Belmont Abbey College celebrates the memory of Father Richard John Neuhaus:

"He taught us the joys of being countercultural"


Yours truly's preliminary note:

An Anglo former Civil Rights activist with both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, former radical Lutheran pastor of a predominantly African American congregation and a lifelong loyal friend of orthodox (or at least genuinely religious) Jewry as well as a man with the distinction of being ordained twice, the first time as a Lutheran minister by his own father in 1960 and then once more, this time as a Catholic priest by Cardinal John O'Connor of New York in 1991, Neuhaus was a man of whom we can say, for all he wasn't bashful about openly enjoying a good cigar nor an even better glass or two of fine wine, that here's a man who never feared to live his live to the fullest.

Hence that spirit of slovenly lukewarmness called mediocrity so justly cursed by Father John Corapi -- and that's so prevalent in the American Catholic church today -- just wasn't part of this man's baggage.

Period!

Now, then:

The following is adapted from a large display add placed in the back page of First Things, the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus' favorite publication. April 2009.

And, here at last, it is:

"In the midst of an American culture that has sadly become debased and disoriented, Father Richard John Neuhaus invited all of us to join him in the high adventure of being countercultural.

"How?

"By refusing to accept a private of compartmentalized form of Christianity.

"By refusing to collaborate in the disintegration of our culture by withdrawing from it [??!!].

"By daring to smuggle some of the transcendent truth, goodness and beauty of the City of God into the City of Man.

"By asserting -- always with gentleness and charity -- that we can move forward as a culture only when we return to first things.

"And what a difference his life and witness made in our culture.

"As the great Michael Novak recently wrote: Father Neuhaus was the most consequential Christian intellectual since Reinhold Niebuhr. He was the most consequential Catholic since John Courtney Murray, S.J., and Fulton J. Sheen. He was a worthy successor in along chain of great witnesses.

"May this journal that Father Neuhaus founded, First Things, which, as Novak has also written, many around the world take to be the most serious and best religious publication in the entire English -- speaking world -- and perhaps without rival in any language, flourish under the leadership of his worthy successor, Joseph Bottum.

"And may those of us who respected and loved Father Neuhaus take up the standard [or old time calvary war banner] he flew so joyously, and continue to defend and promote first things."

Belmont Abbey College


www.BelmontAbbeyCollege.edu