Called "the priest who stayed out in the cold" and "holy outlaw," Father Daniel J. Berrigan (born 1921) never came to terms with the conservatism of the Catholic Church or with the militarism of the American nation. He lived his life as a militant servant of the Christian faith.

Daniel Berrigan was born in Virginia, Minnesota, on May 9, 1921. His father was a socialist farmer and railroad engineer who wrote poetry and raised his six sons in the brawling, argumentative atmosphere of a small farm near Syracuse, New York. Daniel was the frailest of the boys and from childhood had determined to enter the Catholic priesthood. When he was 18 he joined the Society of Jesus--the Jesuits. In 1952, after 13 years of training ("a most unfinished man"), he was ordained a priest. His brother Philip had also become a Catholic priest, though of a different order.

"The priesthood," wrote Berrigan, was "a...