Less Than Victory

A sweeping exploration of the impact of America's most divisive war on the country's largest religious community.

This book explores the impact of the Vietnam War on the American Catholic community, and the impact of the nation's largest religious group upon its most controversial war. It will interest students, scholars, and general readers interested in the Vietnam War, American religious history, and the Cold War.The first book of its kind, Less than Victory explores both the impact the Vietnam War had on American Catholics, and the impact of the nation's largest religious group upon its most controversial war. Through the 1960s, Roman Catholics made up one-quarter of the population, and were deeply involved in all aspects of war. In this book, Steven J. Brady argues that American Catholics introduced the moral, as opposed to the prudential, argument about the war earlier and more comprehensively than other groups. The Catholic debate on morality was three cornered: some saw the war as inherently immoral, others as morally obligatory, while others focused on the morality of the means – napalm, torture, and free-fire zones – that the US and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam were employing. These debates presaged greater Catholic involvement in war and peace issues, provoking a shift away from traditional ideas of a just war across American Catholic thinking and dialogue.