"Anti-nukes priest here readies for next arrest" Bill McClellan

Carl Kabat will turn 76 in October, and he figures to be in jail again by then. In fact, he's headed to Colorado today to commit a crime, the same crime he's been committing for the last 25 years. He intends to attack a missile silo. He's a Roman Catholic priest involved in the Plowshares movement, which is named after the passage from Isaiah: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks."

He was resting Sunday, preparing for the long drive today. I visited him at a home owned by the Catholic Workers on the city's near north side. We sat at a picnic table in the backyard. He was wearing a green and white pullover shirt and a pair of tattered shorts. I asked if he ever wore his Roman collar.

"When I break the law," he said, and then he laughed. He seemed to be in a very good mood.

He was raised on a farm near Mount Vernon, Ill. He celebrated the 50th anniversary of his ordination a couple of weeks ago with a Mass at the picnic table in the backyard. He very seldom goes to a traditional church. Still, he remains in good standing with his order, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

In the early days of his priesthood, the order sent him to the Philippines and then to Brazil. He came back to this country in 1973 just as the Vietnam war was winding down and the peace movement was losing steam. Nevertheless, he found a niche — the anti-nuclear weapon movement.

With all the evils in the world, it's hard to pick one, he told me, but if this one doesn't get solved, it could mean the end of everything

He also talked about the need for individuals to act before there is a nuclear holocaust. He said we can't ask God to stop this because God didn't start it. We started it, and we have to stop it, Kabat said.

He seemed serene about getting arrested again. How much time did he expect to get?

"Somewhere between 18 years and 15 months," he said, and he laughed. He was given an 18-year sentence for taking a jackhammer to a silo in 1984 — the sentence was reduced on appeal and he did less than 10 years — and he was given a 15-month sentence in 2006 for attacking a silo in North Dakota.

Maybe the country is becoming more sympathetic toward your cause, I said. Speaking of change, I asked if the election of Barack Obama seemed auspicious for the Plowshare folks. He dug through some papers he had in front of him, found a newspaper article in which Obama talked about the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. Kabat read it aloud, quoting Obama: "I am not naive. This goal of a nuclear-free world will not be reached quickly, perhaps not even in my lifetime."
Then Kabat looked up and smiled. "Basically, I want to help Obama. I'll take one off-line."

I asked if he expected to go to a minimum security prison camp, or a medium security federal prison. He shrugged, and said it didn't really matter. He said that in some ways, he got along better with poorer inmates. The more downtrodden, the more supportive they were of him, he said. He spoke almost wistfully of a stint he did in a Washington jail. He said that in a minimum security camp, the inmates tended to be better off. Crooked businessmen, he said. Right-wingers tended not to be sympathetic toward his ideas, he said.

I asked if he had seen "Dr. Strangelove."

No, he had not, he said. He didn't see many movies. He said he didn't seem to have the time.

"I have to get back to jail so I can get back to reading and writing," he said, and he laughed again.

He's been out of prison for almost two years. His last incarceration had to do with an attack on a silo in North Dakota, a state that has long fascinated him. He once told me that if North Dakota were to secede from the union, it would be the third greatest nuclear power in the world.

During his next attack, which he figures will take place on Thursday, he intends to wear a clown costume. He first wore a costume when he attacked a silo in North Dakota with a sledge hammer in 1994. That attack occurred on Good Friday, which was also April Fool's Day. "We are fools for God's sake," he said, and I must have looked mystified, because he then added that the quote came from the New Testament. He got five years for that attack.

Kabat is odd, but smart, and he knows that many people think it's silly to attack missile silos with sledgehammers, and to go to jail for doing so. Tilting at windmills might make more sense. But he does it, he said, out of love.

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's apathy. I don't want to be apathetic," he said.