Ralph McInerny, Postmodern Conservative

Lots has been said in memory of McInerny, who, of course, died last Friday. He wrote well over 100 books of all kinds. He was a theologian, philosopher, novelist, poet, and then and now a saint. He showed that a talented and industrious man can both be endlessly profound and make a huge amount of money through writing, and he usually thought it best not to do too much to mix up the two goals in the same book. He thoughtly clearly enough and believed deeply enough not to be “neo” anything or be associated with any fashionable school of thought, and what he wrote always had the confident ring of truth. He might have been the greatest of the great teachers of the pre-elitist era of Notre Dame.

Ralph’s last philosophical/theological book, Praeambula Fidei (CUA Press), is surely THE authoritative defense of the intellectual legitimacy of Thomistic metaphysical and moral realism—an indispensable postmodern conservative theme—of our time. It goes without saying that Ralph would have thought identifying the slogan “postmodern conservatism” with the renewal of Thomistic realism with a kind of American twist is a silly display of failed wittiness. Thank God he was more than willing to both forgive and laugh at the lack of the Irish, and he knew most of us were no more than peeping Thomists.