The Pluralist Game

Abstract

You may have heard Hadley Arkes's charge—always made in good-natured friendship—that Father Richard John Neuhaus owes him royalties for the title of Neuhaus's wonderful monthly, First Things. After all, Arkes's book of the same name came out first, Father Neuhaus read it and liked it, and, voila, shortly thereafter the magazine appeared. Arkes has a good circumstantial case. You probably know that one of Father Neuhaus's books called Moment. His thesis that late twentieth century Americans are living through a crisis of unbelief. Roman Church, Neuhaus argues, can and should be the lead church in proclaiming and exemplifying the Gospel. Why? Because the Church is, not only the oldest, but the most formidable and most resolute repository and defender of both traditional morality and traditional theism in the United States. Where did that title—The Moment—come from? Well, Hadley Arkes has no claim to it. Father Canavan's Pluralist Game, however, includes an essay he published in 1965 entitled Law and Morals in a Pluralist Society. In that essay Father Canavan wrote precisely of two moments in a changing society. just the Catholic moment that Neuhaus speaks of, when society experiencing a kind of moral This volume offers a brilliant account of this meltdown. The tide, as Canavan summarizes the matter, is not flowing in favor of traditional Christian morality; the sound we hear today the melancholy, long, withdrawing roar of the sea of faith (13). Again, there a decent circumstantial case here: Father Neuhaus has read many of Father Canavan's essays, and liked them. He has even published some. I should like to add that in the same 1965 essay, Father Canavan exercised his prophetic faculties. One need not be excessively pessimistic to predict that euthanasia and homosexual relations will become the subject of acrimonious public debate within the lifetime of most of those who read this article (9). I write as the Supreme Court prepares its opinion in two assisted suicide cases, and as we all wonder what effect the legalization of gay marriage in Hawaii will have on our constitutional law, and on public support, encouragement, and protection of decent family life. My assignment to consider Father Canavan's writings on law and public