Michael Novak, R.I.P.

Catholic theologian, writer, scholar and one-time Ambassador to the UN Commission on Human Rights Michael Novak has died of cancer at the age of 83.

I once had the privilege of hearing Novak speak when I attended the Robert L. Bartley Dinner organized by The American Spectator in Washington, D.C. in November 2012. Unfortunately, Novak's voice was frail and hearing him was something of a challenge.

But it's not every man who influences the thought of Presidents, Popes & Dissidents. Novak is one of the few people who can make such a claim.

I haven't read as much Novak as I ought to given that he was one of the original neoconservatives. But I did make a point of reading one of his last books Writing from Left to Right: My Journey from Liberal to Conservative. Novak was a man of The Left who saw them in action and recoiled in horror at their effect on academia, culture, turning a blind eye to Communism and ignoring the excesses of the welfare state and embraced conservatism despite remaining a lifelong Democrat.

Separation of church and state is important, but temporal economics and politics does require guidance from a higher authority from time to time. Perhaps more than any other writer over the past half century, Michael Novak made the case there was room for a spiritual dimension in both economics and politics. The question is who will be able to make that case in his permanent absence. R.I.P.