Fr. Richard John Neuhaus

[benedictgal]

I was reading the Whispers in the Loggia board when I came across the link to this very sad piece of news:

On Fr. Neuhaus [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

His friends and family are keeping vigil and he was administered last rites shortly after midnight. Fr. George Rutler, who gave him the Catholic Sacrament, says that “he is not expected to live long” and suggests “that it is appropriate that prayers be offered for a holy death.”

Fr. Neuhaus has come close to this moment before and been back. If it’s his time: Go in peace. He’s a man who has loved and served His Lord. When he leaves this world, his vast intellectual and spiritual body of work will have a long life here.

Speaking of his archives: Fr. Neuhaus might agree with his brother priest on the appropriate prayer for him. Fr. Neuhaus might say, if he could right now, what he’s already written:

We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already underway. The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well. Most of us are at ease in discussing what makes for a good life, but we typically become tongue-tied and nervous when the discussion turns to a good death. As children of a culture radically, even religiously, devoted to youth and health, many find it incomprehensible, indeed offensive, that the word “good” should in any way be associated with death. Death, it is thought, is an unmitigated evil, the very antithesis of all that is good.

Death is to be warded off by exercise, by healthy habits, by medical advances. What cannot be halted can be delayed, and what cannot forever be delayed can be denied. But all our progress and all our protest notwithstanding, the mortality rate holds steady at 100 percent.

Death is the most everyday of everyday things. It is not simply that thousands of people die every day, that thousands will die this day, although that too is true. Death is the warp and woof of existence in the ordinary, the quotidian, the way things are. It is the horizon against which we get up in the morning and go to bed at night, and the next morning we awake to find the horizon has drawn closer. From the twelfth-century Enchiridion Leonis comes the nighttime prayer of children of all ages: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray thee Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray thee Lord my soul to take.” Every going to sleep is a little death, a rehearsal for the real thing.

I would urge all of us on the CAF to pray for Fr. Richard. His is a clear voice of reason and one of the best priests I’ve heard on the air.

I wrote him a letter once concerning an article he wrote. He was gracious enough to both send me an email and a letter via snail mail. I will pray for him this evening.

 

[katy]

Did he become this ill very quickly? It seems there was an announcement that he had a cancer recurrence, or something, and then this that he is near death. I am sorry to hear it; I enjoyed listening to him and reading his easily understood but powerful writings.

 

[benedictgal]

Did he become this ill very quickly? It seems there was an announcement that he had a cancer recurrence, or something, and then this that he is near death. I am sorry to hear it; I enjoyed listening to him and reading his easily understood but powerful writings.

Evidently, according to his magazine, First Things, Fr. Neuhaus was diagnosed with cancer back on Thanksgiving. The day after Christmas, he checked into a New York hospital because he developed complications, developing an infection I believe. From what I read in Whispers in the Loggia, Fr. George Rutler was called in to administer Last Rites. The folks at First Things seem hopeful, though.

 

[Trishie]

I will pray before the Blessed Sacrament for him today.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I too will pray for him. To be honest, I am no intellectual, and I sometimes find his writings difficult to understand. But I believe him to be an earnest and holy man, as well as a true scholar.

 

[Pax_Vobiscum_57]

I will hold him close in prayer. He has been such a strong voice for the return to orthodoxy.

 

[benedictgal]

I just hung up the phone with the good folks from First Things. It is with deep sadness that I inform the CAF family that Fr. Richard John Neuhaus died at about 10AM CST. Let us pray for the repose of the soul of this great and holy priest.

 

[LRThunder]

I just hung up the phone with the good folks from First Things. It is with deep sadness that I inform the CAF family that Fr. Richard John Neuhaus died at about 10AM CST. Let us pray for the repose of the soul of this great and holy priest.

 

[lizaanne]

Our loss is heaven’s gain. May his soul rest in the peace of Christ.

~Liza

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

Oh what sad news, I was unaware that he was ill.

EWTN also reported it:

ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=92926

 

[benedictgal]

I have a correction. It was not 10AM CST, but 10AM EST. I got the time zones confused as I am in Texas and he died about 9AM, Texas time. I also suppose that the time-frame was a little different because when I called at about 8AM Texas time, the staff at First Things told me that he was still hanging on and that his sisters were with him.

I do not know Fr. Neuhaus, but, I had sent him some emails, especially during the time when folks were criticizing his comments regarding the music at the DC Papal Mass.

Here is what First Things said on their website this morning:

January 8, 2009
Richard John Neuhaus, 1936–2009
By Joseph 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 are still being planned; information about the funeral will be made public shortly. Please accept our thanks for all your prayers and good wishes.

In Deepest Sorrow,

Joseph Bottum
Editor
First Things

I am going to treasure the little letter he sent me.

 

[barb_finnegan]

Oh, how sad it is to read of his passing.

Raymond Arroyo had a note asking for prayers on his “Seen and Unseen” blog on EWTN.com.

I’ve been offering my Rosary for him since he got sick. Now I will pray for the happy repose of his soul.

Just think-he’s probably seeing John Paul II in heaven!



Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord…

 

[benedictgal]

Oh, how sad it is to read of his passing.

Raymond Arroyo had a note asking for prayers on his “Seen and Unseen” blog on EWTN.com.

I’ve been offering my Rosary for him since he got sick. Now I will pray for the happy repose of his soul.

Just think-he’s probably seeing John Paul II in heaven!



Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord…

It is interesting that Fr. Neuhaus’ death comes just a few short weeks after that of Avery Cardinal Dulles. I wish that Fr. Neuhaus would have been created a cardinal. But, I supposed that, with his deep humility, he would have tried to get out of it. He was certainly one of the strongest voices of reason and orthodoxy the Church in America had. Would that he would have been made a bishop.

 

[rpp]

May the eternal light of God shine on him as he joins that magnificent banquet where with, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit who are, for him and all the saints, true light, complete fulfillment, utter happiness and most perfect gladness.

 

[cpayne]

Back when Russell Kirk died, I remember how sad I was that I had always planned to write him a letter, telling him how much his work had meant to me personally, but never got around to it. Just this past December 8, I had the same thought regarding Fr. Neuhaus and was stirred to write him. I wrote and mailed a long letter thanking him for his life and writing, and telling him how much *First Things *had helped changed my thinking on so many things–most importantly, regarding the Catholic Church.

When I heard of his collapse around Christmastime, and then of his death this morning, I was so glad I had written when I did. Don’t put off the good you can do, and the gratitude you can express.

May he rest in bliss forevermore. May all the saints in heaven pray for us.

 

[theistgal]

I am shocked. I didn’t see this on the news anywhere. I love his columns in First Things, and have read every one of his books.

What a great writer … and a great Catholic.

Without meaning to be trite at all, though: our loss is Heaven’s gain.

 

[Roamin_Xian]

He certainly imparted much wisdom- no doubt he’ll live through his works.

 

[barb_finnegan]

I was just on the “Young Fogeys” blog (Fr. Toborowsky), and I read his favorite “Neuhaus moment”, which is mine, too: the “Oh my God” live mike reaction when the announcement was made of BXVI’s election.

I’ll have to play my copy of the EWTN DVD to hear it again!

May he rest in peace, and rise in glory…

 

[benedictgal]

In memory of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, First Things ran this article on their website. It is an article that the late Fr. Neuhaus wrote on death, “Born Towards Dying”:

Death and dying has become a strangely popular topic. “Support groups” for the bereaved crop up all over. How to “cope” with dying is a regular on television talk shows. It no doubt has something to do with the growing number of old people in the population. “So many more people seem to die these days,” remarked my elderly aunt as she looked over the obituary columns in the local daily. Obituaries routinely include medical details once thought to be the private business of the family. Every evening without fail, at least in our cities, the television news carries a “sob shot” of relatives who have lost someone in an accident or crime. “And how did you feel when you saw she was dead?” The intrusiveness is shameless, and taboos once broken are hard to put back together again.

Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One brilliantly satirized and Jessica Mitford’s The American Way of Death brutally savaged the death industry of commercial exploitation. Years later it may be time for a similarly critical look at the psychological death industry that got underway in 1969 when Elizabeth Kübler-Ross set forth her five stages of grieving—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. No doubt many people feel they have been helped by formal and informal therapies for bereavement and, if they feel they have been helped, they probably have been helped in some way that is not unimportant. Just being able to get through the day without cracking up is no little thing. But neither, one may suggest, is it the most important thing. I have listened to people who speak with studied, almost clinical, detail about where they are in their trek through the five stages. Death and bereavement are “processed.” There are hundreds of self-help books on how to cope with death in order to get on with life. This essay is not of that genre.

A measure of reticence and silence is in order. There is a time simply to be present to death—whether one’s own or that of others—without any felt urgencies about doing something about it or getting over it. The Preacher had it right: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die . . . a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” The time of mourning should be given its due. One may be permitted to wonder about the wisdom of contemporary funeral rites that hurry to the dancing, displacing sorrow with the determined affirmation of resurrection hope, supplying a ready answer to a question that has not been given time to understand itself. One may even long for the Dies Irae, the sequence at the old Requiem Mass. Dies irae, dies illa / Solvet saeclum in favilla / Teste David cum Sibylla: “Day of wrath and terror looming / Heaven and earth to ash consuming / Seer’s and Psalmist’s true foredooming.”

The worst thing is not the sorrow or the loss or the heartbreak. Worse is to be encountered by death and not to be changed by the encounter. There are pills we can take to get through the experience, but the danger is that we then do not go through the experience but around it. Traditions of wisdom encourage us to stay with death a while. Among observant Jews, for instance, those closest to the deceased observe shiva for seven days following the death. During shiva one does not work, bathe, put on shoes, engage in intercourse, read Torah, or have his hair cut. The mourners are to behave as though they themselves had died. The first response to death is to give inconsolable grief its due. Such grief is assimilated during the seven days of shiva, and then tempered by a month of more moderate mourning. After a year all mourning is set aside, except for the praying of kaddish, the prayer for the dead, on the anniversary of the death.

In The Blood of the Lamb, Peter de Vries calls us to “the recognition of how long, how very long, is the mourners’ bench upon which we sit, arms linked in undeluded friendship—all of us, brief links ourselves, in the eternal pity.” From the pity we may hope that wisdom has been distilled, a wisdom from which we can benefit when we take our place on the mourners’ bench. Philosophy means the love of wisdom, and so some may look to philosophers in their time of loss and aloneness. George Santayana wrote, “A good way of testing the caliber of a philosophy is to ask what it thinks of death.” What does it tell us that modern philosophy has had relatively little to say about death? Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, “What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.” There is undoubtedly wisdom in such reticence that stands in refreshing contrast to a popular culture sated by therapeutic chatter. But those who sit, arms linked in undeluded friendship, cannot help but ask and wonder.

All philosophy begins in wonder, said the ancients. With exceptions, contemporary philosophy stops at wonder. We are told: don’t ask, don’t wonder, about what you cannot know for sure. But the most important things of everyday life we cannot know for sure. We cannot know them beyond all possibility of their turning out to be false. We order our loves and loyalties, we invest our years with meaning and our death with hope, not knowing for sure, beyond all reasonable doubt, whether we might not have gotten it wrong. What we need is a philosophy that enables us to speak truly, if not clearly, a wisdom that does not eliminate but comprehends our doubt.

It is interesting and fitting, I suppose that he died at the end of the Christmas season, just as Avery Cardinal Dulles died during Advent. Both men were the theological, intellectual and spiritual giants of the Church here in America.

I had a Mass said for Fr. Neuhaus this morning at our hospital chapel.

 

[benedictgal]

As I thought about Fr. Neuhaus today, I realized that he was our generations’s Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. What Archbishop Sheen was to the early days of television, Fr. Neuhaus was to both the print and internet media.

I became an admirer, fan, if you will, of Fr. Neuhaus, during EWTN’s coverage of the death of Pope John Paul II and the subsequent election of Pope Benedict XVI. In fact, I will never forget his (soberly checked) exhuberence when the name Iosephem Ratzinger was called out as the new Pope. Fr. Neuhaus managed to keep Raymond Arroyo in check and add a lot of dignity and maturity to the commentary.