The Life of Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman

John Henry Newman was born in London (1801), an Anglican, son of a banker. Falling ill during the collapse of his father’s bank, he was providentially converted to devotion (1816), a shift he always saw as a turning point of his life. 

Educated at Trinity College, Oxford, he became a Fellow of Oriel (1822), was ordained a priest (1825), and served energetically at a working-class parish nearby.  Vicar of the University Church of Great St. Mary’s (1828), he became a reforming tutor at Oxford, concerned for his students, not only academically but also pastorally.  This shift eventually led to his being sidelined from students by Oriel’s provost and thus given time for historical research into the early Christian Fathers, their controversies, and the Church’s councils. 

Vacationing with friends in Italy and then continuing alone in Sicily, he became deathly sick, anxious to tears that “he had some great work to do” and must return to England.  Finally finding a boat, it was becalmed for a week in the Strait of Bonifacio (1833), frustrating his hurry.  Thus led by seeming circumstance to accept God’s Will over his own, he composed the beloved poem “The Pillar of the Cloud,” our hymn “Lead, Kindly Light.”

Concerned about “national apostasy” as political machinations overtook Anglicanism’s apostolic roots, Newman led the “Oxford Movement,” joining to write the controversial “Tracts for the Times.” Emphasizing the foundational Christian mysteries in his pulpit at Great St Mary’s he shared with his students his fateful investigations into the Fathers of the Church. 

By his research he had hoped to show the Anglican Church to be the Via Media between the extremes of Protestantism and Catholicism. Instead Newman came to learn that where the Fathers were then, the Catholic Church was now. 

Taking stock of his doubts, he resigned as Vicar of St Mary’s (1843) and moved with some of his congregation out to the small parish whose church he had built (also St Mary’s) in the nearby village of Littlemore.  He determined (1844) to write a book on the true development of doctrine and to seek admission to the Catholic Church if further research did not alter his opinions.   Resigning his Oriel fellowship (October 3, 1845) it was at Littlemore that he was received into the Catholic Church by Bl. Dominic Barberi (October 9, 1845).  

Newman began to send installments of his “Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine“ to the printers (from September 1845).  It was never completed but he had become a Roman Catholic on the power of it and thus found no more needed to be said.  In this, his best known work, he distinguished true from false development, finding that true development needs an infallible authority to distinguish it and that the Catholic Church best exhibited it. 

Studying theology in Rome, Newman was ordained a Catholic priest (May 30, 1847), joined the Congregation of the Oratory of St Philip Neri and then founded the English Oratory as its superior in Birmingham.  His lectures “On Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Submitting to the Catholic Church” (1850) used satire to show Anglo-Catholicism inconsistent and limned how his study of the early Church had led him to see the Catholic Church as the Church of the Fathers.  Following it soon was “Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England” (1851) which he considered his best written book - also his best satire. 

Asked by the Catholic bishops of Ireland to found a Catholic University there as its president, Newman’s “Discourses on the Scope and Nature of a University Education” (1852) defended a Catholic liberal education against both secular attacks and anti-intellectual clericalism and became the first half of “The Idea of a University” (1873).  His educational thought is collected in “Office and Work of Universities” (1856) and both capture why Catholic chaplaincies on secular campuses in the US are aptly called “Newman Centers.”

Newman had a lively historical respect for the faith of the laity:  “On Consulting the Faithful on Matters of Doctrine” (1859) described the tradition of the Church, exemplified in the 4th century amid the Arian heresy when the laity were more faithful to the divinity of Christ than the then bishops.  He was also unafraid to stand his ground in defending his own religious opinions throughout his conversion in the much heralded theological autobiography, “Apologia Pro Vita Sua” (1864) which turned public opinion firmly to his side. 

His poem “The Dream of Gerontius” (1865), become famous through Sir Edward Elgar’s oratorio, yielded the famed hymn “Praise to the Holiest in the Height.”  In philosophy he broke new ground in “An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent” (1870), distinguishing inference from assent, notional from real, and featuring the accumulation of probabilities and “the illative sense.”  Since so much of life requires the making of distinctions, his  “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk” (1875) questioned extreme ultramontanism, reminding us that all pronouncements of pope and council need the apt hermeneutic of theologians, especially in their application to individual cases. 

Honored that Trinity College made him its first honorary fellow (1877), Newman found his work and life indeed vindicated by Leo XIII creating him Cardinal of San Giorgio in Velabro (1879).  He took as his motto “Cor ad Cor Loquitur” (“Heart Speaks to Heart, Lips Merely to the Ears”) of St. Francis de Sales his great patron. Visitors to Newman’s study at the Birmingham Oratory are always struck by one third of it being the Chapel of St. Francis de Sales:  a dozen scenes from deSales’ life covering its wall, an oil painting of DeSales centered over the altar. 

Memorable too is the line from his gravestone at Rednal:  “Ex Umbis et Imaginibis in Veritatem” (From Shadows and Inklings into the Truth).  Such was the search that characterized the great journey of Newman’s life.  Indeed, the curious line he had repeatedly exclaimed to his puzzled valet when delirious and near death in Sicily stands as the very hallmark of his life: “I have never sinned against the light!”

(Besides his works themselves, in the finest of English prose, anyone seeking further insight into Newman should consult the magisterial Newman biography by Fr. Ian Ker, our occasional lecturer.)

          “LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT!”

Lead, kindly Light, amid th’ encircling gloom,

Lead Thou me on;

The night is dark, and I am far from home,

Lead Thou me on;

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou

Shouldst lead me on;

I loved to choose and see my path, but now

Lead Thou me on;

I loved the garish day, and spite of fears,

Pride ruled my will; remember not past years.

So long Thy pow’r has blest me, sure it still

Wilt lead me on,

O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till

The night is gone,

And with the morn those angel faces smile,

Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.