“1. Orestes Brownson (1803–1876)
New England public-spirited intellectual. “Catholics are better fitted by their religion to comprehend the real character of the American constitution than any other class of Americans.” Calvinist convert to Universalism and then Catholicism.
2. John Courtney Murray (1904-1967)
New York Jesuit theologian. “America has raised the standard of living to historically unknown heights. …We have multiplied our needs endlessly and thereby multiplied our sorrows.”
3. John Senior (1923-1999)
Columbia University student of Mark Van Doren whose University of Kansas great books program “made converts without proselytizing.” Kansas’ state motto “To the stars, through difficulty” inspired him.
4. Avery Dulles (1918-2008)
Convert Jesuit theologian and cardinal, son of John Foster Dulles. Warning against “excessive and indiscreet accommodation,” he said, “Catholicism will be well-advised to cultivate a measured, prudent counterculturalism.”
5. James Schall (1928-)
Prolific Jesuit political philosopher. “No one will seek the highest [things] if he believes that there is no truth, that nothing is his fault, and that government will guarantee his wants.”
6. Ralph McInerny (1929-2010)
Notre Dame philosophy professor, novelist, poet and translator of Aquinas. Said McInerny: “It is the writing, producing a well-made story, that counts. All the rest is gravy.”
7. Richard John Neuhaus (1936-2009)
Canadian-Texan public-spirited intellectual. “Once religion is reduced to nothing more than privatized conscience, the public square has only two actors in it — the state and the individual.”
8. Mary Anne Glendon (1938-)
Harvard law professor, Vatican ambassador. “All who are ... committed to the advancement of women can and must offer a woman or a girl who is pregnant, frightened, and alone a better alternative than the destruction of her own unborn child.”
9. George Weigel (1951-)
Papal biographer, public-spirited intellectual. “Ideas are not intellectuals’ toys: ideas have consequences, for good and for ill, in what even intellectuals sometimes call ‘the real world.’”
10. Robert P. George (1955-)
Princeton jurisprudence professor. “The impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture.””
Great research, thanks.