Posted by
Billy on Monday, January 12, 2009 1:09:36 PM
The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, one of the nation's leading conservative Catholic intellectuals and founder of the journal First Things, died shortly before 10 a.m. Thursday of complications from cancer. He was 72.
Father Neuhaus was born one of eight children in Pembroke, Ontario, to a Lutheran minister and initially followed in his father's footsteps - graduating from Concordia Theological Seminary and becoming a Lutheran minister.
He began political life as a liberal. An associate of Martin Luther King Jr., he backed Eugene McCarthy for president at the 1968 Democratic convention and led, along with actor Paul Newman, a tumultuous Chicago press conference backing the minority plank against the Vietnam War.
But starting with the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that declared abortion a constitutional right and running through President Jimmy Carter's 1979 White House Conference on the Family, Father Neuhaus began moving to the right, becoming a supporter of Ronald Reagan.
He converted to Catholicism in 1990, was ordained a priest by Cardinal John O'Connor of New York a year later and became one of the leading figures - along with Michael Novak and George Weigel - in advancing a type of neoconservatism among Roman Catholics.
In the 1990s, Neuhaus co-founded the group
Evangelicals and Catholics Together with former Nixon White House counsel Charles Colson, which helped cement the political alliance between two groups that had long been suspicious of each other.
(This man was quite a thinker. No matter what one thinks of people of faith being part of the political culture this man did make a bigger impact. Now I did have issue and do have issue with the document he helped to write
Evangelicals and Catholics Together because it read like all people of the Catholic faith are right with God. As a former Catholic I know that isn't correct and the same goes for every soul no matter what church they belong to. However now is not the time to debate that. I wish this man's family the best. May God bless them as they cope with their loss. Below are links that the above information came from. )