“Are you a clergy member, or is this just a costume?”

From The Wisconsin State Journal:

On May 17, police arrested two people for trespassing and disorderly conduct at Volk Field, a military facility about 90 minutes northwest of Madison.

One was a priest, or so it seemed.

“Are you really a clergy member, or is this just a costume?” the Rev. Jim Murphy remembers the arresting officer asking him.

Murphy, 60, who leads two rural parishes in Grant and Iowa counties, assured the officer he is a priest in the Madison Catholic Diocese. Officers took to calling him “father” as they fingerprinted and photographed him.

Murphy was at Volk Field that day protesting drones, unmanned aerial vehicles. It was his first arrest at Volk Field, but his eighth or ninth overall — he lost count.

All of the arrests were for anti-war activism, except for one in the late 1980s when he was part of a group that blocked the doors to a Madison abortion clinic. Brent King, spokesman for the diocese, said he was unaware of another priest in the 133-priest diocese who has been arrested for his activism on social issues as many times as Murphy.

Bishop Robert Morlino called Murphy “a perfect example” of someone who correctly understands the role of one’s conscience in guiding one’s actions.

“It calls somebody, in the end, to something higher, to something that is beyond the minimum,” Morlino said.

The arrests speak to Murphy’s level of commitment, but they are just one aspect of a passion that has taken him from leafleting grocery stores on behalf of migrant lettuce pickers during his seminary days in Milwaukee to his current efforts advocating on behalf of Latino immigrants working in Wisconsin’s dairy industry.

“Everyone knows Murph as the guy who does the social justice work,” said the Rev. Ken Klink, 73, of Madison, a retired Catholic priest who has known Murphy for more than 40 years and refers to him by his nickname. “Flat out, he’s been the most courageous, the most outspoken.”

It is a sometimes lonely path.

“There are those within the church who would not be supportive of what he’s doing,” said Joyce Ellwanger, 77, of Milwaukee, who served time in a federal prison for her anti-war activism and who protested alongside Murphy for many years.

Some people certainly see the church as being called to feed the hungry, Ellwanger said, but when you start asking them why there are so many hungry people, they get uncomfortable.

“They don’t want to get at the root causes,” she said. “Jim sees that as his calling.”

Read the rest.