John Henry Newman was an important and controversial figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. An esteemed academic, prolific author and convert from the Church of England to ...Catholicism, Newman was a complex and conflicted individual. Intensely loyal to his friends, highly-strung, kind-hearted and tenacious, Newman combined the best of both the Anglican and Catholic traditions. His volume of lectures entitled The Idea of a University, explained his philosophy of education. During the four years he spent in Dublin he was was instrumental in the founding of the Catholic University of Ireland in 1854; this later evolved into University College Dublin, now the largest university in Ireland. John Henry Newman was declared a saint on 13th October 2019.
When this journal established an editorial board in 1974, Austin was a foundation member. Thank you for being a son of Sorrento and yet a citizen of the world. Thank you being in love with the past, ...a man of tradition, certainly a fan of the late Queen, yet also a contemporary man, alert to the events and issues of today and able to bring the past into creative dialogue with the present.
This essay explores how John Henry Newman’s preaching on asceticism can speak to the ostensible tension in contemporary Christianity between “spiritual” and “earthly” concerns. Newman contends, ...paradoxically, that a conscious self-denial of lawful material pleasures necessarily correlates to the Christian’s ability to perceive the spiritual grace mediated by physical objects. The sermons of his Anglican period reflect what he would eventually articulate as the “sacramental principle,” namely that the material world presents “types and the instruments of real things unseen.” This principle is grounded in the doctrine of the incarnation, which he considers to be the central truth of the gospel. I argue that this anchoring in the incarnation gives his preaching on asceticism an ultimately practical or “this-worldly” character and, more precisely, offers an understanding of asceticism not as a means of mystical knowledge or escapism but as the only way to live fully in the world.
The Antagonist Principleis a critical examination of the works and sometimes controversial public career of John Henry Newman (1801-1890), first as an Anglican and then as Victorian England's most ...famous convert to Roman Catholicism at a time when such a conversion was not only a minority choice but in some quarters a deeply offensive one. Lawrence Poston adopts the idea of personality as his theme, not only in the modern sense of warring elements in one's own temperament and relationships with others but also in a theological sense as a central premise of orthodox Trinitarian Christian doctrine. The principle of "antagonism," in the sense of opposition, Poston argues, activated Newman's imagination while simultaneously setting limits to his achievement, both as a spiritual leader and as a writer. The author draws on a wide variety of biographical, historical, literary, and theological scholarship to provide an "ethical" reading of Newman's texts that seeks to offer a humane and complex portrait.
Neither a biography nor a revelation of a life, this textual study of Newman's development as a theologian in his published works and private correspondence attempts to resituate him as one of the most combative of the Victorian seekers. Though his spiritual quest took place on the far right of the religious spectrum in Victorian England, it nonetheless allied him with a number of other prominent figures of his generation as distinct from each other as Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and Walter Pater. Avoiding both hagiography and iconoclasm, Poston aims to "see Newman whole."
According to the standard narrative, although John Henry Newman was driven away from Oxford in the 1840s by the dominant Protestant consensus, by the end of his life in the 1890s he was back in ...favour, fêted in Oxford as a Roman Catholic celebrity and as an esteemed alumnus. This article challenges that interpretation by examining the forgotten controversy over Newman's national monument, a significant aspect of his reception history. It shows how Newman's memory and reputation remained hotly contested, provoking resistance by the dons and citizens of late Victorian Oxford, even in this recently secularised and professedly tolerant university city.
: Reason has reasons of which ‘reason’ knows nothing. It was this essential insight, along with the methodological prioritisation of a phenomenology of cognition and the recognition of the ...epistemological distinctiveness of judgment, that a young Bernard Lonergan gleaned from his study of John Henry Newman's Grammar of Assent. Given that the ‘later’, post‐Insight (1953) Lonergan enacted a more explicit transposition of his thought into a hermeneutical and existential framework, one might be tempted to assume that this coincided with a drift away from his tutelage under the nineteenth‐century Englishman. Indeed, an examination of the secondary literature detailing their relationship would suggest as much. Yet, in the hope of contributing to the regrettably sparse Newman‐Lonergan scholarship and proposing a modest recalibration therein, I argue that the more existential, hermeneutical, and committed to the philosophical turn to concrete socio‐historical subjectivity Lonergan grew, the more fruit his early Newmanian formation bore. By analysing Newman's proto‐Lonerganian anticipations in the areas of self‐appropriation, conversion, the relationship of subjectivity to objectivity, and the hermeneutical nature of consciousness, I will contend that Newman—a presciently continental mind writing as one untimely born into an analytical milieu—was the wellspring from which Lonergan never ceased to draw.
John Henry Newman is known for his consistent, coherent, and sincere thought on the questions of faith that were important to him and his communities. Newman shares philosophical and theological ...reflections in many works, such as, a complex analysis of philosophical and theological aspects of faith and a subtle articulation of infallibility. Yet, Newman provides relatively little on the Eucharist. As a Tractarian, Newman raises the philosophical issue of presence in the Eucharist, distinguishes between local and real presence, and articulates his faith in the latter. As an Oratorian, Newman does not write a treatise on the Eucharist. Instead, Newman's thoughts on the Eucharist are mostly contained within prayers, devotions, meditations, and some passing commentary on the liturgy, rites, and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Through a close reading of these texts, it is suggested that Newman provides a case study for the reflecting on the truth of dogma because of his incisive articulation of the sacramental presence of God in the Eucharist and his response to the use of the philosophical notion of transubstantiation.
This article critically examines the Catholic–Anglican theological dialogue, centering on John Henry Newman’s ‘Primacy of God’, Catholic synodality, and Anglican comprehensiveness. It illuminates the ...interconnectedness of these elements, revealing their potential to enhance ecumenical conversations. Newman’s concept of communal faith and divine primacy resonates across both traditions, advocating a transformative, experiential spiritual journey. This study juxtaposes Newman’s stance on ecclesiastical authority and doctrinal development with contemporary synodal movements in the Catholic Church, paralleled by Anglican practices like the Lambeth Conferences. This comparison underscores a mutual commitment to participatory governance and theological inclusivity. Ultimately, the study envisions a unified Christian theology, fostering dialogue enriched by diverse traditions and promoting a harmonious convergence within the Christian theological spectrum.
Broughton's view was more cautious than the others and there were elements of receptionism in his understanding of the Eucharist, which were nonetheless realist.5 William Crockett argues that ...receptionism, "remained the dominant theological position within the Church of England until the Oxford Movement in the early nineteenth century, with varying degrees of emphasis" and that "it is important to remember, however, that 'receptionism' is a doctrine of the real presence, but a doctrine of the real presence that relates to the presence primarily to the worthy receiver rather than to the elements of bread and wine. In so doing so, this article also seeks to show that Short's influence extended beyond his own period of episcopal ministry and into the continuing life of the Diocese of Adelaide. Newman sought in Tract 90 "to take our reformed confessions as expressed in The Thirty-Nine Articles in the most Catholic sense they will admit" so that "in giving the Articles a Catholic interpretation, we bring them into harmony with the Book of Common Prayer. Newman's theology of the Eucharist has been called a moderate realist eucharistie theology.20 This concept of moderate realism depends on a philosophical analysis of the plurality or multiformity of Anglican eucharistie theology.· · · 21 Discourse on the Anglican eucharistie tradition varies between those who hold a realist understanding of the Eucharist and those who accept a nominalist analysis.
