Remembering Richard John Neuhaus

As the remembrances of America's most influential religious public intellectual pour in, I'll collect them in this space. Leading off:

Commentary editor John Podhoretz writes a beautiful and truthful remembrance of Richard John Neuhaus, with whom Commentary had something of a break.Excerpt:

The breach was never fully healed, and yet, through it all, there was Richard, a man of great personal good cheer and bonhomie, always in possession of a terrific piece of gossip he always knew exactly when and how to drop in order to cause the biggest commotion, who somehow found the time to crank out thousands of words a month while jetting back and forth from Rome, engaging in plots and subplots and side bets. He was an exemplar of the truism that a righteous man need not be or conduct himself as though he were holier-than-thou. But in the end, his work was his life, and whether he was ministering to fatherless youths in Brooklyn or offering his considered and always highly informed opinion on the matter of stem-cell research, Richard John Neuhaus did what he did and said what he said for the betterment of humankind and for the greater glory of God.

Ramesh Ponnuru recalls this passage from Neuhaus' own "Death on a Friday Afternoon":

When I come before the judgment throne, I will plead the promise of God in the shed blood of Jesus Christ. I will not plead any work that I have done, although I will thank God that he has enabled me to do some good. I will plead no merits other than the merits of Christ, knowing that the merits of Mary and the saints are all from him; and for their company, their example, and their prayers throughout my earthly life I will give everlasting thanks. I will not plead that I had faith, for sometimes I was unsure of my faith, and in any event that would be to turn faith into a meritorious work of my own. I will not plead that I held the correct understanding of "justification by faith alone," although I will thank God that he led me to know ever more fully the great truth that much misunderstood formulation was intended to protect. Whatever little growth in holiness I have experienced, whatever strength I have received from the company of the saints, whatever understanding I have attained of God and his ways--these and all other gifts I have received I will bring gratefully to the throne. But in seeking entry to that heavenly kingdom, I will, with Dysmas, look to Christ and Christ alone.

Then I hope to hear him say, "Today you will be with me in paradise," as I hope with all my being--because, although looking to him alone, I am not alone--he will say to all.

Michael Sean Winters writes at America's blog:

I remember the first time Father Neuhaus attacked me in print: I felt on top of the world. For a left-of-center person like me, being attacked by Father Neuhaus was a badge of honor. To gain the notice of someone with whom you disagree is much more flattering than to gain the praise of a mentor or an acolyte.

Neuhaus's career, beginning as a leftie Lutheran and ending as a conservative Catholic (he passed Gary Wills going in the opposite direction some time in the early 1970s), made him a hero among his newly found ideological soulmates on the right: We Catholics love a convert. But, even those of us who stayed on the left developed an admiration for Neuhaus's facility with the language, the self-evident sincerity of his convictions, and the sheer prolificness of his pen. He seemed to be always writing and whether you agreed with him or not, his writings were always worth the read, always provocative and always written with flair.

I never made Father Neuhaus's acquaintance personally but a mutual friend once told me that if we were to break bread together we would soon be downing scotch and laughing with greater intensity than we had ever argued. I suspect that is right and look forward to a tumbler of single malt with him in the hereafter.

Victor Morton and Julia Duin's obituary from the Washington Times.

Ross Douthat remembers. Excerpt:

Every young writer, I imagine, has their first intellectual magazine, whose essays and articles are devoured all the more greedily for being slightly over one's head. Mine was First Things. I don't know exactly when my family began subscribing, but I know it was before we became Catholics - and I know that long before I could quite figure out exactly what, say, Rene Girard meant when he talked about mimesis and the crucifixion, I was reading Neuhaus' sprawling "Public Square" column every month. I would call it a proto-blog, that feature, with its mix of long and short material, and its cover-the-waterfront feel, but that does it an injustice: The very best bloggers strain and fail to achieve the mix of range and rigor that Neuhaus made seem effortless, and the ease with which he moved between esoteric theological disputes and the latest culture-war fracas. Richard Dawkins likes to say that Charles Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Month after month, issue after issue, Richard John Neuhaus - through his writing, and also through the writers he cultivated - demonstrated to my adolescent and early-twentysomething self that it was possible to be an intellectually fulfilled Christian.

You've been waiting for this one: Damon Linker's remembrance.