Re-Reading Father Richard Neuhaus’ ‘American Babylon’ in Light of U.S. Capitol Attack

National Catholic Register, 11 January 2021

Father Neuhaus, who died in 2009, had great faith in the American people, but he would have been worried these last years, and last Wednesday.

The late Father Richard John Neuhaus was a friend and mentor, and around his death anniversary (Jan. 8, 2009) I usually dip into one of his books as a way of remembering him. 

Earlier this week, reorganizing my books, I came across his last book, American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile, published posthumously in March 2009. That was Tuesday. On Wednesday came the assault on the Capitol.

It seemed providential to be re-reading those pages as death and desecration came to the Capitol. And not without sadness, for Father Richard loved the United States of America, and would have been heart-broken about the violence in Washington.

“I am somewhat uneasy with that choice of title,” Father Richard wrote in American Babylon. “Too many people, and not only Americans, are all too ready to identify America with Babylon. … America is Babylon not by comparison with other societies but by comparison with that radically new order sought by all who know love’s grief in refusing to settle for a community of less than truth and justice uncompromised.”

No political order offers truth and justice uncompromised, but recently in the U.S. both have seem in unusually short supply.

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