John Henry Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict during his visit to Britain in September. The life of this saintly Englishman may not offer much by way of outer missionary adventures, nor is there evidence of special or mystical experiences. Newman lived a steady depth of dedication in the realm of prayer, often before the Blessed Sacrament. But his main service of the faith was in the area of intellectual reflection and writing. Here his life represents a continual ‘enlargement or ‘development’ (to use two of his favourite words). He is famous for having said ‘to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often’. This article, written to mark his beatification, will point to six of the many changes he experienced.
1833: Towards a New Mission
Most people have heard of Lead Kindly Light – a famous poem written by John Henry Newman. It became a popular hymn and, ironically, was sung on the Titanic shortly before it hit an iceberg. It was composed in a particular moment of Newman’s life. Even in his twenties, as an Anglican priest, he had become an important figure in the University of Oxford. Then at the age of thirty-two he visited Sicily and nearly died of a serious fever. Emerging from this crisis he sensed a new focus for his vocation. When the ship taking him from Palermo to France was becalmed for a week, in that enforced stillness he wrote his celebrated poem.
Through his brush with death he seems to have discovered humility, trust and a new energy. His previous concerns for his career now seemed to him rooted in pride or self-will. In this personal poem he is content to commit himself to God and not to see the ‘distant scene’. The ‘one step’ involves returning to Oxford with the hope of reforming the Church of England. And that became his main mission for nearly a decade.
The Celebrated Preacher
A second snapshot of his Oxford years can come from his Sunday afternoon sermons in the church of St. Mary’s in the centre of the city. Academics and students flocked to these services as Newman became more famous.
His message was often stern: go deeper into the cost of the gospel, don’t remain ‘unreal’ with a merely conventional and comfortable form of faith. He also defended the path to faith as being essentially personal and not merely a question of external arguments for the existence of God. He invited people to listen within themselves to the voice of conscience: here they would find God’s presence best.
Without being dramatic, his style was hypnotic, as captured in a famous description by the poet Matthew Arnold: ‘that spiritual apparition ... rising into the pulpit, and then, in the most entrancing of voices breaking the silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music, subtle, sweet, mournful’.
1845: Conversion
As is well known, the kindly light led Newman gradually towards a surprising frontier and transformation. After a long struggle of conscience and of reflection on 8th October 1845 he approached a visiting Italian Passionist and asked to be received into the Catholic Church. This priest had come to visit another member of Newman’s little community. He had just arrived drenched from his journey and was drying his clothes at the fire when Newman entered the room with his request.
This decision to become a Catholic was both sudden and yet born from years of pondering. That evening Newman began his confession which continued on the following day, 9th October, when he was officially received into the Church. When news of his conversion became known, such was his national fame that a shock wave ran through Oxford and indeed England.
The Dublin Years
What was the Catholic Church to do with such a distinguished thinker? In England it was mainly the church of the poor Irish. However, in the early 1850s Newman was invited to found a Catholic University in Dublin. He threw himself into this task, crossing the Irish Sea no less than fifty-six times in the course of about five years. But the venture was to end in partial failure with his resignation as Rector. The Irish Bishops were divided about the project. Cardinal Cullen of Dublin wanted the university to be more like a seminary, but Newman’s larger philosophy of education was captured in famous lectures that remain one of his most admired texts.
‘We feel’, he told his Irish audience, ‘our minds to be growing when we not only learn, but refer what we learn to ... a connected view’.
Eloquent Self-defence
Back in Birmingham Newman went through another difficult time, suffering perhaps from depression, until awoken into aliveness by the accusation of being dishonest, of having been a secret Catholic for years. Working round the clock he produced on seven successive Thursdays an account of his spiritual and intellectual journey towards Catholicism, and this became his book Apologia pro vita sua (1864). ‘I must show what I am that it may be seen what I am not … I will draw out the history of my mind’. This publication had a huge impact in England, and many of his former Anglican friends rediscovered their admiration for him.
A Crown on His Life’s Work
Newman never doubted or regretted his decision to become a Catholic. Nevertheless, he did suffer misunderstandings and tensions with some Church authorities.
In the early 1870s he fell from favour in Rome when it became publicly known that he opposed the move to declare papal infallibility during the first Vatican Council. He had no difficulties with the doctrine itself, but he thought it rushed and unnecessary. In particular he wrote of the ‘great scandal’ of church politics, influenced by a ‘violent party’ of closed minds in the Council.
When some of his private opinions on this point became public, a shadow of suspicion hung over this now ageing thinker, at least during the last years of Pius IX. But when a new Pope, Leo XIII, was elected in 1878, he named Newman a Cardinal. In his acceptance speech Newman said that his whole ministry, both as an Anglican and as a Catholic, had been to struggle against reducing religion to individual opinion or feeling, thus robbing it of truth. Personally this new honour healed the wounds of his difficult years and, as Newman lived for another decade, he rested secure in this confirmation of his life’s work. When he died in his 90th year tributes came from many directions. Perhaps the most surprising came from a militantly atheist periodical called The Freethinker. The writer spoke of almost feeling regret in having to differ from Newman’s religious position and added: ‘Here, we said to ourselves, is one who is more than a Catholic, more than a theologian; one who has lived an intense inner life, who understands the human heart as few have understood it, who helps the reader to understand himself.’)
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 power hath blest me, sure it still will 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.
Blessed John Henry Newman