Richard John Neuhaus and the Rockford Institute: Filling Out the Details?

I recently attended a meeting of the Philadelphia Society and found myself speaking with an elderly gentleman named John Howard, who is the head of the Howard Center and once was the president of the Rockford Institute.  Somehow, we got on the topic of Richard John Neuhaus' passing and Dr. Howard mentioned with pride that he had once hired Neuhaus after watching him debate mainline liberals from the World Council of Churches on television. 

As we spoke, it suddenly occurred to me that Dr. Howard was the man who fired Neuhaus from the Rockford Institute and locked him out of his office in New York two decades ago.  So, I asked, "How did it come to be that you fired Richard John Neuhaus?"  I probably sounded a little arch, but I was smiling and Dr. Howard seemed to be a very personally secure man.  He didn't get angry.

Neither did Dr. Howard back off an inch.  "Well, [Neuhaus] got too big for his britches." (This would have been the late 1980's.)  I had to know what that meant, so he elaborated saying that Neuhaus had been given a specific budget for a given number of New York based conferences.  The Institute decided it couldn't do all of the conferences and told Neuhaus not to hold two of them.  He held the events anyway, thus causing budgetary distress to the institute.  According to Dr. Howard, this was the reason Allan Carlson shut Neuhaus down in New York and locked the icon-to-be out of his own offices.

That day, Neuhaus called Dr. Howard to complain about being locked out.  Howard informed Neuhaus he was locked out for holding the conferences he'd been asked to cut.  Neuhaus (according to Howard) claimed it had merely been suggested he reduce the number of conferences.  Howard, countered Neuhaus by saying he'd been in the room when Carlson had made the phone call ordering him not to hold the conferences.

Thus, we discover some explanation for why the Rockford Institute would have so suddenly ended their alliance with Neuhaus.  In other accounts I've heard, the Rockford people's intervention always seemed completely mysterious.

We continued to speak pleasantly and it was clear Dr. Howard maintained his appreciation for the great Neuhaus.

The only thing wrong with the story is that it can now benefit from hindsight.  Richard John Neuhaus never got too big for his britches.  It only appeared to Dr. Howard that he did.  If Neuhaus understood himself to be something special, then he understood correctly.  He just got too big for his budget at Rockford back in 1989.

Comments

[Lawrence Gage]

Here's the recent account of the raid by Maria McFadden Maffucci at First Things:

http://firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6521

She writes, "Any justification Rockford claimed to have for such an event was soon exposed as unfounded, and the raid as pretty ridiculous." It sounds like "unfounded" might be a bit strong.

LG

[Hunter Baker]

Lawrence,

That's part of why I decided to post this account. Figured the old Rockford folks deserved to have their side of it out there.

Hunter

[James Kabala]

Is there any good, impartial account of this important but rather mysterious event? Most accounts on the Internet (this one being an exception) seem to take for granted that one side was egregiously wrong and forget to explain why. Even this one, while impartial, raises more questions than it answers.

[Hunter Baker]

I think this one has explanatory power. The tribute issue of FT repeatedly says RJN could not be trusted with numbers. It is not surprising to hear he might have blown a budget.

[James Kabala]

Well, previous versions of the story blamed deep-seated ideological and philosophical differences between Neuhaus and Rockford. There's no point in dredging up the details here, but they can be found easily through Google. "It was just a dispute over money" seems like revisionist history.

[Hunter Baker]

It's clear that there probably was some tension between Neuhaus and Thomas Fleming (who was and is the editor of Chronicles), but I don't see that there would have been an ideological problem with John Howard and Allan Carlson. I've never seen anything from either of those men that would be wildly at odds with the Neuhausian take on the world.

Interestingly enough, both Neuhaus and Fleming went on to become Catholics. Conservative Catholics. But different kinds of conservative Catholics!

[Kevin J Jones]

If I recall right, Daniel Larison's obituary of Rev. Neuhaus in The American Conservative accused him of "consistently misrepresenting" the circumstances of his departure from the Rockford Institute. Larison didn't elaborate.

Perhaps it's best to leave these old conflicts behind, but those of us who came afterward and have respect for both parties to the dispute are left a little confused.

[Gintas]

Neuhaus was always proud that, in his leftist days, he had marched with Martin King for "civil rights." I'm sure that someone like that would never quite fit in with the folks in Rockford.

Sam Francis, in his essasy, "The Failure of American Conservatism", quotes James Burnham (c. 1971) about the first neocons that, while they had broken with "liberal doctrine" they retained "what might be called the emotional gestalt of liberalism, the liberal sensitivity and temperament."

[Hunter Baker]

Gintas, I don't doubt this last part, but remember, too, that Rockford was once not nearly as divisive among conservatives as it is today.

[T. Chan]

Mr. Baker,

I've never seen anything from either of those men that would be wildly at odds with the Neuhausian take on the world.

I suspect that Dr. Carlson and Fr. Neuhaus differ very much on economics. I don't know about Dr. Howard.

[Hunter Baker]

How so, T. Chan? Think Neuhaus would object to Carlson's idea of the family wage?

[T. Chan]

Would Fr. Neuhaus agree with Dr. Carlson's recommendations presented here?

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-allancarlson_23edi.ART0.State.Edition1.41f9c51.html

[Gintas]

From reading First Things for 10+ years I gathered that Neuhaus was a right-liberal, a Neo-con Intellectual, an Urbane / Cosmopolitan Christian. The overall theme was "gently regaining a place for religion at the New York liberal table."

I just can't see that mixing with Chronicles, which seems to have been becoming more and more Catholic over the years.

[Hunter Baker]

T. Chan, I don't think Neuhaus ever spelled out much of a personal preference with regard to economics in FT. If there was an ideological element to his split with Rockford, it would have been over a feeling that there were some elements within the institute that were anti-Israel.

[mcmoderator]

Comment deleted for use of profane language.

[Tim Ald]

Perhaps it's best to leave these old conflicts behind, but those of us who came afterward and have respect for both parties to the dispute are left a little confused.

Yes, it is troublesome and has actually been an impediment for me every time I encounter an Allan Carlson byline.

The story told by Maria McFadden Maffucci (linked in the first comment above) fits with the facts that have been presented all over for two decades. Whether the incident was triggered by philosophical or financial concerns or, most likely, a combination of the two, seems irrelevant. The actions of Rockford (as universally reported) were despicable.

My imagination has been unable to conceive of any justification for the loutishness described by Maffucci. The closest I could come was that Neuhaus was engaged in criminal embezzlement and that Rockford was compelled to dispatch a goon squad to prevent the NYC scoundrels from fleeing town that weekend with the institute's computers and petty cash. But even this extremely ridiculous scenario wouldn't justify physically intimidating a young lady.

The most likely scenario, an irreconcilable difference concerning finance and philosophy, could have been handled with dignity (even if expeditiously). Hence my trouble taking Allan Carlson seriously as an authority on the important subjects he addresses. The ideas and arguments he eloquently presents (on these pages and elsewhere) require the reader to assume that the author is a gentleman. Hence my cognitive dissonance.

Outrageous public actions require public explanations, and the silence suggests shame. Yes, the details of origins of the Rockford/Neuhaus split probably do belong in the past. I'm sure that there are great reasons for leaving them there. But the actions of that one day are a mysterious stain that a man of courage and integrity would want to address. At the very least, Maria McFadden Maffucci would seem to deserve a public apology. Even if as a young intern she was a criminal mastermind threatening Rockford's bank account.

[Gintas]

I found this from May, 1989:

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/16/us/magazine-dispute-reflects-rift-on-us-right.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

This also gives some perspective:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism_and_paleoconservatism

[Joe]

He never got to big fro his britches? Good grief, sounds like Wall Street CEO mentality.