The War Against Catholicism

This is an innovative and important study of the relationship between Catholicism and liberalism, the two most significant and irreconcilable movements in nineteenth-century Germany

Drawing on interviews with victims of forced disappearance, documents from the state and the Church, as well as field work and participant observation, The Catholic Church and Argentina's Dirty War explores how the Argentine government deployed the legitimating discourse of Catholicism to justify terrorism in the case of La Salette missionaries. It examines how the official Catholic hierarchy rationalized their silence, and how the victims understood their Catholic faith in such a context --

A transnational comparative history of lived religion and everyday Catholicism in Germany and Austria-Hungary during the Great War.

Prior to the outbreak of World War II, nearly forty thousand German Catholics were involved in the German Catholic Peace League, a movement that caused many people in various countries to seriously reconsider the dimension of pacifism in their faith. During the course of the War, however, many of these same German Catholics raised no serious objection to serving in Germany's armies or swearing allegiance to Adolph Hitler. First published in 1962, German Catholics and Hitler's Wars created a furor, ultimately causing a serious reevaluation of church-state relationships and, in particular, of the morality of war. This work began as an attempt to understand the demise of the German Catholic Peace League. But because of various factors, including the destruction of vital records, Gordon C. Zahn began to consider the behavior of German Catholics in general and the evidence of their almost total conformity to the war demands of the Nazi regime. Using sociological analysis, he argues convincingly for the existence of a super-effective system of social controls, and of a selection between the competing values of Catholicism and nationalism. Although Zahn never speculates, conclusions are inescapable, chief among them that the traditional Catholic doctrine of the "just war" has ceased to be operative for Catholics in the modern world.

In the bloody Civil War that split our nation, American bishops worked for the success of the Union . . . and of the Confederacy! As Catholics slaughtered Catholics, pious priests on both sides prayed God to give success in battle. . . to their own side. Men in blue and men in gray flinched at the Consecration as cannonballs (fired by Catholic opponents) rained down on them during battlefield Masses. Many are the moving – and often surprising – stories in these pages of brave Catholics on both sides of the conflict – stories told by Fr. Charles Connor, one of our country's foremost experts on Catholic American history. Through searing anecdotes and learned analysis, Fr. Connor here shows how the tumult, tragedy, and bravery of the War forged a new American identity, even as it created a new American Catholic identity, as Catholics—often new immigrants—found themselves on both sides of the conflict. Fr. Connor

Martyrdom and the Politics of Religion explores the ways that Salvadoran Catholics sought to make sense of political violence in their country in the 1970s and 1980s by constructing a theological ethics that could both explain repression in religious terms and propose specific responses to violence. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the book highlights the ways that progressive Catholicism offered a justification and tools for political resistance in the face of extraordinary destruction. Using the case of Catholicism in El Salvador, the book explores the nature of religious responses to social crisis and the ways that ordinary believers construct and strive to live by ethical systems. By highlighting the importance of theological belief, of narrative, and of religious rationality in political mobilization, it touches questions of general interest to readers concerned with the social role of religion and ethics.

Burglar for Peace is the incredible story of the Catholic Left--also known as the Ultra Resistance--from the late 1960s to the early '70s. Led by the Catholic priests Phil and Dan Berrigan, the Catholic Left quickly became one of the most important sectors of the Vietnam War-era peace movement after a nonviolent raid on a draft board in Catonsville, MD, in May 1968. With an overview of the broader draft resistance movement, Burglar for Peace is an exploration of the sweeping landscape of the American Left during the Vietnam War era as we accompany Ted Glick on a journey through his personal evolution from typical, white, middle-class, American teenager to an antiwar, nonviolent draft resister. Glick vividly recounts the development of the Catholic Left as it organized scores of nonviolently disruptive, effective actions inside draft boards, FBI offices, war corporation offices, and other sites. Burglar for Peace is the first in-depth, inside look at one of the major political trials of Catholic Left activists, in Rochester, NY, in 1970, as well as a second one in 1972 in Harrisburg, PA. With great humility, Glick recalls how his selfless devotion to ending the war in Vietnam resulted in his eleven months of imprisonment, which included a thirty-four-day hunger strike, and he tells the remarkable story of a Catholic Left-organized, forty-day hunger strike against the war. Concluding the story is a reflective account of Glick's open resignation from the Catholic Left in 1974, his eighteen-year estrangement from Phil and Dan Berrigan, and the eventual healing of that relationship. The final chapter relates timeless lessons learned by the author that will find deep resonance among activists today. Burglar for Peace will serve as both an inspiration and an invaluable resource for those committed to transformational, revolutionary change.

German Catholicism at War explores the mentalities and experiences of German Catholics during the Second World War. Taking the German Home Front, and most specifically, the Rhineland and Westphalia, as its core focus German Catholicism at War examines Catholics' responses to developments inthe war, their complex relationships with the Nazi regime, and their religious practices. Drawing on a wide range of source materials stretching from personal letters and diaries to pastoral letters and Gestapo reports, Thomas Brodie breaks new ground in our understanding of the Catholic communityin Germany during the Second World War.