Tranquillitas ordinis : the present failure and future promise of American Catholic thought on war and peace

In recent years, Roman Catholic bishops and activists have been highly visible in the public debate over issues such as nuclear arms control and U.S. policy in Central America. Until now, however, the evolution of American Catholic thought on these questions has received little attention. This book is the first comprehensive critical analysis of American Catholic thought on war and peace. The author's purpose is to evaluate the post-Vatican II transformation of the Church's approach to war/peace issues and to point a wiser direction for its future development. The book begins with a survey of American Catholicism's rich and sophisticated heritage of moral reasoning on war, peace, and political community. In a major reinterpretation of American Catholic history, Weigel shows how the American Bishops' development of a theology of democracy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries enriched the Church's classic understanding of peace as political community. Weigel thus challenges the now-prominent idea that the U.S. Catholic bishops were not seriously involved in the war-peace debate until the last decade. A highlight of the book is its detailed intellectual portrait of John Courtney Murray, S.J., whom Weigel calls the finest political theorist ever produced by the American Church. Weigel then demonstrates how, over the past generation, American Catholic intellectuals and publicists began to abandon their heritage, and thereby impoverished the theological and political argument over war and peace, security and freedom. The book 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 critically explores the U.S. bishops' recent involvement with nuclear and Central American policy. Recovering and developing the classic American Catholic heritage, Weigel argues, is essential to creating a wiser theology and politics whose concern for both peace and freedom challenges realists and idealists alike Prologue: Between the Fire and the Pit—Moral Imagination in the Modern World - - - 3 Part One: The Heritage - - - 23 1. The Catholic Tradition of Moderate Realism - - - 25 * The Augustinian Heritage: Peace as Public Order - - - 26 * The Medieval Heritage: Peace as Human Possibility - - - 32 * Moderate Realism and Political Community: The Distinctiveness of Catholic Theory - - - 42 2. American Catholicism and the Tradition Received: * From John Carroll to the Second Vatican Council - - - 46 * From John Carroll to James Gibbons: American Catholicism and the Moral Problem of War from the Revolution to the First World War - - - 48 * The American Bishops and World War II - - - 55 * Prelude to the Council: The Catholic 1950s - - - 67 3. American Catholicism and the Tradition in Transition: * The Second Vatican Council - - - 74 * Pacem in Terris - - - 78 * Gaudium et Spes: Vatican II on “The Church in the Modern World” - - - 92 * The Ministry of the Laity in the World, Religious Freedom, and a Summing Up - - - 103 4.The John Courtney Murray Project * The Murray Project: A New Hermeneutic - - - 110 * America as Proposition - - - 112 * The Moral Problem of War and Peace - - - 122 * The Incomplete Project - - - 135 5. The Promise and the Vulnerability of the Heritage * The Promise of the Heritage - - - 139 * The Vulnerability of the Heritage - - - 144 * Interlude: Five Portraits - - - 148 * Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement: Catholic Anarchism - - - 148 * Gordon Zahn: “Traditionalist Catholic Pacifism” and the Reform of the Church - - - 153 * Thomas Merton and Catholicism at the Apocalypse - - - 159 * Daniel and Philip Berrigan: The Catholic New Left - - - 164 * James Douglass and Countercultural Catholicism - - - 170 Part Two: The Heritage Abandoned - - - 175 6. Themes for the Abandonment of the Heritage - - - 177 * The Structure of the War/Peace Debate - - - 178 * Themes in Transition - - - 182 7. Vietnam: Vehicle for the Abandonment of the Heritage - - - 216 * 1963-1966: The Consensus under Pressure - - - 216 * 1967-1971: From Dissent to Disillusionment - - - 219 * 1972-1975: From Disillusionment to Illegitimacy - - - 224 * The Aftermath - - - 227 * Other Voices - - - 229 * An Assessment - - - 230 8. The Moral Horizon of “An Entirely New Attitude” - - - 237 * The Church and the World - - - 238 * Morality and Foreign Policy - - - 240 * Pacifism - - - 243 * Just-War Theory - - - 248 * Peace and Justice - - - 252 * “An Entirely New Attitude” - - - 255 9. “The Challenge of Peace”: * American Catholicism and the New Nuclear Debate - - - 257 * The American Bishops and Nuclear Strategy: Pre-1980 - - - 258 * The New Nuclear Debate - - - 261 * The Evolution and Principal Teachings of “The Challenge of Peace” - - - 267 * The Vatican Consultation - - - 275 * “The Challenge of Peace” and the Abandonment of the Heritage - - - 280 10. American Catholicism and the Dilemma of Peace and Freedom in Central America - - - 286 * The American Catholic Debate on Central America - - - 286 * The American Bishops and U.S. Policy in Central America - - - 299 * The Central America Debate and the Heritage Abandoned: An Evaluation - - - * 306 * Interlude - - - 314 * Portrait — J. Bryan Hehir - - - 314 Part Three: The Heritage Reclaimed and Developed - - - 325 11. Beyond Abandonment - - - 327 12. To Be A Church at the Service of Peace - - - 335 * The Incarnate Christ and the Human Prospect - - - 336 * Eschatology and Historical Responsibility - - - 340 * Toward a Theology of Peace: Five Issues - - - 342 * An Ecclesiology for Pastoral Education and Civic Engagement - - - 348 * Sacrament of Human Unity, Community of Charity and Prayer - - - 353 13.To Be a Church at the Service of Peace - - - 356 * The Peace to be Sought - - - 357 * The Question of the Present International System - - - 359 * The Question of the Soviet Union - - - 371 * The Question of Intervention - - - 377 * The Question of Military Force - - - 381 * The Question of the Boundaries of Political Obligation - - - 383 * The Question of America - - - 386 * The Question of Human Nature - - - 391 Epilogue: The Moral Necessity of Politics - - - 393 Notes - - - 397 Index - - - 477