In an informal conversation after the lecture, one of the students asked [Paul] Tillich what it felt like to be famous. “Famous?” he responded. “I’m not famous. My idea of being famous is that I get into a New York taxi and the driver turns around and says, ‘Aren’t you Professor Tillich?’ That has never happened to me.” Some years ago I got into a taxi and the driver asked, “Aren’t you Father Neuhaus?” Ah, I thought, this is it. Then the driver explained that his sister-in-law is a parishioner at Immaculate Conception, the church where I regularly say Mass, and she had complained to him about my too long homilies. Sic transit gloria.

I’ve been saying the same thing for a long time, so it’s gratifying to see I’m in good company: First Things’ section “The Public Square” was the first blog, albeit in print. Richard John Neuhaus tries to deny that fact on First Things’ new web-blog (that supposedly also isn’t a blog; whatever it is, it’s certain to be frequently viewed in my feed reader):

Andrew Sullivan — who could be a much nicer and more sensible person if he really tried — once remarked that, as the writer of The Public Square, I was the world’s first blogger. That is not true.