Catholic Pacifist: The Long and Lonely Quest of Gordon Zahn

A study of the life and work of Gordon Zahn (1918-2007), one of the most significant and formative figures in the history of the US Catholic peace movement.During World War II, Zahn was one of only a handful of US Catholic conscientious objectors, an experience that first put him in contact with Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker.Following the war, Zahn completed a PhD in sociology at The Catholic University of America where Paul Hanly Furfey’s "supernatural sociology" had a profound effect on him.After joining the faculty at Loyola University, Chicago, Zahn won a Fulbright year in Germany (1956-57) where he discovered the story of Franz Jägerstätter, the Austrian Catholic farmer, husband, and father who was beheaded bythe Nazis in 1943 for refusing to participate in Hitler’s military.It was Zahn’s 1964 book In Solitary Witness that introduced Jägerstätter to an international audience and led to his beatification by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007.This work, along with Zahn’s several other