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On Monday, we will launch the second issue of The Fourth Watch, a Catholic newsletter from First Things, authored by theologian James F. Keating. Today, we’re giving you an exclusive excerpt from the new issue. It’s about St. John Henry Newman, whom Pope Leo XIV declared a Doctor of the Church last month—why he matters, but also why Newman’s path to public veneration wasn’t always certain.
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Why Newman? Why Now?
On the Solemnity of All Saints (November 1), Pope Leo added St. John Henry Newman (1801–1890) to the list of the Doctors of the Church and named him co-patron, along with St. Thomas Aquinas, of the Church’s educational mission. This was not a surprise, given the influence the English Cardinal and theologian has had on contemporary Catholicism, but the timing of the ascent is notable. Beatification came during Benedict XVI’s historic trip to England in 2010, and he was canonized nine years later by Pope Francis.
It was not all that long ago, however, that supporters of his cause for sainthood were uncertain of success. Newman was, after all, an adult convert to the Church who sometimes clashed with his bishops and was known to question the timing of Pius IX’s effort to be declared infallible. He was also not a Neo-Scholastic or even a Thomist at a time when that approach was gaining a near monopoly over Catholic intellectual life. Even worse, many of his ideas regarding the development of dogma, the intuitive character of religious knowledge, the universal call to holiness, and the role of the laity were favored by theologians held in suspicion by the Roman magisterium during the first half of the twentieth century.
Things changed, of course, with Vatican II, a council St. Pope Paul VI referred to as “Newman’s hour.” There is obvious truth to this. It is hard to imagine the Second Vatican Council turning out the way it did apart from the intellectual contributions of Newman. That said, Avery Cardinal Dulles, who in countless ways patterned his work after the English Cardinal, was correct to insist that the matter was more complicated. If Vatican II can be described as an interplay of ressourcement and aggiornamento, Newman is more in line with the former than the latter. He would have celebrated, of course, a return to Scripture and the Church Fathers, but had been doubtful that any reproachment with the modern world was possible or prudent. Dulles points to Newman’s assertion in his religious autobiography, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864), that the divine gift of infallibility is “happily adapted” to combatting “the immense energy of the aggressive, capricious, untrustworthy intellect” that he saw
gaining dominion.
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In other words, there is little reason to believe that Newman would have shared in the optimism that characterized the council. It is noteworthy, therefore, that Pope Paul’s commendation of Newman happened in 1975—after it became apparent that the world was not receptive to the Church’s offer of peace. In that sense, I would submit that Newman speaks especially to a Catholicism still finding its legs in the aftermath of a reform council that guessed wrong about the direction of the world.
As with the making of saints, just why someone is made a Doctor of the Church is often difficult to determine. More than one pope is almost always involved, and sometimes with distinct motivations. In this case, the decision was made by Pope Francis and enacted by Pope Leo. If Leo’s homily for the occasion is any indication, a major reason was Newman’s ideas concerning education. The Mass in which Newman was named a Church Doctor occurred during the “Jubilee of the World of Education” sponsored by the Dicastery for Education and Culture. Moreover, Pope Leo looked back to a talk Francis gave to the newly created Dicastery in which he alluded to Newman’s poem “Lead Kindly Light” to describe education as an essential aspect of the Church’s work to “set humanity free from the encircling gloom of nihilism, which is perhaps the most dangerous malady of contemporary culture, since it threatens to ‘cancel’ hope.” Pope Leo built upon this idea and made the connection to Newman explicit:
“The task of education is precisely to offer this Kindly Light to those who might otherwise remain imprisoned by the particularly insidious shadows of pessimism and fear. For this reason, I would like to say to you: let us disarm the false reasons for resignation and powerlessness, and let us share the great reasons for hope in today’s world. Let us reflect upon and point out to others those ‘constellations’ that transmit light and guidance at this present time, which is darkened by so much injustice and uncertainty. I thus encourage you to ensure that schools, universities and every educational context, even those that are informal or street-based, are always gateways to a civilization of dialogue and peace.”
Beyond this, the homily was notably short on Newman’s specific contributions. It was a homily after all, and others will surely pick up on the idea of education as a source and path of hope in Newman’s work. One of the happy results of an ecclesial honoring of a particular theologian is that it occasions a fresh retrieval of their work. Expect a burst of writings, both scholarly and popular, on the newest Doctor of the Church and co-patron of Catholic education. . . .
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