Post by dhunt on Feb 1, 2010 7:01:17 GMT -5
I feel a personal grief on hearing this news. I loved Fr. Richard Neuhaus and grieved when he died as well, but losing Ralph (somehow I feel justified in using a familiar first name--I'm sure he wouldn't be offended at all) is almost like losing a dear friend. Completely at home, as he was, in the most profound philosophical disputations, he was no less at home in popular literature as well. He was a living contradiction to those who insist (overtly or not) on an either/or label. Director of the Maritain Center at Notre Dame, he also wrote over 80 successful novels for popular consumption. I've never been able to take seriously a complaint of a dearth of contemporary Catholic literature that ignored McInerny. Not an O'Conner or a Greene or a Percy--he wouldn't have pretended to be--his contribution to Catholic culture was greater, in a way. He wrote best-sellers, if not Great Literary Masterpieces, that were pervaded by Catholic beliefs and values and gave them to an American secular public who actually received them with gratitude. That is no small achievement. And I've never believed that enough notice was taken of that--or that contemporary Catholic literati were sufficiently aware of his uniqueness in that way. A wonderful, kind, generous, brilliant, gentle, humorous, and talented man--one who quietly walked the walk all his life, both personally and professionally--has been taken from us. A real renaissance man in Catholic literature. I feel the loss.
