Neuhaus Memorial on EWTN Tonight

I just finished watching a moving memorial for Fr. Richard John Neuhaus on Raymond Arroyo's EWTN show, The World Over. Guests included Michael Novak and George Weigel, close friends of Fr. Neuhaus. By telephone, Joseph Bottum, the current editor of First Things, also contributed. The program reinforced my own realization of the magnitude of the loss and it gave a glimpse of the camaraderie of the intellectual circle in New York and Washington, DC in which Neuhaus, Novak and Weigel move. What an amazing experience it must be to be part of that. George Weigel spoke to the apparently widespread concern about the future of First Things magazine. He said that Fr. Neuhaus had two great projects that he wanted to see continue after he was gone. The first was the Evangelical and Catholics Together project and the second was First Things magazine. Weigel, along with Joseph Bottum, the current editor, assured the audience that First Things will go on "for years and years". Parenthetically, the latest issue of First Things arrived in my mail box yesterday, containing what is will be one of the last installments of "The Public Square".