RIP Fr Richard John Neuhaus

Fr Richard John Neuhaus died today (January 8, 2009) of complications from cancer.

He didn't know it - hardly anybody knew it - but Fr Neuhaus was one of the most important men in my life. I don't believe that I actually ever met him. I did sit immediately behind him on the dais at the commencement ceremonies of the University of Dallas in 1993, when I received the year's Distinguished Alumnus award and Fr Neuhaus was (if memory serves) the commencement speaker. I would have tapped him on the shoulder during a lull in the ceremony and introduced myself, but at that time, he was just a name to me. Subsequently, as I worked my way back into the Church by the normal WMBP method - namely, lots of reading and probably way too little prayer - I discovered Fr Neuhaus's writings, and then learned more about his personal story as well. And so he became important to me not just as a teacher but as - well, I hate the word "role model" and it doesn't fit here any way. So let me say it plainly: he's a hero to me, a sort of modern Cardinal Newman. Neuhaus is in that small set of celebrities that I'd actually cross the street to meet.

Fr Neuhaus is especially well known as the founder of First Things. I've been a subscriber to First Things for a number of years now. It remains one of the handful of periodicals that I would truly hate to live without. And the first thing I read every month is the long section at the back containing Fr Neuhaus's comments. Just the other day I was reading to my wife a page that Fr Neuhaus had written in response to fellow Dallasite (and fellow "crunchy con") Rod Dreher, who was undergoing his own conversion process at the same time I was going through mine, except that he decided to leave the Roman Catholic Church for Holy Orthodoxy. I came fairly close to making that decision myself, but at the last minute, I decided to look again to see if there weren't Catholic thinkers with answers to the questions I had. Damned if there weren't. Fr Neuhaus was one of them. And now, instead of being a bad Orthodox Christian, I'm a bad Catholic.

Joseph Bottum's notice of Fr Neuhaus's death says it exactly right: we mourn now not for Fr Neuhaus, but for ourselves, for having lost him. I am glad that Bottum and the many other contributors to First Things are still here and I'm sure the magazine will remain important to me. But it's going to be impossible to fill that gap at the end of each issue where Fr Neuhaus used to write The Public Square.

Today, First Things' web site reposted one of Fr Neuhaus's articles from 2000, "Born toward Dying." I recommend it especially to my own daughters. I will pray for Fr Neuhaus, for after all, none of knows the heart of another and I have no reason to think that Fr Neuhaus was a superstar of piety. But I feel confident that he, like my old teacher and friend Fr Placid Czismazia, O.Cist., is on his way to heaven, and now that his editorial duties have been relaxed, I hope that Fr Neuhaus can pray for me, too.