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The Cardinal and the Pope
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Born in London in 1801, Blessed John Henry Newman was ordained an Anglican priest in 1825. Within 10 years he was nationally known as a scholar and churchman. He was deeply involved in the development of the Oxford Movement, a movement of influential Anglicans interested in returning to many of the practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Newman’s spiritual and intellectual odyssey led him ever closer to Rome and finally in 1845 he was formally received into the Catholic Church. He was ordained a Catholic priest a year later and created cardinal (although he was neither a bishop nor resided in Rome) in 1879. He established St. Philip Neri’s Oratorians in England, residing at the Birmingham Oratory (which he had founded) for most of his life as a Catholic priest, and died there in 1890. Rather than the traditional choice of making the day of his death the blessed’s feast day, the Church has fixed October 9—the date on which John Henry Newman was received into the Catholic Church—as his feast day. For those unfamiliar with Cardinal Newman, the website www.newmanreader.org provides extensive information on John Newman’s life and works.
Blessed John Newman had an enormous influence on both Anglican and Catholic thought in his own times, an influence which has continued even to our day. An unparalleled event uniting the legacy of Cardinal Newman and Pope Benedict was last November’s apostolic constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus, granting provision for Anglican Ordinariates (a kind of non-territorial “diocese”) for Anglican converts to Catholicism which allows them to retain some prayers, customs, etc., of the Church of England while being full members of the Roman Catholic Church. On September 23, 2010, Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., was delegated by the Congregation for the Faith to facilitate the reception of Anglican converts into the Church under the auspices of Anglicanorum Coetibus.
On September 19, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI beatified John Henry Newman during his apostolic visit to the United Kingdom. Although Pope Benedict himself has set a policy for beatifications to be declared by the Prefect of the Congregation for Causes of Saints, he made an exception in the case of Cardinal Newman and proclaimed the beatification himself, in part because of Newman’s influence on his own life as a theologian. Below are excerpts from His Holiness’ homilies for the vigil and the actual beatification ceremony, given in England, September 18 (London) and 19 (Birmingham), 2010.
John Henry Newman
Scholar on the Path to Rome, Theologian, Cardinal...and Blessed
“This is an evening of joy, of immense spiritual joy, for all of us. We are gathered here in prayerful vigil to prepare for tomorrow’s Mass, during which a great son of this nation, Cardinal John Henry Newman, will be declared Blessed. How many people, in England and throughout the world, have longed for this moment! It is also a great joy for me, personally, to share this experience with you. As you know, Newman has long been an important influence in my own life and thought, as he has been for so many people beyond these isles. The drama of Newman’s life invites us to examine our lives, to see them against the vast horizon of God’s plan, and to grow in communion with the Church of every time and place: the Church of the apostles, the Church of the martyrs, the Church of the saints, the Church which Newman loved and to whose mission he devoted his entire life.
His lifelong struggle
“[...] Let me begin by recalling that Newman, by his own account, traced the course of his whole life back to a powerful experience of conversion [as a teenager, to a deeper practice of Anglicanism] which he had as a young man. It was an immediate experience of the truth of God’s word, of the objective reality of Christian revelation as handed down in the Church. This experience, at once religious and intellectual, would inspire his vocation to be a minister of the Gospel, his discernment of the source of authoritative teaching in the Church of God, and his zeal for the renewal of ecclesial life in fidelity to the apostolic tradition. At the end of his life, Newman would describe his life’s work as a struggle against the growing tendency to view religion as a purely private and subjective matter, a question of personal opinion. Here is the first lesson we can learn from his life: in our day, when an intellectual and moral relativism threatens to sap the very foundations of our society, Newman reminds us that, as men and women made in the image and likeness of God, we were created to know the truth, to find in that truth our ultimate freedom and the fulfillment of our deepest human aspirations. In a word, we are meant to know Christ, who is himself ‘the way, and the truth, and the life’ (Jn 14:6).
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The price of fidelity
“Newman’s life also teaches us that passion for the truth, intellectual honesty and genuine conversion are costly. The truth that sets us free cannot be kept to ourselves; it calls for testimony, it begs to be heard, and in the end its convincing power comes from itself and not from the human eloquence or arguments in which it may be couched. Not far from here, at Tyburn, great numbers of our brothers and sisters died for the faith; the witness of their fidelity to the end was even more powerful than the inspired words that so many of them spoke before surrendering everything to the Lord. In our own time, the price to be paid for fidelity to the Gospel is no longer being hanged, drawn and quartered but it often involves being dismissed out of hand, ridiculed or parodied. And yet, the Church cannot withdraw from the task of proclaiming Christ and his Gospel as saving truth, the source of our ultimate happiness as individuals and as the foundation of a just and humane society.
“Finally, Newman teaches us that if we have accepted the truth of Christ and committed our lives to him, there can be no separation between what we believe and the way we live our lives. Our every thought, word and action must be directed to the glory of God and the spread of his Kingdom. Newman understood this, and was the great champion of the prophetic office of the Christian laity. He saw clearly that we do not so much accept the truth in a purely intellectual act as embrace it in a spiritual dynamic that penetrates to the core of our being. Truth is passed on not merely by formal teaching, important as that is, but also by the witness of lives lived in integrity, fidelity and holiness; those who live in and by the truth instinctively recognize what is false and, precisely as false, inimical to the beauty and goodness which accompany the splendor of truth.”
–Homily, Hyde Park, London, September 18, 2010
Learning the “habit of prayer”
“Cardinal Newman’s motto, Cor ad cor loquitur, or ‘Heart speaks unto heart,’ gives us an insight into his understanding of the Christian life as a call to holiness, experienced as the profound desire of the human heart to enter into intimate communion with the Heart of God. He reminds us that faithfulness to prayer gradually transforms us into the divine likeness. As he wrote in one of his many fine sermons, ‘a habit of prayer, the practice of turning to God and the unseen world in every season, in every place, in every emergency – prayer, I say, has what may be called a natural effect in spiritualizing and elevating the soul. A man is no longer what he was before; gradually … he has imbibed a new set of ideas, and become imbued with fresh principles’ (Parochial and Plain Sermons, iv, 230-231). [...]
Newman’s challenge to the laity...
“The definite service to which Blessed John Henry was called involved applying his keen intellect and his prolific pen to many of the most pressing subjects of the day. His insights into the relationship between faith and reason, into the vital place of revealed religion in civilized society, and into the need for a broadly-based and wide-ranging approach to education were not only of profound importance for Victorian England, but continue today to inspire and enlighten many all over the world. I would like to pay particular tribute to his vision for education, which has done so much to shape the ethos that is the driving force behind Catholic schools and colleges today. Firmly opposed to any reductive or utilitarian approach, he sought to achieve an educational environment in which intellectual training, moral discipline and religious commitment would come together. [...] And indeed, what better goal could teachers of religion set themselves than Blessed John Henry’s famous appeal for an intelligent, well-instructed laity: ‘I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it.’ (The Present Position of Catholics in England, ix, 390)...
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...and to priests
“While it is John Henry Newman’s intellectual legacy that has understandably received most attention in the vast literature devoted to his life and work, I prefer on this occasion to conclude with a brief reflection on his life as a priest, a pastor of souls. The warmth and humanity underlying his appreciation of the pastoral ministry is beautifully expressed in another of his famous sermons: ‘Had angels been your priests, my brethren, they could not have condoled with you, sympathized with you, have had compassion on you, felt tenderly for you, and made allowances for you, as we can; they could not have been your patterns and guides, and have led you on from your old selves into a new life, as they can who come from the midst of you’ (‘Men, not Angels: the Priests of the Gospel,’ Discourses to Mixed Congregations, 3). He lived out that profoundly human vision of priestly ministry in his devoted care for the people of Birmingham during the years that he spent at the Oratory he founded, visiting the sick and the poor, comforting the bereaved, caring for those in prison. No wonder that on his death so many thousands of people lined the local streets as his body was taken to its place of burial not half a mile from here. One hundred and twenty years later, great crowds have assembled once again to rejoice in the Church’s solemn recognition of the outstanding holiness of this much-loved father of souls. What better way to express the joy of this moment than by turning to our heavenly Father in heartfelt thanksgiving, praying in the words that Blessed John Henry Newman placed on the lips of the choirs of angels in heaven:
Praise to the Holiest in the height
And in the depth be praise;
In all his words most wonderful,
Most sure in all his ways!
(The Dream of Gerontius).”
–Homily, Cofton Park, Birmingham, September 19, 2010
Our sublime destiny
“[...] Saint Paul asks that we be granted to know ‘the love of Christ which surpasses all understanding’ (Eph 3:14-21). The Apostle prays that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith (cf. Eph 3:17) and that we may come to ‘grasp, with all the saints, the breadth and the length, the height and the depth’ of that love. Through faith we come to see God’s word as a lamp for our steps and light for our path (cf. Ps 119:105). Newman, like the countless saints who preceded him along the path of Christian discipleship, taught that the ‘kindly light’ of faith leads us to realize the truth about ourselves, our dignity as God’s children, and the sublime destiny which awaits us in heaven. By letting the light of faith shine in our hearts, and by abiding in that light through our daily union with the Lord in prayer and participation in the life-giving sacraments of the Church, we ourselves become light to those around us; we exercise our ‘prophetic office;’ often, without even knowing it, we draw people one step closer to the Lord and his truth. Without the life of prayer, without the interior transformation which takes place through the grace of the sacraments, we cannot, in Newman’s words, ‘radiate Christ;’ we become just another ‘clashing cymbal’ (1 Cor 13:1) in a world filled with growing noise and confusion, filled with false paths leading only to heartbreak and illusion.
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“One of the Cardinal’s best-loved meditations includes the words, ‘God has created me to do him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another’ (Meditations on Christian Doctrine). Here we see Newman’s fine Christian realism, the point at which faith and life inevitably intersect. Faith is meant to bear fruit in the transformation of our world through the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the lives and activity of believers. No one who looks realistically at our world today could think that Christians can afford to go on with business as usual, ignoring the profound crisis of faith which has overtaken our society, or simply trusting that the patrimony of values handed down by the Christian centuries will continue to inspire and shape the future of our society. We know that in times of crisis and upheaval God has raised up great saints and prophets for the renewal of the Church and Christian society; we trust in his providence and we pray for his continued guidance. But each of us, in accordance with his or her state of life, is called to work for the advancement of God’s Kingdom by imbuing temporal life with the values of the Gospel. Each of us has a mission, each of us is called to change the world, to work for a culture of life, a culture forged by love and respect for the dignity of each human person. As our Lord tells us in the Gospel, our light must shine in the sight of all, so that, seeing our good works, they may give praise to our heavenly Father (cf. Mt 5:16).”
–Homily, Hyde Park, London, September 18, 2010
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