Richard John Neuhaus 1936 - 2009

There simply are not enough words, and if there were, I could not put them in the right order, to fully express the intellectual and spiritual debt which I owe to Fr. Neuhaus. It sounds strange to say such a thing about a man I never met, but it is nonetheless true. Looking back, I can see that it was my regular encounter with his work in First Things that started to prepare me for my intellectual and spiritual journey into the Church. It seems ridiculous to think that reading a public policy journal could lead one into the greatest spiritual adventure of one's life, but there it is. I do not see how I would have been reconciled to the Church had Father Neuhaus not been such a faithful servant in the tasks of public life to which he was given. Earlier tonight I put my three sons to bed and it gave me pause to wonder at how different it all could have been had I not absorbed the joyful sense of spiritual and intellectual adventure that permeated Fr Neuhaus' writing. It was from Fr Neuhaus that I first glimpsed the deep beauty of the Catholic teaching on the married state, and of the joy that comes from faithfully living one's vocation in life. It was from Fr Neuhaus that I learned to appreciate the simple and humble blessedness that comes from spiritual fidelity to one's state in life, be it great or small. And as a man given to deeply-held prejudices and hasty judgments in intellectual discourse, I learned from Fr Neuhaus the virtue of the old Thomistic saw - "Seldom affirm, never deny, always distinguish." Requiescat, RJN.