Thinking Anglicans

Newman and the Pope

Graham Kings Bishop of Sherborne has written a Fulcrum newsletter. The full title is:
The Ambiguous Legacy of John Henry Newman: Reflections on the Papal Visit 2010.

Beguiling and virulent, holy and vituperative, quicksilver and splenetic, charming and cantankerous: there are many sides to the character of John Henry Newman, brought out variously and vicariously in their biographies by Ian Ker (Oxford, 1988 – Catholic, scholarly and positive) and Frank M Turner (New Haven, 2002 – Protestant, scholarly and iconoclastic).

The severely critical review by Ker of Turner’s book in the Times Literary Supplement (6 Dec 2002), and consequent response from Turner, who noted that Ker was active in the campaign for Newman’s sainthood (20 Dec 2002), and then the answer of Ker, who complained of Turner ‘impugning [his] integrity’ (3 Jan 2003), intriguingly echo aspects of Newman’s own polemical interaction with Charles Kingsley, which produced his Apologia Pro Vita Sua (London, 1864). Ian Ker did not include Frank M Turner as an author in the book he edited recently, Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman (Cambridge, 2009) but John Cornwell does draw carefully on both Turner and Ker in his Newman’s Unquiet Grave: the Reluctant Saint (London, 2010).

Newman’s beatification was the centrepiece, culmination and raison d’être of the papal visit to Britain in September 2010. His attraction and trajectory to Rome were the key part of the planning of the visit. But how would the visit be followed up? In parish or university missions, the follow up of people who come to a commitment of faith is vital and keenly arranged. What of the papal visit? Let us consider first John Henry Newman, second some aspects of the papal visit and finally the follow up to the visit…

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

6 Comments
Oldest
Newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Pluralist
13 years ago
JCF
JCF
13 years ago

“intriguingly echo aspects of Newman’s own polemical interaction with Charles Kingsley”

Drama Queens beget Drama Queens, beget…

Spirit of Vatican II
Spirit of Vatican II
13 years ago

JCF, theology always has a lot of trouble getting taken seriously. It is funny to see that the homophobic insinuation surrounding Newman goes back such a long way, if it is true that Kingsley’s “unmanly” has this connotation. Remember when Newman retired to a “monastery” in Littlemore with some other men in 1841 and how people snooped about — I always thought they were snooping for signs of Papist practices, but now I imagine that a sexual motif was in the air. Frank Turner trivializes his account of Newman by fussing about the alleged role played by his desire for… Read more »

Laurence Roberts
Laurence Roberts
13 years ago

What’s all this ridiculous talk of ‘manliness’?

There is evidence all around of where ‘manliness’ got us and gets us.

The camp of (so much)Catholicism is a vital witness to an important truth. Or has been. Part of truth.

I love the account of how Fr Hope Patten closed the Tabernacle curtains, and then fell back, dead, into the arms of a bevy of servers.

All boxes ticked.

John Wirenius
13 years ago

At the risk of pushing my own blog musings, I believe that Newman’s writing in his late-in-life preface to “The Via Media” about the RCC’s “regal function” explains in some part that Church’s behavior in the sex abuse scandals. Briefly, he contends that “Acts simply unjustifiable, such as real betrayals of the truth on the part of Liberius and Honorius, become intelligible, and cease to be shocking, if we consider that those Popes felt themselves to be head rulers of Christendom and their first duty, as such, to be that of securing its peace, union and consolidation.” (Preface at lxxxii-lxxxiii).… Read more »

Father Ron Smith
Father Ron Smith
13 years ago

“The fact is, having one man, and a small circle of princes, responsible for the preservation of a 2,000 year institution which it believes to be the true incarnation if Christ’s Body on Earth is to put an insupportable burden on that man and that circle of men. It cannot be maintained, because it attributes perfection to the necessarily imperfect. And that leads to covering up the gap between the Heavenly Image and the Earthly Reality.” – John Wirenius, on Sunday – I find this paragraph in John Wirenius’ article (above comment) to be almost perfectly consonant with the situation… Read more »

6
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x