I learned a lot from Arvin Alaigh’s essay for Commonweal about Richard John Neuhaus, but I was disappointed by it. It was too unsympathetic, too one-sided, and too focused on arriving at its eventual conclusion to give a fair-handed—even if still ultimately critical or dismissive—treatment of its subject.

One clue: you will search the essay in vain for even a single mention of “abortion” or “marriage.” Surely a just consideration of the man, his thought, and his changes of mind and politics over the decades would require dealing with those issues, whatever one made of them or of what Neuhaus made of them.