Richard John Neuhaus

A brilliant biography of one of the intellectual mavericks of 20th Century Catholicism. Richard John Neuhaus (1936-2009) was one of the most influential figures in American public life from the Civil Rights era to the War on Terror. His writing, activism, and connections to people of power in religion, politics, and culture secured a place for himself and his ideas at the center of recent American history. William F. Buckley, Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith are comparable -- willing controversialists and prodigious writers adept at cultivating or castigating the powerful, while advancing lively arguments for the virtues and vices of the ongoing American experiment. But unlike Buckley and Galbraith, who have always been identified with singular political positions on the right and left, respectively, Neuhaus' life and ideas placed him at the vanguard of events and debates across the political and cultural spectrum. For instance, alongside Abraham Heschel and Daniel Berrigan, Neuhaus co-founded Clergy Concerned About Vietnam, in 1965. Forty years later, Neuhaus was the subject of a New York Review of Books article by Garry Wills, which cast him as a Rasputin of the far right, exerting dangerous influence in both the Vatican and the Bush White House. This book looks to examine Neuhaus's multi-faceted life and reveal to the public what made him tick and why.

Underlying the many crises in American life, writes Richard John Neuhaus, is a crisis of faith. It is not enough that more people should believe or that those who believe should believe more strongly. Rather, the faith of persons and communities must be more compellingly related to the public arena. "The naked public square"--which results from the exclusion of popular values from the public forum--will almost certainly result in the death of democracy. The great challenge, says Neuhaus, is the reconstruction of a public philosophy that can undergird American life and America's ambiguous place in the world. To be truly democratic and to endure, such a public philosophy must be grounded in values that are based on Judeo-Christian religion. The remedy begins with recognizing that democratic theory and practice, which have in the past often been indifferent or hostile to religion, must now be legitimated in terms compatible with biblical faith. Neuhaus explores the strengths and weaknesses of various sectors of American religion in pursuing this task of critical legitimation. Arguing that America is now engaged in an historic moment of testing, he draws upon Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish thinkers who have in other moments of testing seen that the stakes are very high--for America, for the promise of democratic freedom elsewhere, and possibly for God's purpose in the world. An honest analysis of the situation, says Neuhaus, shatters false polarizations between left and right, liberal and conservative. In a democratic culture, the believer's respect for nonbelievers is not a compromise but a requirement of the believer's faith. Similarly, the democratic rights of those outside the communities of religious faith can be assured only by the inclusion of religiously-grounded values in the common life. The Naked Public Square does not offer yet another partisan program for political of social change. Rather, it offers a deeply disturbing, but finally hopeful, examination of Abraham Lincoln's century-old question--whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

Numerous writers and composers have been captivated by the suggestiveness of Jesus' Seven Last Words. But Richard John Neuhaus's sustained exploration of these utterances is something altogether different. Through them he plumbs the depths of human experience and sets forth the central narrative of Western civilization-the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ-in a way that engages the attention of believers, unbelievers, and those who are not sure what they believe. Death on a Friday Afternoon is an invitation to the reader into a spiritual and intellectual exploration of the dark side of human experience with the promise of light and life on the far side of darkness.

In Catholic Matters, Father Neuhaus addresses the many controversies that have marked recent decades of American Catholicism. Looking beyond these troubles to “the splendor of truth” that constitutes the Church, he proposes a forward-thinking way of being Catholic in America. Drawing on his personal encounters with the late John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, Neuhaus describes their hope for a springtime of world evangelization, Christian unity, and Catholic renewal. Catholic Matters reveals a vibrant Church, strengthened and unified by hardship and on the cusp of a great revival in spiritual vitality and an even greater contribution to our common life.

"A profoundly serious rumination on the meaning of life and especially on the meaning of death. Father Neuhaus's book prompts us to think seriously about our own inevitable death, as well as the way we are leading our current lives." --Wall Street Journal.

With this timely reissue, Image celebrates the twentieth anniversary of an important, classic work on faith and economics from one of the leading Catholic intellectuals of the past century. As pertinent today as it was when it was first published in 1992, Doing Well and Doing Good argues that for too long Christianity has had nothing to say to Wall Street or to Main Street. Some churches have blasted the greed of the former or the bourgeois grasping of the latter. Others have insisted on a socialist alternative. But the time has come, Neuhaus says, to stop such silliness. Drawing on the writings of Pope John Paul II, Richard Neuhaus has written a classic, groundbreaking work that unashamedly seeks to bestow a blessing on business. The common good depends on it.

Christians are by their nature a people out of place. Their true home is with God; in civic life, they are alien citizens "in but not of the world." In American Babylon, eminent theologian Richard John Neuhaus examines the particular truth of that ambiguity for Catholics in America today. Neuhaus addresses the essential quandaries of Catholic life -- assessing how Catholics can keep their heads above water in the sea of immorality that confronts them in the world, how they can be patriotic even though their true country is not in this world, and how they might reconcile their duties as citizens with their commitment to God. Deeply learned, frequently combative, and always eloquent, American Babylon is Neuhaus's magnum opus -- and will be essential reading for all Christians.