Richard John Neuhaus Quotes

The vicissitudes of history, however, have not dissuaded them from their earnest search for a “third way” between socialism and capitalism, namely socialism.

For people of a certain ideological disposition, socialism is the name of their desire, and nothing can discredit that desire. Although expressing confidence in history’s vindication of that desire, the desire itself escapes all of history’s falsifications… The socialist revisionists we will have always with us, for the desire becomes more demanding as the prospect […]

Pluralism is a jealous god. When pluralism is established as dogma, there is no room for other dogmas. The assertion of other points of reference in moral discourse becomes, by definition, a violation of pluralism. Pluralism, relativity, secularization – all come to be much of a piece. There seems to be no place to stand […]

Peace is a very great good. The statement is commonly attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Peace is not merely the absence of warfare but the presence of justice.” St. Augustine said it first in speaking of peace as tranquillitas ordinis. Right order is always in short supply. And there will always be disagreement over […]

When orthodoxy is optional, it will sooner or later be proscribed.

Of course, another explanation for people not availing themselves of professional help is that New Yorkers are too disoriented to know they’re disoriented. Anyway, and to the distress of those selling therapy, they don’t want the therapy, even when someone else is paying. A measure of generalized craziness is what makes New York New York.

In the gay (Catholic) community, it would seem, the maxim is: love the sin and love the sinner, but hate anyone who calls it a sin or him a sinner.

On the left and on the right, we hear people claiming to be “beyond” the old categories of left and right, liberal and conservative. These are the beyondists. They are usually liberals running away from the sour smell of liberalism far beyond its sell-by date. And beyondists are sometimes conservatives wanting to distance themselves from […]

One can find innumerable dumb things said and done by Christians in the name of Christianity, both in the past and at present – perhaps especially at present. The propensity to say and do dumb things, and even wicked things, is simply part of human nature. One can blame the Church or Christianity for such […]

The Catholic Church, as Chesterton observed, is ever so much larger from the inside than from the outside.