Richard John Neuhaus

The Public Square There is the risk of being excessively self-referential, but friends tell me I should respond to this just to keep the record straight. And of course the questions engaged involve many people other than myself. At issue is a very long article in the Winter 1998 issue of that . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square It comes in three fat volumes published by Blackwell, The Rise of the Network Society. A thoughtful cardinal friend put me on to it while we were in Rome participating in the Synod for America. The author is sociologist Manuel Castells, a Spaniard now at Berkeley who has over the . . . . Continue Reading »

Cuba is notably short on snow, and Fidel Castro is hardly a ruler in the mold of the emperor Henry IV, although there are striking similarities between the reforming Popes Gregory VII and John Paul II. Nine hundred and twenty-one years later, there was more than a touch of Canossa about the . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square As a celebrity is someone who is famous for being famous, so the news is what is declared to be news. And nobody declares with such influence as our local paper, the Times. People who have tracked the issue over the years will find little that is new in the Times’ report, but . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square In this space I recently paid tribute to the late Francis Schaeffer, noting, among other things, his singular part in alerting evangelical Protestants to the great evil of abortion. Until the late seventies, I said, the Catholic Church had stood almost alone in publicly protesting . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square “Venomous diatribe.” “Hateful xenophobia.” “Doing the work of Adolf Hitler.” “Agitating for a new crusade.” “Obviously mentally ill.” Such were among the sentiments expressed in response to my review in the October 1997 . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square In addition to being wrongheaded, the book is simply wrong on so many scores. That may be a good reason for ignoring it entirely, except that it represents a viewpoint that is influential far beyond the number of people who hold it. The book is Please Don’t Wish Me a Merry . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public SquareThe day Mother Teresa died, an editor at USA Today asked for an op-ed piece, which I did. In it I quoted her words upon receiving the Nobel Prize for peace (see below). The next day a more senior editor called to say they couldn’t use it. “We had in mind,” he said, “more . . . . Continue Reading »

In 1971, I published In Defense of People , the first book-length critique of “the ecology movement” that was then in ascendancy and that pretty much shaped the arguments that continue to swirl around the varieties of environmentalism today. There are significant differences between then and . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public SquareAstute as ever, my friend Robert Louis Wilken, the distinguished church historian, is impressed by “We Hold These Truths,” but he also admits to having some problems with the declaration released on the Fourth of July and included in our last issue. He agrees with other . . . . Continue Reading »