Tributes to Sister Megan Rice

Sister Megan Rice with Paul Magno at Giuseppe Conlon House, home of London Catholic Worker community, Jan 2016 photo: Henrietta Cullinan

Catholic Workers and peace activists in the UK are saddened by the news that Sister Megan Rice of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus died this week, age 91.

Sister Megan Rice was a member of Transform Now, a ploughshares group that broke into the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee in 2012, putting nuclear facility out of action for two weeks.

Born in New York in 1930, her parents were friends of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker. She joined the Society of the Holy Child Jesus straight from school. After studying Biology, she moved to southern Nigeria, where she was a teacher for 40 years.

When she returned to the US she dedicated her life to activism and was arrested more than 40 times.

The Transform Now ploughshares action of 2012 resulted in her, along with two others, being convicted of sabotage and sentenced to 35 months in prison, in February 2014.

A ploughshares action is a kind of direct action that originated with the Berrigan Brothers and the Catholic Left in the early nineteen eighties and which has been recreated hundreds of times ever since. Usually a small group of committed activists engages with Isaiah's prophecy, 'They shall beat their swords into ploughshares' through physically disrupting the sites of nuclear destruction and war making into something life giving.

In May 2015, the three's sabotage convictions were quashed in the High Court, and they were released. In January 2016 Sister Megan made a visit to Britain with peace activist, Paul Magno, and, in a hastily arranged speaking tour, she spoke at the London Catholic Worker.

Sister Megan told us that she was inspired by the Disarm Now ploughshares action of 2009 and followed the progress of the subsequent court hearings which continued for a whole year. She asked for permission from her order to spend a year researching nuclear weapons. To gather support and participants for Transform Now, she visited Catholic Worker communities, travelling by Megabus, and found the community at Knoxville, Tennessee, who welcomed the action. There were eight members of the group and, up until the last minute, they didn't know who would take part. They called themselves Transform Now, intending to be hopeful, as if to say, 'Let's see how we can make this life enhancing instead of destroying this planet.'

She was a excellent story teller. I was transfixed as she told us how, after two weeks in retreat, they set out at one in the morning. They walked over a steep ridge, through tangled undergrowth, cut through four fences and found the building that housed the highly enriched uranium, one of the ingredients for nuclear warheads. They poured human blood, donated specially for the action by supporters, and wrote Biblical slogans on the walls. They brought with them symbolic objects: crime scene tape, hammers, candles, Bibles, white roses and a freshly baked bread. When they were stopped by a security guard, they invited him to share in the ritual breaking the bread.

"It was easy to do the action," she told us, tucked into one of the many sofas in the cavernous living space at Giuseppe Conlon House. Nora Ziegler, a member of the community there, writes: "There's one thing I really remember from her visit. She told us how she'd spent a lot of time as a teacher in Southern Nigeria and that when she moved to back to the US she knew that, because of this experience, she wouldn't be able to just live a normal life; she would have to dedicate her whole life to resisting the American state, fighting against imperialism, and capitalism. I remember really relating to that very strongly because of my own experience of growing up in Kenya. Moving to Germany as a teenager I was confronted with a world view that completely contradicted my childhood experience. This radicalised me but it was also often lonely. So it was inspiring and encouraging to hear her relate a similar experience."

Shortly after this talk, Sister Megan went to Glasgow to visit the Faslane Peace Camp. Sister Katrina Alton remembers spending the day with her there: "I was really struck by Megan's simplicity, energy and commitment; a really holy and wise woman. She knows how hard it is to try and be a peace activist within a religious order, and how lonely it can be at times. I really appreciated that."

Fr Martin Newell, who met Sister Megan when she spoke in Birmingham, writes: "Sister Megan was gentle, challenging, humble and inspirational: an example to us all that, at 86 years of age, and having recently served two years in prison, you do not retire from living, preaching and witnessing to the Gospel."

Remembering the talk and looking over my notes, I am struck by the faithfulness which she brought to the ploughshares way of bringing Isaiah's prophecy into being, not only at the nuclear facility but in court rooms, in talks and beyond. She accepted the prison sentence gladly, saying it would be an honour to die in prison.

On the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima she said: "I don't feel like I'm free. I'm not out of prison. None of us is out of prison as long as one nuclear bomb exists."

LINKS

War Resistors International made a short video of the talk - https://wri-irg.org/en/story/2016/video-sister-megan-rice-talk-london

Transform Now official website with statements and details of court hearings - https://transformnowplowshares.wordpress.com

The Prophets of Oak Ridge, a detailed account by Dan Zak - www.washingtonpost.com/sf/wp-style/2013/09/13/the-prophets-of-oak-ridge/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_11