Richard John Neuhaus

Religion and Politics: “The Great Separation” I approached Mark Lilla’s new book with considerable interest and with the expectation of encountering a fresh way of thinking about perennial problems. The book is The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (Knopf). It is true . . . . Continue Reading »

The news this next year will be dominated by the presidential race. That is near to inevitable. In that race, there are few things as consequential as the location of authority, and, in particular, the authority of the courts.Way back in 1956, Hannah Arendt wrote an essay titled “What Is . . . . Continue Reading »

It is not a matter of revving ourselves up to experience again the wonder of the Christ Mass. There is no point in trying to recapitulate Christmas as you knew it when you were, say, seven years old. That way lies sentimentalities unbounded.The alternative is the way of contemplation, of demanding . . . . Continue Reading »

I see that Jonathan Last and Michael Novak have been having at it , and getting me in the middle. Please leave me out of it. I have written about the Mormon factor in the Romney candidacy here , here , and here . But let me spare you the trouble of re-reading all that. My argument can be briefly . . . . Continue Reading »

This is a disagreement among friends. I believe Peggy Noonan gets it right when she worries that religion has become the decisive factor in the race for the Republican nomination at this point. Noonan is no friend of the naked public square, and she is on target when she writes, “But there is . . . . Continue Reading »

Robert Kaplan has a fine essay over on the American Interest on the growing gap between the military and the civilian society. The military is increasingly a “warrior class” set apart. Kaplan is by no means the first to worry about this, but the intelligence of his worrying is refreshing. . . . . Continue Reading »

On Opinion Journal earlier this week, John Fund opines on the Mormon factor in Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. He notes that a survey of 1,269 faculty members by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research just found that 38 percent of social sciences and humanities professors, a . . . . Continue Reading »

Pope Benedict’s letter this past week to the Catholics of China is a development of potentially historic importance. In reading the letter and talking with people who know the situation in China, the most striking thing is Benedict’s insistence that there is one Catholic Church in . . . . Continue Reading »

It was a powerful speech powerfully delivered. I don’t do political endorsements but am on record as saying that I think Mitt Romney is in many ways well qualified to be president. There is nothing in the speech that prompts a change of mind on that.Note the title “Faith in . . . . Continue Reading »

In his classic work Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, Henry Adams asserts, only half whimsically, that the twelfth-century Cathedral of Chartres was, in all its details, built at the direction of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for it is her house above all others. To be sure, the sculpture and the glass of . . . . Continue Reading »