L oyal S ons and D aughters of G od ? A merican C atholics D ebate C atholic A ntiwar P rotest

American Catholics witnessed a wave of radical Catholic action during the Vietnam War. Many Catholics protested the war by burning draft cards and destroying draft files. Radical Catholic action continued into the 1980s with the Plowshares actions, protests in which religious activists attempted to damage nuclear weapons and facilities. The response of ordinary Catholics to such protests, gleaned from Catholic editorial letters, was mixed. Some Catholics drew on a tradition in American Catholicism that emphasized patriotism and sought to keep religious and secular matters separate. Others supported the protests on biblical grounds and found justification in church tradition and teaching. Response to Vietnam‐era Catholic protests tended to focus on the propriety of Catholic protests and the changes wrought by the Second Vatican Council, rather than the war itself. By the 1980s, however, American Catholics had become more comfortable with Catholic public protest and focused their editorial debate on the morality of nuclear weapons.