BORN 1801; DIED 1890 Anglican Church. Their eldest was a bookish, PRIEST �en. shy,J andohn affectionate child, and early developed a FEAST DAY: MARCH 26 lifelong love of drama. Although he loved read- ing the Bible, he lacked religious faith until, at ROM the middle of the sixteenth century into fifteen, he underwent a conversion and became the eighteenth�e century, Catholicismnry had �e an evangelicalwman Anglican. He also decided that Fbeen persecuted in England with a ferocity following God’s call required him to remain sin- found in few other countries of Europe. It gle. He hated Roman Catholicism and believed was into this milieu of hatred and contempt for that the Pope was the antichrist, but also under- “Papists” that Ven. , the stood the importance of a “definite Creed.” most renowned minister of the Church of Eng- At sixteen John entered Trinity College of land (Anglican Church) in his generation, en- Oxford University. Shortly after completing tered the and initiated the res- his degree, he was elected a fellow (member of toration of Catholicism as a vital spiritual force the faculty) of Oxford’s top-ranked Oriel Col- in Great Britain. lege, where he remained for almost ten years. John was the oldest of three sons and three At twenty-four, he was ordained an Anglican daughters of John Newman, a banker who was priest and, three years later, was named vicar of a nominal Anglican, and Jemima Fourdrini- Oxford University’s church, St. Mary’s. Gift- er, of Huguenot (French Protestant) ancestry ed with a winning personality and formidable who was a member of intellectual, writing, and public-speaking skills, the evangeli- he quickly developed a reputation as a preach- cal (“low- er of sermons of uncommon grace and power. church”) By this time, he was moving toward the “high- wing of church” wing of the Anglican Church and, in t h e 1830, he broke his last connections with evan- gelical Anglicanism. Following a dispute in 1832, he resigned from Oriel College and went with a friend on a sev- en-month tour of the Mediterranean. Ill in Sic- ily with malaria, he was stranded for weeks awaiting a ship and then on shipboard wrote his famous hymn Lead, Kindly Light. When John returned home, a friend delivered a sermon that set off what came to be called the Tractarian or , an ef- fort to restore doctrinal beliefs in the face of their ongoing erosion. He and four friends began publishing a series of theological es-

PAUL KERRIS says under the general title of “Tracts for Our Times.” (In 1833, he also published The Arians of the Fourth Century, which explored in detail the history of the Arian heresy (holding that Jesus was not divine) in Church history. His research for this book was a vital element in the develop- ment of his understanding of the true Church.)

The Association for Catechumenal Ministry (ACM) grants the original purchaser (parish, local parochial institution, or individual) permission to reproduce this handout. In eight years, ninety “To be deep in history is to cease write what became the tracts were published, turning point in his twenty-six of which to be a Protestant.” faith, a book-length he wrote himself, us- exploration of wheth- ing a masterful prose style that was simple, er or not the Catholic Church’s doctrinal devel- clear, and convincing. Together with his ser- opment was authentic, which took shape as the mons, these tracts enthralled large numbers of Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (pub- people. To the growing consternation of Angli- lished in 1846). A work of theological genius in can bishops, the tracts defended doctrines that which his historical work on the Arians became the Church of England had abandoned. Many invaluable, he identified seven “notes” of a true people read them and left the Church of Eng- doctrinal development: 1) its preservation of land for Catholicism. type (organic growth), 2) its continuity of (that By 1840, John was losing faith in Angli- is, building upon) first principles, 3) its power canism. In that year, he read an article by of assimilation of new things without chang- Nicholas Wiseman, a Catholic priest and ing itself, 4) its logical sequence of devel- rector of the English College (seminary) opment from other doctrines, 5) early in Rome, which signs of its future maturity demolished in apostolic times, 6) con- his thesis of servative action upon its the Anglican past (keeping, not de- via media, a stroying it), and 7) “middle way” its chronic vigor between Ca- (its longevity). tholicism and In the book Protestantism al- he famous- lowing the Church ly con- of England to cluded: claim apostolic de- “To be scent from the one, true deep in Church. The article quot- history is to cease ed St. Augustine’s reply to John Henry Newman came to see the necessity to be a Protestant.” He heretics who claimed that of papal authority for the unity of Christians stopped work on the Es- they were Catholic: Securus say the day he became judicat orbis terrarum (in English, “the Church of convinced that the Catholic Church was the “one the whole world judges serenely who are and true fold of the Redeemer,” and in October 1845 who are not of her communion”). He realized he and several followers were received into the that the Church of England could not simply Catholic Church, to the anger and dismay of an assert membership in the Catholic Church. He England that had followed his spiritual leader- then began seriously to consider the truth claims ship. He went to live at Oscott College, the Cath- of the Catholic Church. In the last of the tracts, olic seminary in Birmingham, England, under the Tract 90, published in 1841, he interpreted the spiritual direction of Father Wiseman. He was Anglican “Thirty-nine Articles,” which had been ordained a Catholic priest in Rome in 1847. formulated in 1571 as the fundamental doctri- While in Rome, John read of the work of St. nal statement of the Church of England, as con- Philip Neri, the sixteenth-century founder of the sistent with Catholicism. Numerous Anglican Oratorians as an apostolate of personal ministry. bishops condemned it and the Anglican bishop A few months after his return home, he founded a of Oxford banned any more tracts. Congregation of the Oratory at Birmingham. He John’s journey toward Catholicism acceler- settled on the outskirts of Birmingham, where he ated and, in February 1843, he publicly with- lived for most of the rest of his life, focusing on drew all his anti-Catholic statements in a news- preaching, writing, and working with youths and paper advertisement. The following September, young adults. Two years later, Pope Pius IX re-es- he preached his last sermon as an Anglican and tablished the Catholic hierarchy in England, nam- resigned from St. Mary’s. He then settled in to ing Father Wiseman Cardinal and the first Arch-

Ven. John Henry Newman ~ Page 2 bishop of Westminster. There was an enormous published Grammar of Assent, which discussed public backlash. The Pope was burned in effigy in the way individual people come to religious be- several places, and stones and dung were thrown lief. At the same time, he opposed the growing at Cardinal Wiseman’s carriage. John joined Car- momentum for pronouncing as dogma the in- dinal Wiseman in writing numerous letters to Brit- fallibility of the Pope, because he felt that it was ish newspapers, delivering lectures, and preaching premature to do so. But once the Vatican Coun- sermons, and together they calmed the storm. cil I issued the dogmatic declaration in 1870, he John’s life following his conversion was strongly defended it. filled with setbacks that tested his utter trust For most of John’s life, his prayer was char- in God’s providence. He was rumored to be acterized by a dryness that he saw as a severe appointed a bishop, but it never happened. He mortification. He prized the stability and inner was appointed the general editor of a new Cath- calmness of the habit of daily prayer and was olic translation of the Bible that never got start- continually aware of the working of the Holy ed. He was invited to Dublin to help found Spirit in his meditation. He saw the tender, liv- a Catholic uni- ing, broken heart as versity that nev- “They alone inherit [the world] the garden of God, er really got off but also viewed the the ground, and who take it as a shadow of the world spiritual life not as he returned home to come, and who for that world mere feeling but as four years later in obedience to God. disappointment to come relinquish it.” He also insisted on (it was during this the central impor- period that he developed his ideas of the pur- tance of prayer accompanied by fasting, as the poses of a university education, published in two “wings of the soul”: “They alone are able 1873 as The Idea of a University Defined, the fin- truly to enjoy this world, who begin with the est defense of Catholic educational theory ever world unseen. They alone enjoy it, who have written). Shortly after his return, he became first abstained from it. They alone can truly editor of a Catholic publication, only to have feast, who have first fasted; they alone are able his tenure cut short because his essay on con- to use the world, who have learned not to abuse sulting the faithful on doctrinal matters was it; they alone inherit it, who take it as a shadow censured by Rome as a statement against pa- of the world to come, and who for that world to pal infallibility. Perhaps the hardest burden come relinquish it.” was the suspicion with which he was viewed by John’s towering reputation gave such legiti- Church officials, including Pope Pius IX him- macy to Catholicism that, when he was seventy- self, for twenty years. seven, he was elected the first honorary fellow In 1864, an Anglican clergyman and writer by his alma mater, Trinity College. The follow- attacked the Catholic clergy as uninterested in ing year, Pope Leo XIII named him a Cardinal, truth for its own sake, and personally attacked an honor received with joy by English Catho- John as counseling religious deception. Deep- lics. He is the first of the modern Cardinal-theo- ly wounded and desiring to restore the good logians. His theological writings had such a tre- name of the Catholic priesthood, in a space of mendous impact on the Second Vatican Council six months John published Apologia pro Vita Sua (1962-1965) that he is often called the “Father (“Defense of One’s Own Life”), a powerful and of Vatican II,” and they continue to exert tre- poignant spiritual autobiography comparable mendous influence on people considering the to St. Augustine’s Confessions and St. Teresa of Catholic Church, so that he is credited with in- Ávila’s The Life. The unfavorable public opin- numerable conversions not only in his lifetime, ion of John reversed completely. In 1870 he but up until the present day.

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