Richard John Neuhaus: Catholic Public Intellectual and Pastoral Evangelist

In 1984, when Richard John Neuhaus published The Naked Public Square, people of faith inspired by religious principles were in grave danger of being turned away from the table of public intellectual discourse.  A secularist “hold on mainstream thinking,” as Michael McConnell would later describe it, was firmly in place in the elite sectors of American society.  To be sure, Americans as a whole remained a people of deep and broad-based religious faith.  But the elites who dominate the worlds of academia, entertainment, news media, and government (other than elected government officials) were disproportionately non-believers or persons of marginal religious devotion.

 

As sociologist Peter Berger observed in the 1960s, if India is the most religious country in the world and Sweden is the most secular, then the United States had become a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes.  And many of the “Swedes” were anything but open to invocation of religious principles as having any relevance to questions of public importance.  Richard Rorty would bluntly argue that it should be regarded as “bad taste to bring religion into discussions of public policy.”  In so dismissing religious faith, Rorty was simply being more candid in expressing what most others in academic and intellectual circles thought.

 

In his ground-breaking book, Father Neuhaus drew attention to the increasing intolerance of the intellectual elite, saying that they were acting “to strip the public square of religious opinion that does not accord with their opinion.”  He argued that “we have in recent decades systematically excluded from policy consideration the operative values of the American people, values that are overwhelmingly grounded in religious belief.”  He contended that the idea of America as a secular society was not only “demonstrably false” but “exceedingly dangerous” because it would lead to a decline in civic virtue.

Other thoughtful voices were soon added to the discussion, including Stephen Carter with his best-selling work, The Culture of Disbelief, Kent Greenawalt with his still growing treasury of books on these subjects, and many of the the members of the Mirror of Justice, most prominently our own Michael Perry.  By the beginning of this new century, the focus of debate was moving ever more in the direction of considering how religious voices should be heard rather than whether they should be excluded from public discourse.  Even those who prefer that non-religious arguments be recognized as the “ common currency of political discourse,” now are increasingly likely to agree with Greenawalt that “[r]eliance on religious convictions is appropriate under any plausible model of liberal democracy much more often than is claimed by those who would have the good liberal citizen restrict himself in political decisions to shared nonreligious premises and common forms of reasoning.”

With gratitude to Father Neuhaus for his impertinence in calling the question, we here at the Mirror of Justice now can join exhuberantly with Michael Perry in his 2003 book Under God and “simply welcome the presentation of religiously grounded moral belief in all areas of our public culture, including public argument specifically about contested political choices.”

 

Indeed, the Mirror of Justice is an exemplification of the “clothed” public square for which Father Neuhaus eloquently contended.  Without Father Neuhaus, the Mirror of Justice is difficult to imagine.

 

A few years after publishing The Naked Public Square, Father Neuhaus established First Things magazine “to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.”  Although First Things has always been ecumenical in religious participation, Father Neuhaus founded the magazine simultaneously with his entry into the Catholic Church.  First Things and Father Neuhaus’s ongoing interlocutions in that venue were to play a major role in revitalizing the Catholic intellectual tradition in American public life.

 

For a generation of orthodox Catholic academics, political activists, students, and assorted intellectuals, Richard John Neuhaus was not only the penultimate example of what we aspired to be but invariably expressed our own thoughts not only better than we could but before we even were fully aware of what we were thinking.  Father Neuhaus had his finger on the pulse of a new Catholic public intellectual movement, sensing the strengths and the weaknesses of the movement and responding to each before others could identify the opportunities and the challenges.  As a consequence of his prolific writings, active involvement, and multiple other contributions, the term “Neuhaus Catholic” has become a common term in Catholic circles and one that everyone immediately understands.  We can only hope that his many disciples will carry on that work in his absence, which in the end would be the greatest testament to his lasting influence on so many of us.

 

Less well known than his writings and work on religion and public life, Father Neuhaus was a powerful and personal evangelist for our Catholic faith.  Yes, he was a public figure and a Catholic intellectual.  But he was first and foremost a priest.  The pews of many, many churches could be filled with those who have entered into full communion with the Catholic Church inspired by Father Neuhaus and encouraged by his pastoral counsel.  No matter how occupied he was with his writings or how busy his schedule of appointments and travels had become, Father Neuhaus generously gave of his time to the sincere inquirer.  Rob Vischer noted in his posting a few days ago that he was “grateful that I had the opportunity to tell Fr. Neuhaus how valuable First Things was in helping me, as a young Protestant lawyer, to begin to discern the relationships between faith, public policy, and a vibrant intellectual life.”

 

I too should acknowledge a debt of eternal gratitude to Father Neuhaus, as he was one of the three individuals who played the strongest role in bringing me into the Catholic Church (the others being Pope John Paul II and Monsignor Frank Bognanno of Des Moines who led me through RCIA).  Before ever I had seriously considered the claims of the Catholic Church, and was still a young academic, Father Neuhaus contacted me and invited me to make a contribution to First Things.  From that point on, First Things and Father Neuhaus’s prolific writings were constant companions in my spiritual journey.  In 1999, writing in First Things, Father Neuhaus noted that “there has been a dramatic but little-remarked increase in the number of converts coming into the Church, and I am in regular conversation with Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and others who are contemplating that momentous step.”  The day came when I realized that I was among those being called home toward Rome.

In this regard, as always, Father Neuhaus could cut right to the chase.  He perceptively noted that the moral teachings of the Catholic Church were seldom an obstacle for such inquirers―indeed those teachings were a “definite attraction.”  Instead, he recognized that papal infallibility was a common obstacle, saying:  “That is a good problem to have, for thinking it through leads to a deeper understanding of ecclesial authority, the development of doctrine, and Christ’s promise that the Holy Spirit will lead his Church into all truth (John 16).”

 

As I wrote to Father Neuhaus as I began preparation for confirmation into the Catholic Church, I felt excited, spiritually nourished, intellectually challenged, and more historically grounded than I had been at any prior point in my journey.  God was truly “restoring unto me the joy of my Salvation” (Psalm 51).  I pray that Father Neuhaus will now experience the full joy of Salvation in the Eternal Presence of our Savior.

 

Greg Sisk