Catholic Michael Steele New GOP Chairman

The Washington Post reports:

The Republican National Committee elected Michael Steele as its first African American chairman today in Washington, a decision that came after an excruciating series of ballots that displayed a level of drama rarely seen in national politics.

On the sixth and final ballot Steele bested South Carolina Republican party Chairman Katon Dawson 91 to 77.

"It's time for something completely different and we are going to bring it to them," Steele said after his victory. "This is our opportunity. I cannot do this by myself." (Watch the full speech.)

Steele acknowledged that the GOP has an "image problem" but cast his election as a "new moment" for the Republican Party.

***
It was -- interestingly -- former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell who ultimately swung the race to Steele when he dropped out before the fifth ballot and endorsed the former lieutenant governor. The move was somewhat unexpected as Blackwell had staked out the turf as the most socially conservative candidate in the field while Steele had had to beat back rumors that he was not sufficiently conservative.

[More]

"Conservative Catholic Grandmother"™ Pelosi Says Birth Control a Boon for the Economy

Matthew Archbold reports:

Your favorite grandmother Nancy Pelosi defended the inclusion of millions of dollars being spent on birth control in Obama's new economic "stimulus" package by claiming "contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."

So that's what you are folks. You are a cost to the state and federal government. You are not a product of love, an immortal being with a soul. You are the product of a cost/benefit analysis.

Here's the exact exchange on ABC's THIS WEEK. (H/T Drudge)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

Now this just might explain why Obama and Pelosi are so vehemently pro-abortion. It's because they're so worried about the economy.

[More]

UPDATE
Video (Hat tip: American Papist):

Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life and U.S. Catholic Bishops respond to Obama's repeal of the Mexico City Policy

The Associated Press reports that the Vatican has responded to Obama's repeal of the Bush Administration's "Mexico City Policy", ending a ban on federal funding for international groups that perform abortions or provide information on them:

Monsignor Rino Fisichella, who heads the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life, urged Obama to listen to all voices in America without "the arrogance of those who, being in power, believe they can decide of life and death."

Fisichella said in an interview published Saturday in Corriere della Sera that "if this is one of President Obama's first acts, I have to say, in all due respect, that we're heading quickly toward disappointment."

Obama signed an executive order that ended the ban on Friday, reversing the policy of the Bush administration.

"This deals a harsh blow not only to us Catholics but to all the people across the world who fight against the slaughter of innocents that is carried out with the abortion," another top official with the Academy for Life, Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, told the ANSA news agency.

"Among the many good things that he could have done, Barack Obama instead chose the worst," he was quoted as saying Saturday.

See also: President Obama's Reversal of Mexico City Policy 'Very Disappointing,'
Says Pro-Life Committee Chair Justin Rigali United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. January 23, 2009.

Update

• The Vatican Slams Obama over Abortion, by Jeff Israely. Time January 26, 2009.
  

New website calls Christian supporters of Obama to "Moral Accountability"

A new website: MoralAccountability.com. This is their mission statement:

In the course of the 2008 presidential campaign, a small group of Catholic and Evangelical Protestant intellectuals and activists, while saying that they personally support legal protection for the unborn and oppose the redefinition of marriage, promoted the candidacy of Barack Obama, who made no secret of his intention to wipe out the entire range of laws restricting or discouraging abortion and embryo-destructive research, or of his opposition to all state and federal initiatives (such as California Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act) to preserve marriage as the union of a man and a woman. These men and women assured their fellow Christians and other social conservatives that Obama’s economic policies would reduce the incidence of abortion, and they promised that Obama was being honest when he said that he was opposed to “same-sex marriage.”

Despite these assurances, we fear that the Obama administration will swiftly begin an assault on pro-life laws and pro-marriage policies. During his campaign for the presidency, Obama promised that his very first presidential act would be to push through the so-called Freedom of Choice Act, which would require federal and state funding for abortion and, in the gleeful words of the National Organization for Women, “wipe out hundreds of anti-abortion laws” across the United States. Even if he and his allies in Congress are unable to win sufficient support for this extreme measure to enact it as a package, they will no doubt seek to push through its various elements one by one. Bills will be introduced, for example, to override laws requiring parental consent or at least notification for abortions performed on minor girls—laws that demonstrably save thousands of lives every year—and laws mandating the provision of factual information about fetal development and the risks of abortion to women contemplating the procedure.

Barack Obama has also promised to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act which protects states from being forced to recognize out-of-state marriages that are contrary to their public policy of treating marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife. Despite his statement to voters that he favors preserving the definition of marriage as a male-female union, Obama actively opposed California’s Proposition 8, a measure—passed despite his opposition by the people of California—that preserves the traditional definition of marriage.

The Moral Accountability Project trusts that those self-identified pro-life and pro-marriage Catholics and Evangelicals who helped to put Barack Obama into a position to accomplish his goals were sincere in their admiration for him. We are willing to believe that they genuinely hope that he will go back on his pledges to attack pro-life laws and repeal pro-marriage policies. Still, actions have consequences, and the actions of these intellectuals and activists will have consequences that are all too easy to predict. With each assault of the Obama administration on laws and policies upholding the sanctity of human life and the dignity of marriage, we will ask all Catholics and Evangelicals, including those who supported Obama, to join us in resisting these assaults. That is what we will do at www.moralaccountability.com.

Our project is offered in a constructive spirit, not one of vilification. Our goal is to help ensure that never again will good intentions conspire with shoddy reasoning and wishful thinking to compromise the rights of the weakest and most vulnerable members of our community and to undermine the institution of marriage. And so in a sincere spirit of friendship, we invite those Catholics and Evangelicals who joined with Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Rights Action League, and similar organizations in supporting Obama to join us now in repelling the attacks that will be launched against life and marriage in this administration.

With the revocation of the Mexico City Policy forbidding the use of U.S. taxpayer funds to promote abortion abroad, with the repeal of the Hyde Amendment protecting U.S. taxpayers from being forced to pay for abortions, with the demolition of laws requiring parental involvement and informed consent, with the promotion of “therapeutic” cloning and the expansion of embryo-destructive research, with the abolition of conscience and religious liberty protections for pro-life physicians, nurses, and pharmacists, and with the fulfillment of Obama’s other promises to the abortion and embryo-research industries, the death toll is sure to mount. In solidarity with the victims, we will document it as best we can, and we will demand moral accountability.

Robert P. George, Princeton University
Hadley Arkes, Amherst College
Francis Beckwith, Baylor University
Gerard V. Bradley, University of Notre Dame
Robert Lowry Clinton, Southern Illinois University
Anthony Esolen, Providence College
Matthew Franck, Radford University
John Breen, Loyola University of Chicago
Patrick Lee, Franciscan University of Steubenville
Michael New, University of Alabama
Michael Paulsen, University of St. Thomas
Ronald Rychlak, University of Mississippi
Colleen Sheehan, Villanova University
Gregory Sisk, University of St. Thomas School of Law
James Stoner, Louisiana State University
Micah Watson, Union University

Obama overturns the Mexico City Policy

Yesterday, a number of websites had reported that Obama's first executive order would be the reversal of the Mexico City policy, in keeping with precedents set by prior Democratic Presidents. CNN News had previously reported that:

The sources said Obama may use the occasion to reverse the "Mexico City policy" reinstated in 2001 by Bush that prohibits U.S. money from funding international family planning groups that promote abortion or provide information, counseling or referrals about abortion services. It bans any organization receiving family planning funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development from offering abortions or abortion counseling.

The "Mexico City policy," commonly referred to by critics as "the global gag rule," was devised by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 at a population conference in Mexico City.

The same news being echoed by FoxNews.com and LifeSiteNews.com. (Yours truly jumped the gun in reporting this news as well, thus meriting the harsh censure of a blogger at Vox Nova impassioned by a concern for journalistic accuracy).

Fortunately, this does not (yet) appear to be the case, according to the Christian Broadcasting Network:

The Brody File has learned that President Obama WILL NOT issue an executive order today that would have reversed a Bush administration policy which bans federal money by non-governmental agencies that provide abortions overseas. It’s called the Mexico City Policy. Go to the end of this blog to read more from White House Producer Laura Kraus on this policy.

A source with knowledge of the situation says the fact that Obama will not issue this executive order today (on the same day of the huge March for Life rally in DC) sends a strong signal to religious leaders across the political spectrum that President Obama wants to set a different tone in Washington.

President Reagan first implemented the policy but President Clinton reversed it on this day of January 22, 1993. January 22nd is the annual March for Life rally. President Bush then reversed Clinton’s executive order on this on January 22, 2001.

Catholics in the Public Square will keep you posted as events develop.

Update

• Amid protests, Obama backs 'right to choose' on Roe anniversary CNN.com. January 23, 2009:

  President Obama affirmed his support for a woman's "right to choose" on Thursday, the 36th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that led to the legalization of abortion, as thousands of anti-abortion activists descended on the National Mall to challenge his position.
  

  Roe v. Wade "not only protects women's health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters," Obama said in a statement.

  
  
• Obama bides time on abortion measure Politico claims:

  [H]e’s planning to do it Friday – and aides suggest he’s choosing a different kind of symbolism, to show that he’s not always going to do the usual Washington thing, even though his staunch supporters in the abortion rights community were pressing him to do it quickly.

  
  
• According to the Wall Street Post, Obama postponed the order out of sensitivity:

  By holding off on the policy change, the president hoped to divorce the question of family-planning funding from the frenzied and highly charged emotions surrounding the Roe anniversary, according to two people familiar with his thinking.
  

  That's a respectful move, said the Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland Church, outside Orlando, Fla., an abortion opponent who has tried to expand the evangelical agenda.
  

  "I really do appreciate their sensitivity to this day and this issue," he said. "To do it [the policy change] on a day that pro-life people see as a day of grief, and a day of a really hurtful decision, would be, I think, very insensitive. And that's not who I think President Obama is or would mean to be."

  How touching! -- We have a sensitive President!
  

  
  

• On Friday, January 23rd, Reuters reported that "U.S. President Barack Obama lifted restrictions on Friday on U.S. government funding for clinics or groups which provide abortion services or counseling for the procedure overseas".
  

Pope Benedict XVI congratulates President Barack Obama; Cardinal George proposes "an agenda for dialogue and action"

Text of Pope Benedict XVI's telegram to the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama:

The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States of America
The White House
Washington, D.C.

On the occasion of your inauguration as the Forty-fourth president of the United States of America I offer cordial good wishes, together with the assurance of my prayers that the Almighty God will grant you unfailing wisdom and strength in the exercise of your high responsibilities.

Under your leadership may the American people continue to find in their impressive religious and political heritage the spiritual values and ethical principles needed to cooperate in the building of a truly just and free society, marked by respect for the dignity, equality and rights of each of its members, especially the poor, the outcast and those who have no voice.

At a time when so many of our brothers and sisters throughout the world yearn for liberation from the scourge of poverty, hunger and violence, I pray that you will be confirmed in your resolve to promote understanding, cooperation and peace among the nations, so that all may share in the banquet of life which God wills to set for the whole human family (cf. Isaiah 25:6-7). Upon you and your family, and upon all the American people, I willingly invoke the Lord's blessings of joy and peace.

* * *

In addition, here is the text of the message Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago and president of the U.S. episcopal conference, sent to President Barack Obama last week, proposing "an agenda for dialogue and action" and "to offer a constructive and principled contribution to national discussion over the values and policies that will shape our nation's future."

In Celebration of our First African-American President

Farewell (and a heartfelt thanks) to President George W. Bush

George Weigel would like to thank President Bush. "For what, you ask? For many things that ought to count for Catholics":

I should like to praise him for his steadfast support of the pro-life cause, domestically and internationally. Thanks to President Bush, we have two more Supreme Court justices who likely know that Roe vs. Wade was terrible constitutional judging, and dozens more federal district court and appellate court judges with similar convictions. Thanks to President Bush, the U.S. government drew an important moral line in stem cell research, even as the administration accelerated bioethically sound research strategies that have produced real results. Internationally, the Bush administration stood firm against the Gadarene rush to use international law to declare abortion an international human right and a necessary component of the emancipation of women; as one senior Vatican official put it to me, a year ago, “We know we’re never going to have another American administration as supportive of our core issues as the Bush administration has been.”

I should like to praise the President for his work to rid Africa of the plagues of AIDS and malaria and to relieve the suffering of those afflicted with those awful diseases. George W. Bush may be an object of ridicule in certain U.S. zip codes; he is the subject of veneration among those in the “bottom billion” whose lives his policies have saved or enhanced.

I should like to thank the President for offering Pope Benedict XVI such a warm welcome on the South Lawn of the White House on April 15, 2008 — a welcome that ought to have put paid, once and for all, to the notion that there is something incompatible between robust Catholic faith and a mature gratitude for the political miracle of American democracy.

I should like to thank President Bush for his personal decency, manifest in his (unpublicized) personal attention to our wounded and to the families of the fallen; in his refusal to become bitter in the face of outrageous slander; and in his calm amidst tribulations that most of us can’t imagine. I should like to thank him for his unapologetic confession of Christian faith, and for his testimony to the importance that prayer plays in his life. And I should like to thank him for not giving a hoot about the mockery that such a witness draws from a secularized mass media, from American high culture, from cranks like Michael Moore, and from Euro-secularist snobs who spent eight years sneering at the evangelical cowboy in the White House while their continent was dying from spiritual boredom.

Related

• President Bush's Farewell Address to the Nation January 15, 2009.
  
• National Sanctity of Human Life Day, 2009, A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America. January 15, 2009.
  
• The blogger at Wheat & Weeds covers a list of President Bush's pro-life accomplishments during his two terms. Be sure to read as well her roundup: George Bush and the Least of These:

  I will always love and admire Bush because as the Leader of the Free World he never missed an opportunity to stand with "the least of these." Can you think of anyone more forgotten and less important in the eyes of our culture than the unborn, African AIDS & malaria patients, Afghan women, Sunni & Shiite Muslims, immigrants, dissidents of tyrannical nations, the wounded and grieving parents of fallen soldiers? Nobody really cares about any of those folks --the media can't even be bothered to report their plight when it doesn't suit their own purposes to do so. Not so George Bush. Here's a little pictorial reminder of the man's perpetual commitment to the dignity of the human person. ...

  
  

The Martyrdom of Doug Kmiec

In a recent issue of Commonweal, Doug Kmiec has issued an extensive -- how to describe it? -- paeon to his own martyrdom at the hands of the "right wing [Catholic] blogosphere":

A longtime Republican who served in the Reagan administration, I nonetheless endorsed Obama last spring. Ever since, I’ve been subjected to unrelenting personal attacks launched from right-wing Catholic keyboards-blogs (and bloggers) so coarse and uncivil they make the insults of talk radio sound like actual journalism. Further, the lack of civility that rules the right-wing Catholic blogosphere has infected mainstream Catholic journalism as well. ...

Of course, bloggers deny there is anything “personal” in such attacks. My online tormentors like to claim that their beef with me is my alleged abandonment of the prolife cause or willful misstatement of church teaching. Neither charge is true. I remain unabashedly prolife and I have never consciously misstated the doctrine of the church; indeed, I’ve publicly said that were the Holy Father to tell me I had contradicted the magisterium on any given page of my Obama book, I would tear out that page.

No, the real problem with the blogospheric reaction to Obama lay in the responses themselves, which all too often mixed the smallest dollop of substance into a big steaming stew of personal contempt. As the vilification of Catholic Obama supporters progressed over the months, it became something of a bloggers’ sport to conjure up ridiculous explanations for what was wrongly described as my “apostasy.” ...

Noting my continued good health, the editors of Commonweal invited this essay which I submit even as I acknowledge the wisdom of Sr. Pius’s eighth-grade counsel: “Douglas, just offer it up!”

And so on and so forth. Never mind the fact that the "blogosphere" can be rather harsh, (Kmiec, it seems, was not acquainted with the crassness of commentbox conversation, much less the notion that people might react adversely to political turncoats, particularly during a presidential election) -- what is notable is that Kmiec never actually bothers to engage those who respectfully mounted substantial criticisms of his position.

In An open letter to Doug Kmiec (on behalf of the “right-wing Catholic blogosphere”), Thomas Peters (American Catholic) offers his response:

... what Kmiec has in essence done is to complain about any instance of uncharity in the blogosphere. Considering how easy it is to publish a blog, it is almost like criticizing free speech. Kmiec is asking that we shut down (or criticize heavily) an open room of vocal Catholics because of a few hecklers.

Kmiec’s choice to only call out the hecklers has allowed him to avoid other legitimate, constructive criticisms of his position. Here he has perfected the art of misdirection by turning the debate away from the issues onto the personal hurt he feels he has received.

For someone who “never thought it was mainly about [him]”, Kmiec spends most of the time talking about himself, long after he apparently gave up pursuing an open debate in a public forum (or any even playing field). Instead he has chosen to portray himself as some sort of martyr in his Catholic support for Obama.

This is exceedingly strange to me, because a universal trait of martyrs is that they do not complain about or bring attention to the fact that they are martyrs.

See also "Catholic bloggers respond to Kmiec criticism" Catholic News Agency. January 14, 2009.

Richard John Neuhaus, 1936-2009

From Jody Bottum:

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the weakness that sent him to the hospital the day after Christmas, caused by a series of side effects from the cancer he was suffering. He lost consciousness Tuesday evening after a collapse in his heart rate, and the next day, in the company of friends, he died.

My tears are not for him—for he knew, all his life, that his Redeemer lives, and he has now been gathered by the Lord in whom he trusted.

I weep, rather for all the rest of us. As a priest, as a writer, as a public leader in so many struggles, and as a friend, no one can take his place. The fabric of life has been torn by his death, and it will not be repaired, for those of us who knew him, until that time when everything is mended and all our tears are wiped away.

Funeral Arrangements

A Funeral Mass was celebrated for Father Richard John Neuhaus at the Church of the Immaculate Conception—414 E. 14th Street, New York City—on Tuesday, January 13, 2009.

A Christian wake service in the form of a Vigil for the Deceased was celebrated at the Church of the Immaculate Conception on Monday evening, January 12.

In lieu of flowers, donations are requested for Fr. Neuhaus’ work, the Institute on Religion and Public Life, online at this page or by mail to:

Institute on Religion and Public Life
156 Fifth Avenue
Suite 400
New York, NY 10010

“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 won. 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 received I will bring gratefully to the throne. But in seeking entry to that heavenly kingdom, I will…look to Christ and Christ alone.”

Richard John Neuhaus. Death on a Friday Afternoon

Notices

• Statement of President George W. Bush
  
• Statement of House Republican Leader John Boehner
  
• Richard John Neuhaus dies of cancer, by Victor Morton and Julia Duin. Washington Times January 8, 2009.
  
• Fr. Richard John Neuhaus dead at age 72, by John Allen, Jr. National Catholic Reporter.
  
• Father Neuhaus, iconic U.S. theologian, is dead at 72, by Laurie Goodstein. International Herald Tribune
  
• Father Richard John Neuhaus Mourned, Celebrated by Cardinal Newman Society Catholic.org
  

Reflections

• "Born Towards Dying" originally published in the February 2000 issue of First Things.
  
• "A Second Brother Dies", by Michael Novak. National Catholic Reporter
  
• Richard John Neuhaus, 1936-2009: A gaping hole in the public square, by Joseph Bottum. The Weekly Standard
  
• "Death on a Thursday Morning" The Editors @ National Review (allusion to Neuhaus' Death on a Friday Morning).
  
• Richard John Neuhaus, 1936 - 2009, by Rev. George W. Rutler. InsideCatholic.com.
  
• Remembering Father Richard John Neuhaus, by Fr. Robert Sirico. The Acton Institute.
  
• Richard John Neuhaus, RIP, by Ross Douhat. The Atlantic.
  
• Richard John Neuhaus, intellectual, provocateur, blogging pioneer, dead at 72, by Gary Stern. Blogging Religiously (LoHud.com)
  
• Alan Jacobs, The American Scene
  
• Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review
  
• A Priest in Full, by Brian C. Anderson. City Journal
  
• Peter Wehner, National Review
  
• Kevin Schmiesing, The Acton Institute
  
• Like The Star of Bethlehem, Dies After Leading So Many to Christ Top pro-life leaders pay tribute to memory of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus: remembrances by Fr. Tom Euteneuer, President of Human Life International; Rabbi Yehuda Levin, Spokesman for the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada; Judie Brown, President of American Life League; Joseph Scheidler, President of the Pro-Life Action League and Jim Hughes, President Campaign Life Coalition, VP International Right to Life.
  
• Father Richard John Neuhaus: A Man Animated by His Faith , by Raymond Arroyo. Wall Street Journal
  
• Father Richard John Neuhaus: Remembering the theologian, by Michael Sean Winters. Slate. January 9, 2009.
  
• Father Richard John Neuhaus, 1936-2009 Fr. Raymond J. de Souza, National Catholic Register.
  
• In Memoriam: Our Friend, Richard John Neuhaus, by the writers of The Catholic Thing (Robert Royal, Ralph McInerny, Brad Miner, Michael Novak, Austin Ruse, Mary Eberstadt, William Saunders, James Schall, S.J., Michael Uhlmann and Hadley Arkes).
  
• Richard J. Neuhaus: Remembrances by Anthony Sacramone, former managing editor of First Things.
  
• Richard John Neuhaus: Witness to Truth, by Jordan Hylden. A First Things junior fellow remembers the man whose life was spent 'witnessing to the truth.' January 9, 2009.
  
• In Defense of Death, by David Brooks. New York Times January 12, 2009.
  
• Richard John Neuhaus, 1936–2009: An Honorable Christian Soldier, by George Weigel. Newsweek January 19, 2009.
  
• EWTN's "The World Over" tribute to Fr. Richard J. Neuhaus with Raymond Arroyo. George Weigel, Michael Novak, and Joseph Bottum spend the hour reminiscing about RJN's life and legacy.
  
• Movement Man, by Matthew Boudway. (Former editor of First Things). Commonweal January 16, 2009 / Volume CXXXVI, Number 1.
  
• Nigeria: A Tribute to Father Neuhaus, by Sonnie Ekwowusi. AllAfrica.com. 20 January 2009.
  
• Essay: Where is the rabbi like Richard John Neuhaus?, by David Klinghoffer. Jerusalem Post January 20, 2009.
  
• First Things First:
  The life and legacy of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus National Review Online Q&A with Robert P. George. January 23, 2008.
  
• The Radical Conservative: Richard John Neuhaus helped inspire a generation of evangelicals to participate boldly in the public square, by Timothy George. Christianity Today March 11, 2009.
  

* * *

The story of the modern social conservative movement is all about activism and politics, petitions and court cases, but Father Neuhaus’s great testament was about something grander: through those he inspired, through his writings, through his organizing, and through something as simple as connecting people over lunch who may share nothing in terms of what they can eat on the table but share greatly in what is unseen, Father Neuhaus fundamentally changed religious life in America forever.

This is not an exaggeration. Nor by any means is it a dismissal of anyone else’s influence - but ultimately, the changes most other conservative thought leaders have helped achieve in the twentieth century were made at the hands of other men, elected to office. Father Neuhaus did not merely inspire the intellectual undergirding of change: with God’s help, he fashioned it himself, through hard work, a gift for eloquence, and always a wry smile at the end.

The world Father Neuhaus leaves is one where evangelicals and Catholics are more united than they are divided - where the old ethnic politics and arguments have faded, and where we worship and work together in harmony. My mother, never anything but a Protestant, upon learning of this Catholic convert priest’s passing, wrote to say she paused on learning the news to sing Faure’s Pie Jesu for him. I can think of nothing more fitting.

-- From Ben Domenech, RedState.com

* * *

His conviction that abortion was the great crime of the age and his disgust with the American system’s failure to expunge the crime led to the most controversial act of his editorship, the publication of a symposium entitled “The End of Democracy?” in which he and other participants flirted with the notion that the United States had lost its legitimacy. COMMENTARY’s editors responded in part with a symposium entitled “On the Future of Conservatism,” in which various contributors argued heatedly against what they perceived to be an unacceptable radicalization of conservative discourse.

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.

John Podhoretz, Commentary Magazine

(More tributes are being collected by Steve Dillard @ Southern Appeal)

Catholic Governor Tim Kaine (D-VA) will chair the DNC

Though Governor Kaine has been touted as “pro-life” by some, others disagree with the label.