What was Cathleen Kaveny smoking? Her recent column in Commonweal attacks First Things founder Richard John Neuhaus for “sowing division” among Catholics and reducing theological commitments to “mere instruments of political will.”I’m not interested in defending Neuhaus against the charge . . . . Continue Reading »
From the introduction to Evangelicals and Catholics Together at Twenty: Vital Statements on Contested Topics (Brazos, 2015), edited by Timothy George and Thomas G. Guarino, with foreword by George Weigel, and prefaces by Timothy Cardinal Dolan and J.I Packer. This volume contains the nine public . . . . Continue Reading »
For some time now, First Things has sought to bring Catholics and evangelicals together. Richard John Neuhaus, Charles Colson, and their fellow travelers have engaged in an fruitful ecumenism of the trenches, discovering as they went along that they had more in common than they knew, particularly with respect to Christian ethics and the church’s public witness. And much though not all of First Things’ work has been in the service of a religiously informed “public philosophy,” seeking to find a common language for perennial truths about marriage, life, freedom, and other issues in the public square. Continue Reading »
On Tuesday, May 19, we had a special dinner at the Union League Club in New York to celebrate our silver anniversary. Continue Reading »
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the 1975 “Hartford Appeal for Theological Affirmation.” Some of us who were signers have been quietly reminiscing about the project. One of my fellow participants wrote me about it recently, referring to “the ‘historic’(?) Hartford conclave.” Putting the “historic” in quotes with a parenthetical question mark rightly distanced the Appeal from any status as a major ecclesiastical document. The Appeal may show up in an occasional footnote these days, but its actual theological content is seldom recalled. Continue Reading »
Randy Boyagoda’s biography of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square came out last month and has already received significant notice. (See reviews and notices here and here and here and here) A few weeks ago, Boyagoda himself . . . . Continue Reading »
In his insightful new biography, Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square, Randy Boyagoda recounts the extraordinary journey of the man who many believe was “the most consequential public theologian in America since the days of Reinhold Niebuhr and John Courtney Murray.” Born . . . . Continue Reading »
Despite legitimate efforts of believers to reserve a place in the public square, the followers of the secularizing ideologies have historically found ways to thwart such efforts, while, paradoxically, accusing the believers of trying to launch a theocratic takeover. Continue Reading »
Twenty years ago today, on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Richard John Neuhaus was ordained a Catholic priest. Cardinal John O’Connor ordained Father Neuhaus in 1991 at St. Joseph’s Seminary, just north of the city in Dunwoodie. Exactly one year previous, on September 8, 1990, Cardinal O’Connor had received Richard into full communion with the Catholic Church, in a ceremony held in the private chapel of the cardinal’s residence… . Continue Reading »
Richard John Neuhaus May 14, 1936“January 8, 2009 I am deeply touched by the death of the Reverend Father Richard John Neuhaus. I have known him for more than ten years and learned to admire him for his zeal for the Catholic faith, his intellectual robustness, his courage, and his love of the . . . . Continue Reading »
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