Remembering Rev. Drinan -- "the stuff of which legends are made."

Joel Connelly: Remembering Rev. Drinan

As Monday headlines centered on the death of a horse that won the Kentucky Derby, the passing of a man who introduced the first House impeachment resolution against President Richard Nixon went virtually unnoticed. . .

As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, Drinan introduced a 1973 resolution to impeach Nixon based on the secret (and illegal) bombing of Cambodia. The panel ultimately picked broader grounds, chiefly abuse of power, to vote overwhelmingly in the summer of 1974 to impeach the 37th president.

. . .The "mad monk," as Drinan called himself, served five terms in the House, retiring in 1981 after an order from the Vatican forbade priests from serving in elective office. . .

Kevin Hamilton, a Seattle attorney and Georgetown Law graduate, said that Drinan was "just full of beans when I saw him last month.

"He and I were discussing a legal ethics seminar that he would have come out to Seattle for.

"Really ticks me off that I didn't get a chance to do that."

In giving Drinan its ABA Medal, the American Bar Association described his life as "the stuff of which legends are made."
. . .

The passing of Fr. Drinan, in a way, shows that history moves in circles: The U.S. is fighting another hugely unpopular war. President Bush's poll numbers resemble Nixon's at the time of Watergate.

And, during the weekend that Fr. Drinan was passing from this life at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., more than 100,000 anti-war demonstrators were converging on the capital.

..."Father Drinan was a forever gentle, resilient, tenacious advocate for social justice and fundamental decency," said Senator John F. Kerry, who was Father Drinan's campaign manager in 1970. "He lived out in public life the whole cloth of Catholic teachings. In the most divisive days of Vietnam when things were coming apart, this incredible man and most unlikely of candidates showed America how a man of faith could be a man of peace."...

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/01/29/congressman_priest_drinan_dies?mode=PF

In perhaps his last public appearance, he celebrated mass on Jan. 3 for Nancy Pelosi at her alma mater, Trinity College, an all-women’s Catholic college.

...If Rome thought this progressive priest would be silenced once he left Congress, they were mistaken. If anything, he expanded his repertoire of causes, writing extensively and lecturing about everything from his moderate views on abortion and birth control to protecting the rights of political prisoners and enemy combatants, even serving for a time as president of the Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal interest group.

...In 1970, he fended off John Kerry, in an early test among liberals trying to coalesce behind a single antiwar candidate, to beat an entrenched pro-war Democrat, Joe Lieberman Philip J. Philbin, in the primary. Philbin, a 28-year incumbent, could not believe he had lost to this upstart priest, and ran in November as a write-in candidate. Drinan prevailed again, this time over both Philbin and a Republican opponent.

...“Can we be silent about this flagrant violation of the Constitution?” he asked. "Can we impeach a president for lying about sex concealing a burglary but not for terrorizing the nation into war concealing a massive bombing?”