Saint John Henry Newman

ST. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

John Henry Newman was a prominent English theologian and cardinal who founded the Oratory in England. He was known for his conversion to Catholicism and his deep intellectual writings on faith and reason.

Education and upbringing Newman was born in the City of London on February 21, 1801, the eldest of three sons and three daughters.John Newman, his father, worked as a banker in Lombard Street for Ramsbottom, Newman and Company.Jemima (née Fourdrinier), his mother, came from a prominent Huguenot refugee family in England that was established by the engraver, printer, and stationer Paul Fourdrinier.Francis William Newman was one of his older brothers.Harriet Elizabeth, his younger sister, got married to Thomas Mozley, a prominent member of the Oxford Movement as well.The Bloomsbury family bought a country retreat in Ham, close to Richmond, in the early 1800s. They lived in Southampton Street, which is now Southampton Place.

Newman attended George Nicholas' Great Ealing School when he was seven years old.Walter Mayers was the classics instructor, and George Huxley, the father of Thomas Henry Huxley, taught mathematics there.Newman did not participate in the informal school games.He enjoyed reading Robert Southey and Walter Scott's novels, both of which were in the process of being published at the time.He read skeptical works by Thomas Paine, David Hume, and possibly Voltaire when he was 14 years old.

Evangelical Newman converted to Evangelical Christianity when he was 15 and in his senior year of high school. He wrote in his Apologia that his conversion was "more certain than that I have hands or feet."His father left to run a brewery, and almost simultaneously, in March 1816, the bank Ramsbottom, Newman and Co. failed, despite paying its creditors.Books from the English Calvinist tradition were loaned to Newman by Mayers, who had also converted in 1814.Newman was influenced by a specific creed in the fall of 1816, and he began to develop impressions of dogma that he would never forget.Under the influence of Thomas Newton's writings and his reading of Joseph Milner's History of the Church of Christ, he converted to evangelical Calvinism and held the common belief that the Pope was the antichrist.Mayers is described as moderate and a Calvinist from the Clapham Sect. Newman also read devotional literature by William Law and William Beveridge.Additionally, he read Thomas Scott's The Force of Truth.

Newman gradually moved away from his early Calvinism, even though he looked back on his conversion to Evangelical Christianity in 1816 as the saving of his soul until the very end of his life."He came to see Evangelicalism, with its emphasis on religious feeling and on the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone, as a Trojan horse for an undogmatic religious individualism that ignored the Church's role in the transmission of revealed truth, and that must lead inexorably to subjectivism and skepticism," according to Eamon Duffy.

At Lincoln's Inn, Newman entered his university name.However, he was quickly sent to Trinity College in Oxford, where he studied extensively.His desire to succeed in the final schools led to the opposite outcome;Under Thomas Vowler Short, he failed the exam and received his BA "under the line" (with a lower second-class honors grade in Classics and a failure to be classified in the mathematical papers).

Newman took private students and studied for a fellowship at Oriel College, which was then "the acknowledged centre of Oxford intellectualism." He wanted to stay in Oxford.On April 12, 1822, he was selected to be a fellow at Oriel.In 1823, Edward Bouverie Pusey was made a fellow at the same college.

Ministry within the Anglican Church On June 13, 1824, Newman was ordained a deacon at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford.Ten days later, while visiting his former teacher, the Reverend Walter Mayers, who had served as the church's curate there since 1823, he delivered his first sermon at Holy Trinity Church in Over Worton, Oxfordshire, near Banbury.He was ordained a priest by the Bishop of Oxford, Edward Legge, at Christ Church Cathedral on Trinity Sunday, May 29, 1825.Pusey suggested that he become the curate of St. Clement's Church in Oxford.He worked here for two years and wrote articles for the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana about "Miracles," "Cicero," and Apollonius of Tyana.

The Oriel Noetics were a group of dons who held a strong belief in free speech and were led by Richard Whately and Edward Copleston, Provost of Oriel.Newman was appointed vice-principal of St. Alban Hall in 1825 at Whately's request, but he only held this position for a year.At the time, he credited Whately with much of his "mental improvement" and partial conquering of his shyness.

In 1826, Newman returned to Oriel as a tutor, and that same year, Richard Hurrell Froude, whom Newman referred to as "one of the acutest, cleverest, and deepest men" he had ever met, was elected fellow there. George Richmond painted this portrait of Newman in 1844.Tensions in the college resulted from the two's high ideal of the tutorial office as clerical and pastoral rather than secular.Newman worked with Whately on his popular 1826 work Elements of Logic, which was originally written for the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana. He gained a firm understanding of the Christian Church as an institution from Whately:a divine appointment and a substantive body with its own rights, prerogatives, and powers, independent of the state.

On the occasion of Robert Peel's re-election as University Member of Parliament in 1827, Newman broke off his relationship with Whately:Peel was opposed by Newman personally.Newman was a preacher at Whitehall in 1827.

In 1828, Newman supported Edward Hawkins and won his election as Provost of Oriel over John Keble.He said later that this decision led to the Oxford Movement and all of its repercussions.Pusey was promoted to Regius Professor of Hebrew in the same year that Newman was appointed vicar of St. Mary's University Church, which was part of the benefice of Littlemore, south of Oxford.

Even though Newman was still formally associated with the Evangelicals at this time, his opinions were gradually taking on a more ecclesiastical tone.According to George Herring, Newman was profoundly affected by his sister Mary's death in January.He worked hard during the middle of the year to read the Church Fathers thoroughly.

Newman circulated an anonymous letter as the local secretary of the Church Missionary Society that suggested a strategy for Anglican clergy to practically eliminate Nonconformists from all control of the society.On March 8, 1830, he was fired from his position as a result;Newman completed his departure from the low church group when he withdrew from the Bible Society three months later.From 1831 to 1832, Newman was the university's "Select Preacher."His disagreement with Hawkins regarding the "substantially religious nature" of a college tutorship grew so pronounced in 1832 that he resigned.

Mediterranean travels In December 1832, due to the health of Archdeacon Robert Froude and his son Hurrell, Newman went with them on a tour of southern Europe.They went to Gibraltar, Malta, the Ionian Islands, Sicily, Naples, and Rome on the mail steamship Hermes. It was in Rome that Newman met Nicholas Wiseman.He wrote to his parents from Rome, calling it "the most wonderful place on Earth," but he also called the Roman Catholic Church "polytheistic, degrading, and idolatrous."

The majority of Newman's short poems, which were published in the Lyra Apostolica a year later, were written during this tour.In April, Newman went back to Sicily alone from Rome rather than accompanying the Froudes home.At Leonforte, he contracted gastric or typhoid fever, which put him in danger, but he recovered convinced that God still had work for him to do in England.This was Newman's third unforeseen illness, he believed.He took an orange boat from Palermo to Marseille in June 1833, but it capsized in the Strait of Bonifacio.The verses of the hymn "Lead, Kindly Light" were written by Newman here.

The main article in the Times tracts:William Charles Ross's Tracts for the Times portrait of Newman Newman returned to Oxford on July 9, 1833, and on July 14, Keble delivered an assize sermon at St. Mary's on "National Apostasy," which Newman regarded as the beginning of the Oxford Movement."Keble who inspired, Froude who gave the impetus, and Newman who took up the work," according to Richard William Church.However, Hugh James Rose, editor of the British Magazine and dubbed "the Cambridge originator of the Oxford Movement," was responsible for its initial organization.Rose went to Oxford to look for magazine contributors and met people from the Oxford Movement. On July 25 and 26, a meeting of High Church clergy met in his rectory house in Hadleigh, Suffolk (Newman was not there, but Hurrell Froude, Arthur Philip Perceval, and William Palmer had come to visit Rose). At the meeting, it was decided to fight for "the apostolical succession and the integrity of the Prayer Book."

A few weeks later, Newman apparently started the Tracts for the Times on his own, from which the movement was later dubbed "Tractarian."Its objective was to provide the Church of England with a solid foundation for doctrine and discipline.The specter of disestablishment, or the departure of high churchmen, had been raised at the time by the state's financial stance toward the Church of Ireland.Newman's Sunday afternoon sermons at St. Mary's added to the teaching of the tracts. Over the course of eight years, these sermons had a greater impact, particularly on the more inexperienced students at the university.Pusey joined the movement in 1835, which became known as the "Puseyite" movement because of its emphasis on ritual observance.The London-based Rivington house published the tracts through Francis Rivington.

The Tractarians formed as an activist group in 1836 to oppose Renn Dickson Hampden's appointment as Regius Professor of Divinity.Joseph Blanco White assisted in the preparation of Hampden's 1832 Bampton Lectures, which were regarded as heretical;Elucidations of Dr. Hampden's Theological Statements, a pamphlet published by Newman, heightened this suspicion.

The British Critic's editor at the time was Newman.In addition, he gave lectures in a side chapel of St. Mary's to support the via media ("middle way") of Anglicanism between popular Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

Opposition and doubts Newman dominated Oxford around the year 1839.Just then, however, his study of monophysitism caused him to doubt whether Anglican theology was consistent with the principles of ecclesiastical authority which he had come to accept.He read Nicholas Wiseman's article in the Dublin Review titled "The Anglican Claim," in which Augustine of Hippo was quoted as saying, "the verdict of the world is conclusive" in opposition to the Donatists.Later, Newman wrote about his reaction:

St. Augustine's words struck me with a power I had never experienced before from words, even for a single sentence.They were like the 'Tolle, lege,—Tolle, lege,' of the child, which converted St Augustine himself. 'Secure justice for the earth!The theology of the Via Media was completely crushed by those powerful words of the ancient Father, which interpreted and summarized the lengthy and varied course of ecclesiastical history. (Apologia, Part 5) Newman began to consider leaving Oxford after the eccentric John Brande Morris preached for him in St. Mary's in September 1839, causing a stir.The establishment of a religious community outside of Oxford in Littlemore was one of the ideas that surfaced.Newman had a chapel (dedicated to the Saints) since he accepted his position at St. Mary's.Nicholas and Mary) and a school were built in the neglected area of the parish.In 1835, Newman's mother laid the groundwork on a half-acre plot and a donation of £100 from Oriel College.In 1836, Newman intended to appoint Oriel man Charles Pourtales Golightly as Littlemore's curate.Golightly, on the other hand, had been offended by one of Newman's sermons and joined an aggressive anti-Catholic group.As a result, Littlemore's curate was Isaac Williams, who was succeeded by John Rouse Bloxam from 1837 to 1840, when the school opened.From 1840 on, William John Copeland served as the curate.

Newman remained a controversial High Anglican until 1841, when he published Tract 90, which turned out to be the last book in the series.According to this in-depth analysis of the Thirty-Nine Articles, the negators did not target Catholicism's official creed, but rather popular misconceptions and exaggerations.Archibald Campbell Tait and three other senior tutors, despite the fact that this was not entirely new, condemned it as "suggesting and opening a way by which men might violate their solemn engagements to the university."The commotion was shared by other high-ranking officials and house heads.The Tracts' publication was halted at the Bishop of Oxford's request, Richard Bagot.

Retreating to Littlemore, Newman also resigned as editor of the British Critic and was "on his deathbed as regards membership with the Anglican Church" from that point on.He now thought that the Anglicans' position in the Arian debate was similar to the semi-Arians'.He saw the establishment of a joint Anglican-Lutheran bishopric in Jerusalem as additional proof that the Church of England was not apostolic.

In 1842, Newman and a small group of followers moved to College Lane, Littlemore, where he established a semi-monastic life.John Dobree Dalgairns was the first person to join him there.William Lockhart, who took Henry Manning's advice, Ambrose St. John in 1843, Frederick Oakeley, and Albany James Christie in 1845 were additional individuals.Stables and a granary for stage coaches were among the modified structures that the group constructed in the area that is now College Lane, Littlemore, directly in front of the inn.It was referred to by Newman College as "the house of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Littlemore."Newman attempted to downplay the public interest in this "Anglican monastery," but some gave it the nickname Newmanooth (derived from Maynooth College).While Newman himself worked on finishing an Essay on the development of doctrine, some of his disciples wrote about English saints.

In February 1843, Newman published an anonymous but formal retractation of all of his harsh remarks about Roman Catholicism in the Oxford Conservative Journal as an advertisement.Lockhart was the first member of the group to officially convert to Catholicism.On September 25, Newman delivered the valedictory "The Parting of Friends," his final Anglican sermon at Littlemore, and he resigned from St. Mary's. However, he did not leave Littlemore for two more years until he was officially accepted into the Catholic Church.

Conversion to Catholicism After a gap of two years, Dominic Barberi, an Italian Passionist, received Newman into the Catholic Church on October 9, 1845, at the college in Littlemore.Newman's conversion had significant personal repercussions:He had shattered relationships with family and friends, and his Oxford circle's views of him became divided.Some scholars believe that Oxford's dominance of the Tractarian movement and Newman's leading role are overstated, so the impact on the movement as a whole is still up for debate.After 1845, Tractarian writings circulated widely and remained in print well beyond the range of personal contacts with the most prominent Oxford figures. Additionally, a large number of Tractarian clergy members remained recruited into the Church of England.

Oratorian In February 1846, Newman moved to St. Mary's College in Oscott, where Nicholas Wiseman, who was at the time the vicar-apostolic of the Midland district, lived.He also went to Rome in October, where Cardinal Giacomo Filippo Fransoni ordained him as a priest and Pope Pius IX conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Divinity.Newman returned to England as an oratorian at the conclusion of 1847, initially settling in Maryvale, which is now home to Maryvale Institute, a college of Theology, Philosophy, and Religious Education;then at Cheadle's St. Wilfrid's College;and then at St. Anne's in Birmingham's Alcester Street.He eventually made his home in Edgbaston, where he lived for nearly forty years in solitude—with the exception of four years in Ireland—in spacious community buildings.

Statue in front of the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in London, more commonly referred to as the Brompton Oratory. Newman established the London Oratory with Father Frederick William Faber as its superior before the house at Edgbaston was occupied.

Lectures on the Current Position of Catholics in England Anti-Catholicism had been an important part of British culture since the English Reformation in the 16th century.Anti-Catholicism was "an integral part of what it meant to be a Victorian," according to D. G. Paz.

In the pastoral letter "From out of the Flaminian Gate," Wiseman made the announcement on October 7 that the Pope had restored the Catholic hierarchy in England.

The British press, led by Punch and The Times, interpreted this as an attempt by the papacy to reclaim control over England.The term "Papal Aggression" was given to this.In a public letter to the Bishop of Durham, prime minister John Russell condemned this "attempt to impose a foreign yoke upon our minds and consciences."

Catholics should "make the excuse of this persecution for getting up a great organization, going round the towns giving lectures, or making speeches," according to Newman, who was keen for lay people to lead any public apologetics.

Newman booked the Birmingham Corn Exchange for a series of public lectures on his own initiative.He made the decision to make their tone popular and offer attendees inexpensive off-prints.These were his Lectures on the Current Position of Catholics in England. He gave nine lectures all together:

The nine chapters of the published book consist of the Protestant view of the Catholic Church: Tradition as the Protestant view's sustaining power; Fable as the Protestant view's foundation; True testimony as insufficient for the Protestant view; Logical inconsistency as the Protestant view's basis; Prejudice as the Protestant view's life; Assumed principles as the intellectual ground of the Protestant view; Ignorance as to Catholics; Protection as the Protestant view; Duties of Catholics as the Protestant view.Following the Achilli trial, "they were decided by a jury to constitute a libel, June 24, 1852," several paragraphs were removed from the first edition.

"An analysis of this [anti-Catholic] ideology, satirizing it, demonstrating the false traditions on which it was based and advising Catholics how they should respond to it" is how Andrew Nash describes the Lectures.In English literature, they were the first of their kind."

The Lectures are rated by John Wolffe as:

an interesting take on the issue of anti-Catholicism from an observer who had the advantage of seeing the religious conflict from both sides of the tortured no man's land of Littlemore and whose partisan commitment did not lead him to engage in mere polemic.

Protestants and Catholics had different reactions to the Lectures.They were generally greeted enthusiastically by Catholics.They were described as "furnishing a key to the whole mystery of anti-Catholic hostility and as shewing the special point of attack upon which our controversial energies should be concentrated" in a review published in the Catholic publication The Rambler.However, some Catholic theologians, most notably Ushaw College president John Gillow, thought that Newman's language overemphasized the role of the laity.Gillow said that Newman gave the impression that the infallibility of the church comes from a partnership between the hierarchy and the faithful, not from the teaching office, which Pope Pius IX called the "ordinary magisterium" of the church.Less enthusiastic was the Protestant response.Newman "is determined to say whatever he chooses, in spite of facts and reason," according to Archdeacon Julius Hare.

The Lectures are described as follows by Newman's first biographer, Wilfrid Ward:

The spectacle of a grave religious apologist giving way for the first time at the age of fifty to a sense of rollicking fun and gifts of humorous writing, which would naturally have adorned the pages of Thackeray's Punch if expended on other subjects, is very curious.

Newman's satire has gained more attention thanks to Ian Ker.Ker says that Newman's imagery can be "grotesque in the Dickens manner" and has a "savage, Swiftian flavor."

The Lectures were deemed Newman's "best written book" by him.

One characteristic of English anti-Catholicism was the holding of public meetings at which ex-Catholics, including former priests, denounced their prior beliefs and provided detailed accounts of the alleged "horrors" of Catholic life. Achilli trial Caricature of Newman by "Spy" was published in Vanity Fair in 1877.One such speaker was Giacinto Achilli, an ex-Dominican friar who lived from 1803 to 1860.

Achilli, author of Dealings with the Inquisition, wrote in 1833:or, Papal Rome, her priests, and her Jesuits... (1851) had been given the position of Master of Sacred Theology at the College of St. Thomas, which would eventually become the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum.

Nash says the following about Achilli's journey to England:

[Achilli] had been imprisoned by the Inquisition for heresy in a monastery. Six months before the Papal Aggression crisis broke out, a group of English ultra-Protestants rescued him as a hero.He was greeted at a public meeting at Exeter Hall with a specially composed hymn, "Hail Roman prisoner, Hail," and given a chapel in London by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston.He sold a lot of copies of Dealings with the Inquisition.He gave public lectures that were supported by the Evangelical Alliance. He said that he was a sincere Protestant and opposed Catholicism. His compelling account of the inhumane practices of the Inquisition made him a popular and credible anti-Catholic speaker.

Wiseman published a comprehensive expose of him in The Dublin Review in July 1850, listing all of his offenses.As a result, Newman figured that he would be able to repeat the facts in his fifth lecture in his Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England after consulting with a lawyer.

Newman criticized a number of anti-Catholic statements in these lectures.These included Maria Monk's cells, Giacinto Achilli's cells, and the claim that they were under his own Oratory on Hagley Road in Birmingham.Newman emphasizes how crucial it is to respond to Achilli:

Brothers of the Oratory, how, then, can we trust a man like Achilli when he sounds like Maria Monk, Jeffreys, Teodore, and others who have had their day and then been forgotten by the wrath or shame of humanity? He sounds like Maria Monk, Jeffreys, and Teodore, after all.

The jury determined that the following portion of the lecture was libelous:

I've been both a Catholic and an atheist;I have been a hypocrite and a Roman priest;Under a cowl, I've been wasteful.I am that Father Achilli, who in 1826 lost my lecture privileges due to an offense that my superiors tried as hard as they could to conceal;and who had already established a reputation as a scandalous friar by 1827.I am Achilli, the one who stripped a young woman of her honor in the diocese of Viterbo in February 1831;who, in the case of a 28-year-old, was found guilty of a second such offense in September 1833;and who was responsible for the third, which occurred in July 1834 with another 24-year-old victim.I am he, who was later found guilty of similar or worse offenses in other nearby towns.I am the Dominican son who is known to have committed the same crime twice at Capua in 1834 or 1835;and once more in Naples in 1840, this time for a 15-year-old child.He chose the church sacristy for one of these crimes and Good Friday for another—I am him.You "ne'er may look upon my like again," so look upon me as a confessor against Popery, England's mothers.I am that genuine priest who, after all of this, began to speak against the Catholic faith and morality through my teaching and perverted others.I am Cavaliere Achilli, the man who went to Corfu, made a tailor's wife unfaithful to her husband, lived in public, and traveled with a chorus singer's wife.I am that Professor of the Protestant College in Malta who, along with two other people, was fired for offenses that the authorities are unable to identify.And now, pay attention to me as I am, and you'll learn about the brutality and wastefulness of the Rome Inquisition.

O Achilli, you speak truthfully, and we have no response.Priest are you?You served as a friar;Your extraordinary depravity is, without a doubt, the scandal of Catholicism and the palmary argument of Protestants.It is true that you have been a wasteful spender, a nonbeliever, and a hypocrite.Your time in the convent lasted only a short amount of time, and you never sang in the choir. Instead, you lived in private homes where the laity could watch you.We own the professorship you were denied;You were not allowed to preach or hear confessions;We learned from an official Neapolitan Police document that you were required to pay hush money to the father of one of your victims because he was "known for habitual incontinence;"Your name was brought before the civil court in Corfu for adultery.You have denied every one of your offenses for as long as you could;When you were lusting after sin, you have vowed to seek the truth.

In November, Newman was officially charged with libel.Newman was required to provide evidence for each and every charge he brought against Achilli under English law.Wiseman had provided Newman with the documents for his article in the Dublin Review, but he had misplaced them.He found them eventually, but it was too late to stop the trial.

It was necessary for Newman and his defense committee to locate the victims and bring them back to England.Maria Giberne, a friend of Newman's, traveled to Italy with the victims to return to England with them.When Achilli learned that witnesses were going to be called, he made arrangements to delay the trial.This put a lot of pressure on Newman, who was writing and delivering the lectures for The Idea of a University and had been invited to be the founding rector of the Catholic University in Dublin.

The libel trial began on June 21, 1852, and lasted three days.Achilli denied that any of it had occurred, despite the victims' and witnesses' testimony to the contrary;Newman was found guilty of libel by a jury that believed him.

The administration of justice in this country has suffered a significant setback, and Roman Catholics will now have every reason to assert that they will not receive justice in matters that are likely to pique the Protestant feelings of juries and judges.

The sentence was delayed and a second trial was not granted.Newman did not receive the expected prison term at sentencing; instead, he received a £100 fine and a lengthy lecture from Judge John Taylor Coleridge about his moral decline since becoming a Catholic.Later, Coleridge wrote to Keble:

We must denounce this libel because we believe it to be largely true—or at least possible, and it is a very painful situation for us to do so.

The fine was paid right away, and his expenses as a defendant, which totaled approximately £14,000, were paid out of a fund established by this defense committee with contributions from Catholics in the United States and abroad;The remaining £2,000 was used to purchase a small Lickey Hills property in Rednal with a chapel and cemetery, where Newman was eventually buried.

Newman substituted the following inscription for the libelous portion of the fifth lecture:

De illis quae sequebantur / posterorum judicium sit - Concerning the things that came after / allowing posterity to decide

Educator In 1854, Newman went to Dublin to serve as rector of the newly established Catholic University of Ireland, which is now known as University College, Dublin, at the request of the Irish Catholic bishops.He established the Literary and Historical Society during this time.He left after four years.He explained his educational philosophy in a collection of lectures titled "The Idea of a University" that he published.

T. Westmacott's bust of Newman, 1841. Newman believed in a middle way between free thought and moral authority that would honor the rights to knowledge and revelation.His goal was to establish a Catholic university in a world where the majority of Protestant universities in the English-speaking world and the major Catholic universities on the European continent had recently been secularized.A university would need to support research and publication without church censorship in order to be considered legitimate in the larger world;However, a university would need to be a place where the Catholic church's teachings are respected and promoted in order to be a safe place for Catholic youth to learn.

This is the goal and the goal of the University;It doesn't think about moral impressions or how things are made mechanically;It claims that it does not engage the mind in work or art;Intellectual culture serves as its purpose;It can leave its scholars here, and when it does as much as this, it has accomplished its goal.It teaches the mind to think rationally in all situations, to seek the truth, and to comprehend it.

Bishop Paul Cullen's opinion shows that this philosophy was met with opposition within the Catholic Church, at least in Ireland.Cullen wrote a letter in 1854 to the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith at the Vatican, which is now known as the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. In the letter, Cullen criticized Newman's lenient use of authority at the new university:

The introduced discipline is certainly inappropriate for this nation.The young men are permitted to smoke, etc., at any time.Additionally, there has not been a set time for studying.All of this demonstrates Father Newman's lack of attention to detail.

The university that Newman had in mind was met with too much opposition to succeed.However, his book had a significant impact.

Newman designed an Oxford branch of the Oratory in 1858;However, Father (later Cardinal) Henry Edward Manning, another influential convert from Anglicanism, and others opposed this project.It was believed that the establishment of a Catholic body in the heart of Oxford would likely encourage Catholics to send their sons there rather than to newly established Catholic universities.The plan was scrapped.A Catholic club was established when Catholic students began attending Oxford in the 1860s. In 1888, the club was renamed the Oxford University Newman Society to honor Newman's efforts to promote Catholicism in Oxford.Over a century later, in 1993, the Oxford Oratory was established.

In conjunction with the Birmingham Oratory, Newman opened a school in 1859 to educate gentlemen's sons in a manner akin to English public schools.

Afterlife and death Painting of Cardinal Newman by Jane Fortescue Seymour, circa 1876 In 1870, Newman published his Grammar of Assent, a carefully reasoned work in which the case for religious belief is maintained by arguments that are somewhat distinct from those that were typically used by Catholic theologians at the time.In 1877, he added a lengthy preface to the two volumes that contained his defense of the via media to the republication of his Anglican works. In it, he criticized and responded to his own anti-Catholic arguments that were included in the original works.

Newman was concerned about the formal definition of the doctrine of papal infallibility during the First Vatican Council (1869–1870), believing that the time was "inopportune."He denounced the "insolent and aggressive faction" that had pushed the matter forward in a private letter to his bishop, William Bernard Ullathorne, that was secretly published.When the doctrine was finally defined, Newman showed no disapproval, but he was in favor of the "principle of minimising," which included very few papal declarations within the scope of infallibility.Newman stated that he had always believed in the doctrine and had only feared the deterrent effect of its definition on conversions due to acknowledged historical difficulties in a letter supposedly addressed to the Duke of Norfolk when Gladstone accused the Roman church of having "equally repudiated modern thought and ancient history."Newman responded to the allegation that he did not feel at ease within the Catholic Church, particularly in the postscript to the second edition of this letter.

Cardinalate In 1878, Newman was made an honorary fellow at his old college, and on the day that Pope Pius IX died, he returned to Oxford after a 32-year absence.Pius had a bad relationship with Newman, but his successor, Pope Leo XIII, was persuaded by the Duke of Norfolk and other English Catholic laymen to make Newman a cardinal despite the fact that he was not a bishop and did not live in Rome.Rome made the offer in February 1879.Despite making two requests, Newman accepted the gesture as a validation of his work:that he should not, as was customary at the time, be ordained a bishop upon receiving the cardinalate;that he could remain in Birmingham, and

In the consistory of May 12, 1879, Pope Leo XIII elevated Newman to the rank of cardinal and appointed him to the deaconry of San Giorgio al Velabro.Newman insisted that his opposition to "liberalism in religion" would remain constant throughout his life while he was in Rome;He argued that it would result in total relativism.

Death of Newman in May 1890: Following an illness, Newman went back to England and lived at the Birmingham Oratory until his death. He made sporadic trips to London, mostly to see his old friend R. W. Church, who is now Dean of St. Paul's.Aside from a preface to an 1879 work by Arthur Wollaston Hutton on the Anglican ministry and an article in The Nineteenth Century titled "On the Inspiration of Scripture," Newman did not publish anything while he was a cardinal.In 1880, Newman said that he was "extremely happy" that Conservative Benjamin Disraeli was no longer in power and hoped that Disraeli would be gone forever.

Newman started to deteriorate in health toward the end of 1886.On Christmas Day in 1889, he celebrated his final Mass.Newman was buried on August 11, 1890, in the grave of his lifelong friend Ambrose St. John, as per his explicit wishes.William Barry, writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia in 1913, traces Newman's "eloquence, unaffected, graceful, tender, and penetrating" to Francis de Sales. The motto that Newman adopted for use as a cardinal was Cor ad cor loquitur, which means "Heart speaks to heart."Ambrose St. John converted to Roman Catholicism around the same time as Newman. The two men shared a memorial stone with the motto "Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem" ("Out of shadows and phantasms into the truth"), which Barry attributes to Plato's cave allegory.

Newman's £4,206 estate was probated on February 27, 1891.

Remains Newman's grave was opened on October 2, 2008, with the intention of moving any remains to a tomb inside the Birmingham Oratory so that they could be venerated as relics during Newman's consideration for sainthood in a more convenient manner;However, it was discovered that his wooden coffin had collapsed and that there were no bones inside.According to a representative of the Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory, this was due to the damp location of the burial and the wooden coffin.According to contemporary sources, the soil that covered the coffin was softer than the grave site's clay marl.John Hunter, a forensic expert from the University of Birmingham, examined soil samples from near the grave and concluded that a complete disappearance of a body over that period of time was unlikely.He stated that the intact coffin handles would have been lost under extreme conditions that could have removed bone.

Feast Day

9-10-

Birth Date

21-2-1801

Died Date

11-8-1890

Canonised Date

13-10-2019

Rednal, Worcestershire, England

Saint John Henry Newman, Guide us in our journey of faith, Help us to seek truth, Live with love and humility, And trust in God’s providence. Intercede for us, that we may grow in wisdom, And follow Christ more closely each day. Amen.
ST. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

Video Not Found

ST. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

The information you see here may be either accurate or might contain some discrepancies, as it is gathered from various sources. If you believe that any part of the details about this saint is incorrect or incomplete, we kindly invite you to share your suggestions or corrections with us. Your insights are invaluable in helping us ensure that we provide the most accurate and reliable information.

We encourage you to use the form on the left to submit any corrections or additional information you may have. Whether it's a small detail or a larger correction, we will carefully review your submission and update the information accordingly. Your contributions will not only help us maintain the integrity of the content but also benefit others who seek to learn more about this saint. We greatly appreciate your assistance in making our information more accurate and complete.

Please rest assured that your personal details will remain confidential, and your suggestions will be handled with the utmost care. Together, we can ensure that the information about this saint is as accurate and informative as possible. Thank you for your time and contribution!