This dissertation explores two interrelated questions. 1) What is a more adequate way to assess nonviolent peacemaking compared to the more common rule-based or strategy-based assessments? 2) What is a more fruitful way to mediate or persuade others in public discourse to implement nonviolent peacemaking practices not only in our public life but also particularly in public policy?

The context of this dissertation considers the present framework of U.S. moral reasoning, which largely entails rule or strategy-based approaches around issues of acute conflict and specifically in assessing nonviolence. I use major components of official Catholic Social Teaching and moral philosopher James Childress to illustrate the rules-based assessment. I use Gene Sharp and Peter Ackerman to illustrate the strategy-based assessment.

The context of this dissertation also considers the contemporary development of Catholic Social Teaching, and particularly the use of it by U.S. Bishops, who have faced criticism at times for inadequately challenging U.S. policy on preparation for war and engagement in war. The relationship between rules, specifically human rights, and virtue has slowly been unfolding in official Catholic Social Teaching. My project aims to contribute to this unfolding relationship between rights and virtue, specifically on the topic of nonviolent peacemaking.

I argue that the limits of a rule-based or strategy-based assessment of nonviolent peacemaking for public discourse and policy can be largely resolved by appealing to a virtue-based assessment of nonviolent peacemaking enhanced by aspects of human rights discourse. I explore the contributions and limits of a virtue-based approach from a Christian perspective, which I extend and enhance by using the work of Gandhi and Abdhul Ghaffar Khan. Drawing on Martin Luther King, I offer some contributions a virtue-based assessment could bring to U.S. public discourse and policy, which I then enhance with aspects of human rights discourse. My proposed virtue-based assessment entails understanding nonviolent peacemaking as a distinct and central virtue, which corresponds to seven core practices. I end by applying my approach to the contemporary situation in Darfur. I primarily raise questions and suggest a repertoire of possible responses, which could also potentially hold for other similar situations.