This may help us and the whole cause of due process: Father Joseph Byron, the Washington Nineteen, and American Catholic priests as Sixties rebels

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article recovers an important episode of Sixties spiritual politics. It tracks the efforts of the Washington Nineteen, a group of Roman Catholic parish priests suspended by their superior for defending the laity’s sexual freedom, to secure rights of due process in the American Catholic Church. Secular dissidents – students, soldiers, and civil rights activists – also demanded rights of due process from local authorities. But these radical priests sustained one of the era’s most prominent campaigns for legal protection from authority. As such, the Nineteen’s story demonstrates how the extension of constitutional rights into non-state institutions comprised a crucial demand of Sixties activists.