"A Tendering of Respect"

"A Tendering of Respect" | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | August 10, 2009

Back in the early 1970's I wrote a book called Human Dignity and Human Numbers. It was about the vagaries of the "overpopulation" lobby of the time. They are about as bad as ever, even worse now that they have become earth-warmers who want to control us all. At that time, I was struck that there was one cleric who seemed to be saying more or less the same thing I was saying. He was a Lutheran pastor, in New York somewhere—Neuhaus, by name, but I had no idea who he was.

The reading of the memorial issue of First Things (April, 2009) on the death of Father Richard John Neuhaus is more than a meditation on the life and death of a good priest, but it is certainly that also. My brother-in-law in California had a copy of this issue, which I had not seen before my visit with him and my sister. As I began to read these touching remembrances of Father Neuhaus, I realized that I was seeing him through the eyes of many men and women whom I knew or knew of. I knew him myself, but not at all well. A pity. I had been at conferences where he spoke. No one fails to notice that this was an eloquent man. Moreover, he understood the purpose of eloquence, namely, that it was to move our souls not to himself, but to the truth. Often today, anyone who speaks of truth will be said to be "arrogant." Neuhaus was sometimes said to be arrogant, but he also knew that he had a powerful, rich voice that no one could hear and not notice. He knew that his eloquence was a gift as well as an art. He was in the unfamiliar role of a man who speaks the truth and speaks it well.

No one in the some thirty short reflections on his life in this issue of First Things failed to mention his capacity for friendship, for his love of good conversation and, yes, good cigars and good drink. Father de Souza in his funeral homily even suggests that Neuhaus was most eloquent at the dinner table, which I suspect is true. He knew Leon Kass after all, whose book, The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfection of Our Nature, makes it clear that, in the most basic sense, the dining together, the convivium, the conversation and goodness of table and evening are what this life is about at its best, the exchange of wit and truth, good will, laughter, and good feeling. Some of us, including I think Fr. Neuhaus, suspect that heaven is not far behind.

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