From Library Journal
Weigel, president of the James Madison Foundation, first outlines a sophisticated view of war and peace developed from church tradition by American Catholics, especially John Courtney Murray, and based on the concept of peace as "dynamic, rightly ordered political community." He then shows how, after Vatican Council II, Dorothy Day, Gordon Zahn, the Berrigans, James Douglass, J. Bryan Hehir, and, finally, the American bishops abandoned this view for "personalist/conversionist understandings of peace." The wealth of information makes the survey valuable, but Weigel is disappointingly vague on the precise differences between the "traditional" view and the "failures" of American Catholics since the Council. W. Charles Heiser, S.J., St. Louis Univ. Lib.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
This widely-praised, extensively-documented, and highly controversial volume presents the first comprehensive, critical analysis of American Catholic thought on war and peace. George Weigel begins with a survey of American Catholicism's complex heritage of moral reasoning on war, peace, and political community. Offering a major reinterpretation of American Catholic history, he demonstrates how the American bishops' development of a theology of democracy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries enriched the Church's classic and medieval understanding of peace.
Weigel then explores how, over the past generation, American Catholic intellectuals began to abandon their heritage. He analyzes the ideas of seven key figures in the transformation of the American Catholic war/peace debate--Dorothy Day, Gordon Zahn, Thomas Merton, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, James Douglass, and J. Bryan Hehir--and explores the American bishops' recent involvement with nuclear strategy and Central American policy. Weigel's sharply argued study may well set the stage and the agenda for the next round of debate on the role of moral reasoning in U.S. foreign policy.
Weigel then explores how, over the past generation, American Catholic intellectuals began to abandon their heritage. He analyzes the ideas of seven key figures in the transformation of the American Catholic war/peace debate--Dorothy Day, Gordon Zahn, Thomas Merton, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, James Douglass, and J. Bryan Hehir--and explores the American bishops' recent involvement with nuclear strategy and Central American policy. Weigel's sharply argued study may well set the stage and the agenda for the next round of debate on the role of moral reasoning in U.S. foreign policy.
