Biography: John Henry Newman (1801–1890)
Biography:
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN (1801–1890)
1. FAMILY, EALING SCHOOL, “FIRST CONVERSION”
John Henry Newman was born in London on February 21, 1801, and was baptized in the Anglican church of St. Benet Fink on April 9, 1801. His father, also named John (1767–1824), was a banker and businessman, whose family came from Cambridgeshire. His mother, Jemima Fourdrinier (1772–1836), came from a French Protestant family, which had emigrated to England after the revocation (1685) of the Edict of Nantes (1598), which accorded religious liberty to Protestants. John Henry was the oldest of six children: he had two brothers, Charles (1802–1884) and Francis (1805–1897), and three sisters, Harriet (1803–1852), Jemima (1808–1879) and Mary (1809–1828). Their religious upbringing was typical of a middle-class English family in the early nineteenth century: regular attendance at church and reading the Bible at home.
In 1808, at the age of seven, John Henry was sent to a boarding school at Ealing, a town west of London, whose headmaster was Rev. Dr. George Nicholas of Wadham College, Oxford. Dr. Nicholas would later say that no boy had run through the school, from the bottom to the top, as rapidly as John Henry Newman. During his last year at Ealing, Newman came under the influence of a teacher of classics, Rev. Walter Mayers (1790–1828), Whose Calvinistic spirituality made a deep impression on Newman. During his final months at Ealing, Newman experienced a “conversion,” which convinced him that he was “predestined to salvation” and so would persevere in his Christian faith. This conversion experience also produced in Newman a “mistrust” of “material phenomena” and a sense of the invisible world—which he later described as “the thought of two and two only absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator” (Readings 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4).
2. STUDENT AT TRINITY COLLEGE
After finishing Ealing School, Newman was enrolled in Trinity College, Oxford, on December 14, 1816—two months short of his sixteenth birthday; due to the lack of rooms, however, he was unable to begin residing at Trinity until the following June. During the waning days of the school year, he had the good fortune to meet another freshman, three years his senior, John William Bowden (1798–1844), who became his inseparable companion as well as his partner in several joint literary endeavors and a life-long friend (Reading 2.3).
Newman's tutor, Thomas Short (1789–1879), who had recently arrived at Trinity from Rugby, was initially suspicious of the youthful Newman's abilities, but was soon convinced of his talents and encouraged him to be a candidate for one of the competitive Trinity scholarships. Newman later described the rigorous exam for the scholarship: “They made me first do some verses; then Latin translation; then Latin theme; then chorus of Euripides; then an English theme; then some Plato; then some Lucretius; then some Xenophon; then some Livy”—a formidable challenge for a teenager. After waiting in suspense, on May 18, 1818, Newman recalled: “At last I was called to the place where they had been voting; the vice-chancellor [the president] said some Latin over me; then made a speech. The electors then shook hands with me, and I immediately assumed the scholar's gown.”
Newman had won a scholarship with a stipend sufficient to pay his college expenses; moreover, the scholarship was good for nine years, along with the possibility of a fellowship for an additional five years. At the age of seventeen, Newman's future looked bright. The Monday following Trinity Sunday, however, was not only the day when Trinity College announced the selection of its new scholars and fellows, it was also the date of the annual college “Gaudy”—a term derived from the Latin gaudium (joy)—which undergraduates celebrated with “a drinking bout”—a custom that Newman felt contradicted the name and nature of Trinity College (Reading 2.2).
Encouraged by his success in achieving the Trinity scholarship, Newman began studying in earnest for honors in his baccalaureate examination. As he later recalled, from the summer vacation of 1819 to “my examination in November 1820 it was almost a continuous mass of reading. I stayed in Oxford during the vacations, got up in winter and summer at five or six, hardly allowed myself time for my meals, and then ate, indeed, the bread of carefulness.” During the twenty-four weeks immediately preceding his examination, he read for an average of twelve hours a day. Newman's family and friends not only wished him well on the examination; they expected him to win honors in both classics and mathematics. Unfortunately, he had over-exerted himself, and when he was called by the examiners a day sooner than he expected, “he lost his head, utterly broke down, and, after vain attempts for several days, had to retire, only first making sure of his B.A. degree.”
When the list of graduates was posted, Newman's name “did not appear at all on the mathematical side of the paper, and in classics it was found in the lower division of the second class of honours, which at that time went by the contemptuous title of the ‘Under-the-line.’” Newman was not only disappointed; he found it painful to inform his family of his poor showing (Reading 2.3). Newman's parents replied that they were more than satisfied with his efforts and advised him to be patient and cheerful. His poor performance on the examinations was also an occasion for personal reassessment: instead of a career as a lawyer, he decided, with his father's approval, to become a clergyman in the Church of England. This seemed a reasonable decision: he had the support of the Trinity scholarship for another half-dozen years; he could privately tutor students to earn additional income; and he could support his brother, Francis, as a student at Oxford—a necessity in light of the failure of his father's bank and, as a result, the straightened circumstances of his family. It would have been a modest yet unspectacular life had not another opportunity presented itself.
3. FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE
In spite of his poor performance on his baccalaureate examination, Newman decided to become a candidate for a fellowship at Oriel College—much to the concern of his friends, who felt that he was only setting himself up for another failure (Readings 3.1). An Oriel fellowship—at the time the most prestigious in Oxford—was unlikely to be awarded to a person who had not graduated with honors. Although his Trinity tutor, Thomas Short, did not expect Newman to be successful in the examinations for an Oriel fellowship, Short felt that Newman would make a credible showing. Accordingly, Newman began studying the topics that would be covered on the week-long Oriel examinations, but, mindful of how he had over-exerted himself in preparing for his baccalaureate examinations, he also attended a series of lectures on geology and wrote his first musical composition (Reading 3.2).
On April 12, 1822, the butler of the provost of Oriel—who by custom was responsible for informing the successful candidates—made his way to Newman's lodgings on Broad Street and found him playing the violin. This surprised the butler, who did not associate “fiddling” with a candidate for an Oriel fellowship. The butler's perplexity increased when, after delivering the usual message on such occasions—that “he had, he feared, disagreeable news to announce, viz. that Mr. Newman was elected fellow of Oriel and that his immediate presence was required there”—Newman, thinking that such language was impertinent, merely answered—“Very well”—and went on playing his violin. The butler then asked whether he had come to the wrong person, and Newman replied that he was the right person. As soon as the butler left, Newman put his violin aside and dashed downstairs with all speed to Oriel College.
Newman's election as a fellow of Oriel College not only restored his reputation that had been tarnished by his poor performance on his baccalaureate examinations, it also opened a promising future, either to pursue a career in law and government or to seek ordination in the Church of England. Newman considered his selection as an Oriel fellow nothing less than providential (Reading 3.3).
4. ANGLICAN DEACON AND PRIEST
In preparation for ordination in the Church of England, Newman attended theological lectures and studied Scripture—he even memorized entire books of the Bible (Reading 4.1). Before being ordained an Anglican deacon on Trinity Sunday, June 13, 1824, Newman confided to his father that he was “convinced it is necessary to get used to parochial duty early, and that a fellow of a college, after ten years’ residence in Oxford, feels very awkward among poor and ignorant people.” Ten days after his ordination as deacon in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, Newman preached his first sermon at Over Worton, the parish of his Ealing School mentor, Rev. Walter Mayers.
The opportunity for pastoral experience soon became available. The elderly rector of St. Clement's Church, Rev. John Gutch (1746–1831), was no longer equal to the task of parish ministry without assistance. St. Clement's, which was then located just across Magdalen Bridge from Oxford, was a populous but poor parish. Newman, then age twenty-three, began the task of house-to-house visitation, “asking the names, numbers, trades, where they [the people] went to church,” etc. His parishioners responded by calling Newman “a proper minister” and “a nice young gentleman” (Reading 4.2). More importantly—from both a theological and pastoral perspective, Newman soon discovered that “real” people didn't fit neatly into his Calvinistic categories of the “predestined” and the “reprobate.” Most people were in between: his parish visitation resulted in a re-evaluation of his Calvinist theology (Reading 4.3).
The people in St. Clement's Parish flocked to hear Newman preach and had to be turned away at the doors since the old church could hold only some two hundred people. Accordingly, Newman began collecting funds for a new church; in addition, he established a Sunday school for the youngsters of the parish. Newman's ministry of preaching and teaching prompted him to write a personal memorandum: “Those who make comfort the great subject of their preaching seem to mistake the end of their ministry. Holiness is the great end. There must be a struggle and a toil here. Comfort is a cordial, but no one drinks cordials from morning to night.” Newman had been at St. Clement's only a few months when he was unexpectedly called home for what proved to be his father's last illness. Newman had the consolation of helping his father prepare for death—which came on Wednesday, September 29, 1824 (Reading 4.4).
After his father's funeral, Newman returned to Oxford and quickly resumed his various parochial duties—ranging from fund-raising to visiting the sick, from teaching Sunday School to preaching (Readings 4.5, 4.6). In addition, he was invited to write a couple of articles for the Encyclopædia Metropolitana. Nonetheless, his principal concern was preparation for his ordination as an Anglican priest, which occurred on May 29, 1825 (Reading 4.7). Newman continued his curacy at St. Clement's until February 1826, when he was appointed vice-principal of Alban Hall and a tutor of Oriel College.
5. TUTOR OF ORIEL COLLEGE
At the time of Newman's appointment as Tutor of Oriel College, tutorships were generally considered an instructional responsibility for preparing students for the Oxford university baccalaureate examinations in mathematics and the classics. Although college tutors were usually Anglican clergymen, religious instruction was not ordinarily considered part of their tutorial responsibility. Newman, in contrast, considered a tutor responsible not only for academic instruction, but also for the spiritual formation of his students (Reading 5.1). Indeed he felt that it would be wrong for him to accept a teaching position if it were a purely secular position (Reading 5.2). In addition, Newman was quite aware that some Oriel College students had little interest in either academic studies or spiritual development and so, like a “new broom,” he tried to sweep out non-productive students, while simultaneously devoting special attention to the best and the brightest (Reading 5.3).
Newman's efforts to promote academic achievement and moral integrity eventually brought him into conflict with the new Oriel provost, Edward Hawkins (1789–1882), who considered Newman's tutorial approach a form of favoritism. When Newman refused to change his methods, Hawkins refused to assign Newman and two other tutors any more students, thereby effectively removing them from their positions: within a couple of years—as their students graduated—Newman and the other two tutors had no one to teach. Hawkins's decision was particularly ironic insofar as Newman had campaigned for Hawkins's election as provost in 1828; in addition, when Hawkins became provost and resigned his position as vicar of St. Mary's, the University Church, Newman was his replacement (1828–1843) (Reading 5.4).
Newman's removal from the tutorship had long-lasting consequences. The replacements for Newman and the two other tutors devoted less attention to instructing students capable of gaining “first-class” degrees; as time went on, fewer students gained “firsts,” and Oriel began to lose prestige (Reading 5.5). Although obviously an embarrassment, Newman's dismissal proved to be a blessing in disguise: without tutorial responsibilities, he had time for other pursuits: he was able to finish his first book: The Arians of the Fourth Century; then he was able to go on a Mediterranean voyage (1832–1833) with Richard Hurrell Froude and his father; and most significantly, Newman had time to become involved in the Oxford Movement—which might never have happened the way that it did—had Newman remained in a labor-intensive tutorship.
6. VICAR OF SAINT MARY'S
The provost and fellows of Oriel College had the responsibility for appointing the vicar of Saint Mary's, the university church of Oxford. When Edward Hawkins was elected provost, he resigned his position as vicar, and in his place, on March 14, 1828, Newman was “instituted” as Vicar of St. Mary's—a position he held for the following fifteen years. At the age of twenty-seven, Newman was entrusted with the most prestigious pulpit in Oxford as well as an influential position in the Church of England.
Newman preached regularly at the Sunday afternoon service—evensong (vespers). His sermons quickly attracted both students and visitors; indeed, visitors considered a visit to Oxford incomplete unless they heard Newman preach. As an Anglican, Newman wrote out his sermons and then read them from the pulpit. He initially shared his written sermons with his mother and his friends. Other people, however, wanted copies of his sermons, and eventually ten volumes of his Anglican sermons were published: eight volumes of Parochial and Plain Sermons, a volume of Oxford University Sermons, and a volume of Sermons on Subjects of the Day. In an age when “keeping holy the Sabbath” was customary, many people read sermons at home on Sunday and Newman's sermons became popular spiritual reading.
Although Newman's sermons usually took between thirty and forty-five minutes to deliver, according to W. J. Copeland (1804–1885), Newman's former curate at Littlemore and later the editor of his Parochial and Plain Sermons, Newman's sermons “found a response in the hearts and minds and consciences of those to whom they were addressed, in marvellous proportion to the affectionate and stirring earnestness with which their Author appealed to the conscious or dormant sense of their needs, and his zealous and energetic endeavours, under God's blessing, to show, in every variety of light, how the grand central Verities of the Christian Dispensation, entrusted as the good ‘Deposit,’ to the Church, were revealed and adapted to supply them.”
Copeland's description highlights three important aspects of Newman's preaching: first of all, his “earnestness”—his audience had no doubts about the sincerity of his convictions; he preached what he believed. Second, Newman was able to show in a convincing way how a particular scriptural passage or spiritual topic was applicable to the lives of his listeners. Finally, people in the audience felt that he was speaking directly to them: his sermons were not merely addressed to their minds, but also to their hearts; listeners felt that Newman was personally challenging them to live better lives as Christians. To recapture some of the original force and spiritual depth of Newman's sermons, readers today might well read his sermons aloud (Reading 6.1).
Newman's appointment as vicar of St. Mary's was the capstone of a half-dozen years of achievements—from his election as a fellow of Oriel, through his ordination as a deacon and a priest of the Church of England, to his appointment as an Oriel tutor. These evident changes in his public life were accompanied by a series of gradual changes in his personal theological views. Newman had arrived at Oxford an Evangelical of a decidedly Calvinistic complexion; by the end of the 1820s, his Calvinism had waned as a result of his pastoral experience, while his Evangelical devotion to Scripture would serve him life-long.
Simultaneously, Newman came under the influence of the “Noetic” views of Edward Hawkins, provost of Oriel, and Richard Whately (1787–1863), a fellow of Oriel and principal of St. Alban Hall, where Newman served for a year as vice principal. In his Apologia, Newman credited Whately “to the effect that he had not only taught me to think, but to think for myself.” Similarly, Newman credited Hawkins as being “the first who taught me to weigh my words, and to be cautious in my statements. He led me to that mode of limiting and clearing my sense in discussions and in controversy, and of distinguishing between cognate ideas, and of obviating mistakes by anticipation.”
Although the Noetic method helped Newman become an effective thinker and writer, it was not without its dangers. As Newman later acknowledged in his Apologia: “The truth is, I was beginning to prefer intellectual excellence to moral; I was drifting in the direction of the Liberalism of the day.” What rescued Newman from the rationalistic tendencies of the Noetics was not intellectual argumentation, but “two great blows—illness and bereavement.” In November 1827, Newman experienced a physical/nervous breakdown that temporarily paralyzed his ability to function as an instructor and examiner; he had to request a leave from his academic responsibilities. The following January, the unexpected illness and then sudden death of his youngest sister, Mary (1809–1828), left him heart-broken (Reading 6.2). A second bereavement came the following month with the unexpected death of his mentor, Walter Mayers, who had been Newman's instructor at Ealing School and the curate of Holy Trinity Church, Over Worton, where Newman preached his first Anglican sermon—“Waiting on God”—on June 23, 1824; Newman preached Mayers's funeral sermon—“On the Death of a Very Dear Friend”—on April 2, 1828.
7. DISCOVERY OF THE PATRISTIC CHURCH
During his first years as a fellow of Oriel College (1822–1826), Newman was influenced by the Noetic approach of Hawkins and Whately—from whom he garnered two important doctrinal positions: Hawkins taught him the importance of Tradition as a necessary companion to interpreting Scripture, and Whately taught him the importance of the visible Church. Gradually, however, Newman found more congenial the theological positions of three other fellows of Oriel: John Keble (1792–1866), Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800–1882) and Richard Hurrell Froude (1803–1836).
Keble, who published anonymously a book of poems entitled The Christian Year in 1827 and four years later was later elected the professor of poetry at Oxford, gave the Assize Sermon on July 14, 1833, which Newman considered the beginning of the Oxford Movement. Pusey, who had convinced Newman that Baptism was not merely an external sign, but an interior spiritual regeneration, was appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew and a canon of Christ Church in 1828. Froude, the most outspoken in his views, was one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement until his premature death in the midst of the Tractarian Movement.
In addition to theological discussions with his three Oriel colleagues, Newman began a systematic reading of the Fathers of the Church in 1828 (Reading 7.1). Gradually his reading of the Fathers brought Newman to an increasing dissatisfaction with the then conventional views of religion along with a more “orthodox” understanding of Christianity in general and of the Church in particular (Reading 7.2). Two events marked the gradual shift of his theological views from Evangelical and Noetic to Anglo-Catholic. First in 1829, Robert Peel (1788–1850), then the Member of Parliament for Oxford, announced that he had decided to support the Emancipation Bill, which would extend many civil rights to people who were not members of the Church of England. Newman felt that such a reversal was a betrayal of the Church of England and joined in what proved to be a successful campaign to defeat Peel's bid for reelection; Newman's opposition to Peel, however, strained his relationship with both Hawkins and Whately. Also in 1829, Newman was elected joint secretary of the Church Missionary Society—an organization that was Evangelical in orientation; however, just a year later, he was replaced in that position—an indication that some Evangelicals no longer felt that his views were congenial with theirs.
In 1831 Newman was invited to write a history of the councils of the Church—a task that he undertook with energy and enthusiasm in light of his patristic studies. However, he became so fascinated with the Arian controversy in general and the role of St. Athanasius in suppressing Arianism in particular that his book turned into a work focused not on the councils—as the editors of the “Theological Library” wanted—but on Arianism and Athanasius. Although Newman's The Arians of the Fourth Century (1833) was “plucked” from the series because of its failure to treat all the councils, it was eventually published by another firm.
8. MEDITERRANEAN PILGRIM
Since his responsibilities as an Oriel tutor had been terminated and since his book on the Arians was en route to publication, Newman accepted an invitation from Richard Hurrell Froude and his father to join them on a Mediterranean voyage that had been recommended for Froude's health. Newman initially had qualms about accepting the invitation, since he did not feel that a “Grand Tour” was appropriate for a clergyman. However, he persuaded himself that the proposed Mediterranean voyage would be beneficial both for his teaching and his preaching by providing first-hand knowledge of the sites of classical antiquity as well as an opportunity to retrace the paths of the apostles through the Mediterranean to Rome.
On December 8, 1832, Newman and the Froudes sailed from the port of Falmouth on the Hermes. At sea, Newman passed the time by writing poems—many of which were later published in his Verses on Various Occasions (1867) (Readings 8.1). After sailing through the Bay of Biscay, the Hermes passed Cape Ortegal, Lisbon, St. Vincent and Cape Trafalgar; in mid-December, Newman arrived at Gibraltar, “the first foreign soil I have come near.” The Hermes then departed Gibraltar for Malta, where Newman and the Froudes spent Christmas. Next the Hermes sailed along the coast of western Greece before returning to Malta, where Newman spent almost a month, including a dozen days quarantined in the Lazaret, since the port authorities were afraid that Newman and his shipboard companions might be carrying a fever.
In February, Newman and the Froudes traveled from Malta to Sicily, where they spent several days before going on to Naples with side trips to such well-known sites as Herculaneum, Pompeii, Salerno, Paestum, and Amalfi (Reading 8.2). In early March, Newman and the Froudes arrived in Rome, where they spent over a month, visiting churches and historic sites, attending ceremonies, and meeting people—including Nicholas Wiseman (1802–1865), then the rector of the English College and later cardinal-archbishop of Westminster.
In early April 1833, the Froudes decided to return to England, but Newman opted to go back alone to Sicily, where he became “very weak and ill.” After ten days of convalescence at Castro Giovanni, Newman was sufficiently recovered to sail on the Conte Ruggiero from Palermo for Marseilles. While at sea off the coast of Corsica en route to France, he wrote what would become his most famous poem: “Lead Kindly Light” (Readings 8.3, 8.4). From Marseilles, he traveled across France, crossed the Channel and arrived back at Oxford on July 9, 1833.
Although Newman began his Mediterranean voyage with the anticipation that he would become familiar with the monuments of classical and Christian antiquity, while serving as a companion for his close colleague, Hurrell Froude, in fact, he also gained first-hand knowledge of Roman Catholicism through his visits to Malta, Sicily, and Italy. In addition, as a survivor of a life-threatening illness, he returned from his trip with a heightened sense of mission: “I have a work to do in England.”
9. EARLY YEARS OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT: 1833–1839
On returning to England after his Mediterranean voyage, Newman found Oxford in an uproar over the Whig government's proposal to suppress many dioceses and parishes of the Anglican Church in Ireland. For the Whigs, the Irish Church Reform Bill was basically a practical measure: since the overwhelming majority of the people in Ireland were Roman Catholics, there was little need for Anglican parishes and dioceses in places where there were few Anglican parishioners; the money that was being expended in maintaining little-attended churches and supporting clerical sinecures could be better spent for educational and social projects.
To many at Oxford, the Whig proposal was a case of the unjustifiable interference of the government in the very life of the Church. Many Anglican clergymen at Oxford, including Newman, decided to campaign against the Whig proposal. Among their protest strategies was the publication of a series titled Tracts for the Times, calling upon the clergy to defend the prerogatives of the Anglican Church. The idea of publishing tracts was not original; in the eighteenth century, for example, John Wesley (1703–1791) had used pamphlets as a way of furthering an Evangelical renewal within the Church of England. In contrast to these “Methodist” pamphlets, which were directed to Christian laity at a popular level, the Tracts for the Times were intended to rally the Anglican clergy and educated public in support of reform within the Church of England.
The Tracts, which were originally published anonymously, called for a renewal of the Church of England through a retrieval of its apostolic heritage as manifested in the teachings of the early Church. Each author was personally responsible for the contents of his Tract. The result was a multi-pronged approach to Church reform and so more of a program in progress than a definite agenda guided by a single vision. Newman, along with John Keble, Edward Bouverie Pusey, and Richard Hurrell Froude, was at the center of this reform initiative, which became known both as the Tractarian movement after the series of Tracts and also as the Oxford movement after its place of origin.
Newman considered Sunday, July 14, when “Keble preached the Assize Sermon in the University Pulpit”—a sermon later “published under the title of ‘National Apostasy,’” as “the start of the religious movement of 1833.” Following Keble's call for “remonstrance” against the Whig government's interference in Church affairs, Newman, on September 9, anonymously published Tract One, which called upon people to come to the defense of the Church of England and its “Apostolical descent” (Reading 9.1). Over the next eight years, a total of ninety Tracts appeared—a third of them written by Newman.
The first half-dozen years of the Oxford Movement were a time of intense activity for Newman, who preached sermons, delivered lectures, wrote letters, and published a couple of books and a truly amazing number of articles, poems, essays, and tracts advocating the return of the Church of England to its Apostolic origins (Reading 9.2). Some of his publications involved him in controversy—particularly with people whose “Liberalism” in doctrine he strenuously opposed (Reading 9.3). Simultaneously, Newman continued his parochial ministry at St. Mary's and supervised the building of a church at Littlemore, a small village about three miles from Oxford whose pastoral care was part of his responsibility as vicar of St. Mary's. The year 1836 brought happiness at seeing the dedication of the new church at Littlemore and the weddings of his two sisters to two brothers: Jemima to John Mozley and Harriet to Thomas Mozley. Unfortunately, 1836 also saw the death of his good friend and colleague Hurrell Froude in February at the age of thirty-three and the death of his mother in May at the age of sixty-three.
Newman's efforts to revitalize the Church of England by reclaiming its Apostolic heritage required him to elaborate his understanding of Anglicanism in relation to other Christian churches. Newman responded by depicting the Church of England as occupying a via media—“middle road”—between the doctrinal diminutions of continental Protestantism and the devotional exaggerations of Roman Catholicism. Newman claimed that the Church of England had not succumbed to the temptation either to water down Christianity as had continental Protestantism or to over-state Christian beliefs as had Roman Catholicism. Indeed, Newman's via media seemed to be a cogent justification for the position of the Church of England until he read an article by Nicholas Wiseman about St. Augustine and the Donatists in 1839.
10. CRISIS YEARS OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT: 1839–1845
For a movement that was attempting to find its way while on its journey, the first half-dozen years (1833–1839) of the Oxford Movement went remarkably well. The attempt to reinstill a sense of “apostolicity” both in theology and in worship within the Church of England became the focus of national, even international, attention though not always of acceptance. On the one side was opposition from “liberals” who considered the Tractarians not only conservative but also antiquarian. On the other side was suspicion on the part of evangelicals who felt that the Tractarians were becoming excessively Catholic in their views. On balance, while there were differences and difficulties, the Oxford Movement seemed reasonably on course; as Newman remarked in his 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” (Reading 10.1).
In September 1838, Newman published Tract 85, Part One, which alleged that the rationalistic tendencies of continental Protestantism had led to a basic diminution of Christianity; his readers awaited the second part in which Newman presumably would show how the devotional and doctrinal excesses of Roman Catholicism had led to an exaggerated distortion of Christianity. The second part of the tract never appeared; Newman's theoretical via media was about to collapse.
The first “hit” against the via media came in the summer of 1839, when Newman read an article by Nicholas Wiseman about St. Augustine and the Donatists. Newman was struck by Augustine's phrase securus judicat orbis terrarium—“the Universal Church is secure in its judgment”—which Newman understood to mean: “the deliberate judgment, in which the whole Church at length rests and acquiesces, is an infallible prescription and a final sentence against such portions of it as protest and secede.” Gradually Newman came to the conclusion that the Church of England was in the position of the Donatists and the Roman Church was what it had always been: “the Church of the Apostles.”
Newman was not the type of person to come to a quick decision; he wondered whether the doctrines of the Church of England were compatible with the Roman Church. Since the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England, which had been approved under Queen Elizabeth I in 1571, had been designed to be interpreted in a broad fashion, Newman proposed in Tract XC (1841) that the Articles could be interpreted in a Catholic sense (Reading 10.2). Whatever the theoretical merits to Newman's argument, it quickly became clear that his Catholic interpretation of the Articles was unacceptable to most Anglicans: bishops, clergy, and laity. In fact, the opposition to Tract XC was so strenuous that Newman agreed to terminate the publication of further Tracts and decided to move to Littlemore, where he had purchased a former stable, which he converted into a retreat house for himself and a few of his closest followers.
During the next two years, Newman pondered his future in the Church of England. He eventually came to the conclusion that he could no longer minister as an Anglican cleric and in September 1843, he resigned his position as vicar of St. Mary's and preached his farewell sermon as an Anglican—“The Parting of Friends”—at Littlemore on the seventh anniversary of the church's dedication (Reading 10.3). Newman decided to continue as a lay communicant in the Church of England, while praying and working on various projects, including a translation of Select Treatises of St. Athanasius.
However, the question that continued to haunt Newman and many of his contemporaries was “where is the Church of the Apostles today?” Some felt that the Church had been essentially corrupted; for some, this meant that the Church must be reformed; for others, it meant that Christians must restore the early Church. For others, the Church was a community that is always in the process of remaking itself: while one can point to historical continuity, the doctrines and structures of the Church are subject to change, always in flux. In contrast to such opinions, for Newman, the Church must embody both continuity and change; on the one hand, the basic type of the Church must always be preserved; on the other hand, the Church must have an assimilative power that enables it to self-adapt to the different and ever-changing worlds in which it preaches and lives the Gospel.
When Newman was puzzled by a question, he often resolved it by writing a solution. In answer to the question of where is the Church of the Apostles, he proposed what in the mid-nineteenth century was a very innovative hypothesis: the Church and its doctrines have developed over the centuries; accordingly, in order to recognize the Apostolic Church, one must discard both fraudulent diminutions of the faith and unwarranted accretions to the faith (Reading 10.4). Newman's An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine was his attempt to show that the Roman Catholic Church was the present embodiment of the Apostolic Church (Reading 10.5). Convinced that the Roman Catholic Church was where his favorite patristic writers—Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine—would worship were they alive today, Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church by an Italian Passionist missionary, Dominic Barberi, on October 9, 1845, at Littlemore.
11. ORATORIAN
After being “admitted into the Catholic Church,” Newman visited Oscott College, Birmingham, where he was confirmed as a Roman Catholic by Bishop Nicholas Wiseman on November 1, 1845. On February 22, 1846, Newman left Littlemore and, after spending the night at Oxford, went to Maryvale, Birmingham, which was his temporary home until he left for Rome at the beginning of September (Reading 11.1). Arriving in Rome in late October, Newman and Ambrose St. John (1815–1875) began their theological studies at the College of Propaganda Fide at the beginning of November.
While preparing for ordination to the priesthood, Newman and Ambrose St. John considered both the diocesan priesthood and various religious communities; eventually, with the approval of Pope Pius IX (1846–1878), Newman and St. John decided to enter the Oratory of St. Philip Neri (1515–1595). An Oratory is a house of diocesan priests who live together in community and undertake various types of pastoral ministry such as staffing parishes, conducting schools, giving conferences, etc. Newman felt that the Oratorian vocation was both suited to his personality and adaptable to the needs of pastoral ministry in England (Reading 11.2). After his ordination as a Roman Catholic priest on May 30, 1847, Newman and St. John made their Oratorian novitiate and then returned to England to establish the English Oratory.
The first Oratorians included Newman's followers at Maryvale and those of Frederick Faber (1814–1863), who had established a community known as the Brothers of the Will of God (Reading 11.3). Since the members of the combined group were too numerous for a single Oratory, Newman divided the group in two to form a Birmingham Oratory, where he became rector, and a London Oratory, whose superior was Faber. During the next few years, Newman was occupied with the myriad practical details connected with establishing a new religious community, along with the regular parochial work of preaching and celebrating the sacraments, counseling, and responding to the needs of parishioners, as well as lecturing and writing. In 1850 Newman presented and then published a series of lectures, Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, which provided an answer to prospective converts about their “perplexities in the proof of Catholicity, which keep the intellect from being touched by its cogency, and give the heart an excuse for trifling with it.”
On September 29, 1850, Pope Pius IX issued Universalis Ecclesiae, which officially restored the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales. Nicholas Wiseman was named a cardinal and the first archbishop of Westminster; simultaneously a dozen suffragan dioceses were established. These papal appointments reflected the notable change in the situation of Roman Catholics in England since the time of the Reformation: they were a small group of perhaps fifty thousand at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but the influx of Irish immigrants had increased the Roman Catholic population tenfold by midcentury. The first Provincial Synod of Westminster met at St. Mary's, Oscott, and Newman was invited to preach on July 13, 1852 (Reading 11.4).
12. EDUCATOR
The restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England was greeted with vocal and sometimes violent protests by English Protestants against what they called “papal aggression.” Taking advantage of this public outburst of “no popery,” the Evangelical Alliance invited Giacinto Achilli, an excommunicated Dominican priest, to deliver anti-Catholic lectures in various cities in England. In response, Cardinal Wiseman publicly criticized Achilli for moral turpitude and Newman castigated Achilli in his Lectures on the Present Positions of Catholics in England (1851). Achilli then sued Newman for libel and the jury found Newman guilty for not legally proving all his allegations. After an unsuccessful appeal, Newman was fined the then significant amount of £100 and also had to pay huge legal expenses—which were met by donations from Newman's friends in England, Europe, and America. Once the truth of Achilli's flagrant immorality became public, he abruptly left England; simultaneously, many people, both Anglican and Catholic, came to feel that Newman's trial had been exceedingly unfair; as a result, Newman gained popular vindication.
Just as the Achilli trial was getting underway in November 1851, Newman was named the first rector of the newly established Catholic University of Ireland. Among his numerous tasks as rector were recruiting faculty, designing the curriculum, fostering public relations, and fund-raising. In order to gain support for the new university, Newman gave a series of public lectures, which, along with various articles and addresses to the faculty and students, were later collected and published as The Idea of a University.
Since Newman felt that religious practice was an essential part of a university education, he arranged for the building of a university church, where he regularly preached (Reading 12.1). He wanted university students to have not merely a superficial knowledge and conventional observance of Christianity, but a deep personal faith (Reading 12.2). In effect, his vision of a university included many of the ideas that he had tried to implement as a tutor of Oriel College, especially a close relationship between students and their tutors. The tutors were to be responsible for the academic achievement of their students, but they also were to be good examples and thus mentors of moral integrity (Reading 12.3).
During his years in Ireland, Newman faced a number of problems. First, as university rector and simultaneously superior of the Birmingham Oratory, he had to make frequent and time-consuming trips from Dublin to Birmingham and back. In addition, the recruitment of students was a continual problem and fund-raising required considerable effort. But most of all, he often found that his administrative proposals went unheeded by Archbishop Paul Cullen (1803–1878) and the Irish hierarchy. Frustrated and exhausted, he tendered his official resignation on November 12, 1858.
However, Newman's resignation as rector of the Catholic University in Dublin was not the end of his educational endeavors. In 1859 he established the Birmingham Oratory School to provide an education for boys whose parents did not want to send them either to Anglican private schools in England or to Roman Catholic schools abroad. Newman not only designed the curriculum and supervised the administration of the boys’ school, he also was regularly involved in the students’ activities: coaching them in their studies, directing them in their theatrical productions, chatting with them during recess, and walking to the school's playing fields to watch their sporting events.
13. ADVOCATE FOR THE LAITY
The half-dozen years following Newman's resignation as rector of the Catholic University were plagued by difficulties with ecclesiastical authorities. In 1857, Newman was invited by Cardinal Wiseman to supervise a new translation of the Bible into English; only after expending a great deal of time and money recruiting prospective translators and beginning work on the translation was Newman informed that the project had been cancelled. In 1859, Newman was asked by Bishop William Bernard Ullathorne (1806–1889) of Birmingham to assume the editorship of The Rambler—a journal sponsored by a group of laymen to discuss the arts, history, politics, science, and topics of the day from a Catholic perspective. Although reluctant to accept Ullathorne's invitation, Newman did so because he was a firm believer in the important role of the laity in the Church (Reading 13.1).
Unfortunately, the tenor of some of the articles in The Rambler had upset the English hierarchy. When The Rambler began discussing government support of Catholic education, the bishops felt that The Rambler was intruding into matters that were the bishops’ prerogative to decide. Newman, in contrast, believed that the bishops should “consult” the laity in such matters, just as Pope Pius IX had consulted the bishops of the world about the belief of the faithful prior to the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854. For Newman, the fact of such a consultation was a recognition of the sensus fidelium—the instinctive understanding of believers about what is truly a matter of Christian faith and what is not.
Newman's essay “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine” in The Rambler emphasized that while the bishops are the official teachers in the Church, the laity have an important role as witnesses of doctrine; indeed, Newman cited many instances in the early Church where the bishops had betrayed the Christian faith, while the laity had resolutely defended it (Reading 13.2). Newman's views were not well received by the English hierarchy; Bishop Thomas Brown of Newport formally denounced Newman to Rome. The Vatican subsequently forwarded a list of objections to Newman's essay to Cardinal Wiseman, who neglected to inform Newman of the charges against him.
When Newman did not respond, Vatican officials interpreted his silence as a refusal to answer these charges. As a consequence Newman unintentionally found himself “under a cloud”; indeed, one curial official described Newman as “the most dangerous man in England.” It was only in 1867, after Wiseman's death, that Newman was finally able to respond to the charges against him. Fortunately, however, a chance event allowed Newman to regain his reputation in the eyes of the English public, both Anglican and Catholic.
14. DEFENDER OF BELIEF
In December 1863 Newman received in the mail a copy of the January (1864) issue of Macmillan's Magazine, which had a book review of two volumes of James Anthony Froude's History of England. The reviewer, identified by the initials “C.K.,” commented in passing: “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.”
Such an aspersion on both his personal integrity and the truthfulness of the Roman Catholic clergy prompted Newman to demand an apology. The editors of Macmillan's forwarded his request to the review author, Charles Kingsley (1819–1875), an Anglican clergyman and Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge (1860–1869).
When Newman denied that he had ever made such a comment and demanded a retraction, Kingsley published a condescending reply but refused to apologize. Newman then published their exchange of correspondence, to which Kingsley replied in a pamphlet: “What, Then, Does Dr. Newman Mean?” Newman replied with two additional pamphlets, but was aware that pamphleteering was at best a half-measure (Reading 14.1).
Newman realized that he needed to provide the public with a detailed response in order to refute Kingsley's allegation that as a leader of the Tractarian Movement (1833–1845), Newman had been guilty of dishonesty. Indeed, there were some who insinuated that Newman had really been a papist in disguise, sent by Rome to promote Catholicism under the pretext of reforming the Church of England. In response to Kingsley's attack against both the integrity of his own conversion to Roman Catholicism and the honesty of those who had followed him into the Roman Catholic Church, Newman wrote his autobiographical Apologia pro Vita Sua, which traced the history of his “religious opinions” from his adolescent Evangelicalism, through his flirtation with Liberalism to his endeavor to recapture the Apostolicity of the Early Church during the Oxford Movement to his decision to become a Roman Catholic.
In an engaging yet candid way, Newman showed how his decision emerged only gradually from a series of theological discussions, historical reflections, and church-related events. His Apologia not only became a best seller that is still regarded as a classic example of Victorian autobiography, it also convinced the British public of his integrity. As a “self-defense,” Newman's Apologia succeeded in re-establishing his stature among both Anglicans and Catholics. On the one hand, the Apologia enabled Newman to reconnect with many of his Anglican friends; on the other hand, his Apologia provided not only a biographical argument for his decision to become a Roman Catholic, but a rationale for other Anglicans who had followed his example. As Newman eventually came to realize, Kingsley had inadvertently done him a great favor (Reading 14.2).
Just as Newman's Apologia presented an autobiographical account of his search for the true Church, his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, published a half-dozen years later, described the search for faith as a via media—a middle path—between Evangelicalism (where a believer's faith is seen as depending on love) and “Evidentialism” (where the degree of a person's assent purportedly depends on scientifically verifiable evidence). Dissatisfied with both these alternatives, Newman used a realistic approach to show that if ordinary people must trust in order to live their everyday lives, it is reasonable to assume that they must be guided by faith in religious matters (Reading 14.3).
Newman's analysis of the process of faith began with the fact that everyone asks questions, considers evidence, and comes to conclusions. In some cases, such as logic or mathematics, when the data and the process of reasoning are identical, everyone comes to the same conclusion. However, in those cases where the data are variable and can be understood in different ways, then it is not surprising that people come to different conclusions. If this is true in daily life, it is not surprising that it is also the case in religious matters. Newman gave the example of three brothers who grew up in the same family and so presumably had the same religious background. Because of their different personalities and different experiences, the brothers came to different conclusions about Christianity: one brother became an agnostic, another a Unitarian and the third a Roman Catholic. Such was the case with the three Newman brothers: Charles, Francis, and John Henry (Reading 14.4).
By explaining how different people come to different conclusions about the same evidence, Newman's Grammar provided an explanation of why some Tractarians, like Keble and Pusey, remained within the Church of England, while others followed Newman's example and became Roman Catholics. Faith decisions, like decisions in everyday life, depend on the way that each person interprets the evidence in light of their conscience.
15. CHAMPION OF CONSCIENCE
Even as an Anglican, Newman believed that Christ had endowed the Church with the gift of infallibility so that its dogmatic teachings were free from error. For Newman, both as an Anglican and as a Catholic, the core question was the way in which this gift of infallibility could and should be exercised in the Church. During the nineteenth century, some Roman Catholics insisted that the pope was the one person empowered by Christ to exercise infallibility; other Catholics, however, felt that for an exercise of infallibility, dogmatic declarations needed to be approved by a general council or accepted by the bishops throughout the world.
These discussions about the papal exercise of infallibility were complicated by the fact that in the nineteenth century the pope was not only the spiritual leader of the Church but also the temporal ruler of the Papal States in central Italy. Due to a series of wars and revolutions, by 1864 the Papal States, had been reduced to a small area around the city of Rome. On the one hand, many Catholics rallied to help the pope preserve the remainder of his political power with the conviction that the pope could not really be a spiritual leader unless he was politically independent. On the other hand, some Catholics felt that the Papal States were an anachronism: the pope did not need to be a political ruler in order to be a spiritual leader.
On June 29, 1867, Pope Pius IX announced the convocation of a general council of the Roman Catholic Church. Immediately, the new archbishop of Westminster, Henry Edward Manning (1808–1892), like Newman a convert from Anglicanism, made a private vow to work at the Council for a declaration of “papal infallibility.” Although Newman acknowledged both the infallibility of the Church and the authority of the pope in doctrinal matters, he did not see any need for such a definition: he felt that it would be difficult to express such a definition in appropriate theological terminology; in addition, he feared that such a definition could place Roman Catholics at a disadvantage in England and elsewhere due to prejudice against Roman Catholicism in general and the papacy in particular; nonetheless, he stated that he would accept a definition if the Council promulgated one.
After prolonged debate about “the infallible magisterium of the Roman Pontiff,” the First Vatican Council (1869–1870) on July 18, 1870, declared that when the pope, as pastor and teacher of all Christians, solemnly defines a doctrine of faith or morals, he exercises the infallibility bestowed by Christ on the Church (Reading 15.1). After carefully examining the new definition, Newman came to the conclusion that it stated what he had long believed. Nonetheless, he was upset at the exaggerated interpretation of Manning, W. G. Ward, and others, who insisted that practically every papal statement should be considered an exercise of infallibility. For Newman, the Vatican definition implied a rare and restricted use by the pope of this Christ-given gift. Although Newman expressed this moderate interpretation of infallibility privately, he did not publish his views in order to avoid public disagreement with Archbishop Manning.
In 1874, the British prime minister, William Gladstone (1809–1898), published a small book, The Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, which asserted that Catholics could not be considered loyal citizens if they acknowledged the infallibility of the pope. Newman seized the opportunity to reply in A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk (1875), which simultaneously corrected Gladstone's misunderstanding of the council's teaching and rejected the exaggerated misinterpretations of people like Manning. Newman's Letter effectively showed that a good Catholic could and should be a good citizen.
In addition to discussing papal authority in the ancient and modern Church, Newman devoted a section of his Letter to the pivotal question of the obligation of Catholics to follow their conscience in accepting the definition; he gave a memorable summation of his position: “Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please,—still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards” (Readings 15.2, 15.3, 15.4). In addition to giving an effective response to Gladstone, Newman's Letter provided a moderate interpretation of the papal exercise of infallibility that countered many popular misconceptions of infallibility.
Gladstone's pamphlet had inadvertently provided Newman with an opportunity to explain Roman Catholic ecclesiology, just as Kingsley's aspersion had given him the chance of explaining his journey to Roman Catholicism a decade earlier. Following the favorable reception of his Apologia (1864), Newman decided to republish many of his Anglican writings. He republished his Parochial and Plain Sermons in 1869 and his Oxford University Sermons two years later. In 1877, on the fortieth anniversary of its original publication, he republished On the Prophetical Office of the Church with a new preface. That same year, he was pleasantly surprised to receive an invitation from his undergraduate alma mater, Trinity College, to become its first honorary fellow. He was delighted at the honor as well as the opportunity to revisit Oxford for the first time since he had left it a third of a century ago (Reading 15.5). As a token of his esteem, he dedicated the revised edition (1878) of his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845) to the president of Trinity College.
16. CARDINAL
In January 1879, Newman was informed that the new pope, Leo XIII (1878–1903), wanted to name him a cardinal. On the one hand, Newman was deeply grateful because such an honor would forever lift “the cloud” that had plagued his life for three decades: many Roman Catholics, including some members of the English hierarchy, had viewed his doctrinal positions with suspicion. On the other hand, at that time cardinals who were not diocesan bishops were expected to live in Rome, but Newman wanted to continue to live at the Birmingham Oratory. His request was initially misunderstood—perhaps deliberately misconstrued by some people who did not want him to receive the cardinalate—but the pope granted his request to remain at the Birmingham Oratory, and Newman gladly accepted the offer of a red hat. Once the news became public, Newman was inundated with congratulations from both Catholics and Protestants (Reading 16.1).
Named cardinal deacon of the Church of San Giorgio in Velabro, Newman selected as his cardinalatial motto, Cor ad cor loquitur (“Heart speaks to heart”). While in Rome for the ceremonies, Newman took the occasion of the official announcement (biglietto) on May 12, 1879, to give a speech about his lifelong campaign against the “spirit of liberalism in religion” (Reading 16.2). Two days later, a congratulatory reception was sponsored by English-speaking Catholics in Rome, who presented him with vestments embroidered with his cardinalatial coat-of-arms (Reading 16.3).
Yet even in the midst of the customary ceremonies, Newman was still concerned about pastoral ministry. For decades, he had been corresponding with William Froude (1810–1879), a brother of his friend Richard Hurrell Froude, who had died in the midst of the Oxford Movement. William Froude, a distinguished naval architect, was an agnostic who held that there was no scientific basis for belief. Froude's correspondence with Newman on the relationship of faith and reason was reflected in his Grammar of Assent (1870). After the publication of his Grammar, Newman, hoping to convince Froude of the reasonableness of belief, continued his corresponding and was working on another letter while in Rome, when he received word of Froude's death.
Newman also hoped to take advantage of his return trip to England to visit Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger (1799–1890), a German priest and professor at Munich, who had been excommunicated in 1871 for not accepting the teaching of Vatican I on the infallible magisterium of the pope. In addition, Newman hoped to visit the sister-in-law of Walter Mayers, Maria Rosina Giberne (1802–1885), who became a Roman Catholic in 1845 and entered the Visitation convent in Autun, France, in 1863. Unfortunately, due to illness and infirmity, Newman was unable to make either of these visits, because he was ordered by his physician to return to England as directly as possible. Newman finally arrived at the Birmingham Oratory on July 1, 1879, where during the formal ceremony of welcome, he expressed his joy at his “homecoming” (Reading 16.4).
After this and many other celebrations, Newman spent the remaining years of his life as rector of the Birmingham Oratory, continuing his priestly ministry, participating in activities at the Oratory boys’ school, editing some of his Anglican works for publication, writing articles and memoirs, receiving visitors and carrying on an extensive correspondence. During the last years of his life, his eyesight weakened so that he could no longer read, and he was debilitated by several falls. He celebrated Mass for the last time on Christmas 1889; but surprisingly, he was well enough to preside at the concluding ceremonies of the school term on July 23, 1890.
A couple of weeks later, Newman contracted pneumonia. After receiving the last rites on August 10, 1890, he died the following day. At his request, he was buried next to his friend and fellow Oratorian Ambrose St. John, in the Oratorian cemetery at Rednal. As Newman's funeral procession journeyed from the Birmingham Oratory to Rednal, thousands lined the streets to pay their last respects. On his memorial plaque at the Birmingham Oratory were words of his own choosing: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem—“From Shadows and Images into Truth.”
17. BLESSED JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
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.” In 1907, the future archbishop of Birmingham, John McIntyre (1855–1935), expressed his “hope that our Cardinal will be the first canonised saint of the Second Spring.” In 1941, an American Dominican, Fr. Charles Callan, made a similar proposal in America magazine. The following year the archbishop of Toronto, James Charles McGuigan (1894–1974) gave an imprimatur to the first prayer for Newman's beatification. In 1958, Archbishop Francis Grimshaw (1901–1965) of Birmingham initiated the canonical process for canonization. In 1980, a reconstituted Historical Commission began the task of gathering all the necessary documents for the diocesan part of the process of beatification and forwarded its findings to the Vatican in 1986. In January 1991, Pope John Paul II declared that Newman had exercised all of the Christian virtues in a heroic degree and was henceforth to be known as “Venerable John Henry Newman” (Reading 17.1).
The next requisite in the process of beatification was evidence of a miracle. In 2009, the Vatican recognized the cure in 2001 of the severe spinal disorder of Deacon Jack Sullivan of Marshfield, Massachusetts, as an authentic miracle worked through Newman's intercession. As part of the process for beatification, Newman's grave in the Birmingham Oratory Cemetery at Rednal was opened on October 2, 2008; however, no human remains were found. At Newman's request the wooden coffin in which he was buried was covered with a type of mould intended to speed the process of decomposition; that mould plus the damp soil characteristic of the graveyard had apparently resulted in the complete disintegration of his body. Some soil, along with a few objects recovered from his grave, were placed in a reliquary in the chapel dedicated to his memory at the Birmingham Oratory, which is located about eight miles from Rednal.
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” (Reading 17.2).