I was saddened to see that William F Buckley Jnr has died, aged 82.

I used to enjoy his program  Firing Line (1966-99) on the TV, when I was in the States, more than 40 years ago.

He made being an intellectual Catholic respectable, as he could hold his own and defend Catholicism eloquently and cogently.  He was a man of culture, a brilliant debater and a loyal Catholic of Irish-American stock, educated in Yale.

American Catholicism it seems to me (as I have written  before)  sometimes appears anti-intellectual, anti-scholarship, anti-learning and anti-education. 

Thus it was encouraging to see a man of the calibre of Buckley representing a Catholic educated lay man with sincere religious beliefs, which he could defend so well.

May the Lord have mercy on him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/business/media/27cnd-buckley.html?ex=1219726800&en=d5816ae143a999ec&ei=5087&excamp=GGBUbuckley&WT.srch=1&WT.mc_ev=click&WT.mc_id=BI-S-E-GG-NA-S-buckley