Life & Wisdom Quote by Richard John Neuhaus

Neuhaus is doing a tightrope act: acknowledging the mess without granting it the drama of a breakup. “My eyes are wide open” is a credibility play, a preemptive strike against the charge of denial. He positions himself as neither naive nor partisan, someone who has seen the infighting up close and still refuses to join the panic merchants. The second clause is the real move. By disputing the word “schism,” he isn’t merely quibbling over vocabulary; he’s trying to keep a conflict from hardening into an identity.

In Catholic life, labels matter because they don’t just describe reality, they create it. Call something a schism and you’ve already begun sorting people into camps, legitimizing defection, and inviting the media’s favorite narrative: the Church as a political party splitting into rival caucuses. Neuhaus, who spent his career translating Catholic arguments into the language of American public life, understood how quickly internal theological disputes could be reframed as culture-war fragmentation. His wording is a brake pedal.

The subtext is pastoral and strategic at once: yes, there are bitter fights - likely over authority, liturgy, sexuality, and the Church’s posture toward modern liberalism - but the bonds of communion still hold. He’s also implying a threshold: conflict is normal, even constitutive, but schism is a specific, catastrophic act of rupture. By refusing the headline, Neuhaus is trying to prevent the diagnosis from becoming the disease.