Keeping Faith with Human Rights. By Linda Hogan . Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015. vii + 240 pages. $29.95 (paper).

Abstract

repression, and sharp declines in human services and economic opportunities for the most vulnerable people. Similar cases involving violent US intervention in other democratic countries without a declaration of war would include El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, not to mention indigenous peoples' territories in North America. Some acknowledgment of this reality would serve to nuance and strengthen the argument for the abolition of war, declared and otherwise. Chapter , "Lawlessness, Disorder, and Dehumanization," would benefit from a deeper theological analysis. Augustine's insistence on mourning as the proper disposition when faced with the prospect of killing another person in war would seem appropriate to mention. In an era of soaring PTSD rates among those returning from armed conflict, the moral injury caused by war would also be another fruitful theological thread to explore in greater detail, by way of supporting the author's thesis. These theological considerations would also invite greater attention to the moral grounding of active nonviolence in Scripture and in moral principles. Dorothy Day receives a brief nod near the beginning of the book, but the wellspring of her commitment to nonviolence in the Sermon on the Mount is not acknowledged. Accounting for the theological and moral underpinning of nonviolence would temper the tendency to reduce nonviolent options to their instrumental value (-). Asking, "How effective are they?" is very different morally from considering their intrinsic value as a dignified, principled, and faithful response to violence. This text's treatment of the development in Catholic teaching of a strong presumption against war, and its summary of the neoconservative critique of this position (chapters  and ), represent its strongest contribution to the existing literature. For undergraduate courses treating war and peace, these chapters could serve as a general introduction to the main interlocutors and issues at stake.