Richard John Neuhaus: Witness to Truth
A First Things junior fellow remembers the man whose life was spent 'witnessing to the truth.'
Jordan Hylden | posted 1/09/2009 12:09PM
I was a high-school kid when I first "met" Father Richard John Neuhaus. I can never remember how I came across the website of First Things, but when I did, it was like a light switch had been turned on in my head. Here was an entire cosmos of Christian thought and tradition, with worlds upon worlds contained in the hallways it pointed me down. I spent countless nights poring over issues, drinking it all in like water in a desert. At the time, I probably didn't understand half of it, but that didn't matter — the depth and breadth of the Christian tradition in those pages, the sheer excitement of thinking through the adventure of the gospel — I knew I had found something that was worth a lifetime. And I very well remember thinking: Wouldn't it be something to write this stuff myself someday?
Three years later, that is exactly where I ended up: working and writing at First Things as a junior fellow. I was in charge of compiling Father Neuhaus's monthly column, "The Public Square," and pretty soon was drafted into covering the Anglican beat for the website as well. Every evening, the editors gathered for prayer at 338 E 19th St., and each Friday night was dinner at Father Neuhaus's apartment. His apartment was something of a revolving door of old friends: Avery Cardinal Dulles, George Weigel, Robert Louis Wilken, Michael Novak — the list goes on.
Board meetings and gatherings of Evangelicals and Catholics Together brought even more friends and comrades-in-arms, such as Chuck Colson, Robert George, Mary Ann Glendon, David Novak, David Bentley Hart, and Robert Jenson. Every so often, I had to pinch myself: I'm a farm kid from North Dakota. What the heck am I doing here?
But Father Neuhaus was unfailingly generous, to me and everyone around him. He spent hours listening carefully to my undoubtedly half-baked apologias for Anglicanism, answering my long list of questions (theological, political, personal — you name it), patiently working with my writing, giving advice, praying with me, and generally being a good guy.
People sometimes forget that before he was a writer and a national figure, Father Neuhaus was a pastor. First Things was a ministry of love for him.
He was a man who had the ears of Presidents, professors, and popes. But he also had time for me. I don't know if I was ever able to tell him how much his encouragement and example meant to me, but it meant the world.
It's hard to know where to begin talking about Father Neuhaus's accomplishments.
For one thing, he brought people together that few others could. Evangelicals and Catholics Together was only one in a long string of discussion groups he led throughout his career. The conversation that centered on First Things was, in large part, a fruit of his many friendships and endless intellectual zeal. I learned from him that sharp disagreement did not preclude friendship; for him, it was simply the respect due to the truth. He once told me that his friendship with Stanley Hauerwas consisted of a "30-year argument." Although the disagreement was at times very sharp, he never seemed to consider it as anything less than a respectful argument between friends.
Of course, Father Neuhaus was well known for his rapier wit and criticism. When I asked him about it once, thinking that a particular instance of it was going a bit far, he explained, "Sometimes, people just aren't aware of the nonsense they are spouting. And I see it as my job to point it out to them." His point, as I understood, was that some "arguments" can really only be responded to with satire.
January (Web-only) 2009, Vol. 53
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