Richard John Neuhaus

The distinction between pro-Palestine and anti-Israel is often hard to discern, and that between anti-Israel and anti-Semitic is sometimes exceedingly fine. Father Drew Christiansen, editor of America , the Jesuit magazine, is unhappy that some anti-Semites agree with him, but he nonetheless agrees . . . . Continue Reading »

Ramesh Ponnuru has kicked off a very important discussion with his book The Party of Death , and nobody has contributed to the discussion more intelligently than Ross Douthat over on The American Scene . The discussion is most importantly about abortion and the related “life questions,” . . . . Continue Reading »

After dinner, the evening before that conference in Vienna a while back, Christoph Cardinal Schoenborn took George Weigel and me on a private tour of the episcopal palace. The vestiges of splendor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are inspiring, although today one cannot help but wonder if they are . . . . Continue Reading »

Less than a year ago, on July 7, 2005, four bombs went off in the London underground, killing 56 people. Ah yes, some might respond, Was it really so recently? It seems so long ago, just another of those nasty incidents that don’t bear thinking about. The arrest of 17 Canadian Muslim . . . . Continue Reading »

It is getting the attention it deserves in avowedly conservative circles, but Ramesh Ponnuru’s fine book The Party of Death is being assiduously ignored by the people who most need to engage his arguments. Ross Douthat has this to say over on The American Scene : The official line, so far as . . . . Continue Reading »

Here’s a happy spin. The headline in Catholic New York , “The Nation’s Largest Catholic Newspaper,” reads: “Poll Says Catholics Not Swayed by ‘Da Vinci Code.’” That’s good news, if you don’t read the story. The national survey was done by . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square If you’re not a Christian and not about to become a Christian, but you’re a public intellectual who is paid to be an expert on a society that is overwhelmingly Christian, you have to make a decision about how to position yourself. For a long time, beginning in the first . . . . Continue Reading »

I was honored to be asked to speak at the commencement of the Dominican House of Studies, also known as the Pontificial Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, in Washington, D.C. As readers of First Things know, I have a thing about the Dominicans and their charism. Here is what I said: I . . . . Continue Reading »

As with the pun, appreciation of the limerick is a cultivated taste. I’m still working on it, very intermittently. Ernest W. Lefever has put together a little collection of 230 of them in Liberating the Limerick (Hamilton Books). There is, for instance, this: . . . . Continue Reading »

Today is Ascension Day, a holy day of obligation. In some dioceses, the observance is transferred to next Sunday. The idea, as it is helpfully explained, is that going to Mass on a weekday may be excessively burdensome or give non-Catholic neighbors the impression that Catholics are different. At . . . . Continue Reading »