Chapter 1: A Spiritual Biography of Newman

1

A Spiritual Biography of Newman

“Holiness before peace”1

“Let a person . . . look back upon his past life, and he will find how critical were moments and acts, which at the time seemed the most indifferent; as for instance, the school he was sent to as a child, the occasion of his falling in with those persons who have most benefited him, the accidents which determined his calling or prospects whatever they were. God’s hand is ever over His own, and He leads them forward by a way they know not of.”2

From the thoughts and events of the past, an individual lives in the present and approaches the future. To understand John Henry Newman, it is important to study those people and events that helped to shape his life and affected his view of life. This chapter will explore the various factors which contributed to the development of his spiritual life in his early years. “John Henry Newman, the subject of this memoir, was born in Old Broad Street in the City of London on the 21st of February 1801, and was baptized in the Church of St. Bennet Fink on April 9th of the same year. His father was a London banker, whose family came from Cambridgeshire. His mother was of a French Protestant family, who left France for this country on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.”3

These are the beginning words of Newman’s autobiographical memoir, which he began writing on June 13, 1874. He was the eldest of six children, whom his parents endeavored to raise according to the Anglican piety of their day. Attendance at church services twice on Sunday, respect for the Prayer Book, daily reading from sacred Scripture, and recitation of the psalms were considered the ideal. Later in life, Newman acknowledged the benefits and limitations of his early religious upbringing: “I was brought up from a child to take delight in reading the Bible; but I had no formed religious convictions till I was fifteen. Of course I had a perfect knowledge of my Catechism.”4

Newman was reared in the Church of England. In the first half of the nineteenth century, there were three major parties within this Church: the High Church or Orthodox party, the Liberals, and the Evangelicals. Newman’s spiritual life was influenced by his association with all three parties within the Church of England. The High Church party, although in the minority and the least influential, sought to be faithful to the traditional faith. Their aim was twofold: to preserve the unity of the church along with the desire to make it a national church. Although there was very little life in this party at the beginning of the century, new life was to be given to the High Church party in the 1830s.

The Liberal party was comprised of people who regarded the Church as a kind of government department. For them, organized religion was chiefly useful for preserving morals and supporting venerable institutions; it was the cement of the entire social structure. At Oriel College resided a group of distinguished liberals headed by Edward Copleston and Richard Whately; although Newman respected these men and was initially impressed by them, he eventually found himself in basic disagreement with their principles.

The most powerful of these three schools of thought during the first three decades of the nineteenth century were the Evangelicals. Originating in the eighteenth century, the party had points of contact with the Methodist movement, but remained within the Church of England. Active in missionary work and social reform, Evangelicals emphasized personal conversion and salvation by faith, and upheld the importance of preaching and the sole authority of Scripture. By their zeal and diligence, they had much to do with the general awakening of the Church prior to the Tractarian movement. The Evangelicals emphasized the need for devotion and reinforced a hunger for holiness which greatly influenced Newman and the other leaders of the Tractarian movement. In fact, the Tractarians were in a great measure recruited from Evangelicals.

Although Newman wrote that he had been converted to a spiritual life by evangelical teaching, he never considered himself a genuine Evangelical. Yet his appreciation for the lasting contribution of Evangelicalism to his own spirituality is evident in the following reflection of 1887:

I will not close our correspondence without testifying my simple love and adhesion to the Catholic Roman Church—not that I think you doubt this—and did I wish to give you a reason for this full and absolute devotion, what should, what can I say, but that those great and burning truths which I learned when a boy from Evangelical teaching, I have found impressed upon my heart with fresh and ever increasing force by the Holy Roman Church? That Church has added to the simple Evangelicalism of my first teachers, but it has obscured, diluted, enfeebled, nothing of it—on the contrary, I have found a power, a resource, a comfort, a consolation in our Lord’s divinity and atonement, in His Real Presence, in communion in His Divine and Human Person which all good Catholics indeed have, but which Evangelical Christians have but faintly.5

Anglican Experiences

Insofar as faith is realized in personal experiences, it is not surprising that the evolution of Newman’s spirituality can be traced through a number of critical events in his life. The first of these was his adolescent “conversion experience.” As Newman recalled in a letter to John Keble in 1844, “When I was a boy of fifteen, and living a life of sin, with a very dark conscience and a very profane spirit, [God] mercifully touched my heart; and, with innumerable sins, yet I have not forsaken Him that time, nor He me.”6 In December 1859, he wrote in his journal:

I know perfectly well, and thankfully confess to Thee, O my God, that Thy wonderful grace turned me right round when I was more like a devil than a wicked boy, at the age of fifteen, and gave me what by Thy continual aids I never lost. Thou didst change my heart and in part my whole mental complexion at that time, and I never should have had the thought of such prayers, as those which I have been speaking of above, but for that great work of Thine in my boyhood.7

In March 1816, a financial crisis arose for Newman’s family when his father’s bank failed. Mr. Newman insisted that all the depositors were to be paid. The house on Southampton Street was sold, and by autumn Mr. Newman had settled his family at Aton in Hampshire and was trying to manage a brewery there. Due to these circumstances, John and his brothers remained at boarding school during that summer. In addition to being away from home, John was struck with a severe illness.8 In his loneliness that summer, he was befriended by the classics tutor, Rev. Walter Mayers, who encouraged him to read Evangelical theologians; this reading undoubtedly helped to pave the way for his early conversion experience. Newman credited Mayers’ conversations and sermons for being “the human means of this beginning of divine faith in me.”9 In his Apologia, Newman characterized this conversion experience as a “great change of thought” which occurred during the autumn of 1816.10 He fell under the influence of a definite creed, and received into his intellect the impressions of dogma which would never subsequently be effaced or obscured.

Although Newman later denied that he had ever been a genuine Evangelical, discussion continues on whether his conversion was in the Evangelical tradition. For example, John Linnan has maintained: “Newman from his conversion till 1826 was a convinced Evangelical.”11 Louis Bouyer, on the other hand, claimed that it is “quite clear that his was no conversion after the Evangelical pattern.”12 C. S. Dessain described Newman’s first conversion as “the wholehearted acceptance of the Christian Faith in the purest form then available to him.”13 Whatever its nature, this conversion gave direction to the rest of Newman’s life.

Newman was more certain of his inward conversion than the fact that he had hands and feet. He temporarily (ca. 1816–1822) appropriated the doctrine of final perseverance from his reading of a work by an Evangelical theologian, William Romaine (1714–1795): “I believe that it [sense of election to eternal glory] had some influence on my opinions, in the direction of those childish imaginations which I have already mentioned, viz. in isolating me from the objects which surrounded me, in confirming me in my mistrust of the reality of material phenomena, and making me rest in the thought of two and two only absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator.”14

At the time of his first conversion, Newman also became convinced that God willed him to lead a single life.15 He called it “a deep imagination”—indicating that it was neither a mere fancy nor a rational decision, but something rising from the depth of the self beyond conscious awareness. Newman felt called to a total dedication to God’s service.

In 1816, after his conversion experience, Newman matriculated at Trinity College, although he did not actually take up residence until the following June. While he was certainly aware of his intellectual abilities, he seemed particularly sensitive to the dangers of intellectual pride.16 His first year at Oxford ended happily; he obtained a college scholarship. With the taste of academic success, he became less eager to receive Anglican Orders and more ambitious for a career as a lawyer. As he struggled to balance his vocational plans with his desire to be resigned to God’s will, Newman prayed that he not be given fame or learning “if the price be transgression in consequence.”17

Three months prior to the examinations for his degree, John wrote to his brother Francis: “It is my daily and I hope heartfelt prayer, that I may not get any honours here, if they are to be the least cause of sin to me.”18 On the eve of his examination he became even more intense and introspective, as a letter to Walter Mayers indicates:

I fear much more from failure than I hope from success. Still may I continue to pray “Give me no honours here if they are to be the slightest cause of sin to my soul.” But, while saying this, I often find that I am acting the part of a very hypocrite; I am buoyed up with the secret idea that, by thus leaving the event in the hands of God, when I pray, He may be induced, as a reward for so proper a spirit, to grant me my desire. Thus my prayer is a mockery.19

Summoned for his examinations a day earlier than expected, Newman broke down completely and placed “below the line”; that is, he just managed to obtain his degree. On December 1, 1820, he wrote to his father: “It is all over, and I have not succeeded. The pain it gives me to be obliged to inform you and my mother of it, I cannot express.”20 Yet he accepted his situation with a certain calm: “I will not attempt to describe what I have gone through, but it is past away, and I feel quite lightened of a load.”21 In response to his mother’s note of comfort, he replied: “I am sure success could not have made me happier than I am at present. . . . Very much I have gone through, but the clouds have passed away. . . . Since I have done my part I have gained what is good.”22

After his failure, Newman gave up his plan to become a lawyer; he entered his decision in his diary on January 11, 1822: “My father this evening said I ought to make up my mind what I was to be . . . so I chose; and determined on the Church. Thank God, this is what I have prayed for.”23

His journal also indicates that he experienced a certain aridity in his prayer life, although he persevered in his devotional exercises, which were occasionally relieved by spiritual consolations. For example, on June 1, 1821, he recorded a dream in which a spirit came to him and discoursed so wonderfully about the other world that he instantly fell on his knees, “overcome with gratitude to God for so kind a message.”24 His journal recorded not only various confessions of sinfulness but also a paternal warning: “Have a guard. You are encouraging a nervousness and morbid sensibility, and irritability, which may be very serious.”25 Newman reflected on his father’s admonition: “O God, grant me to pray earnestly against any delusive heat, or fanatic fancy, or proud imagination or fancied superiority, or uncharitable zeal. Make me and keep me humble and teachable, modest. I have sadly neglected till lately to pray against fanaticism, spiritual pride, etc. How good is God to give me the assurance of hope.”26

Newman soon found his scholarly ambitions resurging; he decided to stand for a fellowship at Oriel College, which at that time enjoyed the highest intellectual reputation at Oxford. During the week of examinations for the Oriel Fellowship, Newman recorded on April 9, 1822: “This morning I was very, very nervous, and I prayed earnestly for strength, and God gave it to me most wonderfully.”27 On April 12 he wrote the simple entry: “I have this morning been elected Fellow of Oriel. Thank God, thank God.”28 Newman always treasured this event; many years later he wrote to Mrs. J. W. Bowden: “It is this day 27 years that I was elected Fellow of Oriel. . . . This day was quite a turning point in my life—and, humanly speaking, I should never have been a Catholic but for God’s Providence to me upon it.”29 With this success, his circumstances radically changed; in a letter to his aunt, he attributed his success to Divine Providence: “A month ago, everything was uncertain and dark as to my future prospects. I seemed to have no hopes in the University. I had few friends, no reputation, no provision for the morrow. . . . Yet by that Heavenly Arm before which the most difficult things are as nothing, I was in an instant secured in comfort and tranquility. He rolled away every barrier, He dispelled every cloud.”30

Newman’s Oriel Fellowship brought him into contact with several people who greatly impacted his spiritual growth. In his Apologia, Newman acknowledged his debt to the Oriel Fellows for his religious development. Richard Whately (1787–1863), afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, taught him the existence of the Church “as a divine appointment, and as a substantive visible body, independent of the State, and endowed with rights, prerogatives, and powers of its own.”31 The principle of the sacred independence of the Church was to become one of the most prominent features of the Tractarian movement. Although later disagreeing with Whately’s liberal principles, Newman acknowledged: “While I was still awkward and timid in 1822, he took me by the hand, and acted towards me the part of a gentle and encouraging instructor. He, emphatically, opened my mind, and taught me to think and to use my reason.”32

In Edward Hawkins (1789–1882), the young Newman found a kind and competent advisor during the long vacation of 1824. Newman submitted his sermons to Hawkins for critique. At this time, Newman tended to classify people sharply as either converted or unconverted; Hawkins helped him to understand that there are degrees in religious and moral excellence. Hawkins also gave Newman a copy of John B. Sumner’s Apostolical Preaching, the book which eventually led Newman to abandon the Evangelical position and to accept the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. Hawkins also introduced Newman to the doctrine of Tradition.

It was also at Oriel that Newman became friends with John Keble, Edward Pusey and Richard Hurrell Froude, who became the “coleaders” of the Oxford Movement. In his Apologia, Newman indicated how he was influenced by Keble’s religious teaching in The Christian Year: “The first of these was what may be called, in a large sense of the word, the Sacramental system; that is, the doctrine that material phenomena are both the types and the instruments of real things unseen,—a doctrine, which embraces in its fullness, not only what Anglicans, as well as Catholics, believe about the Sacraments properly so called; but also the article of ‘the Communion of Saints’; and likewise the Mysteries of the Faith.”33 The second influence was the acceptance of Butler’s teaching that “probability is the guide of life.” While some considered “probability” as destructive of absolute certainty by calling every conclusion into doubt and resolving truth into an opinion, Newman “considered that Mr. Keble met this difficulty by ascribing the firmness of assent which we give to religious doctrine, not to the probabilities which introduced it, but to the living power of faith and love which accepted it.”34

Edward Pusey (1800–1882), was elected a Fellow of Oriel the year after Newman. Although Newman’s evangelical principles clashed with Pusey’s High Church theology, their friendship gradually blossomed. Perhaps, the most lasting influence on Newman came through Pusey’s encouragement to investigate the Fathers of the Church. Pusey’s own contributions to the Tractarian Movement provided significant support and recognition to that movement because of his reputation for scholarship.

Richard Hurrell Froude (1803–1836), a pupil of Keble, became one of Newman’s closest friends. Newman wrote that it was difficult to enumerate the precise additions to his theological creed which he derived from Froude. “He taught me to look with admiration towards the Church of Rome, and in the same degree to dislike the Reformation. He fixed deep in me the idea of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and he led me gradually to believe in the Real Presence.”35 After Froude’s death, when asked to choose one of Froude’s books as a remembrance, Newman chose the Roman Breviary, which soon had a place in his prayer life as an Anglican.

With the approach of his ordination to the diaconate, Newman incorporated the practice of fasting into his spiritual life. He prayed to be made an instrument of God and was very conscious of having “the responsibility of souls” as the life-long task of his new office. On Sunday, June 13, 1824, he was ordained deacon by Dr. Legge, Bishop of Oxford.36 The following year, on May 29, 1825, Newman was ordained priest in the Church of England. It was a calmer occasion than the diaconate which for him had represented his break with the secular world.

In January 1826, Newman became a college tutor, and in the autumn of 1827 he was appointed a University Examiner. Another stage in Newman’s spiritual odyssey began; in his Apologia, he later appraised his state of mind: “The truth is, I was beginning to prefer intellectual excellence to moral; I was rudely awakened from my dream at the end of 1827 by two great blows—illness and bereavement.”37 The sudden death of his beloved sister Mary played an important role in the development of his spiritual life because it revived in him the sense of the unseen world, a world not separated from the world we see, but visible through it and beyond it.38

After Mary’s death, because of a conflict with Provost Hawkins about their tutorial duties, he and Richard Froude were gradually relieved of their tutorial positions.39 This allowed Newman more time for his sermons at St. Mary’s, and for work on his first book, The Arians of the Fourth Century, which was ready for the publishers in July 1832.

Newman worked so unrelentingly on this book that his health suffered. He was easily persuaded to accompany Froude, who was suffering from tuberculosis, and his father on a cruise to the Mediterranean in December. When the Froudes went back to England from Rome, Newman returned to Sicily in April 1833. During this sojourn in Sicily, he fell deathly sick, but kept repeating, “I shall not die, for I have not sinned against the light.” This experience had considerable impact on the development of his spiritual life. The thought of Divine Providence and surrender to the will of God characterized his reflections. He was confident that he would not die because God had some work of great importance for him in England. He experienced a deep sense of sinfulness, especially concerning self-will. Yet there was a certain peace which accompanied his surrender to the will of God.40

Newman later associated his three illnesses with three spiritual crises in his life. The first, when he was fifteen, “made him a Christian,” by turning him away from skepticism; the second checked him, at twenty-six, when he was beginning to prefer intellectual excellence to moral; and the third acted as a purge for his self-will, forcing him to realize his own creatureliness as he lay helpless, struck down at the height of his powers, alone in the hands of strangers in a foreign country.

When Newman left England in December 1832, he was in a state of perplexity about his future; when he returned to Oxford in July 1833, he was a man with a mission—a mission to save the Church of England from the perils that encompassed her. Newman reached his mother’s house near Littlemore on July 9, 1833. On July 14, Keble came to Oxford and preached from the pulpit at St. Mary’s the Assize Sermon on “National Apostasy,” which Newman considered the beginning of the Oxford Movement.41

The Oxford Movement basically began as an effort to defend the independence of the Church from the control of the State. Newman suggested to Keble and Froude an informal association to publish Tracts for the Times in defense of the Church’s independence. Through the Tracts and other writings of its leaders, the Oxford Movement gradually attracted national attention. During the next half-dozen years, Newman’s influence increased. As Gladstone later recalled (March 13, 1879): “I do not believe that there has been anything like his influence in Oxford, when it was at its height, since Abelard lectured in Paris. I myself, in my undergraduate days, saw just the commencement of it. It was beginning to be the custom to go and hear him on Sunday afternoon at St. Mary’s.”42 Newman echoed the same words in the Apologia: “In the spring of 1839 my position in the Anglican Church was at its height. I had supreme confidence in my controversial status, and I had a great and still growing success in recommending it to others.”43

During the long vacation of 1839, Newman was studying the history of the Church in the fifth century. One result of these studies was that his view of the Anglican Church as the Via Media between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism began to disintegrate. Newman’s study of the Council of Chalcedon (451) indicated three parties: the Roman party led by Pope Leo the Great which had condemned Eutyches; the extreme Monophysites; in the middle however, a moderate Monophysite party emerged, claiming to reject Eutyches without fully accepting the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon. “Rome was where she now is; and the Protestants were the Eutychians.”44 To Newman, it seemed that Anglicans were in the same position as the moderate Monophysites; it was difficult then to consider them heretics without saying the same thing about Anglicans; similarly, it was difficult to condemn the sixteenth-century popes and the Council of Trent without also condemning those of the fifth century and the Council of Chalcedon.

This upsetting analogy was followed almost immediately by another. In September 1839, Newman read an article on the Anglican claim to apostolical succession in the Dublin Review by Nicholas Wiseman, then Rector of the English College at Rome. Newman was not particularly bothered by the parallel Wiseman drew between schismatic Donatists in North Africa at the time of Augustine and Anglicans; but he was struck by Augustine’s way of deciding the controversy, his appeal to the general consent of Christians. Newman later described graphically the effect upon him of this double shock. “He who has seen a ghost cannot be as if he has never seen it. The heavens had opened and closed again. The thought for the moment had been, ‘The Church of Rome will be found right after all’; and then it had vanished. My old conviction remained as before.”45

Until the summer of 1841, all had been well; then as Newman began translating the treatises of St. Athanasius against Arius, suddenly the history of the Arians and the semi-Arians appeared in a new light. The example of the Monophysites was repeated. The Arians were like the Protestants, the semi-Arians followed a Via Media like Anglicans; and again “Rome now was what it was then.” The ghost had come a second time.46

On February 27, 1841, Newman published Tract 90, his last and most famous Tract for the Times. Writing it with the intention of keeping within the Anglican Church many who were beginning to move towards Rome, Tract 90 aimed at showing that the 39 Articles (the official doctrinal confession of the Anglican Church) did not necessarily contradict Catholic doctrine, and so could be accepted by those who believed the Catholic truths as expounded by the Tractarians. Tract 90 was a severe shock, because many Anglicans regarded the 39 Articles as a bulwark of Protestantism. Reaction was swift. At first an agreement was reached that the Anglican bishops would not condemn Tract 90 as long as no more tracts were published. However, this agreement was broken by individual bishops who spoke out against it.

It soon became clear to Newman that his position in the Church of England was untenable. A further blow in the autumn of 1841 was the establishment of a bishopric in Jerusalem that was jointly sponsored by the Church of England and the Evangelical Church of Prussia. At the same time that Newman was being denounced for moving closer to Rome, the Anglican Church was officially moving towards Protestantism; moreover, the establishment of an Anglo-Prussian bishopric in Eastern territory directly contradicted the “branch” theory of the Church. At the end of 1841, Newman decided to retire to Littlemore, where in an atmosphere of study, prayer and penance he could think out the problems that faced him.

His reflections, by the summer of 1843, were leading him towards Rome. On May 4, he wrote to Keble of “something which has at last been forced upon my full consciousness,” so that “as far as I can realize my own convictions, I consider the Roman Catholic Communion the Church of the Apostles, and that what grace is among us (which, through God’s mercy, is not little) is extraordinary, and from the overflowings of His Dispensation.” Newman added: “I am very far more sure that England is in schism, than that the Roman additions to the Primitive Creed may not be developments, arousing out of a keen and vivid realising of the Divine Depositum of faith.”47 Five months later, on September 25, 1843, Newman preached his last sermon as an Anglican, “The Parting of Friends.”

Newman continued to live at Littlemore, translating St. Athanasius, and agonizing over his growing conviction that it was his duty to join the Church of Rome. He feared that he was under an illusion, especially when men such as Keble and Pusey did not share his view. This fear could only be dispelled by waiting, by a life of penance, and by prayer and study. Second, since it was his teaching that had brought so many to the practice of a real Christian life, he feared that many would be thrown into confusion and would perhaps even fall into skepticism. He felt intense pain at the distress he was causing others.

The year 1844 was a “dark night” for Newman. To leave the Church of England meant leaving so much that he loved and breaking with so many friends to whom his move was incomprehensible. Even his own family lacked sympathy and understanding for his predicament. When he told his family and friends that he intended to resign his Fellowship at Oriel, his sister Jemima protested: “What can be worse than this? It is like hearing that some dear friend must die. I cannot shut my eyes to this overpowering event that threatens any longer.”48

Personal considerations aside, Newman had to meet the objection that the Roman Church, in spite of its links with antiquity, had tampered with Revealed Religion and added to the revealed truths as they were to be found in primitive times. Newman gradually became convinced that modern Roman doctrines were legitimate developments of the teachings of the Early Church on the assumption that Divine Providence was guiding the Church through the centuries. By the end of 1844, Newman decided to work out fully this theory of doctrinal development in a treatise entitled An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. “Before I got to the end,” he said, “I resolved to be received.”49 On October 9, 1845, John Henry Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church.

Newman’s personal struggle in his own conversion process was very important not only for his own spiritual development, but also in his spiritual direction. Newman understood others who were experiencing turmoil in the process of conversion, because he had suffered through a similar experience. Prospective converts sought out Newman as one who would understand their difficulties.

Roman Catholic Experiences

In 1845, when John Henry Newman joined the Church of Rome, his Anglican bishop, Samuel Wilberforce, commented: “May God give him the grace of repentance before he falls through Rome into infidelity.”50 It was not an atypical reaction in Protestant England where many (including Newman a few years previously) saw Papal Rome as the antichrist of the Apocalypse. Quite different was the reaction of Edward Pusey, who was keenly pained by Newman’s departure yet remained in the Church of England to continue the work of the Oxford Movement:

He has gone as a simple act of duty with no view for himself, placing himself entirely in God’s hands. And such are they whom God employs. He seems then to me not so much gone from me, as transported into another part of the Vineyard, where the full energies of his powerful mind can be employed, which here they were not. And who knows what in the mysterious purposes of God’s good Providence may be the effect of such a person among them? . . . It is perhaps the greatest event which has happened since the communion of the Churches has been interrupted, that each one, so formed in Our Church, and the work of God’s spirit as dwelling within her, should be transplanted to theirs.51

Pusey believed it to be providential that Newman, whose spirituality had been so completely formed in the Church of England, should now be given the opportunity of living out that spirituality in the Church of Rome. Moreover, Pusey anticipated the continuity between Newman’s spirituality as an Anglican and that of his Catholic years. However, such tolerance was the exception, and even Newman’s relationship with Pusey became strained. Furthermore, the loss of old friends was keenly felt by the new convert. Vincent Blehl has observed that the full testing of Newman’s spiritual life took place in the Catholic period. “It is then that he meets the cross in the form of numerous trials and misunderstandings.”52

Newman’s life as a Catholic was plagued by a constant series of trials which became a succession of “purifications” in his spiritual growth and clearly helped shape his spiritual life. In chronological order, the most pertinent “tests” of Newman’s spirituality included the following: the division of the two Oratories (1848–1856); the Achilli trial (1851–1853); the rectorship of the Catholic University in Dublin (1851–1857); the proposed translation of Scripture (1857–1860); the Rambler controversy (1859); Kingsley’s attack (1863–1864); the Oxford Oratory project (1864–1867); the infallibility debate (1867–1875); and his Cardinalate and waning years (1875–1890).

The Oratory Dispute

On February 2, 1848, Newman officially established the Oratory in England with the admission of five priests, one novice, and three lay brothers. Several weeks earlier, Christmas 1847, he had been informed by Monsignor Wiseman that Frederick Faber and his seventeen “Wilfridians” wanted to join the new English Oratory. Newman referred to Faber’s intention as “a most choice Christmas gift,”53 but he expressed a note of realism by asking Faber to consider carefully such a decision.

I will but say that, from the very wish I have that we may come to an understanding, I am anxious you should try if you have fully mastered what Oratorianism is. In many important respects it differs from what you are at present. It is not near so ascetic—indeed it is not ascetic. It is not poetical—it is not very devotional. . . . I am so desirous of our coming together, that I wince while I put down these objections, but no good will come of it, if we don’t consider the matter in all its bearings.54

Faber effulgently responded that he and his community wanted to surrender themselves and their property, in “blind obedience.” The Brothers of the Will of God were received by Newman at St. Wilfrid’s on February 12, 1848. However, within a period of six months, difficulties arose between Newman and the young men in Faber’s group. Newman mentioned his feeling of estrangement to his friend, Ambrose St. John:

My great trouble is some of the giovanni—not that any thing new has occurred, but they have repelled any thing between us but what is external, shown so little kindness when I have done things for them, treated me with so little confidence, as to throw me back upon my self. . . . It is as if my time of work were gone by. Except that one has been led step by step to where one is, beginning in 1841 with going to Littlemore, one is tempted to say, “How much happier for me to have no liabilities (so to speak) but to be a single unfettered convert.”55

Newman subsequently decided to bring the entire community to St. Wilfrid’s while a site in Birmingham was being purchased for the first working Oratory house. Since he considered twelve to be the ideal number to foster a family atmosphere in an Oratory, he planned another Oratory for London and called for prayers that the division of personnel would be according to God’s will. After the lists of names for the two Oratories were decided, Newman wrote to Coffin: “Give my best love to all and every one—and tell them, that, as they have all brought the matter before God for so long a time, with such a desire to know, and resolution to follow, His will, whatever it might be, so now they ought to rejoice and give thanks for what we may all trust is His decision.”56

In the autumn of 1855, a quarrel began between the two houses of the Oratory which was to end in their official separation. Although the immediate issue was a dispute over the Rule, the cause lay deeper—in the increasing differences between the two groups, polarized by their different attitudes to the problems then facing the Church. The trouble began when the London Oratory, without telling Newman, wrote to the Office of Propaganda in Rome for an interpretation of the Rule on the question of hearing nuns’ confessions. The spiritual direction of communities of women was an apostolate that Oratorians were not supposed to undertake, since it took them away from the community. The London Oratorians had assumed this work to oblige Wiseman. The idea of writing to Rome about it, however, was their own. By implication, it indicated their independence to correspond directly with Rome. Newman first learned of this appeal when Bishop Ullathorne said he was glad to hear a rescript from Rome was coming to dispense them from this provision of the Rule.

What disturbed Newman was the realization that because of the action of the London Oratory, the Birmingham Oratory could also be affected by a binding decree from Rome. Ullathorne was embarrassed to find that Newman had not been consulted and did not even know that Propaganda had written for his opinion, as bishop of a diocese in which an Oratory was situated. Subsequent correspondence between the Oratories only increased misunderstanding and mistrust. Eventually, in July 1856, a brief was obtained by the London Oratory to be completely independent of Newman’s Birmingham Oratory.

Throughout this controversy, the nature of the Oratorian Rule was the central issue for Newman. To Richard Stanton, he wrote: “Our Rule is our vocation, as far as any thing external can be so called. Were our rule other than it is, without less devotion to St. Philip, perhaps we should never have been his children. To touch a Rule is to unsettle vocations; to create suspicions about its stability is to weaken the hope which those who have embraced it humbly entertain of their own perseverance.”57

Newman did not see how he could defend himself against the attacks of the London Oratory without personally attacking Faber. He refused to do this and forbade the Birmingham Oratorians to talk to outsiders about the quarrel. Meanwhile, Faber was showing letters to his friends and justifying himself by creating an impression of Newman’s sensitiveness. Newman still insisted on silence and shared his thoughts with John Flanagan: “I have never defended myself through life—I have been called all manner of names—but these things don’t last. Such dirt does not stick. Nor am I allowing scandal to remain, by not speaking; scandal must be somewhere. If you talk of scandal, it is a less [sic] evil that I should be thought tyrannical than F. Faber proved to be double-dealing. Again, any one who defends himself, puts himself in the wrong.”58

The Achilli Trial

In 1851, another storm overshadowed Newman’s life. Giacinto Achilli, a former Dominican priest who had been imprisoned by the Roman Inquisition, had come to England under the auspices of the Protestant Alliance which sponsored his anti-Catholic lectures around the country. Cardinal Wiseman denounced him in an article in the Dublin Review, charging him with moral misconduct. Newman devoted one of his lectures on The Present Position of Catholics in England to an exposé of Achilli’s rather sordid background in an attempt to show him to be a liar whose statements against Catholicism were false. Achilli, supported by the Protestant Alliance, filed charges, and Newman was brought to public trial on a libel suit.

Newman sensed that the Achilli trial was an opportunity for the Church to emerge stronger. “The Church is never more dangerous than when she seems helpless.”59 He recognized that he was probably being taken at his word for the times he had said, “Willingly would I suffer, if the Church is to gain.”60

After a lengthy trial, Newman passed the last two days before the verdict in prayer in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. He had stated during the trial: “I have all my life been speaking about suffering for the Truth,—now it has come upon me.”61 He was comparatively well prepared for the verdict of “guilty” which was delivered by the jury on June 25, 1852. The suspense of the trial had been a great penance for Newman. Writing to J. M. Capes shortly after the verdict, he said: “Suspense is the trial, not certainty—to have one’s thoughts, prayer, masses occupied for months, without definite prospect of being released, to be an ocean of expense and responsibility with a receding horizon, this is a tria1.”62

His lawyers called for a new trial, and Newman became even more hopeful: “I recollect too the proverb, ‘Man’s necessity is God’s opportunity,’ and think it is probable that our adversity is over, and that the prayers of so many holy souls are now at length in the way to be answered.”63 On January 31, 1853, the request for a new trial was refused on technical grounds, and Newman was fined £100. His total court costs, amounting to over £10,000, were paid from a subscription fund to which many Catholics from different countries contributed. He celebrated a Mass of thanksgiving at the Oratory on February 21 for the outcome of the Achilli matter, and continued to remember his benefactors every Friday at Mass.

The Catholic University

In the midst of the Achilli trial, Newman was approached by Dr. Cullen, soon to become the Archbishop of Dublin, and asked to become the first rector of a Catholic University which was to be established in Ireland. The majority of Irish bishops were opposed to “mixed education,” that is, the attendance of Catholics at secular colleges. Dr. Cullen headed a committee to establish an independent Catholic university in Ireland, and Newman was proposed as rector because of his educational background and prestige. After weighing the offer, Newman wrote on November 5, 1851, to Cullen: “I trust, through God’s mercy, I shall be equal to any [work and responsibility] which the Committee puts before me—but at my age, when strength and spirits and vigour and health fail, one may well feel alarmed about it. I do earnestly trust my spirits may not go, or rather that grace may take their place—but, my dear Lord, I need your prayers, and those of all whom I can get to think of me.”64

Newman’s initial enthusiasm was slowly dampened by a series of embarrassing incidents. From the beginning, he was frustrated at not having the freedom to develop and implement his educational ideas. In fact, he was not actually installed as rector until three years after his acceptance; he was not permitted to choose his own vice-rector and could not freely negotiate contracts for professors. Furthermore, decisions were made without consulting or informing him.

Simultaneously, rumors began that he would be appointed Bishop of Liverpool or Nottingham. Being bishop of a diocese did not appeal to Newman, because it would take him away from both the University project and the Oratory. Meanwhile, Cardinal Wiseman decided it would be helpful for Newman to be made a titular bishop so as to be on an equal footing in his relationship with the Irish bishops. In January 1854, Wiseman had this appointment approved in principle at Rome, and proceeded to act as if it were an accomplished fact. The news spread quickly, and Newman’s friends began to send gifts in anticipation of his consecration. When the Papal Brief of March 20, 1854, establishing the University, did not name him a bishop, Newman was surprised but remained silent. Time passed, and Newman never heard again from Wiseman or Cullen about the intended nomination.

In April 1857, Newman wrote to all the Irish bishops that he intended to resign as rector the following November.65 He had experienced a mixture of success and frustration during his administration, and although he had accomplished a great deal, he was never able to have his hopes for the university realized. Nonetheless, his trust in God’s wisdom and goodness remained steady; as he wrote to Bishop O’Brien of Waterford: “I have a sure confidence that the same Providence which has carried on the University to this date, will not be wanting to His own work and carry it on His own wise and good way. He has no need of men, and can find them, when He wills to use them.”66

In 1858, several months after he had resigned the rectorship of the Catholic University in Dublin, Newman wrote Miss Holmes: “Don’t forget to pray for me. We all must have trials in this life—they are for our good, or rather they are simply necessary for us. I have had accumulating trials for several years, and I expect that they will increase rather than diminish. But on the other hand, so great and many mercies, that the troubles are as nothing by the side of them.”67A year later, Newman, expressing his conviction that time is the best judge of the validity of a work, wrote to Robert Ornsby:

It does not prove that what I have written and planned will not take effect sometime and somewhere, because it does not at once. For 20 years my book on the Arians was not heard of, and then I began to hear it talked of. My Oxford University Sermons, preached out as long as 17 years, are now (in some passages) attracting attention at Oxford. When I am gone, something may come of what I have done in Dublin. And, since I hope I did what I did, not for the sake of man, not for the sake of the Irish Hierarchy, not even for the Pope’s praise, but for the sake of God’s Church and God’s glory, I have nothing to regret, and nothing to desire, different from what is.68

Scripture Translation

Following his decision to resign the rectorship of the Catholic University in Dublin, Newman wrote to Ambrose St. John: “Do pray for me that I may find out what use God wishes to put me to, and may pursue it with great obedience.”69 A few months later, Cardinal Wiseman asked Newman to be in charge of “an accurate, idiomatic, well-annotated translation of the Bible.”70 Newman accepted this invitation with renewed enthusiasm: “A greater honour, I feel, could not possibly have been done me than that which your Eminence in that communication has conferred, in selecting me for the office of preparing an annotated English version of the Bible; and I beg your Eminence and through you the Episcopal Body, to receive the heartfelt and most humble acknowledgments, which so high and singular a mark of approbation and confidence demands at my hands.”71

Newman set to work consulting heads of Catholic colleges and theology professors for their suggestions, and by November he presented his translation proposals and budget to Wiseman. The project became complicated by the news from America that Archbishop Kenrick of Baltimore had already published a translation from the Vulgate of the New Testament, the Psalms, and Sapiential Books, and the remainder of the Old Testament translation was ready for publication. The Ninth Provincial Council of Baltimore proposed that Newman should be asked to cooperate with Kenrick in producing a joint version that could be used in all English speaking countries. Newman referred that decision to the English hierarchy, but neither he nor the American bishops were ever formally answered. Newman had spent about £100 for books and materials in connection with the project, but finally decided to abandon it because of lack of communication and support from the English hierarchy. In spite of his disillusionment, Newman still publicly made excuses for Wiseman. In Meriol Trevor’s appraisal, “The frustration of this unresolved mystery was only one, and not the worst, of Newman’s tribulations at this time.”72

The Rambler

In 1848, J. M. Capes launched a Catholic periodical, the Rambler. The young Sir John Acton joined Richard Simpson as coeditor in 1857. The Rambler’s influence was great in comparison with its small circulation of eight hundred copies per month. Its purpose was “to create a body of thought against the false intellectualism of the age, to surround Catholicism with the defenses demanded by that age, to consider from the Catholic viewpoint the discoveries of that age and to give them a Catholic interpretation.”73

Newman was quite happy to support such scholarship, but he recoiled from the hypercritical attitude of the editors towards ecclesiastical authority. The bishops were naturally displeased with this latter aspect, and they considered censuring the Rambler in a pastoral letter. Bishop Ullathorne asked Newman to intervene by helping to secure Simpson’s resignation. Simpson agreed to resign, but threatened to publicize the whole transaction if the Rambler ceased to exist. Simpson also put pressure on Newman to become the editor, and Newman finally accepted the offer on March 21, after much prayer and consultation with the Cratorians and others. In the advertisement for the new series of the Rambler, Newman did not criticize previous indiscrete editorial policies but looked with hope to the future: “The Conductors of The Rambler indulge the hope that the zeal and labour expended on it in former years have not been without fruit; and, under the encouragement thereby given them, they recommend its future to the good prayers of those persons, not few, they trust, nor inconsiderable, who are interested in its well-being.”74

When Simpson became bitter at Wiseman and the bishops for having forced him to resign as editor, Newman empathized:

It seems hardly kind when you have so much to try you, to preach, yet I know you will excuse what comes from one who has had on various occasions already had to practise what he preaches. I assure you that the principal person who has unfairly used you, and whose wishes I have been executing in my negotiation with you, has been personally unkind to me, by word and by deed [viz. Cardinal Wiseman]. I consider myself much aggrieved, and, had not the experience of long years made me tire of indignation and complaint, I could indulge myself in both the one and the other.75

Newman continued with some practical advice on an appropriate response to unkind words or deeds: “But, depend upon it, no advice is better than that of the Holy Apostle, ‘If our enemy hungers, to feed him—’ [Romans 12:20] and to leave our cause simply in the Hands of the good God. He will plead our cause for us in His own way, and, even though it be not His high will to redress us openly, He can make compensation to us by inward blessings. . . . To fret, and to be troubled, does not pay—it is like scratching a wound, instead of letting it heal.”76 This advice is characteristic of Newman, who after making his views known in the clearest manner possible, left the result to God’s will, trusting that God would bring everything to its proper end.

After Newman had assumed the editorship of the Rambler, he expressed his reservations to Henry Wilberforce; yet his course of action was determined not by feelings, but by his desire to do God’s will. “I have the extreme mortification of being Editor of The Rambler, I have never had in my life (in its time) so great a one. It is like a bad dream, and oppresses me at times inconceivably. . . .

I take it in an extremely ill humour, except so far as I have done my best to find out God’s will, and have the consolation of thinking I have found it. But you may be sure I don’t feel indebted to any one for the complication.”77

After the May issue, Bishop Ullathorne, still not satisfied with the tone of the Rambler, advised Newman to resign the editorship after the July issue. Newman promised to do so. “It is impossible, with the principles and feelings on which I have acted all through life, that I could have acted otherwise. I never have resisted, nor can resist the voice of a lawful Superior, speaking in his own province.”78 Newman again wrote Henry Wilberforce to share his reflections about the unexpected way that his editorship was prematurely curtailed. Once again, this letter manifests Newman’s willingness to be patient for the opportune moment when his principles might be expressed.

I did all I could to ascertain God’s will, and that being the case, I am sure good will come of my taking it—I am of the opinion that the Bishops see only one side of things, and I have a mission, as far as my own internal feelings go, against evils which I see. On the other hand, I have always preached that things which are really useful, still are done, according to God’s will, at one time, not at another—and that, if you attempt at a wrong time, what in itself is right, you perhaps become a heretic or schismatic. What I may aim at may be real and good, but it may be God’s will it should be done a hundred years later. . . . When I am gone, it will be seen perhaps that persons stopped me from doing a work which I might have done. God overrules all things.79

In addition to the problem of the editorship, a controversy developed over his Rambler essay, “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine,” which Newman published in the July issue. Bishop Brown of Newport deleted his article to Rome. The seriousness of this accusation was not conveyed to Newman at this time, and so he did not defend himself. At Rome, his orthodoxy was regarded with great suspicion; his reputation was “under a cloud.” In December 1859, he wrote to W. G. Ward: “What I write may be mixed with a great deal of error—but if it is done honestly, in the sight of God, under the correction of the Church, good must come of it in some way or other, even though, certainly not in my day, it does not bring me any credit personally.”80 Newman’s journal entry for December 15, 1859, stated: “I am writing on my knees, and in God’s sight. May He be gracious unto me! as years go on, I have less sensible devotion and inward life. . . . I live more and more in the past, and in hopes that the past may revive in the future. My God, when shall I learn that I have so parted with the world, that, though I may wish to make friends with it, it will not make friends with me?”81 Reflecting on how these recent events had affected his spiritual life, he prayed:

O my God, not as a matter of sentiment, not as a matter of literary exhibition, do I put this down. O rid me of this frightful cowardice, for this is at the bottom of all my ills. When I was young, I was bold, because I was ignorant—now I have lost my boldness, because I have had advanced [sic] in experience. I am able to count the cost, better than I did, of being brave for Thy sake, and therefore I shrink from sacrifices. Here is a second reason, over and above the deadness of my soul, why I have so little faith or love in me.82

Newman certainly came near to a nervous breakdown in these years, although he carried on his normal work; Emily Bowles, a longtime friend of Newman, recorded her impressions after visiting him in Birmingham in 1861:

She was welcomed by Newman “as only he can welcome.” She would never forget “the brightness that lit up that worn face as he received me at the door, carrying in several packages himself.” But when they were talking in the Guest Room, she noticed a change in him. He had not only aged disproportionately to the time but his grand massive face was scored with lines which no lapse of years had written there. They were too evidently lines of intense grief, disappointment, and the patient bearing up against the failure of hope. Whenever he spoke, the expression softened, but when at rest, and his conversation was frequently broken by short fits of absence of mind, there was even a look of terrible weariness akin to lasting depression of mind—It gave me at first the idea of some personal displeasure, but I soon found that this idea could not be entertained.83

After the Rambler incident, Newman did not publish again until 1864. He occupied himself with the Oratory School which he had established in 1859, and with his pastoral duties as preacher and confessor. His disappointment was confided to his journal:

“Not understood”—this is the point. I have seen great wants which had to be supplied among Catholics, especially as regards education, and of course those who laboured under those wants, did not know their state—and did not see or understand the want at all or what was the supply of the want, and felt no thankfulness at all, and no consideration towards a person who was doing something towards that supply, but rather thought him restless, or crotchetty, or in some way or other what he should not be. This has naturally made me shrink into myself, or rather it has made me think of turning more to God, if it has not actually turned me. It has made me feel that in the Blessed Sacrament is my great consolation, and that while I have Him who lives in the Church, my Superiors, though they may claim my obedience, have no claim on my admiration, and offer nothing for my inward trust. I have expressed this feeling, or rather implied it, in one of my Dublin Sermons (preached in 1856).84

He countered the temptation to look back, having put his hand to the plough, by praying for a greater spirit of detachment: “It has been my lifelong prayer, and Thou hast granted it, that I should be set aside in this world. Now then let me make it once again. O Lord, bless what I write and prosper it—let it have much success; but let no praise come to me on that account in my lifetime. Let me go on living, let me die, as I have hitherto lived.”85 In a memorandum which Newman wrote as a personal reflection on his delation to Rome, he considered himself as the “scapegoat” of a series of events. Providence had drawn him through a certain rhythm of purifying experiences, yet, although he was sensitive to misunderstanding, he was not bitter or cynical:

I hope we shall be on our guard against the indignation or anger which in various ways may at this moment or that be in danger of besetting us. Pride and passion are bad counsellors. In saying this I do not at all forget that reason would lead one to be quiet and composed, but it is very difficult at all times to go by reason. For myself, I think it is a portion of the fate of my life—and, if I anticipated it beforehand, I really cannot with any reason be annoyed with the instruments of it, when it takes place, for nothing can happen without instruments.86

The Apologia

At the end of 1863, Newman received a book review that provided another such “instrument.” At the time, Newman appeared to be a forgotten, powerless figure. His Birmingham Oratory included only six others, and he lived under a cloud of misunderstanding by Catholic authorities. On December 30, he received a copy of Macmillan’s Magazine from William Pope, calling his attention to the following quotation from a book review of volumes 7 and 8 of James Froude’s History of England: “Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage. Whether his notion be doctrinally correct or not, it is at least historically so.”87

When he learned that the author of this article was Charles Kingsley, he realized he was not dealing with “a young scribe, who is making himself a cheap reputation by smart hits at the safe objects.”88 Kingsley was Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, a popular novelist, and tutor to the Prince of Wales. Newman entered into correspondence with Kingsley, but not receiving a satisfactory retraction, decided to publish their exchange of letters in a pamphlet: “Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Newman: A Correspondence on the Question whether Dr. Newman Teaches that Truth Is No Virtue?” Newman had conflicting feelings about this type of publication but made his decision after deliberation, consultation, and prayer. Kingsley retorted by means of another pamphlet: “What then Does Dr. Newman Mean?” Feeling that Kingsley’s accusations were not only a personal insult but an attack on the Roman Catholic priesthood, Newman decided there was only one way to answer the charge of untruthfulness against him.89 “I must give the true key to my whole life; I must show what I am, that it may be seen what I am not, and that the phantom may be extinguished which gibbens instead of me.”90

Two pamphlets appeared on April 21 and 22 in which Newman described Kingsley’s behavior throughout the affair; each week thereafter until mid-June, a new installment was published and quickly read by an avid English public. As this strikingly personal history of his “religious opinions” unfolded, Newman presented his readers with a new perspective on the Oxford Movement. It was an exhausting ordeal for him to meet the publisher’s weekly deadlines, and he pleaded with his friends for the support of their prayers,91 so that he might be guided “to say that which is according to the Will of God.”92 On June 12, he sent his last proof to the printer; subsequently, to express his gratitude to his friends, he wrote letters such as this one to Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan: “I was like a man who had fallen overboard and had to swim to land, and found the distance he had to go greater and greater. At last I am ashore, and have crawled upon the beach, and there I lie; but I should not have got safe I know, but for the many good prayers which have been offered for me.”93

Kingsley’s chance remark unintentionally provided Newman with the opportunity of regaining his stature with the English public; Kingsley’s insulting insinuation resulted in a spiritual classic. A century later, Basil Willey noted:

The Apologia, though some of its themes belong to a dead past, will live as long as great literature itself has any survival-value. It will live because it is the record, in restrained yet impassioned prose, of the spiritual pilgrimage of a great and saintly man; it will live as a noble attempt to assert external Providence against the “all-corroding, all-dissolving skepticism of the intellect in religious inquiries.”

The immediate effects of the Apologia can be expressed in less sweeping terms. First, it did more than any other single book to change the Englishman’s image of the Roman Catholic Church; secondly, it dispelled the clouds of suspicion and misunderstanding which for a quarter of a century had hidden the real Newman from most of his contemporaries.94

The Proposed Oxford Oratory

Newman felt encouraged by the reception of his Apologia. Thus the proposal of Bishop Ullathorne that Newman should establish a Catholic mission in Oxford coincided with his hope to use his renewed influence at his alma mater. Although it was now possible for Catholics to attend English universities, the English bishops only reluctantly permitted it. Newman approached this new challenge enthusiastically, as can be seen in this letter to Sister Mary Imelda Poole: “We shall have plenty of trials in time, but at present the sky is very clear and bright, and the landscape is rose-colour. Alas! That bright mornings are the soonest over cast! So great a work cannot be done without great crosses—Yet I don’t like to say so, for it is like prophesying against myself and I do not like trial at all. What is to happen if we are not preserved in health and strength? . . . But we must leave all this to Him who we trust in employing us.”95 To his old friend Pusey, he described the circumstances which led him to the Oxford scheme:

Two or three things have combined—first, our youths are beginning to go to Oxford, and the Colleges are admitting them—secondly the late Mr. R. Smith suddenly offers me land—thirdly my diocesan puts, to my surprise, the Oxford Mission into my hands. These are independent of me—but, combined as they are, they have the force enough to make me think that it is God’s will that I should accept the conclusion in which they issue. . . . I am too old to be able to speculate on the future—and, if I found an Oratory at Oxford, it may be as much as Providence means me to do.96

The purchase price for the plot of land was £8,400, which Newman set about raising through subscriptions. Financial worries yielded to his trust in Providence, which he believed would bring him through the difficulty.97

Meanwhile there was influential opposition to Newman’s involvement with Oxford: William G. Ward, Henry Manning, George Talbot, and Herbert Vaughan.98 They used their influence at Rome to reinforce a strong stand against mixed education; on December 13, the English Bishops passed resolutions absolutely prohibiting Catholics from attending Oxford. Newman shared his disappointment with Sister Mary Imelda Poole: “As to the Oxford scheme, it is still the blessed will of God to send me baulks. On the whole, I suppose, looking through my life as a course, He is using me—but really viewed in its separate parts, it is but a life of failures.”99 Newman sold the property which had been acquired. Bishop Ullathorne, however, was still interested in having an Oxford Mission, and renewed his offer to Newman in April 1866. Newman’s initial response was cautious and he listed five difficulties in his lengthy reply to Ullathorne.100 He told Pusey that coming to Oxford “would be as painful a step” as he could be called to make, and that he “would not contemplate it except under the imperative call of duty.”101 The formal permission for an Oxford Mission was secured from Propaganda by Ullathorne, but with secret instructions—not communicated to Newman at the time—that he personally was to be dissuaded “blande suaviterque” (smoothly and sweetly) from residing at Oxford. Unsuspecting, Newman wrote to Catherine Bathurst at the end of 1866: “Incomprehensible as it is, great ecclesiastics in England, friends of mine, have set themselves with a feeling quite personal against me in the Oxford matter, and for two years have thwarted the plan. Our Bishop has triumphed over them, and we are to go there. The leave has come from Propaganda. Still, the same influence which has been so violent against me will bother me when I am there, I cannot doubt. So you must give me some good prayers.”102 A few days later he shared his reflections with Emily Bowles in a letter which reveals his sensitivity of conscience:

I have already asked the Bishop about our collecting money [for the Oxford scheme]. You speak as if I were dawdling and losing time. So I should be if the work were one which I had chosen as God’s work. But on the contrary, it has been forced on me against my will, and certainly, if not against my judgment, yet not with it, or my will would not be against it. It would be a great inconsistency in me to let six months pass and do nothing were I convinced it was the will of Providence,—but I do not feel this. I only go because I fear to be deaf to a Divine call,—but, if anything happened in the six months to prevent it, that would be to me a sign that there never had been a Divine call.103

On April 6, 1867, William Neville and Newman went for a walk during which they talked happily about the prospects awaiting them in Oxford. When they returned to the Oratory, Newman was handed a long blue envelope delivered in his absence. It was a letter from Ullathorne revealing the secret instruction from Propaganda. Newman, after reading the letter, turned to Neville and said only: “All is over. I am not allowed to go.”104

Newman’s sense of interior peace and detachment can be sensed in a letter that he wrote to Henry Coleridge:

It is my cross to have false stories circulated about me, and to be suspected in consequence. I could not have a lighter one. I would not change it for any other . . .

For twenty years I have honestly and sensitively done my best to fulfill the letter and spirit of the directions of the Holy See and Propaganda—and I never have obtained the confidence of any one at Rome . . .

I have lost any desire to gain the goodwill of those who thus look on me. I have abundant consolation in the unanimous sympathy of those around me. I trust I shall always give a hearty obedience to Rome, but I never expect in my life time any recognition of it.105

Newman later wrote to Bishop Ullathorne to withdraw his offer to establish a Mission at Oxford: “Accordingly, I now ask your permission to withdraw from my engagement to undertake the Mission of Oxford, on the ground that I am not allowed by Propaganda the freedom to discharge its duties with effect.”106

Vatican I

The proposal of convening a general council, which would be the first since Trent three hundred years earlier, was privately announced by Pius IX at the end of the year 1864. The public announcement came in June 1867, but the preparations took so long that it did not begin until December 8, 1869. Officially, the Council was convened to restate Catholic doctrine on issues under attack and to discuss proposed changes in Church discipline. However, there were persistent rumors that there would be a definition on the doctrine of “papal infallibility.” English pro-infallibilists, also known as Ultramontanes, included Manning, Ward, and Talbot. Even prior to the opening of the Council, they had begun a campaign in favor of a declaration about infallibility and their exaggerated interpretations of infallibility aroused emotions to a high level. They insisted that their opinions were the only orthodox teaching. Newman maintained that Popes had always acted as if they had the right to the last word on disputed matters, thus sharing in Christ’s guarantee to his Church that the Holy Spirit would guide it into all truth. What Newman rejected was a sweeping application of infallibility to all papal pronouncements as well as the way in which the pro-infallibilists characterized everyone else as unorthodox.

Although Newman had been invited to take part in the preparatory work of the Council, he declined the invitation because of his age and health. Instead he went to Rednall to finish writing An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, which appeared on March 15, 1870. On that very day, the Standard published Newman’s private letter to Bishop Ullathorne protesting the methods of those who were campaigning to get the Council to promulgate a definition of papal infallibility. In his letter, Newman said the Ultramontanes were causing confusion and were spreading fear and dismay among Catholics.107 After lengthy debate, the Council approved the constitution Pastor aeternus on July 18, 1870. However, the triumph of Manning and other exaggerated proponents was limited by the modifications inserted into the text.108

When Newman saw the wording of the definition itself on July 23, he was pleased to find nothing in it that was starthng. Nevertheless, he felt that it would not be easy for the ordinary person, whether Catholic or not, to understand the meaning of the decree, especially when Manning returned from Rome and began to pressure people to accept the new dogma. Many people were disturbed and wrote to Newman for advice.

During the months after the Council, Newman was frequently urged to write on the topic of infallibility, but a suitable opportunity did not present itself. In fact, he was again forced to defend his good faith—there were persistent rumors that he did not accept the decree, or that he had left or would leave the Church, that he was unhappy and longed to return to the Anglican Church. Finally, in 1874, an opportunity presented itself. William Gladstone published a book on The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance that maintained that the Pope could command Catholics to act contrary to their civil allegiance under pain of eternal damnation. Newman needed no further urging. In defending the Church, Newman did not want to attack Gladstone personally; rather he wanted to attack both Gladstone’s misunderstanding and the extreme views of Manning and Ward. Newman wanted to explain the definition in a legitimately minimizing sense, to clarify the relative position of conscience and papal authority and to disown Ultramontance exaggerations of the doctrine.

Newman decided to dedicate his pamphlet to his friend, the Duke of Norfolk, who had been educated at Newman’s school, and who was England’s leading Catholic layman. Since Newman’s emphasis was on civil allegiance, he gave Gladstone no grounds for offense and Manning no grounds for attack. The Letter to the Duke of Norfolk was published early in January 1875. Like the Apologia, this work was immediately successful. The Letter’s understanding of the Catholic position completely reversed public opinion, including that of Gladstone himself.

Honors

Newman was almost seventy-four when his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk was published. Like many others his age, he was often saddened at the death of close friends who had stood by him in his trials and whose deaths left great voids in his life. Perhaps the greatest loss came not long after the success of the Letter when Ambrose St. John died on May 24, 1875, at the age of sixty. Newman’s senior years were also the time of unexpected honors.

Just before Christmas 1877 came the surprising news that Trinity College wanted to make Newman its first Honorary Fellow; after anxiously consulting his fellow Oratorians and his bishop, he gladly accepted. And so it was in 1878 that Newman returned to Oxford for the first time since 1845. He called on Pusey and saw the new Keble College; he visited Thomas Short, his old tutor, age ninety and blind. The Trinity fellowship lifted the cloud which had overcast Newman in Anglican circles since he left Oxford a generation earlier.

However, Newman also lived under a cloud of suspicion in the communion which he joined. After the longest pontificate on record, (1846–1878), Pius IX died on February 7, 1878. His successor, Leo XIII, wanted to create Newman a cardinal. Rumors to this effect appeared in print in England in the summer of 1878, but Newman dismissed them as most improbable. The Duke of Norfolk, however, on behalf of the Catholic laity of England, took up the matter with enthusiasm. At that time, cardinals who were not diocesan bishops were expected to reside in Rome and Newman feared that he would have to leave the Birmingham Oratory; however, that fear was allayed when the official letter arrived at the Oratory on March 18, 1879. As cardinal, he was permitted to remain at his Oratory; Newman gladly accepted the cardinalate, regarding it as a sign of approval for his work. He felt as though the cloud had been lifted forever.

In 1886, Newman’s health began to deteriorate. He celebrated his last Mass on Christmas Day 1889, but continued to see visitors on a limited basis. In August, 1890, Newman contracted pneumonia and after receiving the last rites on August 10, he died quietly the following day. At his request, he was buried next to his close friend and fellow Oratorian, Ambrose St. John, in the Oratorian cemetery at Rednal. As Newman’s funeral procession passed through the streets from the Birmingham Oratory to Rednal, thousands lined the way to pay their final respects. In the cloister leading to the Oratory Church, there are tablets on the wall in memory of the deceased Oratorians. Newman, who had composed graceful Latin tributes to those who died before him, wrote a simple epitaph that summarizes his whole life: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem—“From Shadows and Images into Truth.”

At the time of Newman’s death, the London Times remarked that “whether Rome canonizes him or not, he will be canonized in the thoughts of pious people of many creeds in England.” On January 22, 1991, Pope John Paul II declared Newman “Venerable” since he had exercised the Christian virtues in an heroic degree.109 After the Vatican recognized the cure of the severe spinal disorder of Deacon Jack Sullivan of Marshfield, Massachusetts, as an authentic miracle worked through Newman’s intercession, on September 19, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI beatified John Henry Newman at Cofton Park, not far from the Oratorian house at Rednal. In his homily at the Mass of Newman’s beatification, Pope Benedict XVI emphasized: “In Blessed John Henry, that tradition of gentle scholarship, deep human wisdom and profound love for the Lord has borne rich fruit, as a sign of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit deep within the heart of God’s people, bringing forth abundant gifts of holiness.”110

1 Newman, Apologia, 17. These sayings were attributed to Thomas Scott, who had a great influence on Newman in his early life.

2. Newman, “Christ Manifested in Remembrance,” in Parochial and Plain Sermons, 4:261.

3. Newman, Autobiographical Writings, 29.

4. Newman, Apologia, 14.

5. JHN to George T. Edwards, 24 February 1887, in LD 31:189.

6. Newman, Correspondence, 314. Bracketed and parenthetical information within quotations here and throughout are in the original, unless otherwise noted.

7. Newman, Autobiographical Writings, 250. Similarly, in 1863 he told William Brownlow: “I should be contradicting my own individuality and personality, if I was not as sure that God changed me altogether when I was a boy of fifteen, as I am of the existence of any particular creation of grace, of any actual divine working, of any given Saint, of this or that supernatural deed, in the Catholic Church. I am more sure that God gave me great opportunities of loving Him then, than that St. Ignatius was a true Martyr, or that St. Augustine is a Doctor of the Church.” JHN to William Brownlow, 25 October 1863, in LD 20:543. In 1885, when Newman was corresponding with Anne Mozley concerning the publication of a memoir after his death, he again reflected on the importance of this conversion experience: “I am rather perplexed what to send you—whether to begin with my school time or with 1816. Of course I cannot myself be the judge of myself, but, speaking with this reserve, I should say that it is difficult to realize or imagine the identity of the boy before and after August 1816, as the memoranda, still undestroyed, describe him. I can look back at the end of 70 years as if on another person.” JHN to Anne Mozley, 19 February 1885, in LD 31:31.

8. Many years later, in 1869, Newman mentioned the impact of this illness on his spiritual life: “The first keen, terrible one, when I was a boy of 15, and it made me a Christian—with experiences before and after, awful, and known only to God.” Newman, Autographical Writings, 268.

9. Newman, Apologia, 16.

10. In his Autobiographical Writings, 181, Newman noted the dates of his great change of thought: “The first or last days of the half year of my conversion, August 1 and December 21, 1816.”

11. Linnan, “Evangelical Background,” 558.

12. Bouyer, Newman, 20.

13. Dessain, “Newman’s First Conversion,” 51, agreed with Newman’s later statement that his conversion was not truly Evangelical.

14. Newman, Apologia, 16. This famous phrase provides an insight into Newman’s spiritual life at the time.

15. Ibid., 19.

16. For example, after his prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord for having given him “some abilities” and having supplied him with excellent tutors, he prayed in April 1817: “If I have any abilities, if I ever did a good Action, to thee be ascribed the glory! Not unto me, O Lord! Not unto me but unto Thy Name, be the Praise.” Later that same year he prayed again: “Let me attend and apply to my studies but let me have thy glory in view as the end of all my pursuits.” Ivory, “Doctrine,” 12.

17. Newman, Autobiographical Writings, 159. “I will accept of none of these, without bargaining that sin is not included in the gift.”

18. Ibid., 159. He asks his brother to pray for him in the same way.

19. Ward, Young Mr. Newman, 52.

20. Newman, Autobiographical Writings, 48. By this time, the Newman family was in straightened circumstances, so that his success was also financially important.

21. Ibid., 48.

22. Ibid., 49.

23. Ibid., 180.

24. Ibid., 166–67.

25. Ibid., 179.

26. Ibid., 179–80.

27. Ibid., 185.

28. Ibid., 186.

29. JHN to Mrs. J. W. Bowden, 12 April 1849, in LD 13:108.

30. Bouyer, Newman, 57.

31. Newman, Autobiographical Writings, 69.

32. Newman, Apologia, 22.

33. Ibid., 27.

34. Ibid., 28.

35. Ibid., 33.

36. Newman, Autobiographical Writings, 200, expressed his feelings about his ordination. “It is over. I am thine, O Lord; I seem quite dizzy, and cannot altogether believe and understand it. At first, after the hands were laid on me, my heart shuddered within me; the words ‘for ever’ are so terrible. It was hardly a godly feeling which made me feel melancholy at the idea of giving up all for God. At times indeed my heart burnt within me, particularly during the singing of the Veni Creator. Yet Lord, I ask not for comfort in comparison of sanctification. . . . I feel as a man thrown suddenly into deep water.”

37. Newman, Apologia, 24. In 1869, Newman, Autographical Writings, 268, reflected about his illness: “My second, not painful, but tedious and shattering was that which I had in 1827 when I was one of the Examining Masters, and it too broke me off from an incipient liberalism.”

38. See Mozley, Letters, 1:184, a letter written to his sister Jemima on May 10, 1828. “Dear Mary seems embodied in every tree and hid behind every hill. What a veil and curtain this world of sense is. Beautiful, but still a veil.” Over fifty years later, Newman wrote to Miss Giberne, now Sister Pia, 5 January 1882, in LD 30:48, about his love for his sister Mary. “This is the anniversary of my dear Mary’s death in 1828, an age ago; but she is fresh in my memory and as dear to my heart, as if it were yesterday, and often I cannot mention her name without tears coming into my eyes.” Four years later, he again referred to her death in a letter to Lord Blachford, 5 October 1886, in LD 31:167. See also his poem, “Consolations in Bereavement,” written shortly after Mary’s death in Verses, 26–28.

39. The Provost of Oriel, Edward Hawkins, disliked the reforms Newman was introducing into the tutorial system. Previously, tutors had simply delivered lectures, and if any undergraduate wanted individual attention, he had to pay for it. Newman thought such private supervision was what the tutors were already paid to do; he also thought they had a duty to take a personal interest in the young men—a pastoral care. Hawkins resolved the disagreement by assigning no more pupils to Newman and to the other tutors who agreed with him. Trevor, Newman’s Journey, 41–42. Recalling how he understood his role as tutor in a pastoral sense, decades later, he mentioned to George Edwards, 25 February 1886, in LD 31:119: “And I know that before I became Tutor I resolved with God’s help to resign the office if I could not make it a pastoral one, and that for this reason I did in the event actually resign it.”

40. During his return voyage, he expressed his new spiritual growth in an intensely personal prayer which was to become his most famous poem, “The Pillar of the Cloud,” better known by its opening words, “Lead, kindly light,” in Verses, 152–53, written at sea, June 16, 1833.

41. Newman, Autographical Writings, 119. See also Dessain, John Henry Newman, 34. The immediate occasion of Keble’s protest was the abolition of a number of unneeded Protestant bishoprics and parishes in Catholic Ireland by Parliament; in effect, the State, was interfering with the successors of the apostles.

42. Sir Mounstuart Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1873–1881, 2:121, as cited by Dessain, John Henry Newman, 43.

43. Newman, Apologia, 81.

44. Ibid., 96.

45. Ibid., 99.

46. Ibid., 114–15.

47. Newman, Correspondence, 218–19.

48. Trevor, Newman: The Pillar, 349. About a year and a half later, on Palm Sunday 1845, Newman wrote to his sister Jemima describing his anguish: “At my time of life men love ease. I love ease myself. I am giving up a maintenance involving no duties and adequate to all my wants. What in the world am I doing this for (I ask myself this) except that I think I am called to do so? I am making a large income by my sermons. I am, to say the very least, risking this; the chance is that my sermons will have no further sale at all. I have a good name with many; I am deliberately sacrificing it. I have a bad name with more. I am fulfilling all their worst wishes, and giving them their most coveted triumph. I am distressing all I love, unsetthng all I have instructed or aided. I am going to those I do not know, and of whom I expect very little. Oh, what can it be but a stern necessity which causes this?” Bouyer, Newman, 241–42.

49. Newman, Apologia, 181.

50. Trevor, Newman: The Pillar, 370.

51. Liddon, Life, 2:461.

52. Blehl, “Holiness,” 327.

53. JHN to F. W. Faber, 2 January 1848, in LD 12:145.

54. JHN to F. W. Faber, 31 December 1847, in LD 12:140.

55. JHN to Ambrose St. John, 12 July 1848, in LD 12:243.

56. JHN to R. A. Coffin, 15 April 1849, in LD 13:114.

57. JHN to Richard Stanton, 27 May 1856, in LD 17:248.

58. JHN to John Flanagan, 10 July 1856, in LD 17:317.

59. JHN to J. M. Capes, 27 November 1851, in LD 14:443.

60. JHN to Richard Stanton, 4 December 1851, in LD 14:451.

61. JHN to Sister Mary Imelda Poole, 25 November 1851, in LD 14:438.

62. JHN to J. M. Capes, 4 July 1852, in LD 15:116.

63. JHN to Sister Mary Imelda Poole, 28 November 1852, in LD 15:206.

64. JHN to Archbishop Cullen, 5 November 1851, in LD 16:416.

65. JHN to Archbishop Cullen, 2 April 1857, in LD 18:5.

66. JHN to Bishop O’Brien, 14 April 1857, in LD 18:15.

67. JHN to Miss Holmes, 10 August 1858, in LD 18:438.

68. JHN to Robert Ornsby, 15 December 1859, in LD 19:254. These “University Sermons” are found in Newman, Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford.

69. JHN to Ambrose St. John, 7 May 1857, in LD 18:30.

70. Cardinal Wiseman to JHN, 26 August 1857, in LD 18:122.

71. JHN to Cardinal Wiseman, 14 September 1857, in LD 18:129.

72. Trevor, Newman: Light, 173.

73. Guitton, Church, 21.

74. JHN, March 1859, in LD 19:89. This advertisement was prefixed to the May 2 edition.

75. JHN to Richard Simpson, 25 February 1859, in LD 19:51–52.

76. Ibid., 52.

77. JHN to Henry Wilberforce, 31 March 1859, in LD 19:96.

78. JHN to Edward Thompson, 29 May 1859, in LD 19:150.

79. JHN to Henry Wilberforce, 17 July 1859, in LD 19:179–80.

80. JHN to W. G. Ward, 3 December 1859, in LD 19:251.

81. Newman, Autobiographical Writings, 249.

82. Ibid., 251.

83. Trevor, Newman’s Journey, 202.

84. Ibid., 251–52. Journal entry, January 8, 1860.

85. Newman, Autobiographical Writings, 252. He closed the entry for January 8 by praying for two concerns: “(1) Let not the contempt which comes on me, injure the future of my Oratory—about this I am anxious, though I ought to put it, and do put it simply, into Thy hands, O Lord. (2) And again, O teach me (for it is a subject which tries me very much just now, which I have prayed about, and have said Masses about), teach me how to employ myself most profitably, most to Thy glory, in such years as remain to me; for my apparent ill success discourages me very much.” Ibid., 253.

86. Memorandum of Newman, 14 January, 1860, in LD 19:292.

87. JHN, 30 December, 1863, in LD 20:571, cited in a letter sent by Newman to Messrs. Macmillan and Co.

88. JHN to Alexander Macmillan, 8 January 1864, in LD 21:12.

89. Ibid., 4: “I was making my protest on behalf of a large body of men of high character, of honest and religious minds, and of sensitive honour,—who had their place and their rights in this world, though they were ministers of the world unseen, and who were insulted by my Accusor, as the above extracts from him sufficiently show, not only in my person, but directly and pointedly in their own.”

90. Newman, Apologia, 11–12.

91. JHN to Miss. Holmes, 9 April 1864, in LD 21:92. “Only pray for me that I may not be overtired, for the toil is a fatigue, and that I may be guided what to say.”

92. JHN to Edward Ryley, 26 April 1864, in LD 21:103.

93. JHN to Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan, 25 June 1864, in LD 21:131.

94. Willey, Introduction to Apologia, v–vi.

95. JHN to Sister Mary Imelda Poole, 16 November 1864, in LD 21:295. Newman wrote to Henry Wilberforce that same day: “As to Oxford, we are astonished at our own doings—and our only hope is that we are doing God’s Will in thus portentously involving ourselves both in money matters and in work.” JHN to Henry Wilberforce, 16 November 1864, in LD 21:297.

96. JHN to Edward Pusey, 22 November 1864, in LD 21:303–4.

97. JHN to George Smith, 24 October 1864, in LD 21:269.

98. Bishop Ullathorne to JHN, 28 March 1867, in LD 23:3.

99. JHN to Sister Mary Imelda Poole, 28 December 1864, in LD 23:359.

100. JHN to Bishop Ullathorne, 23 April 1866, in LD 22:221–24.

101. JHN to Edward Pusey, 29 April 1866, in LD 22:227.

102. JHN to Catherine Bathurst, 31 December 1866, in LD 22:337. However, see JHN to Bishop Ullathorne, 1 January 1867, in LD 23: 4–5n4; this footnote indicates that Ullathorne sent Newman the letter from Propaganda on December 25, and that Ullathorne knew at this time about the “secret instruction” which did not allow Newman to reside at Oxford; however, Ullathorne did not tell Newman about this constriction.

103. JHN to Emily Bowles, 8 January 1867, in LD 23:16.

104. Ward, Life, 2:138–39. The Roman correspondent for the Weekly Register, E. R. Martin, submitted a letter in the April 6 issue in which he attacked Newman, saying that the Pope himself had prohibited him from going to Oxford because of his doubtful orthodoxy. This provoked great indignation among Newman’s friends, and they presented an address to him signed by about two hundred distinguished English Catholic laymen. They declared that “every blow that touches you [Newman] inflicts a wound upon the Catholic Church in this country.” Ibid., 143.

105. JHN to Henry Coleridge, 26 April 1867, in LD 23:191.

106. JHN to Bishop Ullathorne, 18 August 1867, in LD 23:312.

107. JHN to Bishop Ullathorne, 28 January 1870, in LD 25:18–19.

108. The following day, war was declared between France and Prussia, and many bishops returned to their dioceses. Although the Council met on three more occasions, attendance was small and nothing important was accomplished. Pius IX suspended the Council indefinitely on October 20; sessions never resumed.

109. The decree of beatification is available online at: http://www.newmanreader.org/canonization/promulgation.html.

110. The papal homily at the mass of beatification is available online at: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20100919_beatif-newman_en.html.

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