Cardinal John Henry Newman, the 19th century saint who is probably the greatest Catholic English intellectual of the past 500 years, will soon become a Doctor of the Church.
Only six years after he was canonised, St Cardinal Newman will be formally declared a “Doctor of the Universal Church” by Pope Leo. He will join Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, Thérèse of Lisieux, and 33 others as one of the learned saints whose writings contain exceptionally valuable insights.
Emeritus Bishop Peter J. Elliot, a former auxiliary bishop of Melbourne, told The Catholic Weekly that he was thrilled. Bishop Elliott has a special connection to the saint, as he had made the same journey from the Anglican Church to the Catholic Church. “He made it in the 1840s and I made it in the 1980s and both of us had strong connections with Oxford,” he said. “He had a big influence on me, because the last book I read before I became a Catholic was Newman’s Development of Christian Doctrine.”
Newman’s religious journey is an extraordinary story of interior struggle, public controversy, and immense literary output. He was not only a zealous priest, but a theologian, preacher, controversialist, philosopher, historian, novelist, and poet.
Born in 1801, Newman became one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement, a group of Anglicans who wished to reconcile their church with its ancient Catholic heritage. But intense study of the early Fathers of the church drew Newman even further and in 1845, he was received into the Catholic Church.
In his new spiritual home he experienced both great joy and great suffering. He lost some of his Anglican friends and some Catholics viewed him with suspicion. He was accused of hypocrisy and double-dealing—allegations which led him to write his intellectual autobiography, Apologia pro Vita Sua, to explain his conversion. It was immediately acknowledged as a literary and theological masterpiece.
As a man Newman was sensitive and humane and had a great capacity for friendship. As a writer he combined a subtle and rigorous mind with stylistic brilliance. His writings continue to be relevant in ecclesiology, ecumenism, philosophy, and understanding the contemporary drift away from God.
Newman’s new distinction was greeted with jubilation by Australian scholars.
Professor Tracey Rowland, a world-renowned theologian at the University of Notre Dame Australia (UNDA), was “delighted.” “It’s fitting that one Pope Leo gave Newman a red hat, and the next Pope Leo declared him a Church Doctor. It is particularly good news for Catholics in the UK,” she said.
“For each Church Doctor there is usually a subtitle. It will be interesting to see if Pope Leo suggests a sub-title for Newman such as Doctor of the Second Spring or Doctor of Doctrinal Development or Doctor of Conscience. Pope Benedict was a very enthusiastic endorser of Newman’s idea of conscience.”
Dr Shaun Blanchard, of UNDA in Fremantle, was part of a team which outlined the case for declaring Newman a doctor of the Church to the Vatican. He felt elated. “I felt the same kind of joy and connection to the global church that I felt when Pope Leo was elected,” he told The Catholic Weekly.
It took centuries to proclaim some saints as doctors. St Hildegard of Bingen died in 1179 and was recognised as a doctor in 2012—more than 800 years later. But Newman died relatively recently, in 1890.
“There are a number of reasons for that,” said Dr Blanchard, “but probably most significantly is that Newman correctly sensed that the intellectual climate of the modern world he lived in was profoundly different, and required a new and creative form of fidelity. The answers he gave to many of the doctrinal and other problems he addressed were taken up by Vatican II, so he has become a sort of quasi-official godfather of the Council.”
Pope Benedict XVI and Newman were kindred spirits, said Dr Blanchard.
“Ratzinger greatly admired Newman. They were both sensitive, idiosyncratic, and I think often misunderstood geniuses who wrestled profoundly with the problems of history, change, contingency, and the nature of tradition. Ultimately, Ratzinger believed Newman had rightly expounded upon doctrinal development, making it a ‘decisive and fundamental concept of Catholicism’. The future Pope Benedict spoke of Newman as one of the ‘great teachers of the Church’.
“Pope Francis followed this by canonising Newman a saint, and seeing in him an archetype for the ecclesiological vision he wanted to nurture in the global church. This vision touched all kinds of issues connected to synodality, including the role of the laity, true collaboration between the ‘teaching church’ and the ‘learning church,’ and a view of infallibility that sees it first and foremost as a gift to the entire believing community.”
The Vatican’s announcement is sure to prompt a surge of interest in Cardinal Newman. What is the best book to read? There are dozens of biographies, and the official edition of his collected works runs to 31 volumes—which does not include an additional 31 volumes of letters and diaries.
Bishop Elliott suggests that beginners read Newman’s autobiographical novel Loss and Gain, which was written shortly after his conversion. It has “lovely satirical humour”, he says, and it’s “a way of tracking his journey” into the Catholic Church.
