Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth [Hardcover]

Richard John Neuhaus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2006

Millions of people journeyed to Rome in April 2005 to say farewell to Pope John Paul II. As televisions beamed these images into American homes, it became undeniably clear that Catholic matters really matter, and not only to Catholics. In Catholic Matters, Father Neuhaus addresses the many controversies that have marked recent decades of American Catholicism: the battles over the meaning of the Second Vatican Council, the "destabilizing" of the liturgy, the declining number of priests, and the sexual abuse scandals. Looking beyond these troubles to "the splendor of truth" by which the Church is constituted, he proposes a vibrant, forward-thinking way of being Catholic in America. Drawing on his personal encounters with the late John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, Father Neuhaus describes their hope for a springtime of world evangelization, Christian unity, and Catholic renewal. Catholic Matters shows a vibrant Church-one strengthened and unified by hardship-that is on the cusp of a great revival in her spiritual vitality and an even greater contribution to our common life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Readers acquainted with Neuhaus's previous books and his work with the magazine First Things will be most interested in this latest tome on the state of the Catholic Church. A former Lutheran pastor who became Catholic in 1990 and a priest in 1991, Neuhaus has emerged as a leading voice among those considered to be faithful to the Church's Magisterium, or teaching authority. Here, Neuhaus challenges the oft-heard statement, "Yes, I am a Catholic, but I think for myself," explaining how fidelity to the church begins with thinking for oneself so one can think with the church. He expands on this by exploring the role of conscience, drawing a distinction between doing what one wants and discerning and acting upon the truth. Neuhaus also discusses the church's authority, emphasizing that it is never invoked to require people to believe what is false. Other topics include the eerily prophetic Humanae Vitae, the 1968 papal encyclical on artificial contraception; the loss of Catholic identity when Friday abstinence from meat faded from practice; and how news reporting on the Second Vatican Council shaped its meaning for many American Catholics. Neuhaus devotees and others interested in the issues he raises will find here a thoughtful exposition of Catholicism's present moment. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Between excerpts from the "Rome Diary" he kept between John Paul II's death and Benedict XVI's election, the editor of the religiously informed cultural journal First Things delivers a sort of state-of-the-church report, informed by personal experience and the long Catholic tradition. Three pages in, diary gives way to how Catholics and others see the church, namely, as the Church, without peer. Neuhaus then explains how and why he, formerly a Lutheran minister, became a Catholic priest, and thereafter discusses the church's authority, conflicts within the church following Vatican II, the differences in American Catholic life before and after the sixties, the misunderstanding of those who would politicize and "democratize" the church, and his conviction that the center--the dogma and teaching--of the church perdures. The church proposes, he says, "that fidelity and continuity, not autonomy and novelty, are the paths toward a more promising future." There is a lot of meat in this relatively brief book, but Neuhaus' careful service of it makes it as palatable as it is rich. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; First Edition edition (March 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465049354
• ISBN-13: 978-0465049356
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #446,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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106 of 117 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Catholic Truly Matters, April 4, 2006

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Alvin Kimel (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth (Hardcover)

Last week I finished Richard John Neuhaus's new book *Catholic Matters*. I recommend it highly. This is the book I've been waiting for Neuhaus to write ever since he converted to Catholicism. He wisely chose, though, to wait until he had gained some real measure of fluency in the Catholic language of faith. He now writes as a Catholic, yet one can still discern a Lutheran accent-thankfully so.

This is a difficult book for me to describe. It is a personal book, a theological book, a commentary on the state-of-the-Catholic Church book, a summons to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church book. The presence of John Paul II is felt throughout.

As always, Neuhaus writes in that easy, fluid style, with that occasional turn of phrase that catches one's attention, that makes reading him such a pleasure.

I recommend Catholic Matters to all who are seriously interested in the Catholic Church, particularly those who now live on the Protestant side of the Tiber and who wonder what it might be like to swim to the other side. He shares with us many insights into the Catholic Church, insights that only a convert can share. Here's one that really caught me up: "To be a Catholic is to refuse to hold oneself aloof from the vulgar." Think about that the next time you are tempted to haughty dismissal of traditional Catholic devotions or the popular versions of the Novus Ordo Mass that we find in the typical Catholic congregation.

I also believe that every Catholic bishop and priest should read this book. Neuhaus brings with him a unique perspective. He knows what life in Protestantism is like. He has experienced it in one of its theologically strongest expressions and he has also witnessed the devastation that the embrace of modernity and revisionism can bring to the life of the Church. He knows why it is of vital importance to humanity that the Catholic Church be Catholic. All attempts to imitate liberal Protestantism can only result in the secular enculturation of the Catholic Church and betrayal of the gospel:

"The Protestant principle, as we know from sad experience, is so protean and subject to variation that it results either in gutting the tradition or in creating new traditions around which further schisms are formed. Theology that is not in service to `the faith once delivered to the saints' (Jude 3) will, in time, turn against the faith once delivered to the saints. Ideas that are not held accountable to `the Church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of truth' (1 Timothy 3:15) will, in time, become the enemy of the truth."

Neuhaus yearns for a renewal of Catholic liturgy. He grieves over the evacuation of the Western rite and despises the breezy, superficial pop-liturgy that has become so popular. But he has no nostalgia for the Latin Mass. He prays for a liturgy in English that truly honors God and moves us into mystery and awe. Oh, if only the bishops and priests of the Catholic Church in America would attend.

Catholic truly matters.

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Matter of Perspective., March 21, 2006

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Gerard J. St John (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth (Hardcover)

A book very well written by one of America's more articulate commentators on the subject of religion and public life. A Lutheran priest before converting to Catholicism in 1990, Neuhaus is uniquely situated to present a personalized perspective of the conflicts that have raged within the Catholic Church for the past five decades.
The book begins and ends in Rome, in April 2005, with the funeral of Pope John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI. Neuhaus then discusses his conversion to the Catholic Church, the theological background of the Lutheran Church in which he was raised, the Second Vatican Council and various failures of leadership within the Church following Vatican II. The discussion frequently returns to the subjects of primacy of conscience, concerted efforts to undermine the teaching power of the Magisterium and the more than twenty-six year effort of John Paul II (Neuhaus calls him "John Paul the Great") to implement the determinations of the Council in the face of opposition by certain Catholic theologians and the public news media.
Neuhaus adopts the words of St. Ignatius of Loyola that "we should think with the Church," which helps put into perspective that the Church must be judged over a span of centuries and not just within the lifetime of any one individual or group of individuals. He supports his views in clear language, often supported by references to recognized Church fathers, such as Aquinas, Augustine and Ignatius. In response to those persons who would define a large number of American Catholics as being outside the Church, Neuhaus says, "That is a Protestant way of thinking, and I decline to go along with it. I did not become a Catholic in order to be a Protestant." He argues that, despite the conflicts, there is a continuing and identifiable community that is the Catholic Church.
The book concludes with Neuhaus' notes taken while he was co-host of the EWTN network television coverage of the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI. Readers will not be surprised to find that Neuhaus' discussion of the conflicts within the Church continues through his Rome Diary.
It is a very interesting presentation of a complex subject.

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Splinter of Truth, March 31, 2006

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James H. Toner (Montgomery, AL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth (Hardcover)

Father Richard John Neuhaus writes the English language with power and grace and the occasional barb, well directed at, um, barbarians. That is what I mean by "splinter." But more, by "splinter," I mean what Father Neuhaus implies on pp. 24-26, which is that the splinter of truth, at least occasionally, ought to penetrate our precious skins and make us very uncomfortable. We are called to be saints, and we ought to be uncomfortable with any moral attainments short of or tangential to that. Catholicism, then, is a splinter needling us, not to be "nice" (see p. 109), but to be holy and to serve the cause of truth. But "truth," we are told by our society, is a silly word and an even sillier concept, for "truth" conveys the ideas of authority, of standards, of moral certitude. And the world tells us that all we have are preferences (see p. 145). You prefer chocolate; I prefer vanilla; you prefer partial-birth abortion; and I prefer babies' births. It's all relative, isn't it (see p. 146)? But no, it isn't, Father Neuhaus insists. Christ is not only the Way, the Truth, and the Life, He has a bride, the Church, which "subsists" in the Catholic Church (pp. 20-21). The Catholic Church must be countercultural (pp. 149) and "call the world home" (p. 154), but, instead, too often its bishops and priests have not been true to their vows of fidelity (159), leading, tragically and criminally, to sexual abuse and--we must never forget it--to the imperilment of souls. Three weeks ago, I heard a homily in which a priest said he could not deal with the notion of "pray, pay, and obey"--the clever little way of attacking orthodoxy. Except, of course, that we are to "pray without ceasing" (1 Th 5:17); to provide "for the material needs of the Church" (CCC 2043); and to form our consciences "in conformity with the true [that word again!] good willed by the wisdom of the Creator (CCC 1783; cf. 407-408, 892, 1740, 1783, 1811, 2039). This same priest, after suggesting in a homily that obedience is an outdated idea, was stunned at a subsequent penance service that only a dozen or so people bothered to show up. Some of the "wreckovations" (p. 114) in the Church after (not because of) Vatican II (p. 140) involve the profoundly unbiblical notion that there is no sin any more (pp. 127, 130): whew! I'm glad we have put that behind us, sparing us--so some say--the need for admonitory homilies and other unpleasantries. But "love without truth is blind and truth without love is empty," says Father Neuhaus, acknowledging Pope Benedict (p. 237). The Church must always, always, always speak truth to power (cf. p. 239), and that means offending our sensibilities, making us uncomfortable, disturbing our moral slumbers, and disabusing us of the little lies--and the big lies--which fill our days but corrupt our souls (cf. Jn 12:43, Gal 1:10, 1 Th 2:4). Catholics have learned the trick of being popular, of being acceptable, of being "American Catholics." Father Neuhaus, however, contends that we must be Catholic Americans (pp. 166, 142), by which he means having "a robust and uncompromised Catholic identity." We are, he says, "at a time in our country when some Catholics--too many--are discovering that they've gradually become non-Catholics who happen to go to Mass" (191). We will not "fix" these problems by ourselves. Thank God, we do not have to. And so Father Neuhaus ends this superb study with the prayerful petition of the Mass:
"Strengthen in faith and love your pilgrim Church on earth." Amen.