Washington D.C., Feb 17, 2017 / 02:38 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The theologian, philosopher and Catholic commentator Michael Novak died Friday, drawing remembrances for his insights and influence on religion in public life.
“We are immensely grateful that he could end his academic life as he began it, as a member of our community,” Catholic University of America president John Garvey said, calling Novak a man of “great intellectual honesty.”
“Unlike some scholars, Michael Novak made it a point to reflect on new and different topics, always with a fresh and dynamic perspective,” Garvey said.
Novak died Feb. 17 at the age of 83.
He was a student at Catholic University of America in 1958 and 1959. In 2016 he was named a visiting fellow at the university’s The Arthur and Carlyse Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship. He taught special topics in management and lectured on human ecology.
The center’s director, Andreas Widmer, stressed Novak’s pioneering role in considering the intersection of faith and economics. He said he and his colleagues were touched by Novak’s “kindness and humility,” his generosity with his time, and his encouragement for others.
“You would never have known from working with him that this was a man who had counseled popes and changed the course of history,” Widmer said.
St. John Paul II, President Ronald Reagan, and U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher considered Novak a friend, Catholic University of America said.
Novak was the author of numerous books, most prominently the 1982 work The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. He contended that democratic capitalism is “neither the Kingdom of God nor without sin,” but better than all other known systems of political economy.
“Such hope as we have for alleviating poverty and for removing oppressive tyranny — perhaps our last, best hope — lies in this much despised system,” he said.
The book was published around the world and had a particular impact among anti-communist dissidents in Eastern Europe. The book was illegally distributed in Poland by the Solidarity movement, the Washington Post reports.
His other books include Tell Me Why: A Father Answers His Daughter’s Questions About God, a 1998 work he co-authored with his daughter Jana.
Novak wrote on human rights, economic systems, the history of labor unions, U.S. ethnic history, and the role of churches in the modern world.
He was born to a Slovak-American family in Johnstown, Pa. on Sept. 9, 1933. His studies for the priesthood took him to the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and he was ordained for the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1960. Within months of his ordination, he left the priesthood and was later laicized.
He received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Stonehill College, a Bachelor of Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, and a master’s degree in history and the philosophy of religion from Harvard.
Novak worked as a journalist in the early 1960s, writing for the National Catholic Reporter and Commonweal before working for Time Magazine in Rome during the Second Vatican Council. He would go on to serve as an editor at Commonweal and Christian Century magazines, religion editor for National Review, a contributing editor for First Things magazine and editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine.
According to Novak’s website, his political work included the 1968 campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy and speechwriting for Democratic vice presidential nominee Sargent Shriver during Sen. George McGovern’s unsuccessful 1972 presidential campaign. He became an opponent of the Vietnam War after initially supporting intervention.
He would turn away from left-wing politics and the Democratic Party to join the Republican-trending neoconservative school of thought. Under President Ronald Reagan, he was named as U.S. Ambassador to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations and served on the Board of International Broadcasting that oversaw Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Liberty.
He served in multiple academic positions, teaching at Harvard, Stanford, Notre Dame, and Ave Maria University. In the early 1970s, he helped design a new humanities program for the Rockefeller Foundation of New York.
He joined the American Enterprise Institute think tank in 1978, where he worked as a scholar until his retirement in 2010.
Among Novak’s many achievements were his work to launch many academic institutes and seminars, including the Tertio Millennio Seminar that aimed to bring together North American and Eastern European students to discuss Catholic social teaching.
George Weigel, one of Novak’s collaborators, wrote in the National Review that “both Church and nation have lost one of their most imaginative and accomplished sons.”
Weigel remembered Novak “first and foremost” as a teacher, who “offered a model of patient counseling and courteous listening that our students will long remember.”
Novak’s honors include the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.
Ahead of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Novak went to the Vatican to argue that the war would be justified on the grounds of self-defense against Iraq’s then-leader Saddam Hussein. His remarks tried to counter some high-level Vatican critics of a war on Iraq.
Though Novak was careful not to criticize him personally, opponents of the war included St. John Paul II.
At the time, the Los Angeles Times reported that U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Jim Nicholson had brought Novak to Rome for an embassy-sponsored lecture series, but Nicholson stressed that Novak did not represent the U.S. government or its embassies.
Novak is survived by three children and four grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his wife Karen Laub-Novak.
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These Bishops did not learn their sciences as CO2 is essential to plant growth and the development of humis that improves the tilth of the soils. Interesting that the Bishops are so interested in Climate Change while their churches burn and are desecrated by the left with their union between climate change and abortion.
This story absolutely *defies* belief.
I am appalled at our bishops’ fatuousness and arrogance. I mean, what in heaven’s name do they know about climate science as they issue their deep and weighty climactic pronunciamento?
Climate change? Are you kidding me?
A few brief points about climate change.
• The earth’s climate is changing. Duh. It has always changed. And life on earth has always adjusted. That’s what life does. Devastating the economies of entire nations in an impossible quest for an unchanging climate is needlessly imposing misery on humanity. It’s almost as if the left were purposely bringing about poverty. (Raises one eyebrow tellingly.)
• A 1.5-degree warming of the climate in a century is hardly the “existential threat” that the warmists claim. Think of the people now living 60 miles south of your home. That’s what your hometown will be like after a century of warming. Do they “exist” now, even with a climate that’s 1.5 degree warmer than yours? Is their town an uninhabitable hell-on-earth? Are they bursting into flames atop thousand-foot-high sand dunes? No? That’s good information to ponder.
• Carbon dioxide is not a poison. It’s not a pollutant. It’s a necessity for life on earth. Indeed, carbon is the molecule of life. Remember when, in one of the early episodes of ‘Star Trek’, humans were called “carbon units” by the aliens because we are composed to a large degree of carbon? In eons past, the earth did experience significantly higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than we have now. The difference then? Plants thrived, food was plentiful and large mammals literally covered the earth, from pole to pole. In sum, more carbon dioxide equals more plants equals more animals equals a better, less stressful life for all.
• The “scientists” we keep hearing about who are sounding the climate alarm are meteorologists — weathermen. Their climate hysteria is based on computer programs that are not validated. They are closed loops with no way to account for all of the parameters that determine climate now, let alone decades from now. (Such as solar activity, the earth’s magnetic field, etc.) These are the same types of computer programs that predicted that the deaths from COVID-19 would be exponentially higher than what actually came to pass. Lowering all of humanity’s living standards based on such flimsy computer modeling is not just irresponsible. It’s diabolical.
• There are indications that the sun may be entering a period of relative dormancy, as it did for a few hundred years, starting in the fourteenth century. The inactive sun meant less energy released, which led to the Little Ice Age in America and Europe. Rivers and canals in northern Europe froze, vineyards were destroyed, cereal production in Ireland was devastated, and famine hit France. (Interestingly, the cold also caused hardwood trees to grow denser and harder, leading to the remarkable tone of Stradivarius’ string instruments.)
I could go on and on. And on.
For example, about the indications that the earth’s magnetic field may now be in the process of flipping. This will affect how much of the sun’s energy strikes the earth. The problem is, the last time such a thing took place — an event known as the Laschamp excursion — was more than 40,000 years ago. So information on how earth’s climate was affected is hard to come by.
Anyway, it is hard to conclude that our bishops are anything but utter morons, to be wandering so far afield from their area of familiarity.
On the other hand, I wonder if they would be able to advise me on how best to treat my tinnitus. Or what kind of tires to buy. Or a really good recipe for chicken marsala.
Meanwhile, the irrepressible Nancy Pelosi, who is as responsible as anyone for the killing of scores and scores of millions of children around the world, continues to bait her bishop and encourage Catholics to oppose the Church’s teachings, by presenting herself to receive the Eucharist — at the Vatican, of all places. Think our brainiac American bishops would have anything to say about her?
Nah. Why would they.
Do I sound a tad irritated at our bishops? Bitter even?
So be it.
Brineyman – I couldn’t put it ANY better, so I’ll have to suffice with
Ditto
P.S. – We’ll get through this
Excellent, brineyman. Thank you.
Our good bishops are towing the Party line that includes the Dem Party and the Vatican policy on the environment [basically Green]. We never hear the USCCB complain about the open border policy and the multiple travesties of injustice, human suffering, deaths,rapes, child exploitation, the monumental influx of drugs literally murdering our youth [drugs laced with Fentanyl]. Where is the moral admonition to this coming out of this hierarchal forum?
If they decided to candidly assess these issues without bowing to the Party and the Vatican [what can the Vatican do with justice, although unfortunately the pontiff has acted with injustice toward singular bishops in Puerto Rico and elsewhere? However not with a bishops conference, Germany and the Synodal Way is more of a promotion].
The bishops missed the point that the ruling against EPA simply means that legislating must be done by the Congress and not by administrative agencies or the courts. (The celebrated Dobbs decision re-establishes this principle.) This line of demarcation can be a tough one to figure out, given the clumsiness of legal drafting, on the one hand, and on the other hand the complexity and intricacy of the scientific world.
I also concur with Fr. Morello that the bishops have a history of selectivity as to which public policy areas (prudential judgment, not doctrines of the faith or belief) they choose to notice.
But, to help retain the reputation of CWR as partly a credible forum on such lively matters…
I invite readers to supplement Brineyman’s exposition of what “absolutely defies belief” on the meaning of 1.5 degrees Centigrade. In general, yes, natural systems are resilient and not well-modeled, but resilient only within boundary conditions and tipping points which merit informed consideration and forethought. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2865/a-degree-of-concern-why-global-temperatures-matter/
The historic issue might be less one of sunspot cycles than whether the bourgeois model (another imperfect “model”!) of economic development can be forever extended across the face of the earth and into the future, all in an attempt to materially outrun human appetites and conflicts. OR whether Nature, as our silent partner, is actually the last slave culture—which now is signaling to the plantation owners that enough is enough.
In one of his hundreds of letters, St. Augustine sixteen centuries ago, connected in a Christian way our unlimited bucket list and our finite bucket: “the passions are more easily mortified finally in those who love God, than satisfied, even for a time, in those who love the world.”
What, really, should a viable post-modern world really look like?
Peter, your point certainly merits consideration.
But you’re talking about boundaries that are not apparent yet and are, in the end, impossible to pinpoint ahead of time.
I say we should trust to God and human ingenuity to deal with whatever problems arise in the future — that is, if they do arise at all.
In the meantime, we should avoid ruining economies and starving masses of people in a vain attempt to stabilize inherently unstable global climate conditions.
Yes, six of one, half-dozen of the other…
But, rather than the hubris of allegedly attempting to “stabilize inherently unstable global climate conditions,” might the better question be largely one of (a) adapting fundamentally (but not “ruining”), AND (b) earlier rather than later, BECAUSE boundaries “hard to pinpoint ahead of time,” AND (c) possibly not aggravating things along the way (established restraints on over-harvesting, for example, which are not entirely new or “beyond belief”)?
I would agree that the bishops are not climatologists. Always difficult to raise the moral dimension of solidarity in a technical world, while also respecting–what’s that word again, oh yes–boundaries. Especially when abandoned by the likely more expert laity (e.g., the Land O’ Lakes Declaration).
Perhaps, if framed properly, the Church is arguing for, yes, imperfect but responsible prudential judgment, with sufficient lead time? This call is well within the bounds of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and the moral virtues on which the CST is based (temperance, courage, fortitude—and prudence), not ideology.
As for your “human ingenuity,” St. John Paul II celebrates this part of the equation with you (!), in Centesimus Annus (1991):
“In our time, in particular, there exists another form of ownership which is becoming no less important than land: the possession of know-how, technological skill [italics]. The wealth of the industrialized nations is based much more on this kind of ownership than on natural resources”; “Man himself, that is, his knowledge, especially his scientific knowledge, his capacity for interrelated and compact organization, as well as his ability to perceive the needs [not market demands?] of others and to satisfy them” (n. 32), [involving an “interdisciplinary” conversation where] “humanity today must be conscious of its duties and obligations toward future generations” (n. 37), etc.
But, again, ingenuity is not hubris or unquestioned momentum. Just how ‘interrelated and compact” are things, really? A good question even if it is raised by morons. The Dust Bowl happened.
I appreciate your thoughtful comments, Peter, and I largely agree with you. You are certainly better versed in theology than I.
And I think you realize I’m not advocating for untrammeled, abusive exploitation of resources.
I’m just pointing out that the climate change argument is badly flawed and that the draconian measures that warmists are calling for would be onerous to humanity — especially the poor — and would very likely serve no purpose other than to further consolidate political power in the hands of a few.