Newman, John Henry (1801-1890), Venerable, Cardinal, Catholic and Anglican Apologist, Man of Letters. 
By Dr. Mary Katherine Tillman, Notre Dame University
Catholic Free Shipping does not presume to take credit for the authorship of the following biography.
Born in London, raised with bible religion, Newman experienced
conversion at fifteen: luminous awareness of himself and God impressions
of creed and dogma, calling to single life. He studied classics and
mathematics at Trinity College, Oxford, there developing his evangelical
beliefs along Calvinist lines. Ordained an Anglican priest, he became
vicar of the university church, St. Mary the Virgin. Fellow and tutor
of Oriel College, Oxford, he was influenced by rationalist scholars
whose methods included logic and evidences to prove religious matters.
Patristic studies, Joseph Butler's Analogy of Religion, friendships,
illness, his sister's death, gradually separated him from the liberal
leanings of Oriel, centering him in high church or Anglo-Catholic
tradition. In 1832 he published his first book, The Arians of the
Fourth Century, and, on a Mediterranean voyage, wrote many religious
poems (Lyra Apostolica). Recovered from grave illness in Sicily, he
returned to England to become leader of the Oxford Movement.
From 1833 to 1841, Newman prolifically defended the Via Media of the
Anglican church. The far reaching “Tracts for the Times against Popery
and Dissent” were complemented by his legendary Parochial and Plain
Sermons delivered at St. Mary's. He published Lectures on the
Prophetical Office viewed relatively to Romanism and Popular
Protestantism, and became editor of the Movement's journal, The British
Critic. His and the Movement's last Tract, number ninety, proposing a
Catholic reading of the “Thirty-nine Articles,” was denounced by church
and university. The effect of this blow, other disappointments and
doubts, further study of the early church, resulted in resignation from
his position and clerical status. After years of intellectual and
spiritual struggle, Newman became a Catholic in 1845 while completing An
Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, which showed continuity
from the church of antiquity to the Catholic church of the nineteenth
century.
Newman went to Rome to study theology for Catholic priesthood, entered
and brought to England the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, published two
novels of conversion, Loss and Gain (1848) and Callista (1855), and two
volumes on ecumenical relations in England, Lectures on Certain
Difficulties felt by Anglicans in submitting to the Catholic Church
(1850), Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England (1851).
From 1851 to 1858, Newman founded and presided over the
Catholic University of Ireland, justifying Catholic liberal education in the now
classic Idea of a University. In 1859 he founded the
Birmingham Oratory School for boys, became editor of the Rambler, published a defense of
the laity, “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine” (1859),
was reported to Rome for it and asked to resign the editorship.
After four years of relative silence, Newman was aroused by Charles
Kingsley's published accusation that Newman and the Roman clergy were
indifferent to truth and cultivated deception. Newman responded with
the Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864), disclosing the history of his
religious opinions from childhood, defending both reason and authority
with rhetorical magnificence. Enthusiastic response from Anglicans and
Catholics reinstated Newman in the public mind. In 1865 he published
“The Dream of Gerontius,” a long poem about immediate life after death,
and “Letter to Pusey” on Marian devotion. His most philosophical work,
An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870), aimed at justifying
religious faith by describing how ordinary minds think, assent, and
reach certitude.
Newman declined the invitation by bishops and Pope to serve as
theological consultant for the First Vatican Council. As Catholic, he
had always believed in papal infallibility, but opposed its conciliar
definition saying the Church was not yet ready and episcopal intrigue
too dominant. Newman accepted the definition of 1870, pleased with its
moderation. His “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk” (1875) defended both
the doctrine and Catholic conscience in Anglican England. His last
major contribution to ecclesiology was the 1877 Preface to The
Prophetical Office, now retitled The Via Media, in which he detailed the
Church's three offices and their interrelations: the prophetic,
exercised by theologians; the priestly, by laity; the governing, by pope
and magisterium.
In 1878 Newman became first honorary fellow of Trinity College, Oxford.
In 1879 Pope Leo XIII made him cardinal and, in accepting,
Newman singled out as his lifelong work the battle against liberalism,
the usurpations of reason in matters of religion. His cardinalate motto
was “Cor ad cor loquitur” (Heart speaks to heart). After physical
decline, Newman died in 1890. The inscription on his grave at Rednal
reads: “Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem” (Out of shadows and
images into truth). Newman's Letters and Diaries (1961-84), when
complete, will comprise thirty-one of his nearly eighty published
volumes.
Man of solitude, man of action, Newman possessed tremendous capacity
for friendship and human sympathy. A thinker of great assimilative
power, originality and genius, he is one of the foremost stylists of the
English language, his writings rich in psychological subtlety,
illustration, and satire. He was interested in the personal character
of all mental acts; the influence of mind upon mind; the sacred duty of
developing one's gifts; liberal education as the cultivation of the
healthy mind. His method of investigation included exploring extremes,
balancing antagonistic principles, reasoning concretely through the
convergence of antecedent probabilities.
Newman's spirituality emphasized conscience as connecting principle
between self and God, the Holy Spirit's indwelling in individuals and
church, the gospel “Image of Christ,” God's particular providence,
devotion to Mary and the saints, and patience. He celebrated the
reality of the invisible world, the sacramentality of the visible world,
the holiness of everyday life in consistent fulfillment of one's duties,
through friendship and personal influence, not as much by words as by
actions.
Newman's thought had significant influence at the Second Vatican
Council, particularly his ecclesiology, ecumenism, theory of doctrinal
development, defense of conscience, theology of the laity. Pope John
Paul II declared him “venerable” in 1991.
Newman and His Age
This
scholarly biography of Cardinal Newman by Sheridan Gilley charts the
relations of the great academics, ecclesiastics, and writers of
Newman's day with him against the background of Oxford in the 1820's
and 30's, including the Tractarian Movement and Roman Catholic revivals.
