What Was Cathleen Kaveny Smoking?

What was Cathleen Kaveny smoking? Her recent column in Commonweal attacks First Things founder Richard John Neuhaus for “sowing division” among Catholics and reducing theological commitments to “mere instruments of political will.”

I’m not interested in defending Neuhaus against the charge that he was, at root, a political, not a religious, man. That’s a tired claim. Anyone who knew or read Neuhaus grasped that he was a passionately religious man who had strong views about matters of public importance—views he was able express in sharp, polemical, and effective ways that made him politically influential.