{"id":208,"date":"2009-01-08T10:46:09","date_gmt":"2009-01-08T10:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/01\/fr-richard-john-neuhaus-1936-2.html"},"modified":"2009-01-08T10:46:09","modified_gmt":"2009-01-08T10:46:09","slug":"fr-richard-john-neuhaus-1936-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/01\/fr-richard-john-neuhaus-1936-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, 1936-2009"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/span>Father Neuhaus, the founder of the conservative ecumenical journal of religion and politics and culture and everything else, First Things<\/em>, died this morning. The magazine longtime second-in-command, Jody Bottum, has this announcement<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the weakness that sent him to the hospital the day after Christmas, caused by a series of side effects from the cancer he was suffering. He lost consciousness Tuesday evening after a collapse in his heart rate, and the next day, in the company of friends, he died.
\nMy tears are not for him–for he knew, all his life, that his Redeemer lives, and he has now been gathered by the Lord in whom he trusted.
\nI weep, rather for all the rest of us. As a priest, as a writer, as a public leader in so many struggles, and as a friend, no one can take his place. The fabric of life has been torn by his death, and it will not be repaired, for those of us who knew him, until that time when everything is mended and all our tears are wiped away.
\nFuneral arrangements are still being planned; more information about the funeral will be made public shortly. Please accept our thanks for all your prayers and good wishes.
\nIn Deepest Sorrow,
\nJoseph Bottum
\nEditor
\nFirst Things<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Father Neuhaus was one of the more combative personalities in Catholicism and the country–not for nothing was he known as a leading theocon–but he was also one of the most colorful and generous of public figures to journos. And while Joseph Bottum will do just fine, I can’t imagine anyone being more prolific a writer than Neuhaus. I’m a longtime ROFTER (“Reader Of First Things,” for the unwashed) and always find it as illuminating as it is maddening–a great combo.
\nThe picture above is a classic–a First Things hootenanny<\/a> after their 2008 board meeting. From left, Robert George, Joseph Bottum, Robert Wilken (standing) and Richard John Neuhaus, seated in a characteristic pose, one might say.
\nRJN, RIP.
\nUPDATES:<\/strong>
\nMark Silk has a characteristically perceptive take on Neuhaus<\/a>, warts and all, though without transgressing the old commandment, de mortuis nihil nisi bonum<\/em>. (As RJN might have put it.) Mark’s good insight is that Neuhaus, the Old Sixties Radical-turned-theocon, remained Neuhaus the Old Sixties Radical:<\/p>\n

In the past year, the word on the street was that the Vatican had become displeased with him–something to do with his having taken a potshot or two at Benedict XVI’s American visitation. If so, it would not have been out of keeping with a certain irrepressible bomb-throwing side to his character that generally kept him this side of insufferability. The old antiwar activist was on display in the 1990s when he roiled the neocon waters by calling for civil disobedience against the American judicial system because of Roe v. Wade and its progeny. He never was afraid to question the legitimacy of the system.
\nIn his last piece in First Things, copyrighted this month, Neuhaus goes on and on in praise of The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right, a new book by Jon Shields of Claremont-McKenna College. Shields’ argument is that the Christian Right represents the realization of the anti-establishment vision of the radicals of the Sixties, and it’s easy to see why Neuhaus loved it (transposing “Christian right” into “pro-life movement”). By the lights of the culture, it represents an irony of American history. By his own, it proved he kept the faith.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

John Allen’s write-up is here<\/a>;
\nMichael Paulson has a good roundup of reax here…<\/a>
\nFirst Things has also posted this 2000 essay by Neuhaus, “Born Toward Dying”<\/a>about his recovery from an earlier bout with cancer:<\/p>\n

“We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already underway. The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well.”
\n[snip]
\n“There is nothing that remarkable in my story, except that we are all unique in our living and dying. Early on in my illness a friend gave me John Donne’s wondrous Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. The Devotions were written a year after Donne had almost died, and then lingered for months by death’s door. He writes, “Though I may have seniors, others may be elder than I, yet I have proceeded apace in a good university, and gone a great way in a little time, by the furtherance of a vehement fever.” So I too have been to a good university, and what I have learned, what I have learned most importantly, is that, in living and in dying, everything is ready now.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And via Bruce Tomaso at the DMN<\/a>, this Neuhaus classic<\/a> on the First Estate’s view (well, at least from his pulpit) of we in the Fourth Estate–that is, the clerical view of the press:<\/p>\n

An eager young thing with a national paper was interviewing me about yet another instance of political corruption. “Is this something new?” she asked. “No,” I said, “it’s been around ever since that unfortunate afternoon in the garden.” There was a long pause and then she asked, “What garden was that?” It was touching.
\nWhat prompts me to mention this today is that I’m just off the phone with a reporter from the same national paper. He’s doing a story on Pope Benedict’s new encyclical. In the course of discussing the pontificate, I referred to the pope as the bishop of Rome. “That raises an interesting point,” he said. “Is it unusual that this pope is also the bishop of Rome?” He obviously thought he was on to a new angle. Once again, I tried to be gentle. Toward the end of our talk, he said with manifest sincerity, “My job is not only to get the story right but to explain what it means.” Ah yes, he is just the fellow to explain what this pontificate and the encyclical really mean. It is poignant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Father Neuhaus, the founder of the conservative ecumenical journal of religion and politics and culture and everything else, First Things, died this morning. The magazine longtime second-in-command, Jody Bottum, has this announcement: Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,7,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nFr. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}