroshima, repeated his picketing, repeated his statement forty times, forty days, -he will have put on Christ to such an extent that people will see more clearly Christ in him, and follow more in his steps.
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