Father Richard Remembered By CMC Gov. Professor

The loss of Father Richard Neuhas was already written about by Ilan and David Daleiden and John Wilson in the comment section. 

I haven't much to add other than to remark how great of a man he seeemed.

 As Ilan has already pointed out, his last article while alive was published in First Things or in The Wall Street Journal and concerned the scholarly work of a Claremont McKenna Professor, Jon A. Shields. (The Claremont Independent recently interviewed Shields when we received word of his appointment last year. Here's a link to the interview with Laura Sucheski.  Shields also wrote an op-ed for NRO on Sarah Palin and abortion, which you can read here.) 

Now, Claremont McKenna and Graduate Professor Michael Uhlmann has written a reflection piece for The Catholic Thing.  Here's his post in its entirety. 

In the Shadow of Great Men, Michael Uhlmann

One would be hard-pressed to name anyone during the past thirty years who had a deeper or more lasting influence on our nation’s cultural life than Richard John Neuhaus. His only real competitor in that sense was Bill Buckley, who worked somewhat different, if allied, precincts of a more overtly political sort. They are both gone now, and the void they left behind reminds us that we are but Lilliputians laboring in the shadows cast by great men.

Richard’s mind was learned, deep, and subtle, an organ of multiple registers that could alternately inform and entertain an audience, rally the faithful to a cause, or, as occasion might require, gain the attention of the heavenly host. He was a superb preacher (even when he wasn’t formally preaching) and a writer of surpassing power and eloquence. How many millions of words he poured out, I do not know; but essays he wrote twenty-five or thirty years ago seem as fresh today as when first beheld. He not only left his mark; he will continue to do so, on our hearts no less powerfully than on our minds.

The suddenness of his passing compounds our sense of loss. It was only yesterday, was it not, that he sat right there, at the end of the table, orchestrating the talk, brandies, and the cigars, as only he could over the course of a long evening. To think that we shall not be graced by that warm and vigorous presence again reminds us of how weary and stale the world would have been without him – and of how lonely we shall be.

It is altogether fitting that his death should have come so soon after that of his great, good friend Avery Cardinal Dulles. One suspects that more wisdom was shared in their random private conversations than most of us would likely encounter, working full time, over the course of three or four lifetimes. In the midst of our present sadness, we can take great joy in the knowledge that the two are together again, taking up where they left off and – let us pray – shining a light so that we who are left behind can find our way.