Sandro Magister, in this article, discusses how Father Richard Neuhaus' influence figures heavily in President Bush's decisions on religious issues.
The novelty is that, for some time now, the most inner circle of Bush's collaborators has included a very authoritative Catholic priest. He is Fr. Neuhaus, a former Lutheran pastor, who converted to Catholicism in 1990 and was ordained a priest the following year by the archbishop of New York at the time, John Cardinal O'Connor.Fr. Neuhaus is among the most respected theologians. Even better: he is both a theologian and a political analyst, a bit like Reinhold Niebuhr was for Protestant Americans during the mid-twentieth century. He directs 'First Things,' the leading magazine for Catholic neoconservatives, whose regular writers include George Weigel, Michael Novak, and Avery Dulles, all three of whom are well-respected in the Vatican.
