Facing Death

+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
1 Feb 2009

A good friend of mine died recently in New York.  There was nothing unusual in that.

Father Richard Neuhaus made a distinguished contribution as a Lutheran pastor and then a Catholic priest, as a learned and prolific writer and as a social and political commentator and activist.  An unusual intellectual with charm and the common touch he had an extraordinary network of friends and contacts. 

As much as anyone he brought orthodox Catholics in the U.S.A. into political alliance with evangelical Protestants.  He was consistent in his support for life and social justice, taking part in the struggle for black civil rights, opposing the Vietnam war, finally concluding that the second Iraq war was just but imprudent, while he was always involved in the struggle for unborn human life, against abortion.

However today I want to say a few words about how he faced up to death. 

In my youth Catholics were encouraged to pray that death would not come unexpectedly, so that we would be ready for judgement.  A friend of mine brought up as a Methodist claims he still has the whiff of sulphur in his nostrils!  Certainly hell was real for most of us.

The Catholic pendulum has now swung wildly on the afterlife, with many now expecting a sentimental, non-judgemental God to give everyone a good time in the hereafter.

Neuhaus avoided these extremes.

In December he learned that the cancer which nearly killed him in 1993 had returned.  I spoke to him by phone then and he explained that he hoped to stay, but was ready to go if that was the verdict.

He had founded and edited an influential magazine on religion and public life called "First Things" and in each issue there was a section "The Public Square" where he commented on the developments of the month, courteously praising his allies and smiting his foes.

In his last column he wrote that "when there is an unidentified agent in your body aggressively attacking the good things your body is intended to do, it does concentrate the mind".  He thanked his friends for their prayers repeating "that I neither fear to die nor refuse to live.  If it is to die, all that has been is but a slight intimation of what is to be.  If it is to live, there is much that I hope to do in the interim".

He quoted a reply of Martin Luther who was asked what he would do if he knew he was to die tomorrow: plant a tree and say his prayers.  Neuhaus went on "Maybe I have, at least metaphorically, planted a few trees and certainly I am saying my prayers".

He concluded that the entirety of his prayer was "Your will be done ?not as a note of resignation but of desire beyond expression".

Not a bad way to think as you go.