Bishop Richard John Neuhaus? Read carefully...

You have to read carefully sometimes. I just about fell off my chair reading the First Things blog this morning when I came across this throw-away line by Richard John Neuhaus "Now that I am to be a bishop, I will have to be more judicious in what I say." My reaction: "What the?! When did that get anounced? How could I have missed that?"

I missed it by skipping the opening paragraph of the blog, which read:

Some Muslims in America are unhappy with us. And apparently they know something I don’t. This from The American Muslim:

“The most extreme and most sophisticated example of patronizing intolerance in contemporary America, because it most starkly illustrates the reversal of truth and falsehood, was Michael Novak’s seminal article in the April 2003 issue of America’s leading journal on religion in public life, First Things. Its founder, Bishop Richard John Neuhaus, a convert from Lutheranism to Catholicism, changed the environment in Washington by his enormously influential book, The Naked Public Square. This journal and its elite pundits are today the world’s most influential force in shaping policy toward the role of religion, including Islam.”

Neuhaus wryly comments:

I’m waiting to hear from the Vatican on my elevation to the episcopate.

Ah well, no Bishop RJN then. For a moment there, I had a small hope he might have been coming down under to help out with our local shortage.