Choice Review

The Catholic Church's acceptance of the just war doctrine as normative and American Catholics' often uneasy immigrant status, which led them to emphasize patriotism, made ^D["peacemaking harder than war,^D]" McNeal asserts. However, Dorothy Day's peace agitation of the 1930s added the concepts of pacifism, conscientious objection, and nuclear pacifism to the American Catholic agenda by the end of WW II. Thomas Merton would later articulate a theological rationale for those positions. Gandhian nonviolence was incorporated into Catholic pacifism starting in the 1950s and provided a new way to posit actions for peace as well as to address public policy issues although Cold War era Catholics did not widely support such activities. During the Vietnam War years (1963-1975), a sort of double turbulence affected American Catholics who had to adjust to church reforms mandated by Vatican II as well as to face up to civil rights and antiwar agitation. Out of this disruption arose the largest Catholic peace movement in US history, although pacifists are still a minority among American Catholics. McNeal's major conclusion is that Catholic peacemakers had the greatest impact not on their government but on their church. This well-documented and cogently written volume should become the standard treatment of these important topics. Highly recommended for all academic and general libraries.