Cardinal Newman's influence spreads more than a century later

John Henry Cardinal Newman is to be beatified by Pope Benedict in Britain in September, making him the first English man or woman who lived after the 17th century to be so honoured. It’s long overdue. Put simply, Newman is the literary and theological champion of the new wave of Christian orthodoxy.

Born in 1801, his life is the flesh-and-blood reflection of both the journey of a Protestant Christian towards Catholicism and of the evolution in the Anglo-Saxon world of that same Roman Catholic Church. He began as an evangelical within the Church of England but gradually as an ordained minister moved towards Anglo-Catholicism and became a leading member of the Oxford Movement, intent on emphasizing the Catholic nature of the English church. The argument was that the Catholic faith had never left the country, in spite of the reformation, and that Anglican rather than Roman was the true Catholicism.

It’s an imploding position and one more full of holes than St. Peter’s fishing net. Newman came to see Anglo-Catholicism as “a sojourn in a halfway house” and in 1845 converted to Roman Catholicism. That same year saw publication of “Essay in the Development of Christian Doctrine,” followed 20 years later by “Apologia Pro Vita Sua” and in 1870 his “Grammar of Assent.” In addition to his writing was his work as a priest and later as a cardinal.

In those positions he founded The Birmingham and London Oratory and his preaching and writing not only brought legions and generations of people into the Catholic Church but made Catholicism understandable and even acceptable in an England — and thus Canada — that had long regarded the religion not only foreign and alien but unpatriotic and even treasonous. He also founded the Catholic University of Ireland, which would become University College Dublin and provide an intellectual stimulus to Irish self-respect and national independence. Newman Centres have been established in his name in universities throughout the world and Oratories in North America, including Toronto, have preserved authentic and serious Catholicism when the fashion was often oppressively liberal and intent on expunging meaningful Catholicity from the Church.

He was — in every sense — a saintly man who changed his country and his Church and threw a great wave of intelligence and truth over the future. He also suffered. As a mid-19th century Anglican priest he had enjoyed what was still a position of invincible prestige and privilege. The esthetic beauty of church buildings, the membership of a compelling English establishment. All lost for a Church still unsure of its position in English society, solidly working-class and often composed of Irish immigrants who were as jarring to Newman as he was to them. There was rivalry, too, with other Catholics who did not trust Newman or resented his gifts.

He was criticized, libelled, even taken to the courts. A self-conscious and sensitive man, it is surprising that he was able to stand it all. Depression did wash at his feet, sometimes splashing over his head. As his best biographer Ian Ker has written: “At least his imagination did not desert him, as he varied the imagery in his descriptions of his semi-breakdown. ‘I have been in constant hot water, of one sort or degree or another, for full 30 years — and it has at length boiled me’. The worry was ‘sucking life’ out of him.”

It is achingly predictable that a celibate man who formed close platonic friendships with male friends will, in this sexually banal age, be labelled a homosexual. In fact a campaign began as soon as the canonization process became known. Those who understand Victorian life and letters, and Newman’s character, find the accusation laughable. Newman actually tried to avoid female company because he was so aware of what tempted him. His love for a male friend in later life, Ambrose St. John, was possible not because he was homosexual but precisely because he wasn’t and was sufficiently comfortable to regard another man as a brother.

It’s a risible attack on someone who suffered worse while alive. In fact it’s a tribute. Newman died in 1890 but his influence is as strong now as it was then and that makes enemies of vibrant, orthodox Catholicism rather angry.