Readers acquainted with the work of John Courtney Murray, or at least those whose familiarity extends to his book We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition1, are likely to find that several of the essays in this book belabor the obvious; namely, that Murray cannot fairly be read a defender of a neutralist "procedural state," or as a proto-Rawlsian, -Dworkinian or -Rorytian liberal. That the point needs to be argued says more about the nature of the current debate over the interpretation of what George Weigel has dubbed the "John Courtney Murray Project" than it does about Murray himself. This collection helps set matters straight on the current debate over the meaning of Murray's work while trying to come to grips with the tensions and ambiguities in Murray's thought that make for the disagreement in the first place. The essays by Robert Cuervo, Kenneth Grasso and Robert Hunt, in particular, should put to rest the rather dubious assertion that Murray was an advocate of the "neutralist" or "proceduralist" state. Cuervo's essay provides a helpful historical context for Murray's writings on "public philosophy" by locating them within the context of the debate in the 1950s and 1960s among "liberal skeptics" represented by such notables as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Sidney Hook, Clinton Rossiter, and Daniel Bell on the one hand and Walter Lippman, John Hallowell and Murray on the other. The former sought to combat ideology by taking a skeptical stance toward truth claims advanced in the public square, while the latter, though equally skeptical of ideological excesses, sought to reinvigorate a public philosophy through a revival of natural law and the recognition of a transcendent moral order that both governments and citizens are obliged to obey. Cuervo convincingly places Murray within the broader intellectual movement that "refused to fight