Born in London in 1801, he was for over twenty years an Anglican clergyman and Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. His studies of the early Church led him progressively towards Catholicism, and in 1845 he embraced “the one true fold of the Redeemer”. In 1847 he was ordained priest and went on to found the Oratory of St Philip Neri in England. He was a prolific and influential writer on a variety of subjects. In 1879 he was created Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. Praised for his humility, unstinting care of souls and contributions to the intellectual life of the Church, he died in Birmingham on 11 August 1890.
Office of Readings
Second Reading
From the
writings of Blessed John Henry Newman, Priest
(Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Chapter V: Position of My Mind since
1845, London 1864, pp. 238-239, 250-251)
It was like coming into port after a rough sea.
From the
time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no further history of my
religious opinions to narrate. In saying this, I do not mean to say that my
mind has been idle, or that I have given up thinking on theological subjects;
but that I have had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart
whatever. I have been in perfect peace and contentment; I never have had one
doubt. I was not conscious to myself, on my conversion, of any change,
intellectual or moral, wrought in my mind. I was not conscious of firmer faith
in the fundamental truths of Revelation, or of more self-command; I had not more
fervour; but it was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness
on that score remains to this day without interruption.
Nor had
I any trouble about receiving those additional articles, which are not found in
the Anglican Creed. Some of them I believed already, but not any one of them
was a trial to me. I made a profession of them upon my reception with the
greatest ease, and I have the same ease in believing them now. I am far of
course from denying that every article of the Christian Creed, whether as held
by Catholics or by Protestants, is beset with intellectual difficulties; and it
is simple fact, that, for myself, I cannot answer those difficulties. Many
persons are very sensitive of the difficulties of Religion; I am as sensitive of
them as any one; but I have never been able to see a connexion between
apprehending those difficulties, however keenly, and multiplying them to any
extent, and on the other hand doubting the doctrines to which they are
attached. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the
subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. There of course may be
difficulties in the evidence; but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to
the doctrines themselves, or to their relations with each other. A man may be
annoyed that he cannot work out a mathematical problem, of which the answer is
or is not given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer, or that a
certain particular answer is the true one. Of all points of faith, the being of
a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty, and yet
borne in upon our minds with most power.
People
say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to believe; I did not
believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had no difficulty in believing
it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God,
and that she had declared this doctrine to be part of
the original revelation. It is difficult, impossible, to
imagine, I grant;—but how is it difficult to believe?…
I
believe the whole revealed dogma as taught by the Apostles, as committed by the
Apostles to the Church, and as declared by the Church to me. I receive it, as
it is infallibly interpreted by the authority to whom it is thus committed, and
(implicitly) as it shall be, in like manner, further interpreted by that same
authority till the end of time. I submit, moreover, to the universally received
traditions of the Church, in which lies the matter of those new dogmatic
definitions which are from time to time made, and which in all times are the
clothing and the illustration of the Catholic dogma as already defined. And I
submit myself to those other decisions of the Holy See, theological or not,
through the organs which it has itself appointed, which, waiving the question
of their infallibility, on the lowest ground come to me with a claim to be
accepted and obeyed. Also, I consider that, gradually and in the course of
ages, Catholic inquiry has taken certain definite shapes, and has thrown
itself into the form of a science, with a method and a phraseology of its own,
under the intellectual handling of great minds, such as St Athanasius, St
Augustine, and St Thomas; and I feel no temptation at all to break in pieces
the great legacy of thought thus committed to us for these latter days.
Prayer
O God,
who bestowed on the Priest Blessed John Henry Newmanthe grace to follow your
kindly light and find peace in your Church;graciously grant that, through his
intercession and example,we may be led out of shadows and imagesinto the
fulness of your truth.Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,who lives and
reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,one God, for ever and ever.
