Cardinal Newman the Catholic Apologist

Dear Friend,

Our third and final interview in the Catholic Action Insight series on St. John Henry Cardinal Newman features the famed Catholic apologist, Karl Keating, speaking to Catholic Action President, Thomas McKenna, about Newman’s influence on his intellectual formation as a Catholic. Cardinal Newman also provided much of the inspiration for founding the world’s preeminent Catholic apologetics organization, Catholic Answers, based in San Diego. 

Mr. Keating takes us on a very personal tour of his own embrace of Cardinal Newman as a Catholic Apologist. In fact, Newman was the most well-known defender of the Catholic faith in his day, not only because he arrived at his conviction through a thorough study of Catholic history but also because his conversion cost him everything: friends, positions, and influence. Newman went against the grain of so many of his former colleagues who rejected his honest discussion of the issues on which Anglicanism was founded.

Of particular importance to Karl Keating’s understanding of apologetics were these Newmanian influences: 

• His Essay on the Development of Doctrine (1845) which was published on the very threshold of his conversion to the Catholic Church; 
• The historical veracity of Catholicism which he found to be the only Church that could claim to be the One Church Christ founded; and
• His perceptive understanding of the roots of sacramental teaching as well as papal authority and the hierarchical structure of the Church; among many other issues.

Keating found Newman’s methodologies and arguments to be persuasive even with non-Catholics in the apologetics ministry. He relates how his own blockbuster apologetics book, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, (now, incredibly, 30 years on the market) owes a great debt to the zeal and intelligence of one of the Church’s newest saints, who, in addition to having one of the most brilliant minds in history, was also humble and holy. 

At the end of the interview, Thomas McKenna sums up the reason for our CAI series on Cardinal Newman by noting, “We all need to be apologists for the Catholic Faith.”

Cardinal Newman would certainly respond, “Amen!” to that. 

Your friend in Christ,

Thomas McKenna

Founder and President

Catholic Action For Faith And Family
http://www.catholicaction.org/

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