Divine intervention: A powerful podcast on Boston's Catholic anti-Vietnam War protests

Boston Globe

18-07-2025

Sheltering Couming was very much on brand for the liberal priests' anti-Vietnam and anti-Catholic hierarchy endeavors. But their superiors were far from encouraging. After a three-day standoff between Hoover's mostly Irish Catholic agents and the Paulist priests, US Marshals entered the center peacefully and
The lefty priests and their supporters
plunged themselves into all manner of anti-Vietnam ops, e.g., destroying draft files and organizing protests. Narrator Hughes has great characters to work with, including the two priests who shook up the Paulist Center in the early '70s: his father, Patrick, and Floyd McManus. James Carroll, the future author ('Constantine's Sword') and Globe columnist, is their fellow seminarian and comrade in arms.
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Additional cast members include Boston University's
Wyzanski is the jurist who let Ray Charles skate on a 1964 drug bust, when the blues singer was caught at Logan Airport with '
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'Divine Intervention' is an ensemble masterpiece not unlike J. Anthony Lukas's superb book about the Boston busing crisis, '
There's more. Patrick Hughes and his wife, Marianne, staged the first
Why am I kvelling on here? Because Brendan Hughes's story is also personal for me. His father, Patrick, died young, at age 41, and his mother, Marianne, subsequently married the late Globe editorial page editor Kirk Scharfenberg, who brought me to this newspaper. Color me prejudiced. I like these people, a lot.
What I liked most about 'Divine Intervention' is that Hughes takes the church, and the activist Catholics' commitment to moral behavior and social justice, seriously. Reading newspapers and watching television these days, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Christian church is primarily a conspiracy for abusing children and fabulating hypocrisy. The truth is a bit more complicated.
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Hughes, who is not religious ('I've always felt like it's not for me,' he told me) understands that the church can also inspire selfless and ethical behavior among its followers: Reasonable people can disagree about whether the Boston lefties breaking into federal offices, destroying files, and removing draft cards was the correct way to protest an unpopular war. But no one can challenge the sincerity of the activists' commitment and their principled appeal to moral authority.
'All these zany Catholics brought a ferocity of love to everything they did that cannot be denied,' Hughes concludes in the final episode.
God bless them.
Is the series perfect? No. Like everything in the digital world, it's too long; 10 episodes that could be fewer. The history is at times a bit fanciful. Did Pope John XXIII's intervention '
But I don't seek perfection. 'We all stumble in many ways' — James 3:2. I admire great work, and that's what this is. Do yourself a favor and give a listen.
Alex Beam's column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him