One of his negative assessments of the Christianity of Mormonism was in his review of the book Mormon America. My own review of the book in the FARMS Review was in some ways a response to his. Someone, he noted, had sent him a copy of the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, apparently aware of his habit of reading old encyclopedias during vacations, but Neuhaus admitted that he did not bother opening that book, a strange admission for someone so determined to opine on the topic so regularly.

At the same time, he made clear any number of times that he hoped for a means of salvation for those not within the Catholic Church and the Christian faith as he defined it. A former Lutheran pastor, he was very supportive of efforts to promote unity among Christians and with Jews. He thus distinguished himself from those intent on sending Mormons to hell.

Regardless of his attitude towards Mormonism, First Things does a great service by upholding the value of religious views as a legitimate entry into the public marketplace of ideas. The openness of First Things to discussion of Mormonism by Mormons (as in Elder Porter’s article and my own much more modest recent letter) provides a valuable forum, one which I hope that more broadly educated Mormons than myself can use to our advantage to express the LDS viewpoint on issues of public import.

I wonder, though, if not speaking ill of the dead is such a great idea. Isn’t it the living who need the benefit of our doubts and whom we should be reluctant to jucge?

We can’t hurt the dead by speaking candidly about them. And we might make an important point ot two about how to live.

Again, Neuhaus is not particularly an example of someone I want to speak disrespectfully of after his death. I’d prefer to hope that, somehow, he’ll find his way into the celestial kingdom regardless of some ignorant comments in this life. I just hope I qualify to meet him there.

In terms of his legacy, your distinguishing of his writings from First Things itself has some real force to it; Caleb Stegall, the wizard behind the late, great, New Pantagruel, told me that TNP wouldn’t have existed without Neuhaus’s editorial audaciousness and example. The same could be said, I would argue, for much of what FARMS has became, and as you note, what Square Two may become. He was a priest and a polemicist, but he also had a sense of what being a public intellectual really entailed, and he taught, by example, others how to do it.

http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/01/remembering-richard-john-neuha.html