Some virtues may be learned, others are inborn. Punctuality, for example, can be taught, at least in the sense that the costs for procrastination can be made too high. I suspect every West Point cadet shows up for class on time, but such a cadet never enrolls in an elective course called “Learning Courage.” You either have it or you don’t.
I offer this potted version of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics because, for as long as I knew him, I was always impressed by how naturally brave Richard John Neuhaus was, so much so that I wonder if he was aware of his innate courage. “Nothing daunted, nothing won,” goes the proverb; and he won a lot. His book The Naked Public Square not only initiated a conversation, it began a movement. Evangelicals and Catholics Together not only made real advances in ecumenical relations, it altered the way ecumenism was pursued. His magazine First Things not only established itself within the first year of its publication as the premier organ of publicly accessible religious argument, it often set the terms for that debate, whether it be on the American experiment, the judicial usurpation of politics, the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, or, above all, abortion.
