Religion
In keeping with his Catholic upbringing and Jesuit education, Burns regularly read the works of prominent religious commentators, like Richard John Neuhaus (1936-2009), an Evangelical Lutheran minister who converted to Catholicism in 1990. That same year, Neuhaus founded the Institute on Religion and Public Life and its influential ecumenical journal, First Things, which aimed “to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.”
Neuhaus’s 1992 volume Doing Well and Doing Good promotes a “new capitalism” informed by Catholic social teaching and the vision of Pope John Paul II. The dustjacket includes endorsements from William F. Buckley, Jr. and J. Peter Grace, among others. Grace was a Catholic industrialist, presidential advisor, and friend of Burns’s father (the letter from Grace displayed here was tucked into the autobiography of Hearst, shown to the left).
Historian John T. McGreevy, Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame, is the author of three books and numerous articles on American Jesuits and Catholic encounters with slavery and race. McGreevy was presented with the inaugural George E. Ganss, SJ Award in Jesuit Studies at Boston College in 2015.
Richard John Neuhaus, Doing Well and Doing Good: The Challenge to the Christian Capitalist (New York: Doubleday, 1992). BX1753.N484 1992
