Richard John Neuhaus

January 30, 1991 Dear Richard, Your column in the Wall Street Journal (January 23, 1991), “Just War and This War,” came just in time for me. I have been thinking hard, as you can imagine, about what a pacifist does in war. The article—well done as usual—has provoked me to . . . . Continue Reading »

Surveys provide additional evidence that Americans are returning to “traditional values.” Traditional values is usually a synonym for common sense or moral platitudes. Such sense is common and such morality is platitudinous because they are powerfully confirmed and reconfirmed by human . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public Square In our March issue, George Weigel offered a comprehensive, incisive, and, it must be admitted, devastating examination of “The Churches and War in the Gulf.” In times of war, it has been said, truth is the first casualty. There is something to that. But times of great . . . . Continue Reading »

The Public SquareWe need not speculate about what may be down “the slippery slope” on which we find ourselves. The truly ominous changes are the stuff of our daily newspapers. These things are happening now. Consider the much discussed case of Nancy Cruzan. On December 15, 1990, the . . . . Continue Reading »

The Search Institute is located in Minneapolis, and it succeeded in inducing the Lilly Endowment and six denominations to give it big bucks to study the “faith maturity” of members of Protestant congregations. (If you are one of those busybodies who wants to know where your money goes, the . . . . Continue Reading »

Almost nobody wants to be called a prude and reactionary, a bluenose puritan and spoilsport. It would not be accurate to say that nobody wants to be perceived that way. Some, when they have been called reactionary once too often, embrace the epithet and exult in it. When he launched National Review . . . . Continue Reading »

I Voltaire took pleasure in publishing the last will and testament of his friend Jean Messelier: “I should like to see, and this will be the last and the most ardent of my desires, I should like to see the last king strangled with the guts of the last priest.” The anti-religious passion of . . . . Continue Reading »

So you’re not an editor? Lucky you. We were just going to press with an issue that included an outstanding article by Father Paul Mankowski, S.J., on the second draft of “One in Christ Jesus: A Pastoral Response to the Concerns of Women for Church and Society.” The draft was to be considered . . . . Continue Reading »

Richard John Neuhaus: 1992 is scheduled to he a very big year for moving toward European unity. Specifics will be changed as a result of the Revolution of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe, and especially in light of German reunification, but the continuing move toward European unity seems to be . . . . Continue Reading »

Robert Bellah of the University of California, Berkeley, is surely among the most influential commentators on religion and American public life. In the late sixties he was instrumental in reviving the discussion about “civil religion”—a discussion that still goes on and has, all in all, . . . . Continue Reading »