This week’s Thomas More Centre newsletter resonates with the life and work of the great literary and spiritual figure of the 19th century, Doctor of the Church, cardinal and saint, John Henry Newman (1801-1890).
In his Mass for the beatification of the cardinal in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI, who had a lifelong inspiration from Newman, declared:
“His insights into the relationship between faith and reason, into the vital place of revealed religion in civilised society, and into the need for a broadly-based and wide-ranging approach to education were not only of profound importance for Victorian England, but continue today to inspire and enlighten many all over the world.”
Cardinal Newman is also recognised as a prophet of the ongoing purification and deepening of an intentional Christian faith and today for promoting unity amongst committed Christians.
As the American writer George Weigel succinctly captures Newman’s path up until 1841:
“His personal journey of faith had taken him from youthful scepticism to a robustly evangelical Anglicanism, and then from an Oriel College fellowship and the pastorate of the University church of St Mary the Virgin to the leadership of the Anglican-reforming Oxford Movement.”
There are many ways in which the rise of the Oxford Movement as a counter-culture to the growing secularisation and rationalism of the mid-19th century resembles the growing interest in Christ and Christianity in groups of young men (particularly) in the otherwise polarised and fractured times we live in today.
This TMC newsletter is a bit of a landmark – it is our number 90 in the series. An enormous watershed in John Henry Newman’s life was occasioned by his publication, when he was still firmly committed and keenly loyal to the Church of England, in his Tracts for the Times series of the controversial Tract 90: Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles (January 1841).
This tract provoked such a firestorm of reaction and condemnation from the Church of England hierarchy, much to Newman’s anguish as his intention in writing the tract was to find a continuity and unity in Anglican communion with the early “apostolic and catholic” Church.
Tract 90 would be his last tract. This does not mark the last TMC newsletter, Deo volente (God willing).
Another reason for marking the great Churchman this week is that it was only two years after the publication of Tract 90, in this week in the September of 1843, that Newman retired to his quasi-monastic community at Littlemore, and after much reluctance and heartache preached his last Anglican sermon entitled The Parting of Friends (September 25, 1843).
The French convert theologian and scholar, Louis Bouyer, writes vividly of the grief of the occasion. He notes that Newman not only grieved the loss of his friends in the Oxford Movement but of his family and of the sanctity he saw in so many Anglicans, as evidence of its authentic Christianity and its “catholicity”. He saw the Church in England not so much as a “nationalised” establishment but as his spiritual and cultural mother.
Bouyer writes of this service, conducted with solemn dignity by his theological mentor and friend Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882) and then of the congregation as Newman ascended the pulpit to preach:
“Tears rolled down their faces as Newman pronounced those words of final leave-taking, words that told of all he felt he was giving up in leaving the Anglican fold, of all those things that kept so many other generous hearts from following his steps.”
Far from rushing to the Church of Rome, Newman was troubled by the tension between two important poles: tradition and providence and the “signs of the times” and the work of the Holy Spirit; between a deep immersion in the reading of the Scriptures and the spiritual immersion in sacramentality.
Newman contributed to the integration of Christian social and pastoral principles with liturgical richness for many Christians, both Anglican and Catholic.
The late Fr Ian Ker in his detailed studies of the life of Cardinal Newman wrote of the significance of Newman’s conversion for the Church:
“We may surely take Newman himself, both in his life and writings, as a prophetic guide for our own post-conciliar age. Deeply and profoundly conservative in his adherence to revealed truth and in his fidelity to authority and to tradition, Newman was at the same time keenly alive to the importance and inevitability of adaptation and development.”
Pope Leo XIV this July declared Newman’s importance by stating his intention to declare Newman as the 38th Doctor of the Catholic Church. It is also notable that it was Leo’s namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who would so appreciate Newman’s breadth of vision by elevating him to the College of Cardinals.
In his great Catholic work, The Idea of a University, John Henry Newman said of himself: “I am not a great writer; I am an occasional writer.”
It could be misunderstood as a profound understatement by such an important even if humble man. But what Newman meant by this was that he aimed to offer thoughtful and affectively engaged responses to “the occasions” of the time he lived in, while steadying his stance in the wisdom of the Gospels and the insights of the early Church.
If in some slight way, today’s Thomas More Centre can offer a voice of balance, discernment and hope to the “occasion” and to provide occasions which build on that with the inspiration of the Cardinal, then we will be delighted.
We thank so many of you for your financial, spiritual and moral support and in response to our postal appeal for funds. An online link for donations can be found here.
Don’t forget to book for these two important TMC-engaged events:
- In-person or live-streaming – Professor Tracey Rowland’s Book Launch for Remembering George Cardinal Pell (Ignatius/Parousia 2025), September 30, 6.30pm
- The Nicholas Tonti-Filippini Oration for 2025, which this year will include a dinner and the oration speech by Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP | Friday, October 17, 2025, 7pm, Catholic Leadership Centre, preceded by Mass
Anna Krohn
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre
