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Fr. Richard Neuhaus speaking at the Cincinnati Catholic Men’s Conference in 2004.
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Fr. Richard Neuhaus speaking at the Cincinnati Catholic Men’s Conference in 2004.
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Fr. Richard Neuhaus speaking at the Cincinnati Catholic Men’s Conference in 2004.
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Father Richard John Newhouse was born and raised in Canada and has received his education in Ontario and the United States. He was a senior pastor in Brooklyn for 17 years before being ordained as a Catholic priest. Currently, he is the president of the Institute on Religion and Public Life and the editor-in-chief of the publication First Things. He has written over 20 books, including "The Naked Public Square." Father Newhouse is known for his work in promoting the role of religion in public life and has received numerous honors for his contributions. He believes that the encounter with Jesus Christ is intensely personal but not private, and that Christians have a responsibility to share their faith with others and to engage in the public square. He emphasizes the importance of Catholics using reason and natural law to engage in dialogue with others in the public sphere. Father Newhouse also advocates for the culture of life and believes that abortion will remain a controversial issue was born and raised near Ottawa, Canada. He received his formal education in Ontario and in the United States. Father Newhouse was a senior pastor for 17 years in a low-income parish in Brooklyn, New York. In September 1991, he was ordained a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of New York. Currently, he is the president of the Institute on Religion and Public Life. That is an inter-religious research and education institute in New York City. Father Newhouse is editor-in-chief of the institute's publication, First Things, a monthly journal of religion and public life. He has held presidential appointments in the Carter, Reagan, and first Bush administrations. Among the best-known of his more than 20 books is his book, The Naked Public Square, and that's widely regarded as the blueprint for President Ronald Reagan's policy on religion and public life. Father Newhouse has received numerous honors, including the Pope John Paul II Award for Religious Freedom. In a survey of national leadership, U.S. News and World Report named Father Newhouse as one of the 32 most influential intellectuals in America. Gentlemen, let's give a warm Cincinnati welcome to one of the foremost authorities on the role of religion in the contemporary world, Father Richard John Newhouse. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much for that gracious introduction. Praise be Jesus Christ now and forever. When I was asked to formulate a topic, I said, well, how about personal encounter with Jesus Christ? But here's the point. Personal, yes, but private, no. The encounter with Jesus Christ is as intensely personal as personal can be, whether it be in some extraordinary circumstance that you can actually put your finger on and say it was at this particular time and place, that is, at the BG Cafe or whatever that was that Declan was telling us about, or whether it is a growth, a slow and steady, imperceptible growth in your life. The encounter with Jesus Christ personally intensifies throughout our lives. In the last number of years, I have worked very closely with Charles Coulson and with others in an initiative that we call Evangelicals and Catholics Together. And one of the truly extraordinary developments of our time, a historic development, is the convergence of evangelical Protestants and Catholics, not only in an understanding of our common responsibilities in the public square, but a convergence, much more importantly, in our understanding of what binds us together as brothers and sisters in Christ. And working with our evangelical brothers and sisters, frequently one is asked, as some of you know, are you born again, or when were you born again? And I always say, well, I personally don't remember the details very much because I was only two weeks old, and I was baptized with water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And that is, when we're born again, that's regeneration. Those are the waters and the sacramental power of regeneration. All the rest of our life, including, most emphatically including the Sacrament of Reconciliation, is a recovery and a reappropriation and a revitalization of the gift of grace that is already given in holy baptism. The whole of answering the call is answering a call that was given, a gift already received for most of us when we were little children in baptism, a gift not to be latent, not simply to be left lying there, not simply to be viewed as a ticket and a guarantee to salvation, which it is not, but rather to be viewed as a potentiality to be appropriated and lived, to receive the gift already given, is to respond to the call. And to do that is not simply a private matter. It is an intensely personal matter, but not private. The book of Hebrews says that in Jesus Christ a public display was made of the love of God. Jesus in his ministry and the people of promise from whom he came, beginning with Abraham and through the church, the Lumen Gentium, the light to the nations, this is all public. Christianity is not a private faith. We watched a little bit of the remarkable film by Mel Gibson, The Passion, and there is nothing more public, more brutally public, more compellingly public, than this display of the love of God in Jesus Christ. The church is public. Our Lord commissioned an apostolic community. And the great joy of being a Catholic is knowing that we are part of that community commissioned by Christ as it is most fully and rightly ordered through time in accord with his apostolic commission. Go into all the world and teach all people whatever I have commanded you and baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We live in a time and in a culture in which it is very difficult to make the case that to be a Christian is a matter of public consequence. We are told that no, we live in a secular world now. In this secular world, in this secular pluralistic world, it is often added, in this world you may have your faith if you wish. You may discover and affirm and even share within your private little associations whatever it is that makes you feel good, whatever strokes work for you, whatever floats your boat, but keep it to yourself. This is very much, is it not, in the very air, the cultural air that we breathe, great respect for spirituality and for religion and so forth, but keep it to yourself. And we Christians who have been given the gift of God's love and Jesus Christ know that we have been given this gift in order to share this gift. We cannot keep it to ourselves and be faithful to our Lord. We want to say to everybody, we want to say that what I have found and in my being found by God in Christ, this is something for me, yes, intensely, personally so, but if it is true, it is true not simply for me, it is true for all. Jesus Christ is the Lord of all, or he is the Lord not at all. Jesus Christ is the Lord of family and of work and of leisure and of the intellect and of beauty and the aesthetic dimensions of life. Jesus Christ is Lord of the political realm. He is Lord of all or he is Lord not at all. This does not mean in the public square that some people would keep naked of religion or religion's moral influence. It does not mean that we Christians or we Catholic Christians or we Evangelical and Catholics together that we form a Christian political party for we recognize that among people who have truly surrendered their lives to Christ there can be legitimate disagreements about questions of great moment and consequence in the public square, questions of great moment and consequence in addressing what is the political issue, namely how ought we to order our life together. And Catholics in particular come into the public square with a high appreciation of the God-given gift of reason. Catholics come into the public square with a deep appreciation of natural law and of natural right, of those ways of speaking and engaging questions of consequence that need not separate us from non-Catholics, non-Christians or even from atheists and agnostics. We say to them, come let us deliberate together by the gift of reason that God has given us including moral reason. Come let us reason together with the gift of natural law that God has given us. Come let us reason together and deliberate together and debate and decide how ought we best to order our life together. Our devotion is not to a Catholic party. Our devotion is to the common good. In the public realm, in every realm of life, we are in the position here is how we ought to think about ourselves. We are in the position similar to that of St. Paul. You recall in 1 Corinthians where Paul is discussing, especially in the first 12 chapters, the enormous difficulties that the Corinthians were going through, the factionalism, the jealousy, the pride, the contentiousness. When people talk about let us return to the purity and simplicity of the early church, read Corinthians and see. And then you have at the end of chapter 12 where St. Paul having dealt with all these problems, then he says, let me show you a more excellent way. Let me show you a more excellent way. And then begins of course chapter 13, that great unsurpassable hymn of love. This is our role in the world. We are the people appointed by Christ, gifted by Christ, to show the world a more excellent way, a way of life and of light and of love and of life abundant. Let us show you a more excellent way. The Holy Father, John Paul II, has taught the whole world to understand the great cause of what he calls the culture of life. The culture of life, as in Deuteronomy 30, today I put before you life and death, life and death, choose life, that you and your children may live. The culture of life that deals with, of course, abortion and with euthanasia and with stem cell, embryonic stem cell research and a host of other questions. And there are some Catholic men, let's face it, maybe some who are here today, who say, okay, here it comes again, it's already come up several times today, they're going to give me a political pitch on abortion. Why is it that Catholics always have to be so concerned about abortion? Why can't we let it rest for a little while? It's so controversial. Yes, it is. It's so controversial. And it will remain controversial until the end of time, the contest between the culture of life and the culture of death. Our Lord Jesus Christ was controversial. He would not have been put to the cross, were he not. And he said, the disciple is not above the master. For each one of us, if we have envisioned what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, the intense personal encounter with Christ, there comes a time in which we've joined the dots, we've made the connections between commitment to Christ, the Prince of Life, and commitment to the culture of life, and the tasks that that entails. I remember very well, almost to the minute I can name it, 1964, when I was pastor of a large, black, very poor parish in Brooklyn, New York. And I had read that week an article in Harper's Magazine by the late Ashley Montague, a philosopher at Princeton University. And the title of that article was, What Makes a Life Worth Living? And I remember that he laid out, as so many other people have laid out, the criteria, the measurements by which you decide whether a life is worth living. Whether a child is physically healthy, whether a child is born into a secure family, whether there is economic opportunity and potential, educational, etc., etc. And I remember looking out, it was Advent Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, 1964, and looking out at all the hundreds of black faces of the parish of St. John the Evangelist in Brooklyn, and I remember that it hit me, standing there at the altar, like a thunderclap, that a great evil is afoot. That here is a doctrine, here an attitude, that basically says that none of these people, not one of these people of the parish of St. John the Evangelist, not one of them qualified by even three of Ashley Montague's criteria of what constitutes a life worth living. And yet I knew these people, and I loved these people, and I knew their dignity, and their capacity for human greatness under circumstances of great difficulty. And I knew that a great evil was afoot, an evil that we have seen before in human history, in which it is decided that some lives are not worth living, in which it is decided, as long before 1933 in Germany, scholars talked about lebensundwertes Leben, life that is unworthy of life. The Holy Father, John Paul II, calls us to look into every human face, no matter what the grimace of pain, no matter how weak, no matter how simple, no matter how crippled, no matter how vulnerable, and to see there nothing less than what the Blessed Virgin saw when she held Jesus in her arms and saw the face of God. This is what it means to say we believe that every life destined from eternity for eternity is made in the image and likeness of God. And to be answering the call is to have answered the call of recruitment to the cause of the culture of life. And there are people who say, well, that's controversial, and that you're really saying that the church has to be counter-cultural, that the church is against the culture. No, the church of Jesus Christ, when she is faithful, never decides to be counter-cultural. It sometimes finds itself in a circumstance of confrontation with evil. But it is not by our choice. And when we are against the world, it is only because we are so much for the world, only because we share the passion of God himself. John 3.16, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, and we are to share that love for the world and to lift up to the world the more excellent way. Let me show you a more excellent way, a way of life. And to do it lovingly. One of the great gifts of my life was to work for a number of years, especially in the last three years of his life before his assassination on April 4th of 1968 with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And I served as liaison between his organization, the SCLC, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and various organizations in the North. And one thing that Dr. King used to say, it's not usually listed among his best-known aphorisms, but he would say it, I heard him say it again and again on different occasions, he would say, Whom you would change, you must first love, and they must know that you love them. Whom you would change, you must first love, and they must know that you love them. Now, there's a sense in which that's obvious. Any good parent knows that. Any good father knows that. Any good priest knows that. Any good teacher knows that. People are not going to take their leadership of someone whom they perceive as not having their interests at heart. Whom you would change, you must first love. And what we're proposing is, yes, through argument, through organization, through conferences like this, in so many different ways, we want to make clear to the world that there is a better way, and a better way is the one who is the way, the truth, and the life, Jesus Christ. We want to make clear to the world that there is reason for hope. The Holy Father has spoken so often and so compellingly about the springtime, this 21st century as the springtime of evangelization and re-evangelization. And there are many times in which it seems that the Holy Father is simply whistling in the dark, let's face it. You look at the state of the world around us. You look, and God knows Catholics have to say this with heart-wrenching sorrow, at the state of the Church and of its leadership. And you say, how can the Holy Father, given the state of the world and all that he must know more painfully than anyone of the state of the Church, people say, how can he be so optimistic? But John Paul II, I put to you, is not optimistic at all. Optimism is not a Christian virtue. Optimism is simply a matter of optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Rather, he is a person of hope, which is very, very different. Hope looks into the heart of darkness. Hope is with eyes wide open. Hope does not deceive itself in order to get through the day. But hope looks at all the reasons for despair and says, nonetheless. The great British-American philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said, the only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity that is on the far side of complexity. And so the only reason for hope to be trusted is the reason that is on the far side of every reason for despair, which is to say, on the far side of the cross of Jesus Christ. We have been to the cross. The old black spiritual, were you there when they crucified my Lord? We say, yes, we were there when we crucified our Lord. And out of this marvelous instrument of evangelization, that is Mr. Gibson's film, let us as Catholic Christians, along with many others, seize upon this moment to recognize that whatever the intentions of the producers and the directors and the players and whatever that it seems that God has created, a moment for which it is hard to find historical precedent in which the question of the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is in the very heart of the public square. And it's going to continue there. It is up to us to turn this moment into an instrument of what the Holy Father speaks of as evangelization and new evangelization. Answer the call, answer the call. Receive the gift that is already given in your baptism, that is renewed, that is recapitulated and revitalized in every offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice in which your life and mine are embraced by the arms of Christ from the cross and joined to his perfect sacrifice of love. Your life is capable of that greatness. Some of you have been, I'm sure, to World Youth Days with the Holy Father. We have hundreds of thousands and even in some cases millions of young people in Madrid and Paris and Rome and Denver, most recently in Toronto. And you have witnessed that perhaps just on television. All these hundreds of thousands of young people, these millions of young people listening with an electrical sense of intensity to the words of this old Polish Pope. And you say, what's going on there? I have worked, been privileged to work for a number of years now, for well over ten years in the diocese of the former Archbishop of Krakow, Poland, Karol Wojtyla, now John Paul II. And one time I was having dinner in Krakow with an old man who had known Karol Wojtyla, or as they called him, Lolek. That was his nickname as a kid. Known him for years and years, long before he was a priest. And I said, Jacek, I said, why is it that the people, young people, listen to him the way they do? And he says, oh, that's always been true with him. And I said, yeah? He said, oh yeah, long before he was a priest. That's always been true with him. And I said, well, what's the message there? He says, oh, he says, Lolek, he says, he's been saying the same thing for 65 years. He just finds different ways of saying it. And I said, well, okay, what's the same thing that he's saying? And he said, what he's telling those young people in a thousand different ways is this. Settle for nothing less than moral and spiritual greatness. Settle for nothing less than moral and spiritual greatness. You were created for moral and spiritual greatness. You were destined and consecrated in your baptism for spiritual grandeur. Settle for nothing less in the personal but never private encounter with Jesus Christ. In the heart of the darkness, the light. Came the light, John chapter 1 says. And the light came into the darkness, and the darkness has not put it out. And the darkness will never, never, ever put it out. As long as there are men and women and children who are answering the call to an encounter with Christ that is personal but never private, that acknowledges that if he is Lord at all, he is Lord of all. People answering the call who want to lift up a more excellent way and who understand that the only way of persuading others to that way is the way of love for whom you would change. They must first love, and they must know it. Let me conclude with a story. During all of the graces of working in Krakow and getting to know the Holy Father, I've had the privilege of spending time with him on many different occasions. And one time, this was when my dear friend John Cardinal O'Connor of New York was still with us. And I was having dinner with the Holy Father, and the Holy Father would always ask when we'd meet, he'd always say, well, how's Cardinal O'Connor doing? He speaks like actually, how's Cardinal O'Connor doing? And I'd say, oh, Holy Father, he's doing great. He's always doing great. He says, well, that's good. I said, you know, Holy Father, you know what Cardinal O'Connor told me the other day? And he said, no, what did Father, what did Cardinal O'Connor tell you the other day? I said, Cardinal O'Connor said, he said, I get up every morning and pray that I'll go to bed that night without having discouraged any impulse of the Holy Spirit. And I said, Holy Father, isn't that a great thing for a bishop to say? And the Holy Father said, yes, that is a beautiful thing for a bishop to say. I told him that. Amen. Pray, promise today that you'll get up every morning and with respect to what is in your heart and what is happening in your family and in your workplace and in your responsibility as a citizen of this great country, that you will get up every morning and pray that you'll go to bed that night without discouraging any impulse of the Holy Spirit. Blessed be Jesus Christ, now and forever. Amen.
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