John Henry Newman

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John Henry Newman

1801-1890

Cardinal

Early Years. Born into an upper-middle-class family in London in 1801, John Henry Newman was “converted” into evangelical Christianity in 1816. At that time he considered the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church to be heretical. The following year he entered Trinity College, Oxford, from which he graduated with honors in 1820. Remaining at Oxford, he became a fellow at Oriel College in 1822 and was ordained an Anglican priest in 1825. After serving as curate of St. Clement’s Church, Oxford, Newman becme vicar of St. Mary’s, the university church, in 1828. By this time he had jettisoned his youthful evangelical, low-church views for high-church Anglicanism.

From Anglican to Catholic. In 1833 Newman was among the first Anglican clergyman to join with John Keble (1792-1866) in launching the Oxford Movement, a renewal effort to revitalize the Church of England by restoring the historical practices of the early Christian Church. For the next eight years Newman served as editor of Tracts for the Times, writing several tracts in this series, including the last and most controversial, “Tract 90.” In it Newma challenged Anglican orthodoxy by providing a Roman Catholic interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles, the official statement of the doctrines of the Church of England. Following the controversy surrounding this publication, Newman resigned as editor of the series and Tracts for the Times was terminated. Over the next four years Newman gradually came to the conviction that Roman Catholicism offered the truest expression of divine truth. In 1845, he left the Church of England and was received into the Roman Catholic Church. The next year, after deciding to become a Catholic priest, he left England for Rome, where he was ordained into the priesthood in May 1847.

Catholic Educator. Newman received a commission from Pope Pius IX (reigned 1846-1878) to introduce in England the institution of the Oratory, a religious community of secular priests who, in addition to performing pastoral duties such as celebrating mass and hearing confessions, are given enough free time to study, write, and teach (often at a school connected to the Oratory). After returning to England in late 1847, Newman founded an Oratory in Staffordshire, which was soon relocated to Egbaston, outside Birmingham, where he spent most of the remaining years of his life. In 1851 he was appointed rector of a new Catholic University of Ireland to be established in Dublin. Though a few students eventually enrolled, the school failed and Newman resigned as rector in 1858. Having already opened a branch of the Oratory in London, which like the Birmingham Oratory provided instruction similar to that received in English public schools, Newman proposed the establishment of an Oxford Oratory, a plan that failed after opposition by his former fellow Tractarians.

Catholic Writer. A bold and daring writer who seemed to relish controversy, Newman attempted to counter the English anti-Catholic propaganda of the period by writing letters to British newspapers under the pen name “Catholicus” and by publishing a series of apologetic sermons, Lectures on the Present Position of Roman Catholics (1851). In 1859 he became editor of a Catholic magazine, The Rambler, but two months later, after he wrote and published an essay that questioned the doctrine of papal infallibility, he was asked to resign. Later, after the Vaticat Council of 1869-1870, Newman accepted its definition of papalm infallibility and wrote a defense of that dogma in his Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk (1875). Newman’s best-known work is his Apologia pro Via Sua (1864; Apology for His Life), a spiritual autobiography in which he argued that reason alone is an inadequate guide in matters of religious faith.

Cardinal Newman. In 1879 Pope Leo XIII (reigned 1878-1903) made Newman a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. He continued his duties at the Birmingham Oratory until his health began to fail in 1886. Following his death on 11 August 1890, Cardinal Newman was praised by fellow Catholics for his unworldliness and humility. The Church declared him “Venerable” on 22 January 1991.