Biography of John Henry Newman

To fully understand and appreciate Newman’s notion of faith, it is necessary to have some understanding of the man and his life. A brief biography can provide some understanding of the historical context in which Newman developed his notion of faith. Some of the critical moments in Newman’s development of his understanding of faith are elaborated on in more detail at appropriate points in the book.

Born in London on February 21, 1801, John Henry Newman entered this world in rather comfortable and secure circumstances. His father, John Newman, was a successful London banker who provided a good existence for his wife and six children (three boys and three girls, of whom John Henry was the eldest). Jemima Foudrinier, his mother, was the daughter of a wealthy London paper manufacturer who was the descendant of French Protestant Huguenot refugees. Both of his parents were religious and were practicing members of the Anglican Church (the Church of England). Although John Henry was taught the Anglican catechism and learned to read the Bible, he did not consider himself to be devoutly religious in his childhood and early adolescent years. He himself states that, although he was brought up as a child “to take great delight in reading the Bible,” he had “no formed religious convictions” until he was fifteen.¹

Newman’s formal schooling began when he was about seven and one-half years old. On May 1, 1808, John Henry, along with his brother Charles, was sent to a private boarding school at Ealing. Here the young John Henry distinguished himself in his studies. He soon emerged as a leader among his fellow students, editing a magazine and presiding over a club. Dr. George Nicholas, the owner and headmaster of the school, was accustomed to say that no student had gone through the school as rapidly as John Henry Newman. ²

The year 1816, when Newman was a fifteen-year-old schoolboy, proved to be a critical year in the development of his own faith. It was both a year of crisis as well as a year of grace. On March 8, 1816, the bank at which Newman’s father worked was forced to close, and his father lost his job. Although his partners found Newman’s father a job managing a brewery, this crisis resulted in a severe decline in the family’s financial fortunes. Newman’s father never really recovered from this perceived failure. He died in September 1824 as a broken man and in disgrace. At the time his father’s bank failed, Newman was at school at Ealing and suffered a crisis of his own. Newman became seriously ill and, as a result, was forced to remain at Ealing during the summer of 1816. It was in the midst of these two crises, his father’s financial failure and his own illness, that Newman experienced a religious conversion.

Inspired by the books that one of his teachers, the Reverend Walter Mayers, gave him to read while he was convalescing at Ealing during the summer of 1816, Newman experienced an evangelical conversion that was influenced heavily by the theology of John Calvin. The transformation that occurred in Newman as a result of this conversion was radical. The boy who had no religion was now a committed and devout Christian with beliefs and doctrines to which he became strongly committed. Charles Stephen Dessain says that this was the “turning-point” that was to give the rest of Newman’s life its unity.³ Newman himself describes this conversion as the beginning of divine faith in him.⁴ (The effects of this 1816 conversion on Newman’s view of faith are treated more fully in chapter 1.)

Refreshed by this experience, Newman began his matriculation at Trinity College, Oxford, on December 14, 1816 (although he did not take up residency until the fall of 1817). Newman’s days at Oxford were filled with both success and failure. His education at Oxford focused on the study of mathematics and the Greek and Latin classics. In 1818, he won an important scholarship at Trinity that gave him sixty pounds per year for nine years. As a student Newman, avoided the rowdy parties (the students at Trinity had a reputation for overindulging in alcohol) and spent his leisure time taking walks and playing the violin. Although a very good student, Newman suffered a setback when he took his final examinations for his undergraduate degree. He had expected to get a double-first (in mathematics and in classics). Instead, due to overwork and nerves, he broke down and had to retire from the examinations, after making sure that he had done enough to get an undergraduate degree. This was, of course, a bitter disappointment to the young scholar. Yet, Newman continued to read and decided to take the examinations for an Oriel College fellowship. Against all expectations, he passed and was appointed a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, on February 12, 1822. This meant that Newman would become a member of an elite society of scholars at Oriel College and would receive an income for the rest of his life. Being elected a Fellow of Oriel was a privilege and an honor that more than compensated for his poor performances in his undergraduate examinations. His ability as a scholar had been proven and duly recognized.

It was at Oriel that Newman came under the influence of liberal thinkers such as Richard Whately, Edward Hawkins, and Thomas Arnold. These thinkers stressed reason, logic, and clear thinking over devotion and doctrine and played down the supernatural element in religion. Newman says that Whately opened his mind and taught him to think and use his reason. In June 1825, Newman began to read Bishop Joseph Butler’s Analogy of Religion (1736). From this work Newman learned two principles that were to become the foundations of his understanding of faith. One was the principle of analogy that taught him that there are similarities between the works of God in nature and in divine revelation. The second was the principle that probability is the guide of life. From this Newman learned that faith is not based on logical reasoning but on the more informal reasoning that concludes on the basis of the accumulation of probable evidence.

Although Newman had originally entered Oxford with the intention of becoming a lawyer, he had decided in 1821 that he would become a clergyman in the Anglican Church. In 1824, he was ordained a deacon in the Anglican Church; and on May 19, 1825, he was ordained an Anglican priest. His first parish was St. Clement, a working-class parish just outside Oxford. In 1826, when Newman became a tutor at Oriel College, he had to resign his curacy at St. Clement. It was at this time (1826) that Newman came under the influence of a circle of High Church Anglicans that included John Keble, Edward Pusey, and Richard Hurrell Froude. The influence of these men, along with two tragic events, was to change the direction of his life as an Anglican. In October-November 1827, Newman, as a result of overwork, became seriously ill and was forced to leave Oxford on the orders of his doctor. Then, even more tragically, on January 5, 1828, his sister Mary died at the age of nineteen. She was his favorite, and her death was a tremendous blow to Newman. At this point in his life, Newman turned away from liberalism for good and aligned himself with the High Church Anglican party. It was also around this time that Newman began to read systematically the works of the Latin and Greek writers of the early church.

On March 14, 1828, Newman was appointed vicar of the University Church at St. Mary’s, Oxford. In addition to a few parishioners at Oxford, his parish included the village of Littlemore, about three miles outside Oxford. At St. Mary’s, Newman gained a reputation as an outstanding preacher. Some of his major sermons preached on faith at St. Mary’s are collected in his work Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford between A.D. 1826 and 1843. (Newman’s analysis of faith in the University Sermons is discussed in more detail in chapter 1.) In addition to his work at St. Mary’s, Newman continued his position as a tutor at Oriel College. It was at this time (1829-1830) that he found himself in disagreement with Edward Hawkins, the provost of Oriel College, over the proper role of tutors. Newman believed that tutors should be concerned with both the spiritual as well as the intellectual development of their students. Hawkins, however, regarded the office of tutor as a purely academic position, and so, eventually, he stopped assigning students to Newman. By 1831, Newman had no more students.

Beginning in December 1832, Newman, taking a break from his work at St. Mary’s, went on a Mediterranean vacation. His travels brought him to Rome, where he met the future Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, who was at that time the rector of the English College. While in Sicily in April 1833, he became seriously ill with typhoid fever and almost died. When he recovered, he renewed his dedication to be guided in his life by the providence of God. On his way home, in the strait between Corsica and Sardinia, Newman wrote his famous poem “Lead Kindly Light.” On July 8, 1833, Newman returned to Oxford and was about to begin his most significant period in the Anglican Church, his involvement and leadership in the movement in the Anglican Church that became known as the Oxford movement. Newman traces the beginning of the Oxford movement to the Assize sermon on “National Apostasy,” preached by John Keble at St. Mary’s University Church on July 14, 1833. The movement began as an attempt to reassert the independence of the Anglican Church from the state, but it soon took on a wider agenda. It wanted to restore the Anglican Church to its more Catholic (universal/apostolic, not Roman Catholic) roots and to purge the church of some of its Protestant elements. John Keble, Edward Pusey, Hurrell Froude, and others were involved in the movement, but Newman soon became its main spokesman. The principal means used by the movement to communicate its message was through pamphlets, which became known as Tracts for the Times. Although the tracts were written by others, Newman himself wrote the first one on apostolic succession in September 1833, and they continued until the famous Tract 90 on the Thirty-nine Articles (the official statement of the beliefs of the Anglican Church), which was published on February 27, 1841.

In Tract 90, Newman attempted to demonstrate that the Thirty-nine Articles could be interpreted in a Catholic, as distinct from a Protestant, sense. Somewhat to Newman’s surprise, Tract 90 was greeted with indignant protests from both the Anglican bishops and the heads of the Colleges at Oxford. In order to avoid an outright condemnation, Newman agreed to discontinue the tracts in March 1841. At this point, thinking that he had satisfied his critics in the Anglican Church, Newman thought that the matter was over. However, in September 1841, a series of condemnations of Tract 90 by the Anglican bishops began. Bishop after bishop condemned Tract 90 over the course of the next three years. With the condemnation of Tract 90 by the Anglican bishops, Newman’s position in the Anglican Church became untenable. He still intended to remain an Anglican, but he thought about the possibility of remaining as a member of the laity. In October 1842, Newman retired to Littlemore to reflect on things and to pray for divine guidance. Although his doubts about the apostolic basis of the Anglican Church began as early as 1839, the years at Littlemore between 1842 and 1845 gradually led him to the realization that the Roman Catholic Church, and not the Anglican Church, was the true Church of the Apostles. It was during this period that Newman wrote the book An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, in 1845. At Littlemore on October 9, 1845 Father Dominic Barberi, an Italian Passionist priest, received Newman into the Roman Catholic Church. (A more comprehensive analysis of Newman’s doubts and his reasons for becoming a Roman Catholic can be found in chapter 1.)

It is difficult today to realize what Newman’s conversion to Roman Catholicism might have meant in the context of nineteenth-century England. Sheridan Gilley writes that to become a Roman Catholic was “sort of a living death.” Catholics were excluded from many public employments and were, to a great extent, ostracized from decent society.⁵ At this time in England, Catholics were a minority group and were considered educationally backward. ⁶ Even more painful was that many family members and friends cut Newman off for decades, and some, like his sister Harriett Mozley, did so for the rest of their lives. On the other hand, from the point of view of Roman Catholicism, Newman was considered a great prize, and Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman was more than happy to put him on display. Some Catholic leaders had expectations of a massive exodus of Anglicans to Roman Catholicism as a result of Newman’s conversion. A number of Newman’s followers at Littlemore did convert with him, and more would follow. But the numbers fell short of the expectations of the Catholic Church in England. Some Catholic leaders even criticized Newman for not being more actively involved in the conversion of Anglicans to Roman Catholicism.

After forty-four years as an Anglican, Newman was now faced with the task of finding a place for himself in the Catholic Church. On February 22, 1846, Newman left Littlemore and went to Old Oscott (later to be known as Maryvale), just outside Birmingham. After a brief time at Maryvale, Newman in September 1846 left England to go to Rome to study theology at the College of Propaganda, a school of theology presided over by the Jesuits. At this time, Newman was considering the idea of establishing a school of theology at Maryvale when he returned to England. However, his experience in Rome led him to reconsider this plan. While in Rome, Newman discovered that some of the Roman theologians were suspicious of the orthodoxy of his theology. Realizing under those circumstances that the idea of a school of theology at Maryvale was not feasible, Newman decided that he would become an Oratorian and set up an Oratory congregation in England. The Oratorian congregation was founded originally by St. Philip Neri in the sixteenth century. Oratorians are a community of diocesan priests who live under a common rule but do not take the vows of poverty and obedience. Each community, or house, is independent and lives under its own democratic rule. Since Oratories are located in cities and each community is associated with a church, the life of an Oratorian particularly suited Newman. It offered him the opportunity to do pastoral work and provided him also with the independence and the means to continue to pursue scholarship and learning. (Newman’s experience in Rome and his decision to become an Oratorian are treated in more detail in chapter 1.)

On May 30, 1847, Newman became a Catholic priest, and in December 1847, he returned to England. On February 1, 1848, he established the first Oratorian congregation in England at Maryvale. In 1849, this community was moved to Alcester Street in the middle of Birmingham; then, in 1850, it was moved to the Edgbaston section of Birmingham, where it still is today. A second house of the Oratory, with Frederich William Faber in charge, was founded in London in April 1849. Newman had now found a place in the Catholic Church. Working out his role and making his contribution to the church was to be a lifelong task that, as might be expected, was filled with both successes and setbacks.

On September 29, 1850, Pope Pius IX issued an apostolic letter restoring the Catholic hierarchy in England. Up to this point, the Catholic Church in England was a missionary church directly under the control of the Congregation of Propaganda in Rome. The leaders of the Catholic Church in England were called vicars apostolic. The Catholic Church in England had been without a hierarchy for 265 years. On October 3, 1850, Bishop Nicholas Wiseman was made a cardinal of the church and was appointed archbishop of the metropolitan diocese of Westminster. An event that was a blessing for Catholics occasioned a fiery and volatile anti-Catholic outburst from Protestants in England. Protestants commonly referred to the restoration as an act of papal aggression. Although Newman himself thought that the restoration of the hierarchy was premature, he came to the defense of his new religion. Between June 30 and September 1, 1851, Newman delivered a series of lectures at the Corn Exchange in Birmingham defending the Catholic Church against the anti-Catholicism of the English Protestants. These lectures, in which Newman says that he is addressing the reasons for the prejudice against Catholics in England, were eventually published under the title Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England.

One of the unfortunate consequences of these lectures was that in one of them Newman attacked Dr. Giovanni Achilli, an ex-Dominican who was traveling around England spreading all kinds of lurid stories about the abuses of Catholicism. Achilli sued, and Newman was tried for libel in June 1852. Newman was convicted and sentenced to pay a fine of one hundred pounds. Enough money was raised through collections taken up throughout the world, including in the United States, to more than cover the fine and his trial expenses. Although Newman was convicted, the obvious prejudice against him at the trial, along with a relatively small fine, won him a moral victory.

While Newman was still engaged in the Achilli affair, Archbishop Paul Cullen of Armagh on April 15, 1852, wrote to ask him to give a series of lectures on education in Dublin in conjunction with the Irish bishops’ plan to establish a Catholic University in Ireland. Not only did Newman deliver the lectures, but on November 12, 1852, he was appointed rector of the Catholic University in Ireland. The purpose of this new university was to provide higher education in a religious environment for the Catholic laity because the Irish bishops frowned on Catholics attending the newly formed Queen’s Colleges that excluded religious teaching. The university opened, with Newman as rector, on November 3, 1854, and was successful for a few years. Because of a host of problems, which included conflicts among the Irish bishops, difficulties in recruiting faculty, a lack of a suitable student body in Ireland, and Archbishop Cullen’s interference in the affairs of the university, the university did not meet its expectations. As a result of these problems, and because he was needed back at his Oratory in Birmingham, Newman resigned as rector on November 12, 1858. Although his efforts to establish a Catholic University in Ireland were not ultimately successful, his work in Ireland provided the occasion for one of his greatest books, The Idea of a University. In this work, Newman presents a masterful analysis of a Catholic liberal education. Even today it is regarded by many as a classic. There was also one other positive outcome of Newman’s years in Ireland: Although the university he founded only survived until 1882, the medical school that he started at the university is still in existence today.

Newman’s setbacks in Ireland were minor in comparison to the troubles he encountered in the Rambler affair in 1859. It is important to note that Newman got involved in the Rambler affair at the request of his own bishop, William Ullathorne. The Rambler was a Catholic literary journal in England founded by John M. Capes in 1848. In 1859, in order to prevent the journal from being censured by the English bishops because of some of the journal’s liberal views, Newman convinced the editor, Richard Simpson, to resign, and, reluctantly, he agreed to become the interim editor. Newman’s troubles began in the May 1859 issue of the journal, his first as editor, in which he made a remark supporting the consultative role of the laity in the church. Matters got worse when in the July 1859 issue of the Rambler Newman published his article On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine. In this article, Newman maintained that, during the Arian controversy in the fourth century, it was the laity who kept the true faith while many of the bishops, particularly in the Eastern church, supported Arianism, thus resulting in a suspension of the teaching function of the bishops. After a prominent theologian, John Gillow, denounced the article, Bishop Thomas Brown of Newport sent Newman’s article to the Congregation of Propaganda in Rome and accused Newman of heresy. In Rome, Cardinal Barnabo, the prefect of Propaganda, was shocked by what Newman had written, and he wanted Newman to respond to a list of objections. But, because of a lack of communication, Newman never received the list of objections and so did not respond. As a result, it appeared to Rome that Newman was unwilling to reply. (A more detailed account of the events surrounding the Rambler affair can be found in chapter 6.) However, as a result of the Rambler incident, Newman was placed under a cloud of suspicion in Rome. Between 1859 and 1864, he was reluctant to write anything. These silent years were a period of sadness and disappointment for him.

Suddenly and unexpectedly in 1864, Charles Kingsley, a professor of modern history at Cambridge and a well-known novelist, provided Newman with the occasion to write again. In a review of James A. Froude’s book A History of England in the January 1864 issue of Macmillan’s Magazine, Kingsley accused Newman and the Catholic clergy in general of having no regard for the truth. After a brief correspondence between Newman and Kingsley, Newman decided to seize the moment and write a more formal reply to Kingsley’s charges. It was the opportunity for which Newman had been waiting. For twenty years he had heard the charges against the validity of his conversion to Catholicism. Once and for all he decided to put the charges to rest. His answer to Kingsley and the defense of his truthfulness and that of the Catholic Church is found in his work Apologia pro Vita Sua. In the first four chapters, Newman traces his spiritual journey from Anglicanism to Catholicism. The fifth, and last, chapter is a defense of his grounds for holding the truth of the Catholic faith. The reaction to the Apologia was enthusiastic and positive. His voice, which had been silenced, was suddenly restored to him. Many Anglicans felt that Newman had successfully cleared his name, and some renewed their friendships with him. To Catholics, he was their champion, the defender of the clergy and the church. The Old Catholic clergy rallied to his support and sent him letters of congratulations. Only one group of Catholics, the conservative Ultramontanes, such as Henry Manning, Herbert Vaughan, and William George Ward, were not impressed. The Ultramontanes emphasized the authority of the papacy in matters of doctrine and the governance of the church. Newman would encounter their opposition on both the issue of Catholics attending Oxford and the definition of papal infallibility.

The issue of Catholics attending Oxford reached a critical point in 1864. Since 1854, when the religious tests (submission to the Thirty-nine Articles) were abolished at Oxford and Cambridge, both universities had been open to Catholics. Many Catholic laity wanted their sons to take advantage of this opportunity, and some had already sent their sons to Oxford or Cambridge. Newman, who supported the right of Catholics to attend Oxford and Cambridge, was asked by Bishop Ullathorne in August 1864 to take over the Catholic parish at Oxford so that he could provide for the religious needs of Catholics at the university. Henry Manning, himself a convert from Anglicanism who would be made Archbishop of Westminster after Wiseman’s death on February 15, 1865, was strongly opposed to Catholics going to Oxford and was even more opposed to Newman going there. Using his considerable influence in Rome, Manning tried to persuade the Congregation of Propaganda to support his position. However, Propaganda ordered the English bishops to meet and discuss the matter. At their meeting on December 18, 1864, the bishops decided that Catholics should be discouraged from attending Oxford, but no direct prohibition was issued. The bishops met again in March 1865 and reaffirmed the position taken at the first meeting, a warning but no prohibition. In the summer of 1866, Bishop Ullathorne once again asked Newman to take over the Catholic parish at Oxford. Newman agreed on the condition that Propaganda would approve the plan and give him formal permission to establish an Oratory at Oxford. Propaganda granted permission for the Oratory, but, through the urging of Archbishop Henry Manning, inserted a secret stipulation that Newman would not be allowed to live in Oxford. While Newman, unaware of the stipulation, began raising money for the Oratory at Oxford, Bishop Ullathorne worked behind the scenes, to no avail, to get the condition removed. Then, in March 1867, the secret condition was revealed in a letter from the Roman correspondent of the Weekly Register, and the reason given for not allowing Newman to go to Oxford was that Rome had suspicions about the orthodoxy of his theology. The Catholic laity, who strongly supported Newman’s move to Oxford, wrote letters of protest against the stipulation, but to no avail. Archbishop Manning was adamant that Newman would not go to Oxford, and, on this matter, he prevailed. Newman sent Ambrose St. John, his close friend and colleague at the Birmingham Oratory, to Rome in 1867 to address the suspicions against Newman, which actually went back to the miscommunications over the 1859 article On Consulting the Faithful on Matters of Doctrine. However, Newman was under no illusions. He did not expect Propaganda to remove the stipulation. The whole matter only confirmed his distrust of Propaganda and its methods. In the summer of 1867, the idea of establishing an Oratory at Oxford was abandoned.

It was also in 1867 that Pius IX first announced that he was going to convene the First Vatican Council. Newman was asked by Pius IX to help prepare for the council and to be an official theologian at the council. Newman declined primarily on the grounds of old age. On July 18, 1870, the First Vatican Council defined the dogma of the infallibility of the pope. Although Newman had opposed the definition on the grounds that it was inopportune, he was relieved that a moderate definition was approved, and he eventually supported the council’s definition. Also in 1870, Newman published his major Catholic work on faith, the Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. Since this work is the primary source for Newman’s mature notion of Catholic faith and is discussed at length throughout the book, it is not necessary to comment on it any further at this point.

In 1874, the issue of infallibility once again engaged Newman’s attention. Gladstone, the prime minister of England who was defeated as a result of the passage of the Irish University Bill and thus was forced to resign, wrote a pamphlet in November 1874 in which he claimed that, because of the definition of papal infallibility, Catholics in England could no longer be loyal citizens. Newman’s friends urged him to reply, and he was willing. He had a problem, however, because answering Gladstone meant that he would have to attack the extreme Ultramontane interpretation of infallibility that was accepted by Catholics such as Archbishop Manning and William George Ward. Newman’s solution to the problem was masterful. He decided to answer Gladstone in a letter addressed to his friend the Duke of Norfolk. The letter was published in January 1875 under the title A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone’s Recent Expostulation. In this letter, Newman defended the doctrine of papal infallibility and presented an accurate and balanced interpretation of the First Vatican Council’s definition of infallibility. The Letter to the Duke of Norfolk was generally well received by Catholics in England, both bishops and laity. Rome, however, was not pleased and denounced the letter as censurable. The Ultramontanes were also not pleased but were reluctant to speak out publicly against Newman. (A more detailed description of the Gladstone controversy can be found in chapter 6.)

As he approached the age of seventy-three, Newman began to think about his legacy. He spent the years between 1874 and 1878 revising and republishing many of his earlier Anglican works. These years also brought Newman some long overdue recognition. In December 1877, he was invited by the president of Trinity College, Oxford, to become the college’s first honorary fellow. Newman accepted and received the award when he returned to Oxford in February 1878. After half a lifetime of exile from Oxford, Newman returned in triumph and was enthusiastically accepted by all at Oxford. An even greater honor came on May 12, 1879, when Newman was made a cardinal of the Catholic Church by Pope Leo XIII, who succeeded Pius IX when he died in February 1878. Although the tradition at the time was that cardinals who were not bishops were to reside in Rome, Newman received permission from the pope to continue to live at his Oratory in Birmingham. For Newman and his followers, his elevation meant that he had been vindicated. He would no longer be able to be considered only half a Catholic. However, when Newman was made a cardinal, his theological views did not change. He still had supporters and detractors in the church. But now he had received some official recognition for his lifelong service to the Catholic Church.

During the 1880s, Newman continued to remain active, guiding his Birmingham community, making public appearances, preaching, receiving visitors, and corresponding with his many friends. Although his energy gradually diminished and his literary output slowed down, he did manage to publish a significant article on the inspiration of Scripture in February 1884. In 1886, his physical powers began to fail him. Gradually he began to have trouble writing and had to have others write his letters. He was beginning to lose his hearing and his eyesight, and walking became a problem. However, he remained mentally sharp until the end. At the Birmingham Oratory on August 11, 1889, Newman died in peace as a Catholic who had remained loyal to the church in spite of all the trials he had to face. In his life, both as an Anglican and as a Catholic, he had experienced success and failure, joy and tribulation, and acceptance and rejection. He willingly accepted all the challenges, never despaired, and continued, to the moment of his death, to serve God and grow in faith.

Part of Newman’s legacy to the Catholic Church in the United States can be seen in the Newman Centers that serve Catholic students at secular universities today. These centers have their origin in the early Newman Clubs that began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first Newman Club was formed at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1893. It was founded and organized by a medical student named Timothy L. Harrington. As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Harrington had belonged to a club for Catholic students known as the Melvin Club. When he came to the University of Pennsylvania and found no equivalent student organization, he decided to establish a club for the Catholic students in the medical and dental schools at the university. Harrington had read Newman’s works, particularly The Idea of a University, and was impressed with his writings, and so he named the club the Newman Club. When Harrington accepted the presidency of the first Newman Club, he noted that there could not be a more fitting name for an organization of Catholics seeking to improve themselves socially, intellectually, and religiously in a university setting.

Soon after, Newman Clubs began to appear at other major universities in the early twentieth century. From this humble beginning, the Newman Clubs have given rise to the Newman Centers that are found on the campuses of numerous secular universities in the United States today. In the early 1920s, Father John O’Brien began the first Newman Foundation, a separate center, at the University of Illinois. Since then, many more Newman Centers have begun at other secular universities.

The purpose of the Newman Centers is to meet the pastoral, intellectual, and social needs of Catholic students attending secular universities. They attempt to provide a friendly religious environment for Catholic university students. To a great extent, they originally were founded to help Catholic students deal with the difficulties that they faced in practicing their faith on secular campuses that were often anti-Catholic. It is interesting to note that in the early twentieth century, the Newman apostolate to secular universities met with significant opposition from some of the U.S. bishops and representatives of the Catholic colleges and universities, particularly the Jesuit universities, in the United States. The establishment of Catholic Newman Centers on secular universities was seen as a threat to the development of Catholic colleges and universities. Fortunately, this view did not prevail, and today the Newman apostolate continues to serve the intellectual, social, and spiritual needs of Catholic university students both on secular campuses as well as on the campuses of some Catholic universities.

NOTES

John Henry Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, ed. A. Dwight Culler (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956), 21. (Hereafter abbreviated Apo.)

Charles Stephen Dessain, John Henry Newman (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1971), 2.

Dessain, Newman, 5.

Apo., 24.

Sheridan Gilley, Newman and His Age (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1991), 237.

Dessain, Newman, 89.

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