Chapter 36: Founder of the Catholic University of Ireland
CHAPTER 36
FOUNDER OF THE CATHOLIC
UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND
IN 1851, Archbishop Cullen offered Newman the presidency of a new Catholic University in Ireland. James Hope-Scott, who had suggested Newman’s name, and the Oratorians convinced Newman to take this position. From the start, Newman faced numerous difficulties: finding capable professors, attracting Catholic students, and raising necessary funds. The primary difficulty, however, was Irish distrust for Englishmen, and the bishops’ resistance to laymen playing roles in the administration of the new university. One of Newman’s great accomplishments was the formulation of coherent ideas about university education, which Cullen asked Newman to present as public lectures to Dublin’s educated Catholic laity. Newman spoke of the proper and necessary role of theology in every university, of the scientific character of theology, of the harmonic integration of human learning and theology, and of knowledge as its own reward.
Newman presented the ideal of a liberal education without rationalism or religious indifferentism. According to his educational ideal, profane science has its own autonomy, which freely accepts religion and theology. Newman repeated the idea expressed in The Tamworth Reading Room Lectures that knowledge is not a substitute, or cause, for virtue. By itself, knowledge does not make people good. This is the province of moral virtue: “Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man.”1
In his third lecture, “Bearing of Theology on other Knowledge,” Newman taught about the role of Natural Theology in university studies. Newman believed that each branch of knowledge has its proper domain and limits, which have bearing on all other branches of knowledge and which cannot be neglected without detriment to the rest. He taught that theology is not only necessary to complete the full range of studies at a university, but because it leads to the knowledge of man’s ultimate end. Newman concluded the lecture as follows: “In a word, Religious Truth is not only a portion, but a condition of general knowledge. To blot it out is nothing short, if I may so speak, of unraveling the web of University Teaching.”2 The result of nine lectures, only four of them actually delivered, became the classic Idea of a University.
Newman wished to bring to the Catholic University of Ireland professors, known outside of Ireland, who would attract students. He also wished to have as Tutors some young single men whom he knew well, and he wished to pick a trusted Vice-Rector with whom he could work. Cullen, then Archbishop of Dublin, demurred and resisted Newman, who also found opposition among the university’s board of bishops. To attempt to remedy Newman’s inferior position in Ireland and possibly to make up for his failure in the Achilli case, Wiseman asked Pope Pius IX to name Newman bishop.3 Newman realized that he did not have the talent to govern a diocese—his talents lay elsewhere—but an Episcopal appointment would increase his leadership capacity in establishing the Catholic University of Ireland. The Pope made known his desire to make Newman a bishop, and the news became semi-public; but at the last moment Archbishop Cullen, who wished to retain control over the university, stopped Newman’s nomination.4 It was a blow to Newman, who never received an explanation about the affair from Wiseman, but Newman accepted the change in plans without holding any resentments.
Despite the bishops’ lack of cooperation, Newman was able to establish the Catholic University of Ireland.5 Classes at the university began in 1854, with a school of liberal arts. Soon afterward a school of medicine was incorporated. With the money left over from the funds raised for the Achilli trial Newman built a church for the university. He began a school newspaper, The Catholic University Gazette, a newspaper not only to communicate with professors and students but to make the university known in and outside of Ireland. He dreamed of a distinguished Catholic university for all the English-speaking countries, and he crafted on paper its curricula, ways of examining, and other administrative plans. Newman thought that laymen should have the day-to-day management of the university, and that under ordinary circumstances the president and the teaching faculty should be able to run the university. The Irish Episcopate, however, was not ready for these ideas and resented having an English convert in charge of an institution in their country. Only one Irish prelate, David Moriarty, Bishop of Kerry, who befriended Newman, understood Newman’s arguments concerning the role of the laity in the governance of the university, and helped him to establish contacts in Dublin.6
Even with all the turmoil caused by the situation with the University, Newman found time to finish a novel that he had begun a number of years earlier. Writing seemed to be what kept him anchored and perhaps gave a needed mental respite from the stressful situation. It is not surprising that he chose to write a novel during this period—he could, at least while he wrote, immerse himself in a world over which he had control. And so it was that in 1855, during his Long Vacation, that he completed his second novel, Callista: A Tale of the Third Century, a moving story of a young woman in Northern Africa in the third century, during the times of the persecution of Christians. The novel depicts the love of Christians and their courage under Roman torture. The narrative describes their belief in eternal life as well as eternal punishment, and their celebration of the Mass. Newman’s love for the Church Fathers is evident in his portrayal of St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage.
Upon his return to Dublin, Newman encountered one difficulty after another; he had his hands tied because the board of bishops would not allow him to run the university. Newman had judged incorrectly that he could establish a Catholic university for the English-speaking world. There was no interest for the university in England. Only a few English graduates from St. Cuthbert’s College in Ushaw near Durham had enrolled. And the Catholic Irish society did not have sufficient middle-class families to send students to the university. By the end of the academic year, 1855 to 1856, the number of students enrolled did not surpass a hundred. In 1857, Newman, who wished to resign, suggested a compromise to the board whereby he would spend two or three weeks each term in Dublin with a resident Vice-Rector whom he could trust. Until then, Patrick Leahy, Archbishop of Cashel, had been the Vice-Rector and generally absent. For a year Newman continued to work as Rector. In a draft of a letter to Leahy he wrote: “For myself all I can say is, that my time has been absolutely occupied with correspondence and other matters of the University ever since I left it in the beginning of the winter, and, that I have taken no salary since I ceased to reside. But I know perfectly that a resident Rector is indispensable.”7 Discouraged by the delay and opposition of the board, Newman resigned his position as Rector of the university at the end of 1858.
During the seven years Newman worked to start the Catholic University of Ireland, he traveled back and forth between Dublin and Birmingham; he crossed St. George’s Channel fifty-six times. Newman was relieved to be able to dedicate his full attention to the needs of the community at Birmingham. During his frequent absences, the relation between the Birmingham Oratory and the London Oratory had worsened and reached a painful crisis. In 1855, Faber and the London Oratory asked the Holy See to change their statutes to allow the community to hear the confessions of religious women and undertake their spiritual care. The London Oratory did not consult, or inform Newman, the founder of the Oratory in England, of the proceedings.8 As soon as Newman, who was in Dublin, found out he protested to the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fidei, which was unaware that Newman had not been consulted. He also protested to Cardinal Wiseman, about this plot and about the compromise of a far wider principle: “If our Rule may be relaxed in one point without our having cognisance of it, before the event, the same misfortune may happen in any other; and what is to hinder its being swept away altogether without our knowing it?”9
In a letter to Newman, Fr. John Stanislaus Flanagan of the Birmingham Oratory acknowledged the gravity of the matter:
The real point at issue, my dear Father, in my mind, is not—whether we may direct Nuns or take charge of Convents or not, but whether the Brimm [sic] Oratory is to be ruled by, and fashioned after the model of the London one—whether that house has it in its powers to force its views, its interpretations and developments of the Rule upon this or not. I cannot express how strongly I feel this, because as you yourself say, it positively strikes at the root of one’s vocation.10
Newman considered that a modification of the rule was so vital that he traveled to Rome along with Ambrose St. John, visiting on the way the Oratories of Northern Italy to consult on the matter that took them to Rome. In these visits it became clearer that in addition to the question regarding changing the Rule, there was a long tradition of complete independence between Oratories. In January 1856, they met with Alessandro Banabó, head of the Congregation for Propaganda Fidei and Pope Pius IX, who nevertheless did not wish to limit Newman’s powers and in fact wished to extend his power to setting up an Oratory in Ireland, even though each Oratory was to be independent.11 Newman spoke charitably of the London Oratorians, but asked for a more complete separation of the two houses, the Birmingham Oratory and the London Oratory. From the start Newman had enjoined his brothers at Birmingham to treat those at the Brompton or London Oratory with only kindness and respect, imitating St. Philip, who “scarcely ever had this sentence of St. Bernard out of his mouth, ‘to despise the world, to despise no one, to despise self, to despise being despised.’”12
After a long silence, the London Oratorians asked Newman’s forgiveness, but years later Fr. Faber still told others that quarrel had arisen because Newman wanted to be superior of both houses. In the end, the Holy See established complete independence between the Birmingham Oratory and the London Oratory. Newman had responded energetically because of the weight of the matter at hand, but the difference of temperament between him and Faber, and their vision of the Oratory, as well as the one-sided support of Archbishop Wiseman for Faber contributed to the final separation of the two houses.13 The conflict with Faber and the London Oratory damaged Newman’s reputation among ecclesiastical circles in London.
The canonical separation of the London Oratory and later the end of his office at the Catholic University of Ireland brought some calm again to Newman. Life at the Birmingham Oratory suited Newman well. He was not cut out for the government of a university or a diocese. In the midst of this painful period there was, however, an important satisfaction at the university. He wrote Lord Henry Kerr, father of one of the students at the Oratory School: “We have opened our Medical School with great success.”14 To Mrs. Bowden, he was more spontaneous and candid: “We have opened the Medical School with great eclat, and in spite of much croking [sic] beforehand.”15
Newman had many friends and many visitors, but he was a timid and quiet person, and to those who did not know him, he gave the impression of being distant.16 Newman, however, was busy and happy at Birmingham. He supervised the enlargement of the church, took care of order in the library, did bookkeeping, helped in the sacristy, and dedicated much time to the pastoral care of the poor. He heard confessions regularly, preached every Sunday, and helped with children’s catechesis. Newman spent a lot of time writing letters as well as ordering and classifying his extensive correspondence according to dates.
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1John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, 121, available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/idea/index.html. After this it will be cited Idea.
2Ibid., 70.
3Morales, Newman (1801-1890), 218.
4Ibid., 220.
5In The ‘Making of Men,’ The Idea and reality of Newman’s University in Oxford and Dublin (Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 2014) Paul Shrimpton provides an excellent account of the establishment of the university showing how Newman’s vision for university education was more than a noble ideal, and could be made a reality in some instances, then and now.
6Morales, Newman, 1801-1890, 221.
7LD, JHN to Patrick Leahy, Archbishop of Cahel (October 5, 1858), 476-477, 476.
8Ronald Chapman, Father Faber (London: Burns & Oates, 1961), “An Unhappy Quarrel,” 261-90; 270, 278.
9LD, Vol. XVII, JHN to Cardinal Wiseman, (October 19, 1855), 13-14, 13.
10LD, Vol. XVII, John Stanislas Flanagan to JHN (October 22, 1855), 14-15.
11LD, Vol. XVII, JHN to Edward Caswall (January 29, 1856), 138-139, 139.
12LD, Vol. XVII, JHN to Fr. Ambrose St. John and all the Fathers at Birmingham (November 9, 1855), 40-51, 49.
13Morales, Newman (1801-1890), 235-36.
14LD, Vol. XVII, JHN to Lord Henry Kerr (November 15, 1855), 62.
15LD, Vol. XVII, JHN to Mrs. J. W. Bowden (November 18, 1855), 68.
16Ibid., 241-43.