Richard John Neuhaus

And now for something completely different. Well, not completely different but different enough. For some time we’ve been discussing how to make this site even more useful. I assume it is already useful because it is used so much by so many. People more at home than I am in the ethereal worlds . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square In the many worlds of evangelical Protestantism today there is enormous vitality—including theological vitality. That makes possible substantive conversations, such as the project known as Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT). Nobody has contributed more to that conversation . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square April 11: Remembering John Paul II There, on the catafalque only a few feet away, was what remained. Kneeling at the prie-dieu, I had only a few minutes, certainly no more than ten, to think what I wanted to think and pray what I wanted to pray in this moment I had so long . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square When the much-celebrated architect Philip Johnson died this year at age ninety-eight the obituaries made little or no mention of his politics. In the days following, some commentators took note of this glaring omission. To be more precise, the omission was glaring only to those who . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square That America is guided by Providence is a belief deeply entrenched in the seventeenth-century beginnings, the constitutional period, Lincoln’s ponderings on our greatest war, and Woodrow Wilson’s convictions about the inseparable connections between freedom and American . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square “As society became more modern, it became more secular.” That sentence has about it a certain “of courseness.” It or its equivalent is to be found in numerous textbooks from grade school through graduate school. The connection between modernization and secularization is . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public SquareIt’s coming on ten years since Thomas Cahill published How the Irish Saved Civilization. The book gave new life to a genre of tribal literature in which extraordinary claims are made on behalf of one people or another to whom we are indebted for their crucial contribution to . . . . Continue Reading »

George Santayana: A Biography by John McCormick Transaction, 615 pages, $29.95. Reaching a certain age that rather abruptly presents itself as one’s maturity, I discover a more frequent impulse to reflect on the influences that brought me to this point. “Impulse” is the right word, . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square It is an unprecedented “but,” although I expect it will turn out to be ephemeral. My unscientific survey of reactions to the November election led me to read, for the first time in months, an editorial in the New York Times. The gist of the editorial, published the day after, . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public SquareAmong the most oft-quoted statements on American foreign policy is that of John Quincy Adams in 1821: “Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of . . . . Continue Reading »