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Cigars With Father Neuhaus

  • RUSSELL E. SALTZMAN

A shared (bad) habit, a Lenten promise and a friendship remembered.


If you have two, three hours you'd like to waste someday, I can relate for you all the times I unsuccessfully quit smoking.  I used all the stop-smoking aids available and, well, in a somewhat prideful sense, I overpowered every one of them: patches, lozenges, gum, hypnosis; the entire array.

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, a friend of long-standing, had the same problem.  He tried unsuccessfully as well and failed successive times.  He thought he could quit simply by sheer strength of will, pure mental determination — pretty much the way he tackled most subjects that challenged his personal and intellectual interests.  He conquered them and demanded their surrender.  Which, incidentally, explains why he had a baby grand piano in his apartment; he bought it not knowing how to play it.  He took lessons so he could, which was fine except in all the time I knew Richard, I never knew him to have a sense of rhythm, and if the absence of a singing voice can be called a singing voice, that's what it was.  Mostly, he invited guests to play it.

One year, 1997, back to smoking, in my own desperation I turned to prayer and self-denial to rid myself of the devil weed.  I would give up cigars for Lent, yes, my precious Between the Acts cigar brand that years before Richard had introduced to me.  (Best little cigar out there, by the way — but of course, no, no, no, you shouldn't smoke it, ever, really.)

I prepped for weeks before Ash Wednesday.  I did a mental countdown.  How many cigars were left that I could smoke between Epiphany and Transfiguration Sunday before Ash Wednesday?  I don't remember, but I remember I had the number.  I timed my purchases to match — one last cigar before the service, and nothing afterward.  I was ready and determined, fierce in the cause.  I shared the news with parishioners and friends, everyone except Neuhaus, as it turned out.

On Tuesday before Ash Wednesday I dropped by the post office to get mail.  There was a large box from Richard.  Enclosed were six cartons of Between the Acts, and a note.  He said he was giving up cigars for Lent and thought I would appreciate his abandoned stash.

This, as I prefer to still understand it, was God's sign saying that 1997 was not going to be the year I gave up cigars.  It wasn't Richard's year, either.  When I visited that fall, we sat on his patio on a mild afternoon and drank some Scotch and smoked our cigars.  The poet, whose name I cannot place, said it:

daring me on
with whiskey and cigar
to the pack camaraderie
of manhood

This is Meaghen Gonzalez, Editor of CERC. I hope you appreciated this piece. We curate these articles especially for believers like you.

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Acknowledgement

Russell E. Saltzman. "Cigars With Father Neuhaus." Aleteia (January 26, 2016).

Reprinted with permission of Aleteia

The Author

saltzman Russell E. Saltzman is a former Lutheran pastor, a former dean of the North American Lutheran Church, and a former editor of the august Lutheran publication Forum Letter. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri and writes for First Things.  He became a Roman Catholic in 2014.

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