This video is excerpted from an excellent profile of America’s most famous Canadian-born priest, Father Richard John Neuhaus, aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in December 2007.
(The original CBC video ran longer than the ten minutes permitted for Youtube videos. So we recommend you go here to view the complete video on the CBC website.)
One striking aspect of the video is its reporting about how Father Neuhaus won over a largely hostile audience in New York during a debate about whether religion and politics should always be kept separate.
The debate’s outcome highlighted how people in general, and young people in particular, could be convinced of the merits of Catholic arguments when those arguments were presented to them through the prism of the profound faith and reason of the editor in chief of First Things.
“I was thoroughly impressed by Father Neuhaus’s points and the way he structured his arguments,” one young woman told the CBC.
Added a young man, “I think Father Neuhaus was convincing because he showed that it’s basically, practically, it’s impossible to separate religion and politics in every instance.”
— Tom McFeely