Joe Feuerherd, publisher and editor-in-chief of National Catholic Reporter (NCR), died last Thursday after a long fight with cancer. His presence in the lives of so many of us who work and study the intersection of the Catholic faith, the Church, and American public life was extraordinary.
Joe and I may have originally met in the early '80's. As he was finishing his undergraduate work at The Catholic University of America in those years, I was simultaneously arriving to take up a professor's post. At that time Joe was interning for NCR at their Washington office in the National Press Building on 14th Street. But, if our paths crossed in the '80s, neither Joe nor I were ever quite sure -- although we often reminisced about mutual acquaintances (students, faculty, Msgr. George Higgins, and Fr. Bill Byron) and reminisced as well about events and turmoil from the university life of that decade. Joe later wrote of his NCR internship saying that "I made the coffee, sorted mail, answered phones, clipped newspapers -- and grabbed whatever reporting assignments I could finagle."
He got his first byline with NCR in 1984 in an article describing the faith community's reaction to Reagan's invasion of Grenada. In March of this year, his last byline appeared above a column praising Archbishop Timothy Dolan's handling of the controversy swirling around New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's personal life. Between these bylines is found an amazing virtuosity of journalism, everything from uncovering CIA payments to Central American prelates to revealing the politics behind Karl Rove's Catholic outreach strategy. Joe became editor and publisher of NCR in 2008, determined both to reinvigorate the paper's roots in hard-hitting reporting on the Catholic Church and equally determined to push its transition into the 21st century's new technologies and social media. He was especially keen to maintain NCR's independence. It remains the only Catholic newspaper in America whose governance does not include Church leadership.
I really came to know Joe well beginning in 2005 when I took over as director of a university center -- now called the Institute for Policy Research & Catholics Studies. He was then the Washington correspondent for NCR and, as the institute became more involved in contemporary issues of public policy, Joe was a regular at the institute's events, symposia, and press conferences. We began to meet at the Press Club (his favorite haunt) for lunch. But, Joe and I both lived in the near-in Washington suburb of Kensington, and eventually the Donut King on Connecticut Avenue became our occasional healthy breakfast spot. We talked of politics and the Church, of history and philosophy and theology, and of our own efforts and vocations. When he assumed the publisher's job, we talked about his efforts and plans for NCR and mine for trying to forge ahead with the institute. He wanted NCR to be the place for the freshest Catholic news, but also where Catholic scholars and leaders joined in a wide-ranging (but always pithy and issue-oriented) conversation about the place of the Church in the contemporary world. I remember only one brief mention of his cancer, which he brushed aside in conversation as if it were no more than a pesky gnat.
Joe's presence will be sorely missed. The Church in America has lost an extraordinary friend -- the kind of friend we all treasure: the one who loves us wholeheartedly, who cheers loudly for our every success, but who also has that courage and sublime charity to intervene and speak up when we have done something stupid. Joe, more so than anyone I ever knew, understood the dynamics of the Church's place in American public and political life. He "got it" in a way few do, informed equally by faith and by patriotism, and he made it look easy. Imagine what NCR might have come to be for the Church and America after a few decades of his leadership.
Our hearts and prayers go out to Joe's wife, Becky, to his three children, and to all his family and friends.
Lord, may your angels welcome him into paradise.
