In Father John Dear's "Introduction" in his new 2024 book The Gospel of Peace (pp. xiii-xxix), he says, "I have used only the New American Bible as my source. I consider it one of the best translations, if not the best, of the New Testament. It has two sets of excellent footnotes, and I highly recommend it" (p. xxiii).
In the subsection titled "What Is Nonviolence Anyway?" (pp. xx-xxi), Father John Dear operationally defines and explains this key term. He says, "In an effort to define nonviolence, I proposed in my book The Nonviolent Life [2013], that the holistic nonviolence of [Mohandas] Gandhi and [the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther] King demands three simultaneous attributes: [1] we have to be nonviolent to ourselves; [2] at the same time, we have to be nonviolent to all people. All creatures, and Mother Earth; [3] and also at the same time, we have to be part of the global grassroots movement of nonviolence. We can't just pick one or two of these attributes; we have to practice all three at the same time, otherwise it's not the holistic, authentic nonviolence of Jesus, Gandhi, and King" (p. xxi).
For a recent biography of Dr. King (1929-1968), see Jonathan Eig's King: A Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023) - which I reviewed in my OEN article "Jonathan Eig on the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." (dated May 28, 2023): Click Here
I discuss Dr. King's significance in my life in my OEN article "Thomas J. Farrell on Thomas J. Farrell" (dated November 17, 2023): Click Here
Now, in overall spirit, Father John Dear's new 2024 book The Gospel of Peace is related to the 2007 book God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now by the historical Jesus expert John Dominic Crossan (HarperSanFrancisco).
Concerning the teaching of the historical Jesus, see my 9,000-word 2022 review essay "John Dominic Crossan on the Historical Jesus's 93 Original Sayings, and Walter J. Ong's Thought" that is available online through the University of Minnesota's digital conservancy: https://hdl.handle.net/11299/226607
Now, on the occasion of the celebration of the fiftieth World Day of Peace, January 1, 2017, Pope Francis (born in 1936), the first Jesuit pope, issued his message titled Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace. Subsequently, Pope Francis published the book Against War: Building a Culture of Peace (Orbis Books, 2022).
I have succinctly profiled the doctrinally conservative Pope Francis in my OEN article "Pope Francis on Evil and Satan" (dated March 24, 2019):
However, I should also mention here that Pope Francis is not popular with certain vociferous conservative American Catholics - as the Italian Catholic papal biographer and philosopher Massimo Borghesi discusses in his book Catholic Discordance: Neoconservatism vs. the Field Hospital Church of Pope Francis, translated by Barry Hudock (Liturgical Press Academic, 2021; orig. Italian ed., 2021).
They say that birds of a feather flock together. Consequently, it is not surprising that Father John Dear, who has been writing about nonviolence for more than two decades, refers positively to Pope Francis' 2017 and 2022 publications about nonviolence. It would now be wonderful if Pope Francis were to discuss Father John Dear's new 2024 book The Gospel of Peace in one of his own future messages!
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