Doing Well; Done Betterrnby Llewellyn H. Roekwell, Jr.rn’These monstrous views,. . . these veneinous teachings.”rn—Pope Leo XIII on socialismrnDoing Well and Doing Good: ThernChallenge to the Christian Capitalistrnby Richard ]ohn NeuhausrnNew York: Doubleday;rn312 pp., $22.00rnAccording to the jacket copy of DoingrnW’eUand Doing Good, RichardrnJohn Neuhaus is “one of the mostrnprominent religious intellectuals” of ourrntime (which helps explain our time).rnNeuhaus argues that while “Christianityrnhas had nothing to say” to businessmen,rnnow “the spirit” is calling on them “tornmake a buck.” That is why he—arnLutheran minister who became arnCatholic priest—decided to write aboutrnLlewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is presidentrnof the Ludwig von Mises Institute inrnAuburn, Alabama.rnthe “spirituality of economic enterprise”rnin a book based on John Paul H’s encyclicalrnCentesimus Annus. The idearnmight have made an interesting work,rnbut, despite the breezy blasphemy, thisrnisn’t it. Much of Doing Well and DoingrnGood consists of a truncated version ofrnthe widely available encyclical and arnpedestrian, if largely unobjectionable,rncommentary on it. In the introductoryrnand concluding chapters, however,rnNeuhaus proclaims the good news of therndemocratic welfare state and of itsrnavatar, Martin L.uther King, Jr.rn”It was a grace of my life,” saysrnNeuhaus, “to work personally with Dr.rnKing for several years as a liaisonrnbetween his Southern Christian LeadershiprnConference and other socialrnmovements of the time.” What socialrnmovements those were, Neuhaus hayingrnbeen an open leftist in those days,rnor why King keeps his ill-gotten doctoraternin death, Neuhaus doesn’t say. Instead,rnwe are asked to believe that Kingrnwas “above all a Christian minister”rnwhose “1 Have a Dream Speech” was “arnpowerful and almost perfect articulationrnof the Puritan-Lockean Synthesis.”rnThis is nonsense, Neuhaus countingrnon his readers being unfamiliar with thernliterature which demonstrates that King:rnone, stole virtually every word hern”wrote,” from high school to his last sermon;rntwo, rejected the central claims ofrnChristianity in graduate school and neverrnreturned to them; three, had a sex lifernworthy of Magic Johnson; four, advocatedrnracial rcdistributionism; five,rncalled himself a Marxist in private; andrnsix, coordinated his schedule, finances,rnspeeches, publications, and strategy withrnmembers of the American CommunistrnParty. Far from right-wing revisionism,rnthis is standard history as found, for example,rnin David Garrow’s Pulitzer Prize-rn28/CHRONICLESrnrnrn
January 1975April 21, 2022By The Archive
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