Once upon a time there was a lion . . . and the lion had a voice like a lamb. The day Michael Novak died, that unbidden couplet mysteriously wrote itself into my head. Now it’s stuck there like a song that won’t go away. Maybe it lingers because I always thought of Michael as a lion, a metaphor fitting in so many ways.
There is, first, the sheer scope of his kingdom as an intellectual. Theology, philosophy, politics; diplomacy, government, economics; poetry, fiction, journalism: Michael roamed with authority through all these territories and more, leaving lasting tracks in each.
Then there were the institutional dens that he built, or helped to build, all over the world: from seminars such as Tertio Millennio in Poland, still changing lives and honing minds after twenty-five years, to the magazines whose need for existence Michael anticipated before anyone else—including First Things. He could not stop building shelters that would house the thoughts of others.
Even during his last years at the American Enterprise Institute, he presided over one of the few truly charming venues in town—a regular small-c catholic wine and cheese hour, at which speakers were invited to leave the world of Washington wonkery and think about art, literature, and history instead. One high point was an evening during which Michael held a packed house rapt as he delivered a tour-d’horizon about the meaning of the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.