Sunday reflection: John Henry Newman
John Henry Newman, (21st February 1801 – 11th August 1890) who has been canonised today by the Catholic Church and is therefore now recognised as a saint by roman catholics, was a priest, poet and theologian who was an important and controversial figure in the religious revival of the 19th century.
Newman was initially ordained as a priest in the Church of England but then defected to the roman catholic church in which he was re-ordained and later became a cardinal.
The shift in his theological position over his life was even more profound than this may suggest: his original conversion to Christianity, which throughout his life he continued to believe had been the salvation of his soul, was as an Evangelical in the English Calvinist tradition within which the pope was usually regarded as the anti-Christ.
Having started as a "low church" protestant, by his late twenties Newman was moving toward what would become the Oxford Movement which was very much on the opposite wing of the Church of England and supportive of moving that church much closer to the Catholics. He became an advocate of what he called the "Via Media" or "Middle way" of Anglicanism between the catholic tradition on the one hand and low church Protestantism on the other.
However, this was only a point on the way: Newman continued moving in his gradual progress towards Rome and eventually resigned his Anglican orders and from that church. He was received into the Catholic church in 1845 and re-ordained as a catholic priest the following year. He spent the following decades as an educator and advocate of Catholicism in throughout the British Isles and in his old age was, most unusually, made a cardinal without first having been a bishop.
He is the author of a number of beautiful poems and prayers, many of which have become used as hymns and one of his most powerful works, "The Dream of Gerontius," was set to music as an oratorio by Sir Edward Elgar.
Newman's works have been of great spiritual comfort to many Christians of both his original and his ultimate allegiance including myself, sometimes at very difficult times: I recited a few lines from "The Dream of Gerontius" at a particularly difficult moment to which the passage concerned was highly relevant.
You do not have to agree with everything that John Henry Newman said or did to recognise that the cultural and spiritual life of Great Britain would have been immensely poorer without him.
Newman was initially ordained as a priest in the Church of England but then defected to the roman catholic church in which he was re-ordained and later became a cardinal.
The shift in his theological position over his life was even more profound than this may suggest: his original conversion to Christianity, which throughout his life he continued to believe had been the salvation of his soul, was as an Evangelical in the English Calvinist tradition within which the pope was usually regarded as the anti-Christ.
Having started as a "low church" protestant, by his late twenties Newman was moving toward what would become the Oxford Movement which was very much on the opposite wing of the Church of England and supportive of moving that church much closer to the Catholics. He became an advocate of what he called the "Via Media" or "Middle way" of Anglicanism between the catholic tradition on the one hand and low church Protestantism on the other.
However, this was only a point on the way: Newman continued moving in his gradual progress towards Rome and eventually resigned his Anglican orders and from that church. He was received into the Catholic church in 1845 and re-ordained as a catholic priest the following year. He spent the following decades as an educator and advocate of Catholicism in throughout the British Isles and in his old age was, most unusually, made a cardinal without first having been a bishop.
He is the author of a number of beautiful poems and prayers, many of which have become used as hymns and one of his most powerful works, "The Dream of Gerontius," was set to music as an oratorio by Sir Edward Elgar.
Newman's works have been of great spiritual comfort to many Christians of both his original and his ultimate allegiance including myself, sometimes at very difficult times: I recited a few lines from "The Dream of Gerontius" at a particularly difficult moment to which the passage concerned was highly relevant.
You do not have to agree with everything that John Henry Newman said or did to recognise that the cultural and spiritual life of Great Britain would have been immensely poorer without him.
Comments