Richard John Neuhaus

The Public Square “An Open Letter to the Jewish Community” was issued by the Catholic League a few weeks prior to the release of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ . I have problems with aspects of the letter, but it spoke some hard and necessary words about a few Jewish leaders . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square A half-truth is, more often than not, the half that we prefer to believe, or prefer that others believe. David Brooks, now a columnist for the New York Times , observes: “These days political parties grow more orthodox, while religions grow more fluid. In the political sphere, . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square Aftermath does not mean it is over. The word literally means a second-growth crop or, more simply, the continuing consequences of what has gone before. The comprehensive report of the National Review Board (NRB), along with recommendations, is still scheduled for February 27. The . . . . Continue Reading »

The defenders of judicial activism, properly understood as the judicial usurpation of politics, count on wearing down their critics over time. Robert H. Bork is not easily worn down. He returns to the battle with a new book, Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges (AEI, 159 pages, $25). Not . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public SquareAlan Wolfe is director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. His latest book is further evidence of his right to be called the Alfred E. Neuman of the sociology of American religion. Like the mascot of Mad magazine, his all-purpose response is, . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square There are in the press repeated references to “the rapidly growing lay protest movement, Voice of the Faithful.” There is indeed such an organization, but, as for “rapidly growing,” VOTF doesn’t seem to have moved much beyond the thirty to forty thousand . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square In the course of a “self-interview” in his book Signposts in a Strange Land , Walker Percy discussed his becoming a Catholic Christian. What attracted him, he said, was “Christianity’s rather insolent claim to be true, with the implication that the other . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square I don’t know what to call this. It is certainly not, in any ordinary sense of the word, a review of Robert Louis Wilken’s new book The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (Yale University Press, 368 pages,, $29.95). A reviewer is supposed to have a . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square Call it a pause or a hiatus or a bump in the road or a dead end. Such are among the ways in which informed parties describe the present moment in what forty years ago was less problematically referred to as “the ecumenical movement.” There is no doubt that the search for . . . . Continue Reading »

I write the day after military action was launched. What happens in the days and weeks ahead nobody knows, and any speculation would be dated by the time you read this. So there is no point in that. What can be known now, and is very much worth trying to understand, is how the several religious . . . . Continue Reading »