Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → religious groups and the religious perspective → Catholic churches → Cosmas Raimondi

Does the name Cosmas Raimondi ring a bell? Yeah, me neither. And you’d think a name like that would stick in the memory. So I was surprised to see his name in an op-ed piece on tax resistance published thirty years ago today:

Creating a ripple effect?

On the moral objections to paying taxes

by Nick Thimmesch

Washington — What’s remarkable about the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Seattle refusing to pay part of his income tax in protest of U.S. nuclear arms policy — thus risking jail — is that so few of the 95 million Americans who file returns protest at all.

In 1981, according to the Internal Revenue Service, 26,925 people withheld all or part of their taxes in protest, their objections ranging from constitutional reasons to the argument that since the Republic is off the gold and silver standards, why pay taxes? These protesters represent an infinitesimal fraction of that huge, compliant herd of 95 million.

In 1981, there wasn’t one protester who cited pacifist reasons for refusal to pay up. In 1980, there were 20 such souls. But in 1982, there are likely to be hundreds because the “peace” movement inspires this sort of civil disobedience.

Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen announced earlier this year that he was holding back $125, or half of the tax money he owed the federal government as “a means of protesting our nation’s continuing involvement in the arms race for nuclear supremacy.” Archbishop Hunthausen, 60, is known to be soft-spoken and low-key, about as friendly and open as anyone who came out of Montana — as he did. But he feels great moral upset over the construction of a Trident nuclear submarine base close to Seattle, and points out that one Trident has the destructive equivalent of 2,040 Hiroshima bombs. Thus it is “immoral and criminal… the Auschwitz of Puget Sound.”

Now IRS doesn’t take such protesters lightly. First, they write to get them to file a correct return and pay what they owe. If they don’t respond, an IRS representative tries to make a personal visit. If that fails, IRS goes to the Justice Department.

Last week, one such protester, Armen B. Condo of Huntington Beach, Calif., was convicted in federal court on 41 counts of tax violations. The government argued that Condo urged members of “Your Heritage Protection Association” — which he founded — to avoid paying federal tax on the grounds that U.S. money is no longer redeemable in gold or silver. Tsk, tsk.

So, Archbishop Hunthausen and the eight priests in Pittsburgh who stood up April 15 — “Income Tax Day” — to announce that they were withholding part of their taxes to protest “the militaristic priorities of the federal budget and to resist our country’s obsessive participation in the arms race,” are sticking their necks out.

They can also create a ripple effect. When the Pittsburgh declaration reached Indianapolis, a reporter from the local Catholic paper phoned an associate pastor in a “socially active” parish to see if he knew of any area priests who were also protesting. According to National Catholic News Service, the priest, Father Cosmas Raimondi, said yes, he knew one — “me.” Father Raimondi said his expression of conscience was better called “divine” rather than “civil” disobedience.

Another priest, Father James A. Schexnayder of Oakland Calif., said he was “stimulated” by Archbishop Hunthausen’s action, so he, too was withholding half his 1981 taxes — the miserable amount of $60. Father Schexnayder said he “will not be part of a plot to incinerate humanity.”

And so it goes. There are deep rumblings in the Catholic Church, particularly in the clergy, about spending on nuclear weapons. In Amarillo, Texas, the United Way recently stopped funding the Catholic Family Service because Bishop Leroy T. Matthiesen had established a counseling program for workers at the Pantex Nuclear Weapons Assembly Plant. Pantex complained, charging that the Bishop’s anti-nuclear weapons views found their way into the operation of Catholic Family Service.

With nearly half the Catholic bishops in the U.S. backing a bilateral freeze on nuclear weapons, the Reagan administration is worried enough that it is dispatching Secretary of State Alexander Haig and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger to meet with the bishop’s committee this week on the weapons issue.

Whenever a movement gathers momentum, as the anti-nuclear weapons campaign is now, the most committed often threaten to hold back on paying taxes. But if every American who had strong feelings about issues which involve federal funding expressed those feelings by refusing to pay income taxes, millions of Americans would have a plateful of trouble.

But the record shows that this kind of protest is only occasional, and never is expressed in worrisome numbers. The American taxpayer is the world’s most reliable. Indeed some cynics claim that the American taxpayer is a sheep, always waiting patiently to get fleeced.

So I tried to find out some more about Cosmas Raimondi and his protest. Here is something from the following year:

Church Won’t Pay Protesting Priest’s Taxes

Indianapolis (AP) — A church council said Sunday it will not comply with an Internal Revenue Service demand to pay federal taxes owed by its parish priest, who withheld 50 percent of them to protest U.S. defense spending.

Kathy Wallace, president of the 13 member Holy Cross Catholic Church Council, said the decision to support the Rev. Cosmas Raimondi was based on “the sacredness of conscience.”

“Although we personally do not feel called to war tax resistance for ourselves, we do support the right of Father Raimondi to make that decision according to the dictates of his own conscience before God,” Miss Wallace wrote the IRS on Oct. 28.

The 32 year old priest began withholding half his federal tax bill in 1982, and he told the council that he had donated the withheld money to various social service agencies. In August, the IRS put a lien of $593.26 against the priest’s salary.

Miss Wallace said the council did not act on the first demand for payment by the IRS, and an IRS representative came to her home on Sept. 16 and presented a demand for $604.18. Council members later asked parishioners their opinions and consulted a lawyer-theologian from the Center of Law and Pacifism in Colorado. “I really don’t know what’s going to happen now,” said Raimondi, who attended the news conference at which the council’s decision was announced. “It’s up to the IRS.

“I feel relieved, and I feel good,” he said of the council’s support. In an interview after the news conference, Raimondi said he began his tax protest last year because: “I decided in my conscience that if I’m going to pray and teach about peace, I couldn’t at the same time pay for war.”

…and, a few days later…

Tax protest is personal: archbishop

Indianapolis (AP) — The Most Rev. Edward T. O’Meara, archbishop of Indianapolis, says the Rev. Cosmas Raimondi’s tax protest is a “personal issue” between the priest and the Internal Revenue Service.

But O’Meara claimed Wednesday the right to address the political issues which prompted the protest.

O’Meara, in a statement, responded to “a number of requests to offer some comment” on events surrounding Raimondi’s refusal to pay part of his federal income tax.

O’Meara said he neither supported nor rejected Raimondi’s decision to hold back half his income tax payments as a protest against the government’s military buildup and its policies in Central America.

But he upheld the priest’s right to take a stand on arms and other public issues, and reaffirmed his own endorsement of the recent pastoral letter from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, calling for a halt to the nuclear arms race.

“Whether you agree or disagree with the tactic Father Raimondi has elected to use, make no mistake that the Roman Catholic Church does regard the questions of armaments in general, nuclear arms in particular, national budgetary priorities and basic human rights as issues which religious leaders have a right to address,” O’Meara said.

On Sunday, the parish council at Holy Cross Church, where Father Raimondi is pastor, announced that it would not withhold the back taxes from his paychecks and send them to the IRS.

The IRS filed a court lien against Raimondi for $604.18 in taxes and interest dating to last year, and had sought the money through the parish. But the parish council said it would not “undermine” its pastor’s act of conscience.

Raimondi said Wednesday the IRS had not informed him of its plans.

So the IRS, acting with uncharacteristic speed (due no doubt to the publicity surrounding the case), seized Raimondi’s car:

IRS takes his wheels, but priest remains driven

Indianapolis (AP) — The federal government has taken the Rev. Cosmas Raimondi’s car, but the young Roman Catholic pastor remains driven.

His supportive parishioners make sure he gets around, and he still refuses to pay taxes to support the military.

Raimondi said three or four families who attend Holy Cross Church on the city’s poor near east side offered to loan him an auto permanently. “I’m beginning to wonder why I even had a car,” he said.

Raimondi, an Indianapolis native known as “Father Cos” to parish schoolchildren, has withheld half his federal income taxes since 1982 to protest U.S. military intervention in Central America, the nuclear arms race and draft registration.

Earlier this month, the Internal Revenue Service put a lien of $604.18 — the amount he owed plus interest — against his salary and seized his 1980 Honda Civic when his parish council refused to pay the amount.

The car was valued at $2,500, and Raimondi is to receive the difference between that amount and what he owed.

Raimondi says he will respond by taking a pay cut to reduce his taxes or avoid having any taxable income that can be used for purposes he doesn’t support.

He now earns $545 a month, plus a monthly stipend of up to $70.

Lack of a car has not hampered his duties, Raimondi said this week at his church, where parishioners were putting donated Thanksgiving food for the poor into 550 boxes lined up in the pews.

“I think it is a protest when you give and organize for the poor,” Raimondi said. “It is showing what is happening to people’s lives because we don’t have enough in our budget to take care of people.”

In contrast, he said, money spent on the military is “sinful.”

Loss of a car has made him thankful for his friends and parishioners. About a dozen have loaned him theirs at one time or another, and three or four have offered to lend him their third family car permanently.

“I’ve not had to ask one person,” he said.

Three people walked out of Mass in protest, and haven’t returned, when Raimondi announced to the parish’s 179 families that he wasn’t going to pay his taxes.

His pastoral assistant, John Girard, 23, said the church has gained more parishioners than it lost, although he cannot say how many.

Parishioner Mark Scott, 38, said weekly collections have increased about $200 since Raimondi’s protest gained publicity this fall.

While young and old in his parish have supported him, Raimondi said the 40- to 50-year-old age group has had difficulty understanding his political views.

“I think it’s harder for them because they come from the age of peace through strength which was all fine and dandy in World War Ⅱ,” he said. [Another version of this same article adds at this point: “We have to learn how to deal more efficiently with the Soviet Union.”]

Mark Scott, coordinator of the parish food pantry, said: “I support him 100 percent. I would have loved to do what Cos has done, but I have a family to think about. I rebel by giving food to poor people.”

Another version of this article adds:

The priest said he believes that “by and large, a lot of people are not happy with our Government’s defense policies.”

Before withholding taxes, Father Raimondi said he protested by going to peace marches, organizing prayer services on behalf of the people of Nicaragua and El Salvador, and writing Congress. He even met with Sen. Richard Lugar (R., Ind.) to discuss U.S. military policies.

Melissa Derrick, a teacher at the parish school, said the priest’s civil disobedience caused some concern among the 207 students who worried whether he was doing the right thing.

“James A. Schexnayder” is another tax resisting priest that I draw a blank on, but the on-line archives have been less forthcoming about his resistance.

In addition to refusing to withhold taxes from the salaries of tax resisting employees (see The Picket Line for 28 September 2012), employers can also express their solidarity for such resisters by refusing to comply with salary levies. Here are some examples:

• The War Resisters League has a policy of not honoring IRS levies against their employees’ salaries. According to NWTRCC’s guide to organizational war tax resistance, “though the IRS continues from time to time to send levies for other employees, they have not been enforced, and there has been little interaction between the IRS and WRL in recent years.”
• Also according to NWTRCC’s guide, the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund and the Friends Committee on National Legislation have either resisted levies or established policies to resist levies should they occur.
• The “Fifth Avenue Peace Parade Committee,” which helped fuel the anti-Vietnam War movement, refused to turn over to the IRS the paychecks of Eric Weinberger, a war tax resisting employee.
• The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (of Quakers) has a strong and well-thought-through policy on how to respond to IRS levies of the salaries of resisting employees. Excerpt:

  If the conscientious, war-tax-resisting employee requests, in the event that IRS serves a levy on Yearly Meeting against the salary, wages or other employee property alleged to be in the Meeting’s possession, Yearly Meeting will follow the practice approved on April 24, 1975 and decline to submit to the levy. In refusing, the Meeting will set forth its belief that military tax resistance is an appropriate individual expression of the Friends Peace Testimony and that Yearly Meeting is led, consistent with its most fundamental beliefs, to resist government efforts to coerce an employee against their conscience in such historic Friends’ testimonies.

• The New York Yearly Meeting (of Quakers) in 1969 approved a statement in which they agreed that the meeting would refuse to honor salary levies directed at employees who were refusing taxes for conscientious reasons.
• The Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends has a similar policy, and responded to one levy by telling the IRS: “The levy would require the Yearly Meeting to act against our employees’ testimony and witness. The Yearly Meeting is not ready to take that step.”
• The Quaker magazine Friends Journal had a policy against paying such levies, and initially refused to pay $31,343 in taxes, penalties, and interest, from the salary of its editor, Vinton Deming. The magazine eventually gave in when it became clear they could not win a legal challenge to the levy.
• The Christian activist group Sojourners has a policy of refusing to comply with government levies of the salaries of its employees who are war tax resisters. Sojourners managing director Joe Roos says, “To date we have been threatened with levies, with the confiscation of our property, with arrest and prison terms and, most recently, with the money we refused to turn over being taken out of my personal account since the IRS views me as a ‘responsible person.’ Despite all these threats, the only action they have taken is to levy our corporate account, taking the amount they say is still due plus interest, plus penalty.”
• When some American Mennonite farmers resisted the Social Security / Medicare tax, the IRS tried to seize the money owed to them by the Amish-run milk cooperatives they worked through. According to Brad Igou, who documented such resistance for the Amish Country News, most cooperative officials refused to comply.
• When the IRS ordered the First & Summerfield United Methodist Church in New Haven, Connecticut, to turn over the salary of their war tax resisting minister, Carl Lundborg, in 1983, the congregation voted unanimously to refuse.
• The IRS tried also to get war tax resisting Catholic pastor Cosmas Raimondi’s parish to turn over his salary to them in 1983, but the parish council refused, saying that “[a]lthough we personally do not feel called to war tax resistance for ourselves, we do support the right of Father Raimondi to make that decision according to the dictates of his own conscience before God.”

Another way people can assist and show solidarity with tax resisters is by coming to their assistance if their property is seized. Here are some examples:

Practical support

• The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund was established in 1982. It helps war tax resisters who have had penalties and interest added to their tax bills and seized by the IRS by reimbursing them for a large portion of these additional charges.

  The more people we could recruit to shoulder the penalties and interest of resisters, the lighter the burden for everyone. With the modest help we could provide, conscientious resisters were able to keep on keeping on.

  The penalty fund had the added benefit of making us all tax resisters, not just those who withheld all or a portion of their income taxes. The base list of supporters has been as high as 800 people sharing the weight. In nearly every appeal, at least 200 people respond, usually more. In all we’ve paid out about $250,000 to help resisters stay in the struggle.



• When the home of war tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner was seized for back taxes, supporters came from near and far to maintain a 24-hour occupation of the home:

  [David] Dellinger and others have come from as far away as California to the Colrain [Massachusetts] house… Mr. Kehler and Ms. Corner continued to live in the house until they were arrested by Federal marshals last December. Since then, friends and supporters of the couple have arrived to occupy the almost empty house in week-long shifts marked by the Thursday “changing of the guard” ceremony. Because the house was sold in a Government auction in February, all who go inside risk arrest for trespassing.…

  For Bonney Simons of St. Johnsbury, Vt., sleeping on a bedroll in the house is her first official act of civil disobedience. At 72 years of age, she said, it is time to “put your body where your mouth is.”

• Suffragist tax resister Dora Montefiore barricaded her home and kept the tax collector from seizing her property for several weeks in 1906, in what came to be known as the “Siege of Montefiore.” She noted:

  The tradespeople of the neighbourhood were absolutely loyal to us besieged women, delivering their milk and bread, etc., over the rather high garden wall which divided the small front gardens of Upper Mall from the terraced roadway fronting the river. The weekly wash arrived in the same way and the postman day by day delivered very encouraging budgets of correspondence, so that practically we suffered very little inconvenience…

  A woman sympathiser in the neighbourhood brought during the course of the [first] morning, a pot of home-made marmalade, as the story had got abroad that we had no provisions and had difficulty in obtaining food. This was never the case as I am a good housekeeper and have always kept a store cupboard, but we accepted with thanks the pot of marmalade because the intentions of the giver were so excellent.

  Examples like this also proved to be vivid anecdotes that the press could use when describing the siege and the support from sympathizers.
• When the U.S. government seized Amish tax resister Valentine Byler’s horses and their harnesses while he was in the field preparing for spring planting, sympathetic neighbors allowed him to borrow their horses so he could continue his work. Other sympathizers throughout the country who heard about the case sent Byler money — more than enough to buy a new team.
• An auctioneer who was dragooned into helping the government sell some of the livestock of a man who had been resisting taxes meant to pay for sectarian education in 1903, donated the fee he had earned for conducting the auction to the resister.
• During the water charge strike in Dublin, “local campaign groups successfully resisted attempts to disconnect water and in the couple of instances where water was cut off, campaigners re-connected it within hours. The first round was won hands down by the campaign and it was back to the drawing board for the councils.”
• Similar monkeywrenching is being practiced today in Greece, where activists promptly reconnect utilities of people who have been disconnected for failure to pay the increased taxes attached to their utility bills.
• During the Annuity Tax resistance in Edinburgh, people sympathetic to the resisters would bid on and return furniture and other items that had been seized and sold by the tax collectors.
• The Rebecca Rioters, on the other hand, were characteristically more direct in their resistance:

  Warrants of distress were issued… and the constables proceeded to execute them… The constables then went towards Talog; but when on their way there they heard the sound of a horn, and immediately between two and three hundred persons assembled together, with their faces blackened, some dressed in women’s caps, and others with their coats turned so as to be completely disguised — armed with scythes, crowbars and all manner of destructive weapons which they could lay their hands on. After cheering the constables, they defied them to do their duty. The latter had no alternative but to return to town without executing their warrants. The women were seen running in all directions to alarm their neighbours; and some hundreds were concealed behind the hedges, intending to appear if their services were required. The entire district seemed to be aroused, and awaiting the arrival of the constables, who were going to levy on the goods of John Harris of Talog Mill for the amount of the fine and costs imposed upon him by the magistrates. There could not have been less than two hundred persons assembled to resist the execution of process, and vast numbers were flocking from all quarters, in response to the blowing of a horn, the signal of the Rebeccaites to repair thither. Various mounted messengers were scouring the country and sounding the trumpet of alarm.…

  At Maesgwenllian near Kidwelly, several bailiffs were put in possession for arrears of rent to the amount of £150, but about one o’clock on the morning of 11^th September, Rebecca and a great number of her followers made their appearance on the premises, and after driving the bailiffs off, took away the whole of the goods distrained on. As soon as daylight appeared, the bailiffs returned, but found no traces of Rebecca, nor of the goods which had been taken away.

• A group in Olive Hill, Kentucky in 1906 followed the Rebecca model, to an extent, “in a raid… by a band of between 800 and 900 men, who forced Levi White, Collector of Taxes, to give up a stock of goods which had been seized. The goods were then taken back to the store of Levi Oppenheimer, where the official had seized them.”
• Last year in Oaxaca, the PRI said that the would “defend up to the point of injunctions those citizens who suffer from liens imposed as well as judgments in order to prevent the impounding of vehicles, considering it unconstitutional that the police will impound them to stop the driver and remove the unit if the striker does not pay the corresponding [vehicle] tax.”
• The IRS auctioned off a portion of Ralph Shinaberry’s property in 1960 after he refused to pay a fine for growing more wheat on his farm than his government-assigned quota. “I don’t believe the Government can tell me how much I can grow,” he said, explaining his resistance. The winning bidder, Herbert Jessup, told a reporter: “I have no intention of taking possession of the property.”
• When war tax resister Cosmas Raimondi’s car was seized by the IRS in 1982, a handful of families in his parish offered to permanently loan him their car so he could still get around, and many others loaned him their cars temporarily. “I’ve not had to ask one person,” he said.
• In Beit Sahour, when the Israeli occupation authorities seized furniture and appliances from resisters, relatives and others would loan them spares, or camping furniture to use as replacements.
• “In Bedfordshire in 1657 community pressure persuaded a minister to return goods seized from a Quaker for non-payment of tithes.”

Moral support

• When Dora Montefiore was first formulating her “siege” strategy with fellow-activists Theresa Billington and Annie Kenney, they agreed to organize daily demonstrations outside of her home while she was defending it. Montefiore remembered:

  The feeling in the neighbourhood towards my act of passive resistance was so excellent and the publicity being given by the Press in the evening papers was so valuable that we decided to make the Hammersmith “Fort” for the time being the centre of the W.S.P.U. activities, and daily demonstrations were arranged for and eventually carried out. … The roadway was… ideal for the holding of a meeting, as no blocking of traffic could take place, and day in, day out the principles for which suffragists were standing we expounded to many who before had never even heard of the words Woman Suffrage. At the evening demonstrations rows of lamps were hung along the top of the wall and against the house, the members of the W.S.P.U. speaking from the steps of the house, while I spoke from one of the upstairs windows.

  …shoals of letters came to me, a few sadly vulgar and revolting, but the majority helpful and encouraging. Some Lancashire lads who had heard me speaking in the Midlands wrote and said that if I wanted help they would come with their clogs but that was never the sort of support I needed, and though I thanked them, I declined the help as nicely as I could. … The working women from the East End came, time and again, to demonstrate in front of my barricaded house…

• When the IRS seized and auctioned off the home and farm of Art Harvey and Elizabeth Gravalos in 1996, other war tax resisters and supporters were by their sides:

  “I might have cried if I were alone,” Gravalos admitted. But she was far from alone. About 75 supporters gathered outside the building and spoke of their solidarity with Elizabeth and Arthur.

  About 35 supporters turned up for the second auction, this time held at the IRS office in Lewiston, Maine. Demonstrators read excerpts from letters to IRS officials and to President Clinton urging them to call off the auction.

• In 1997, the IRS levied 78-year-old war tax resister Ruth McKay’s social security checks to recoup the taxes she had been refusing to pay over the previous 20 years. To show their support of her stand, 40 activists from New Hampshire Peace Action joined her for a vigil at the federal courthouse in Concord, New Hampshire.
• When war tax resister Maria Smith’s wages were garnisheed by the IRS in 2005, fifty supporters held a special church service in her honor.
• “One of the Valod Vanias,” whose land was seized by the government during the Bardoli satyagraha, “who thus lost all his valuable property, celebrated the event by inviting friends and soldiers of Satyagraha to a party.”

On the other hand, some campaigns have taken the position that sacrifices for the cause are their own reward — that martyrdom is a blessing and that it would be foolish for such resisters to seek or accept recompense.

Nathaniel Morgan was speaking with someone curious about the Quaker stand on war and war taxes, and had this to say:

I told him then that I and my father had refused to pay the income tax on account of war, and had refused it on its first coming out, and withstood it 16 years, except when peace was declared, and that our goods were sold by auction to pay it. This seemed to excite his curiosity, and made a stand to hear further, on the steps above the engine, going down to the river; asking me if we got anything by that, meaning, was anything refunded by the Society for such suffering. I immediately replied: “Yes, peace of mind, which was worth all.”

Today, some excerpts from The Catholic News Archive concerning tax resistance in 1983.

An obituary for Dwight Macdonald in the January 1983 Catholic Worker touched on his tax resistance. Excerpt:

In 1967, he joined the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” in refusal to pay taxes for the Vietnam War. This was his first act of civil disobedience. Dwight defended his action as “the deliberate, public, and non-violent breaking of a law because to obey it would be to betray a higher morality.”

The National Catholic News Service sent this dispatch over the wires on 1 February 1983. Excerpts:

British Churchmen Urge Disarmament Steps

By Robert Nowell

London (NC)— Two top church leaders in Great Britain have urged nuclear disarmament initiatives by their country and a third revealed that he is waging a tax protest against England’s military spending.

On Jan. 26 a new booklet on conscientious objection to military taxation carried the text of a letter in which a prominent Anglican, Canon Paul Oestreicher, announced to the government that he was withholding part of his income tax “as an act of conscientious objection to the manufacture, possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons” by the British government. Canon Oestreicher is assistant general secretary of the British Council of Churches.

Canon Oestreicher wrote last August to the Chancellor of the Exchequer announcing that he was withholding a token sum of 30 pounds (about $46) “as a symbol of my duty as a Christian citizen to refuse to be party to a policy which I believe to be of doubtful legality and certainly immoral.”

His letter was printed as an appendix to a booklet on military tax resistance issued Jan. 26 by the Quaker Council for European Affairs.

The Service sent out this dispatch on 14 April 1983:

Bishop Thanks War Tax Resisters for “Witness”

St. Paul, Minn. (NC)— Bishop Raymond Lucker of New Ulm has thanked war tax resisters “for their witness” while stating that he does not “personally hold that position.”

“I believe that the arms race is evil. I believe that the very possession of nuclear weapons as long as we are making no sustained commitment to achieve multilateral disarmament is evil,” wrote the Minnesota bishop in a column published April 7 in The Catholic Bulletin, newspaper of the St. Paul-Minneapolls Archdiocese. The paper also serves the neighboring New Ulm Diocese.

Bishop Lucker compared war tax resistance with other forms of civil disobedience to unjust laws or immoral public policy, saying for example that he would go to jail rather than obey a law requiring him or a Catholic hospital under his jurisdiction to participate or cooperate in an abortion.

He said he resolves the problem of not supporting the “madness” of the arms race by not earning enough income to be subject to federal taxes.

“I do not want to contribute to this madness,” he wrote. “What I do is take such a small salary that I no longer pay income tax. I make sure that my annual salary each year is less than $3,600. This is no special hardship; my needs are few. I have no family to support. I am free to contribute to the poor.”

In January 1982 Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle announced that he was refusing to pay half of his federal income tax as a symbol of his resistance to U.S. involvement in the nuclear arms race. He said he was giving the money instead to worthy charitable causes.

In April 1982 at least 10 Catholic priests around the country, including eight in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, refused to pay a portion of their taxes as a protest against U.S. nuclear arms expenditures.

The eight Pittsburgh priests announced this April that they would again refuse to pay the part of their taxes that goes to pay for nuclear war and nuclear weapons. They planned to hold a press conference and prayer service in Pittsburgh April 15 before delivering their tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service.

In discussing civil disobedience Bishop Lucker cited “many instances in history where Catholics and other Christians disobeyed a law rather than violate their conscience.”

“They used non-violent means and were willing to pay the consequences,” he wrote. “Frequently their witness was what got an unjust law or sinful public policy changed.”

Among cases he cited were those of early Christian martyrs who refused to worship the Roman emperor, St. Thomas More’s refusal to acknowledge King Henry Ⅷ as head of the Church of England and the non-violent resistance to racist laws in the United States by the Rev. Martin Luther King and his followers.

He said that Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States were beaten and jailed before the U.S. Supreme Court recognized their right to refuse to salute the flag because they believe the action would violate the First Commandment.

“Hundreds of thousands of Americans are working to change the interpretation of the Constitution which allows abortions taking life away from the unborn. We have a right to dissent. We must dissent. The issue is not going to go away,” he wrote.

He also wrote that a Christian soldier has an obligation to disobey an order that is immoral and that a person “can be a good Catholic and a conscientious objector” to all war or to a particular war.

“Each of us in our own way must respond to the Lord’s call,” Bishop Lucker wrote. He said that not engaging in direct civil disobedience but not earning enough money to be subject to U.S. income taxes “is one way for me.”

The Service sent out this dispatch on 22 April 1983:

Tax Resistance Funds Go to Catholic Agencies

By Brian Baker

Albany, N.Y. (NC)— Catholic and Catholic-affiliated agencies were among 33 social service and community organizations that received donations from a war tax resistance fund in Albany.

On April 14, the day before the deadline for filing tax returns, the Military Tax Resistance and Alternative Fund distributed more than $5,500 in checks, ranging from $50 to $600, to the non profit organizations.

The money came from people who, for reasons of conscience, refused to pay the portion of their federal income tax that they estimated would be used for military purposes.

At least five of the recipient organizations were agencies affiliated with the Diocese of Albany, among them Catholic Family and Community Services of Schenectady.

The tax resistance fund has grown each year, from $1,000 when it was begun in 1980 to $5,500 this year.

This year’s total was $1,500 more than last year’s despite a new federal law passed last summer which adds a $500 penalty for filing a frivolous return on top of already existing penalties for failing to pay all taxes owed.

Maureen Casey, a spokesperson for the fund and a member of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Albany, said she has been a tax resister for three years because “it is wrong to kill people, either personally or through war.”

“I see what I am doing as the continuation of a tradition followed by many respectable people, including Dorothy Day,” a pacifist and foundress of the Catholic Worker movement, Ms Casey added.

Donald Roberts, a public affairs officer for the Internal Revenue Service, said that tax resisters could have assets seized or levies placed against their salaries to recover the taxes and applicable penalties. In addition, he said, if the IRS decides to launch a criminal investigation a resister could be prosecuted and imprisoned.

He added, however, that the agencies receiving donations from a tax resistance fund face no legal risks for doing so.

This “news in brief” item was carried by the Service on 19 October 1983:

Indianapolis (NC)— An Indianapolis parish has been ordered to pay for its pastor’s act of civil disobedience. The Internal Revenue Service has issued a notice of levy on the salary of Father Cosmas Raimondi of Holy Cross Parish for $604.18 for unpaid income tax, penalties and interest. While Father Raimondi was associate pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish, Indianapolis, in 1982 he informed the IRS that he was withholding 50 percent of his income tax “as a protest against the nuclear arms race, military intervention in Central America and efforts to reinstate a mandatory military draft.”

And a follow-up on this, from a 9 November 1983 dispatch:

Friends Pay Priest’s Taxes After IRS Seizes His Car

By Jim Jachimak

Indianapolis (NC)— An Internal Revenue Service case against an Indianapolis pastor has been settled, but the priest’s tax protest has not ended.

The IRS seized Father Cosmas Raimondi’s car on Nov. 5 to cover federal income taxes which he withheld in 1982 but other parties have decided to pay the tax so the car can be returned.

Taxes, penalties and interest owed by Father Raimondi, pastor of Holy Cross Church, amounted to $608.14. The car, a 1980 Honda Civic, was valued at $2,500 by the IRS.

“I have been informed that people who care about me are getting the car back by paying the taxes, which I would rather not have happen,” Father Raimondi said. “But that is their decision.”

He withheld $564.87 from the IRS to protest the nuclear arms race, U.S. intervention in Central America and draft registration. Since August the IRS has been attempting to collect the back taxes.

He said his action has focused attention on the issue of militarism and caused the parish council at Holy Cross to discern “the good and moral thing to do given the teachings of our church.”

In August an IRS levy against Father Raimondi’s salary ordered the Holy Cross parish council to pay the amount he owed. The council announced Oct. 30 that it had decided not to honor the levy.

Father Raimondi said that he plans to take a reduction of salary in the future so that he will not be required to pay any federal income tax.

Jane Sammon wrote an article on tax resistance for the December 1983 Catholic Worker. There’s very little meat in it, but it does have the earliest mention I’ve found so far in this archive to the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (with a post office box address in East Patchogue, New York, and Kathy Levine listed as the contact person).