Many American Catholics will probably recognize the name of Franz Jägerstätter (1907–1943), an Austrian Catholic who went willingly to his death rather than fight for Hitler’s Nazi regime. I imagine that fewer will know of Ben Salmon (1888– 1932), a devout Catholic from Colorado who refused to enlist during World War I, and urged his fellow Christians to “listen to the voice of Christ echoed from the pages of the New Testament.”  

To be a conscientious objector during World War I was unthinkable. The majority of Catholic bishops in the United States held that Catholics were obliged to support the war, one cardinal declaring that any criticism of the government was tantamount to treason. Salmon was imprisoned at Leavenworth, tortured, and was refused the Sacraments. Years later, confined to a mental hospital, he wrote a two hundred-page treatise in defense of the principle, “There is no such thing as a just war.”  

“A prophet is not without honor,” says Jesus, “except in his native place and in his own house.” Ben Salmon was a pariah to his fellow citizens and to the Church until people began to recognize the courage and holiness of what he did. Some eighty years after his death, Jesuit Fr. Dan Berrigan said of him, “He brings to mind the buried treasure of the Gospel story, this unlikely hero.” The people of Nazareth, like many Christians two thousand years later, could not bear the hard Gospel wisdom of one of their own. May it not be so with us.  

Lord, help us to see and hear your prophets of peace, who still walk among us. Better yet, help me to be one. 

Christopher Pramuk