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J. Edward Guinan

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For the Villanova astronomy professor, see Edward Guinan.
J. Edward Guinan
Born
John Edward Guinan

(1936-03-06)March 6, 1936
Denver, Colorado, U.S.
Died26 December 2014(2014-12-26) (aged 78)
Washington, D.C.
Occupation(s)Community activist, former Paulist priest, former stock trader
Years active1968-2012
Known forFounder, Community for Creative Non-Violence. Author of the first ballot for the Statehood movement in the District of Columbia.

J. Edward Guinan (6 March 1936 – 26 December 2014) was a former stock trader who became a Paulist priest and founded Washington, D.C.'s Community for Creative Non-Violence in 1970.[1][2][3] Guinan was the first to put the initiative for DC Statehood on the ballot, and it won all wards of the district to kickstart the statehood movement.[4]

Early life and education

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Guinan was born into a blue-collar family in 1936 in Denver, Colorado, the son of Edward Thomas Guinan and Gabrielle Huot Guinan (Irish and French origins).[5] He attended Loyola Grade School in Denver from 1942 to 1950 and Saint Joseph High School from 1950 to 1954.

Military service

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Before college, Guinan served in the U.S. Naval Air Force from 1954 to 1957, at the U.S. Naval Air Station Barbers Point, Oahu, Hawaii.[6] He worked as a radioman, and engaged in top-secret work countering China.[7] After the Navy, he went to college on the G. I. bill in 1957, graduating from the University of Colorado Boulder from in 1960, and majoring in international finance.[8]

Stock trader

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He became a stock trader in San Francisco, where he worked for Schwabacher & J. W. Strauss & Co., a third-market firm. He was a member of the New York, American, and Pacific Coast stock exchanges, and the National and San Francisco Traders Associations.[9] He bought a Jaguar, and said he enjoyed driving it to lavish company getaways in Acapulco, Mexico.[5] However, he also began volunteering in a ghetto behind Nob Hill several nights a week with a young priest friend, and "came to the conclusion that I'd rather respond directly to human suffering than perpetuate the wealth of the already wealthy..."[7] He discerned a spiritual call to join the Paulist Fathers and left the financial world, giving his Jaguar and all his wealth away.[10] His knowledge of international finance would inform his future work as a community founder and DC statehood initiator.

Religious life

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To become a priest, he completed a one-year novitiate from 1965-66, including spending the summer of 1965 as an assistant chaplain in Berkeley, becoming deeply influenced by Mario Savio, whom he met, and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.[5] He engaged in the spirit of radical political dissent that was just starting there in the wake of the assassination of Malcolm X, which he said affected him even more deeply than that of John F. Kennedy.[7] He moved to Washington, DC to attend St. Paul's College, the Paulist major seminary, from 1966 to 1971, completing studies in philosophy and theology.[11] There he volunteered in Anacostia, which was at that time the city's highest-crime neighborhood, and very poor. As a priest he counseled conscientious objectors against going to Vietnam.

He cited 1968 as the year that tipped the balance for him. He had contacted Martin Luther King, Jr. to volunteer for the Poor People's Campaign and the march on the national mall on June 19, 1968, and he served as lieutenant.[5] But King was assassinated in April. Speaking to a writer in the late 1970s, Guinan remembered 1968 as

[a]n explosive year for everyone: Tet, Biafra, Chicago, Johnson refusing to run, my working with King, his assassination, Kennedy’s death, my traveling to New Hampshire with Eugene McCarthy, Thomas Merton dying — I’d been completing my thesis on Merton’s theology of non-violence. That radical non-violence and critical way of looking at socio-economic-theological issues proved helpful in pulling my thoughts together. I came to feel things were much too symptomatic. You were chasing hunger and chasing war and chasing poverty and it was rooted somewhere. In the way economic and social orders evolve.[7]

Guinan was ordained a deacon in 1970 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, Baltimore. His ordination as a priest was on January 16, 1971, at St. Paul the Apostle Church (Manhattan). From 1970 to 1974 he was active in the priesthood, and worked as associate chaplain of the Newman Center of George Washington University in Washington, D.C.[12][13] He was deeply involved in the antiwar movement, and his "fiery let's-go-to-the-barricades" sermons on peace drew large crowds, according to the social justice journalist Colman McCarthy.[14][15] Various student-run underground and campus papers nationwide began taking notice, even encouraging young people to travel to Washington to hear him.[16]

Peace Summer: Contemplation and Resistance

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In the spring of 1972, Guinan persuaded his religious congregation to allow him to host peace activists at Mount Paul, the Paulist Fathers Minor Seminary and novitiate in Oak Ridge, New Jersey.[17] They dubbed the conference Oakridge not just for the location, but as a nod to the hub of US nuclear arms buildup activity in the United States, Oak Ridge Tennessee.[18] The two-month "Peace Summer" on the weekend of June 30 to July 1drew over 1,500 people who organized and coalesced themselves into a movement.[19][20] Catholic Worker founder and activist Dorothy Day attended, as did Catholic journalist and friend of Mother Teresa, Eileen Egan.[21] During this summer Guinan met his future wife, Kathleen Thorsby, and invited her to work with the other activists in Washington, DC. Beyond the antiwar movement, he envisioned working on system issues affecting poverty and racism. The group wanted to feed hungry people, and opened a new house at 1008 K Street Northwest.[22]

Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV)

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Guinan perceived the need to establish a place of dialogue and input where people could think through and have significant input on city issues, the military industrial complex, and the Vietnam War.[23] In 1969 he asked the Paulist Council to grant him the freedom to create a community on the principles of “common goods, shared responsibility and service-oriented — to live poorly, simply, to make ourselves available to others and see if it works.”[5] The response was a unanimous yes, which he said surprised him. He and a group of graduate student peace activists founded the Community for Creative Non-Violence in two houses, one directly on Washington Circle ("23rd Street House" at 936 23rd Street NW), and a second one known as the "Peace Study House" at 2127 N Street NW (21st and N) that offered nightly meetings and courses led by psychologist, conscientious objectors, and fellow Paulists delving into the mindset of violence and how it can transform to peace.[24] This all grew out of the worship community of George Washington University.[25] It was an interfaith enterprise, however, with Jewish, Baptist, and secular members alongside Catholics among the original founding group, and not officially connected to any church. Guinan and the group drafted a statement of purpose, “To resist the violent; to gather the gentle; to help free compassion and mercy and truth from the stockades of our empire.”[5] With the help of House Speaker Tip O'Neill (D-Mass) and Marion Barry, the mayor of Washington, DC, in 1984 the group moved into a vacant federal building at 425 D Street NW, where it remains.[15] McCarthy said it was "an unprecedented accord between the Reagan administration, the District government and the CCNV."[6] It grew to 1,350 beds, becoming the largest such shelter in the US.[6]

Zacchaeus Community Kitchen

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At 905 New York Avenue NW, the group established Zacchaeus Community Kitchen on October 16, 1972.[22] They placed it in a converted barbershop just six blocks from the White House to highlight the need.[18] Over 500 people a day came from the beginning. Mother Teresa, who was still unknown either to the Guinnas or to the US in general because this was seven years before she won the Nobel Peace Prize, came with her friend Eileen Egan, the latter of whom was already friendly with Fr. Guinan. Mother Teresa and Egan served the first bowls of soup, eating with the first guests.[26] Dorothy Day also visited from time to time, and was closely involved with the growth of the communities. Hélder Câmara the self-identified socialist Bishop and advocate of Liberation Theology visited as well. The venue was busy and popular, but they were also threatened with eviction in 1973 for attracting the wrong element to the building, making headlines: "We have come to feed the hungry, and we intend to insist on that right. The more fortunate will have to adjust."[27] The Guinans also founded the Zacchaeus Free Clinic and recruited Jack Bresette, MD. The Zacchaeus organizations later merged to become Bread for the City.

Kissinger protest

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On October 8, 1973, when Henry Kissinger received the Pacem in Terris award from the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, an incensed Guinan led a group of protesters to the event.[21] They bought tickets, and seated themselves strategically around the auditorium at the Sheraton Park Hotel in Washington, DC. An attendee said that those present included "Hans Morgenthau, J. William Fulbright, George Will, Edwin Reischauer, Rexford Tugwell, Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Jackson, George McGovern, Stanley Hoffman, David Horowitz, Hubert Humphrey, Theodore Hesburgh, John Kenneth Galbraith, Elizabeth Mann Borgese, Clark Clifford, John Patton Davies, Sam Ervin, Frank Church, Leslie Gelb, David Halberstam, Marshall Shulman, Francis Fritzgerald, Jonas Salk, and Edmund Muskie," and also a number of celebrities such as Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman.[28] Guinan and his group, which included activist Ted Glick who later wrote about it, brought automated laughing boxes. When Kissinger paused in his acceptance speech, Glick recalled that Guinan stood and said loudly enough for everyone to hear, "Henry Kissinger, it is an outrage that you are getting this award after the millions of deaths you are responsible for in Indochina."[29] Instead of stopping, the event continued and Kissinger kept speaking. Then Guinan, Glick, and the others activated the laughing boxes from their various places around the auditorium, causing an uproar. This prompted security to remove them all, and the disruption was broadcast on national television.[29]

Eat-ins and public fasting

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Guinan and his community became known for both direct action and creative protest, for example "eat-ins" with the poor at grocery stores, and long public fasts, both of which Guinan initiated.[30][31] In 1972 Guinan went on a 21-day water-only fast to bring attention of the right of the poor to eat. He then broke the fast by going into a Safeway grocery store, eating bread from the shelves, and declaring "This bread has been stolen by Safeway from the children, from the elderly, from the hungry, from the farmers and farm workers. It is here in this store so that this monopoly may now steal from the consumers. People have a right to eat."[30] In 1975 he and another CCNV activist, Michael Murphy, were found not guilty by a jury after they entered a grocery store, broke apart a loaf of French bread and shared it with other customers while TV news cameras rolled, "decrying unconscionable profiteering amid mass hunger."[32]

His fast in 1975 protesting a mansion for a Catholic bishop was his most covered in national news. A group of Catholic businesspeople raised money to buy the Chase mansion in Washington, DC's Kalorama neighborhood, where Embassy Row is located. The mansion was considered one of the most beautiful in the city, and the media soon dubbed it the "Christian Embassy."[33] Cardinal William Wakefield Baum purchased it from the group as his intended residence, prompting Guinan to go on what he intended to be a prolonged water-only fast to protest the extravagance and declare that the money should be spent serving the poor.[34] Following a public outcry, Baum relented after Guinan had fasted for 27 days.[33]

Wellspring Ministries

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For 25 years from 1985 until he retired in 2010, Guinan was executive director of Wellspring Ministries, a nonprofit incorporated to serve adults living with developmental disabilities.[35]

Pax Christi USA

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Too many Catholics--and much of the structure--are not even knowledgeable about our own tradition… the ‘just war theory’ has to be deeply questioned.

Then-Paulist Father J. Edward Guinan, C. S. P., speaking as the inaugural general gecretary of Pax Christi USA, National Catholic Reporter, October 19, 1973

Guinan was the founding Director of Pax Christi USA, and became its first General Secretary.[36] He organized the founding assembly, which was held at George Washington University on October 5-7,1973.[37] Many of the 350 participants had also joined pray-ins outside the nearby Nixon White House that summer.[38] Guinan wished to counter Just war theory, using Pope John XXIII's Pacem in terris encyclical of 1963 to, in his words, "permeate the Roman Catholic consciousness and structure with its rich tradition of Catholic pacifism and gospel nonviolence which has always been with us, but which has for many centuries been overlaid with layers of argumentation and rhetoric and is very difficult to uncover."[39] Dorothy Day spoke at that first meeting, saying the group was needed to counter U.S. involvement in Indochina.[37] They adopted two resolutions, (1) to support the United Farm Workers of America in their "struggle for justice" during the ongoing lettuce and grape boycotts, and (2) countering the military's intention to form Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) groups on college campuses, with a focus on establishing peace programs rather than expending energy to fight ROTC. The latter became a point of conversation with his friend, Jesuit Richard McSorley of Georgetown University, who publicly and actively protested against ROTC at Georgetown. [40]

Pax Christi USA differed from similar groups such as Catholic Peace Fellowship (Jim Forest) because, according to Guinan, it had "consultative status with the United Nations."[41] Bishop Carroll Thomas Dozier of Memphis and Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit sent messages of support to the assembly, as did Cardinal Bernardus Johannes Alfrink of Utrecht, honorary chairman of the international body.

Guinan's participation only lasted a year, until the summer of 1974.[42] He had become preoccupied with his public fasting, and was less drawn to day-to-day activities. Bishop Dozier was concerned both about the optics of the fast, and the protest of Henry Kissinger. Guinan's resignation letter was also a key to his personality. "I function very poorly in organizations and institutions, possibly an instinctual disbelief in the form; I abhor majority and distrust consensus, possibly an exaggerated belief in the individual; I oppose sacrificing the person for the greater Glory of God, which has brought me to the precipice of our present disagreement."[42]

DC Statehood

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Guinan, a Statehood Party member, saw a DC statehood initiative as a way of bringing the benefits of being a state to the electorate, especially the poor.[43] The statehood movement restarted after the death of Julius Hobson, when Guinan put statehood on the 1980 ballot as an initiative.[44] He did not ask anyone in the self-determination movement, but instead drafted a statehood proposal "that required a four-step process: an up-or-down vote on the question of statehood, the election of forty-five delegates to a constitutional convention, the submission of a constitution to the voters for ratification, and, finally, an application to Congress for admission to the Union as the fifty-first state."[45] Were DC to become a state, Guinan's proposal would have launched a legal process to create a constitution for the State of New Columbia and lobby congress for a statehood bill. Asch and Musgrove show how Guinan also hoped to establish a grassroots activist network "that would displace establishment leaders and empower citizens to address D.C.'s most pressing needs."[45] The ballot question won all wards.[18]

Publications

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Editor, Peace and Nonviolence, Paulist Press, 1973.[46]

Editor, Redemption Denied: An Appalachian Reader, Gamaliel Press, 1976.[47]

Editor, Flesh and Spirit: A Religious View of Bicentennial America, Gamaliel Press, 1976

Personal life

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Guinan met Kathleen Thorsby, who had come to Washington, D.C., for the "Peace Summer" discussed above.[17] He asked the Paulists for permission to become the first married priest, and he further petitioned the Vatican to abolish the rule that priests cannot marry. His request was denied by Pope Paul VI, so he left the Paulists. He and Thorsby married in 1974, she took his surname, and they remained a married team until his death. Together they founded Zacchaeus Community Kitchen, and other cornerstone organizations that serve the poor. Kathleen Guinan has been CEO of Crossway Community since 1990. [48] She is also a founder of Rachael's Women's Center, the first day shelter for women experiencing homelessness. [49] They had four children. The couple received the WETA Hometown Hero award as DC citizens creating "positive change for underprivileged people."[18]

References

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  1. ^ "CCNV Chronology". The Community for Creative Non-Violence. Retrieved April 21, 2021.
  2. ^ Miller, Timothy (1999). The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. pp. 131–32.
  3. ^ Elwell, Christine (2008). From Political Protest to Bureaucratic Service: The Transformation of Homeless Advocacy in the Nation's Capital and the Eclipse of Political Discourse. Washington, DC: American University, PhD dissertation.
  4. ^ Myers Asch, Chris; Musgrove, George Derek (2017). Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital. Chapel Hill NC: UNC Press Books. p. 417. ISBN 9781469635873.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Rader, Victoria (1986). Signal Through the Flames. Kansas City, Missouri: Sheed & Ward. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-934134-24-8.
  6. ^ a b c McCarthy, Colman (3 January 2015). "J. Edward Guinan, former Catholic priest who ministered to the homeless, dies at 78". The Washington Post.
  7. ^ a b c d Thompson, Toby (1979). The '60s Report. New York: Rawson, Wade Publishers. p. 265. ISBN 978-0-89256-072-1.
  8. ^ "In Memoriam – Spring 2015". Alumni Association, University of Colorado Boulder. Retrieved 2024-12-28.
  9. ^ "National Security Traders Association Convention". Commercial and Financial Chronicle. 196 (6216): 2. 29 November 1962 – via Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
  10. ^ Asch, Chris Myers; Musgrove, George Derek (2017). "Perfect for Washington: Marion Barry and the Rise and Fall of Chocolate City, 1979–1994". Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 390–391. doi:10.5149/9781469635873_asch.18.
  11. ^ The Official Catholic Directory: Anno Domini 1972. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. 1972. p. 902.
  12. ^ Guinan, J. Edward (5 October 1970). "Bulletin Board: Moral Decisions". The Hatchet. p. 2.
  13. ^ Guinan, J. Edward (29 March 1971). "Memorial for Dr. Martin Luther King". The Hatchet. p. 9.
  14. ^ Noonan, James (1 March 1994). "John Shiel". The Catholic Worker. Vol. LXI, no. 2.
  15. ^ a b McCarthy, Colman (4 January 2015). "A Tenacious Advocate for D.C.'s Dispossessed". The Washington Post. pp. C7.
  16. ^ Staff (6 March 1972). "Nonviolence Workshop". The Rag (Austin, Texas). p. 4.
  17. ^ a b Guinan, Fr. Ed (1 June 1972). "Peace Summer". The Catholic Worker. Vol. XXXVIII, no. 5.
  18. ^ a b c d Woodiwiss, Catherine (2015-01-07). "Remembering J. Edward Guinan, Passionate Advocate for D.C.'s Most Vulnerable". Sojourners. Retrieved 2025-01-01.
  19. ^ Holstein, James; Miller, Gale. Challenges and Choices: Constructionist Perspectives on Social Problems. Piscataway, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. p. 224.
  20. ^ Bogard, Cynthia J. (2003). Seasons Such as These: How Homelessness Took Shape in America. Piscataway, New Jersey: AldineTransaction. p. 10, 20. ISBN 9780202307244.
  21. ^ a b McNeal, Patricia F. (1991). Harder than War: Catholic Peacemaking in Twentieth-Century America. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. p. 230. ISBN 978-0-8135-1739-1.
  22. ^ a b Linner, Rachelle (1 May 1973). "Washington, DC". The Catholic Worker. Vol. XXXIX, no. 4. p. 5.
  23. ^ Lewis, Pat (27 March 1978). "They are Dedicating Their Lives to the Urban Poor". The Evening Star. pp. B1.
  24. ^ Simmons, David (18 October 1971). "Radical Catholics Strive for Peace". The Hatchet (George Washington University student newspaper). p. 3.
  25. ^ McCarthy, Colman (February 10, 2015). "Community leader Edward Guinan elevated homelessness to a national issue". National Catholic Reporter. Retrieved April 21, 2021.
  26. ^ Egan, Eileen (February 2, 1973). "Peace Chronicle". The Catholic Worker. Retrieved April 22, 2021.
  27. ^ Blatchford, Nicholas (8 March 1973). "Our Town: Love and Soup". The Evening Star.
  28. ^ Curry, Dean C. (5 February 2024). "Pacem in Terris and Henry Kissinger". Providence (Institute on Religion and Democracy).
  29. ^ a b Glick, Ted (2020). Burglar for Peace: Lessons Learned in the Catholic Left's Resistance to the Vietnam War. Oakland, California: PM Press. p. 150. ISBN 978-1-62963-815-7.
  30. ^ a b Baum, Alice S.; Burnes, Donald W. (1993). A Nation In Denial: The Truth About Homelessness. Boulder/San Francisco/Oxford: Westview. p. 114-115. ISBN 9780429722622.
  31. ^ Day, Dorothy (1 June 1974). "On Pilgrimage". The Catholic Worker. p. 2.
  32. ^ "Creative Non-Involvement". The Evening Star. 25 March 1975.
  33. ^ a b Beale, Betty (23 March 1975). "The Nixons left small comfort in White House" (PDF). The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio). pp. 2E – via The Ford Library and Museum.
  34. ^ Moritz, Charles, ed. (1 January 1976). "Baum, William (Wakefield) Cardinal". Current Biography Yearbook 1976. New York: H. W. Wilson Company. p. 20.
  35. ^ Reedy, Bruce (30 October 1994). "Sarah T. Guinan and Robert H. Nixon". The New York Times.
  36. ^ O'Donnell, Edward J., ed. (19 October 1973). "Catholic Pacifists Unite in U.S." The St. Louis Review. 33 (42): 1, 5 – via JSTOR.
  37. ^ a b Vanderhaar, Gerard (1992). "The Early Years: 1972-78" (PDF). The Peace Current.
  38. ^ "Pax Christi articles tagged "Ed Guinan"". 14 January 2015. Retrieved April 21, 2021.
  39. ^ "Pacificists, activists form U.S Branch of Pax Christi". National Catholic Reporter. October 19, 1973. Retrieved April 23, 2021.
  40. ^ Barker, Alec D. (2001). "Hoya Battalion History". georgetown.edu. Georgetown University. Retrieved April 23, 2021. "I am opposed to the destruction of life. I'm opposed to educators using their facilities to promote that."
  41. ^ "Pacifists, Activists Form U.S. Branch of Pax Christi". National Catholic Reporter. Vol. 9, no. 20. 19 October 1973. p. 1.
  42. ^ a b Anne Klejment, Nancy L. Roberts (1996). American Catholic Pacifism: The Influence of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement. New York: Praeger. p. 150. ISBN 9780275947842.
  43. ^ Haskins, Faye P. (2000). "The Art of D.C. Politics: Broadsides, Banners, and Bumper Stickers". Washington History. 12 (2): 46–63. ISSN 1042-9719.
  44. ^ Musgrove, George Derek (2017). ""Statehood is Far More Difficult": The Struggle for D.C. Self-Determination, 1980–2017". Washington History. 29 (2): 3–17. ISSN 1042-9719 – via JSTOR.
  45. ^ a b Myers Asch; Musgrove. Chocolate City. p. 390.
  46. ^ DeGregory, Michael (1 June 1973). "Peace and Nonviolence: Basic Writings, edited by Edward Guinan, Paulist Press". The Catholic Worker. Vol. XXXIX, no. 5. p. 6.
  47. ^ Lathrop, Chuck (1 March 1977). "Reviews: The Land and Its People". The Catholic Worker. XLIII (3): 6 – via JSTOR.
  48. ^ "Crossway Community". Retrieved April 21, 2021.
  49. ^ "Rachael's Women's Center". Retrieved April 21, 2021.
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