Newman: 'He is a simple, holy man; and ... gifted with remarkable powers. He does not know of my intention; but I mean to ask of him admission into the One Fold of Christ.'

The Superior General of the Passionist Congregation, Father Ottaviano D’Egidio, has published a letter looking forward to the Beatification of John Henry Newman later this year, highlighting the importance of Passionist Blessed Dominic Barberi (1792-1849) who received Newman into the Catholic Church in October 1845.

Blessed Dominic, who at an early age experienced a personal calling to preach the Catholic faith in England, finally arrived in the country in 1840 and worked here until his death in 1849. Newman later wrote of him: “Father Dominic … was a most striking missioner and preacher and he had a great part in my own conversion and in that of others. … his remarkable bonhomie in the midst of his sanctity was in itself a real and holy preaching. No wonder, then, I became his convert and penitent. He was a great lover of England.”

This love for England was expressed in Dominic’s striking 1841 ‘Letter to the Professors of the University of Oxford’, in which he welcomed joyfully the Catholic spirit in Anglicanism heralded by Newman’s ‘Oxford Movement’, but powerfully argued that communion with the See of Rome was the true destiny for contemporary Anglo-Catholics. He wrote: “If all churches should revere the Roman Church, the Anglican should do so more especially, because that is the only mother she can lay claim to.” In an important sense anticipating modern ecumenical practice, as Fr D’Egidio points out, Dominic writes without any ‘disrespect or animosity’, but always with simplicity, calmness, and a love for his hearers and for the one truth of Christ.

At Blessed Dominic’s Beatification, in 1963 during the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI said: “We know that Father Dominic was a great master of asceticism, indefatigable preacher, apostle and expert apologist of the contemporary thought of his time, aware also then of ancient and new ideas and dangerous errors.” Fr D’Egidio says that Blessed Dominic’s “significance … merit that he be appreciated now even more than ever before.” In the year of Newman’s Beatification, he and Blessed Dominic both show that charity and truth go together, that Christians must engage with the modern world with generosity and boldness, and that God’s calling takes us beyond every other tie.

Father Richard Duffield, Provost of the Birmingham Oratory, said: “We are delighted by the letter from the General of the Passionists, Ottaviano D’Egidio. John Henry Newman had the highest regard for Blessed Dominic who was his friend and who received him into the Catholic Church. He also had a strong devotion to the Passionist founder, St Paul of the Cross, who foresaw his order’s work in England. Newman was also a great admirer for Father Ignatius Spencer, one of the earliest English converts and Passionists. We look forward to working with the Passionist order in promoting our Saints and Beati up to and beyond John Henry Newman’s Beatification.”

Click here to read the full letter from Father Ottaviano D’Egidio C.P.

The Bishops of England and Wales celebrate Mass in the Chapel of Propaganda Fidei, Rome, February 2010 (Credit: Mazur/catholicchurch.org.uk)

The Bishops of England and Wales marked the end of their ad limina visit to the Holy See with a Mass in the Church where John Henry Newman was ordained a Catholic priest.

On 3 February, the Archbishop of Westminster and the rest of the English hierarchy, accompanied by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, visited the Vatican Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, and its head Cardinal Ivan Dias. The Congregation, along with offices of Catholic missionary agencies, stands in the Palazzo di Propaganda Fidei, the same building by the Spanish Steps where Newman lived from 1846-7. The Vatican department oversees missionary territories, in which England was included until the bishops and dioceses were restored in 1850.

Newman wrote shortly after arriving: “There are more than thirty languages in this house, and it was quite an affecting sight at the Missa Cantata this morning to see … Indians, Africans, Babylonians, Scots and Americans, embracing each other at the Pax.”

In his sermon, Archbishop Nichols talked of the nature of Christian conversion, and of Newman as “a remarkable convert”, adding that it was “moving for us to be in this place, where we come so close to him.” Newman’s was ordained priest in the Propaganda Church on Trinity Sunday, 30^th May, 1847.

Others present included representatives from the International Centre of Newman friends, and Archbishops and Cardinals based in Rome.

The Bishops also visited the chapel, containing the bones of the martyr St Hyacinth, which has been recently restored and is where Newman celebrated his first Mass. Newman had written in a letter of November 1846: “[Rome] is a place to make one a good deal better, if one is properly disposed, were it only to be at the shrines of so many martyrs. There are relics of one in this house, close to my room – St Hyacinth’s, which were found in the catacombs with his grave stone over him not long ago.” The chapel also had a stone engraving from the catacombs of Christ as the ‘Good Shepherd’, carrying the lost sheep back to the flock.

Cardinal Ivan Dias with the Archbishop of Birmingham, Bernard Longley, outside the Cappella Newman (Credit: Mazur/catholicchurch.org.uk)

This chapel, now known as the ‘Cappella Newman’, has become a centre of prayer for those who see Newman’s life, teachings and ministry as a true example of ecumenical endeavour. Newman’s own path from religious scepticism to the fullness of Catholic faith, as well as his emphasis on conversion of life as the means to bring Christians closer together in the truth, makes him a strikingly important figure for realising the aspirations of the ecumenical movement.

Newman concludes his famous Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864): “And I earnestly pray for this whole company, with a hope against hope, that all of us, who once were so united, and so happy in our union, may even now be brought at length, by the Power of the Divine Will, into One Fold and under One Shepherd.”

During his stay in Rome Newman moved towards a decision to bring the Oratory of St Philip Neri to England. He met with Pope Pius IX, who gave him a precious image of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Mater Dolorosa, the ’sorrowful mother’). Newman also visited the Chiesa Nuova, the first Oratory, and made a Novena (nine days) of prayer in daily pilgrimages to St Peter’s Basilica from 18th-25th January 1847, seeking divine guidance. Then on Newman’s birthday, 21st February, the Secretary of Propaganda gained the Pope’s approval of his Oratorian plan. Newman founded the Birmingham Oratory in February 1848.

Father Richard Duffield, Provost of the Birmingham Oratory, and Actor of the Cause for Newman’s Canonisation said: “In a year dedicated to the priesthood that will also see John Henry Newman’s beatification, the English bishops’ visit to the Propaganda church where Newman was ordained is a tremendous sign of his importance as a priest, not only for England, but for the whole world. It was a place where he found his vocation in the Catholic Church as an Oratorian. Like the Oratory’s founder St Philip Neri, Newman didn’t travel much. But he was a missionary and evangelist through his writing and his influence and remains so to this day.”

The Cappella Newman (Credit: Mazur/catholicchurch.org.uk)

Revd Jack Sullivan, healed through Newman's intercession, meets parishoners at the Oxford Oratory, November 2009

Clifford Longley has written an interesting and provocative article on Canonisation (The Tablet January 9, print edition).

A key passage reads as follows:

The idea that God would demonstrate that a saint is truly in heaven by instantly healing someone’s fatal illness because he has been asked to by the said saint – who is in turn responding to the prayers of the victim or those near to him – seems to me so simplistic, so credulous, so presumptuous, so mechanical and so manipulative, that it brings no credit to the Catholic religion and indeed confirms the worst prejudices of its enemies. Is that really the kind of God we believe in? Don’t millions of people offer prayers every day for the recovery of a loved one – some of which are answered, some not? Doesn’t the very idea of canonisation miracles – in effect miraculous prayers as part of a PR exercise – mock them cruelly?

Perhaps the first thing to say about this is that Mr Longley does not convey the Church’s interest in ‘canonisation miracles’ quite accurately. She does not require that a miraculous healing be from a fatal illness. As Mr Longley recognises, of course, healings from fatal illnesses are not impossible to God, but neither is the Church exclusively concerned with them.

Why miracles?

Secondly, Mr Longley is concerned that in the matter of ‘canonisation miracles’ the Church risks being presumptuous. What does he mean? Mr Longley knows of course that God answers the prayers of the suffering, and that sometimes He does so in response to ’saintly intercession’. Mr Longley’s objection is specifically to the idea that God answers such prayers ‘as part of a PR exercise’ (as he puts it). His difficulty is with what ‘canonisation miracles’ imply about ‘divine intervention in the world.’

Mr Longley is rightly concerned to repudiate unworthy conceptions of God, and thinks that such a conception in implied in believing that God heals a person purely for the sake of a prospective Beatification or Canonisation. It is presumptuous, he believes, to think that in a matter as momentous as someone’s healing, God would act purely to assist an ecclesiastical interest group intent on having its candidate Beatified or Canonised. And he is surely right about this. The question, however, is whether this is what is implied by the Church’s theory and practice of Canonisation.

It may be that Mr Longley’s disquiet is based on a misapprehension. For surely in every instance, God works miraculous healings primarily for the sake of the person who is healed.

At the most fundamental level, all such healings disclose a bond of intimacy between the person who is healed and God, mediated by the multi-dimensional human friendships made possible by the communion of saints. It is no part of the Church’s understanding to suggest that God sometimes heals people purely instrumentally, simply as a means to the end of having someone Canonised. If anything, surely, it is the other way round: God wills Canonisations in order to manifest the relationships of healing intercession existing between the faithful on earth and the saints in heaven.

Reconsidering his difficulty, Mr Longley may therefore be able to agree that we do not have to think that ‘canonisation miracles’ show the Church treating God as Publicity Agent In Chief for heavenly clients whose interests He intends to advance. Once this is clarified, Mr Longley’s concerns about presumption and manipulation largely fall away. ‘Canonisation miracles’ do not embody an unworthy conception of God; on the contrary, they disclose in a wonderful way the economy of God’s mercy.

Granted Mr Longley’s misapprehension on this point, there is of course a profound question underlying his thoughts about canonisation; but canonisation as such is irrelevant to it. The profound question concerns why God heals some people and not others. This mystery haunts Mr Longley’s reflections; but surely he must acknowledge that his objection to some of the healings which God performs also being ‘canonisation miracles’ does not really get to the heart of the problem? God heals some and not others, and this is true regardless of issues of Canonisation. An objection to ‘canonisation miracles’ on the basis that some people are not healed is really an objection to anyone being healed unless everyone is. Whatever we say about why God heals some and not others, Mr Longley may surely wish to reconsider whether it is right to say (as he says about ‘canonisation miracles’ in particular) that when God heals someone, this fact mocks those whom He doesn’t?

Newman and miracles

Towards the end of his article, Mr Longley suggests that Cardinal Newman would have shared his reservations about ‘canonisation miracles’. There is evidence which points the other way.

Writing about Benedictine saints in his 1859 essay ‘The Benedictine School’ (Historical Sketches Vol. II No. 5), Newman remarked on those ‘whom the Church holds up as choice specimens of divine power, and, as being such, sealed by miracle for eternal bliss‘ (emphasis added). This passage surely gives conclusive reason to think that Newman had no objection in principle to ‘canonisation miracles’?

Elsewhere, Newman reflected upon intercessory prayer and miracles of healing. Mr Longley, of course, is not disquieted by these phenomena, but by ‘canonisation miracles’ in particular; Newman’s reflections, however, show how ‘canonisation miracles’ can be securely located within the Christian understanding of intercession and healing which Mr Longley does not question. Thus in his sermon ‘Intercession’ (Parochial and Plain Sermons Vol. III), Newman referred to intercessory prayer as ‘the characteristic of Christian worship, the privilege of the heavenly adoption, the exercise of the perfect and spiritual mind‘. From this passage, it is surely clear how, in Newman’s vision, ‘canonisation miracles’, which are above all confirmed manifestations of intercessory prayer, can be seen to flow from the Heavenly Liturgy of the sanctified? And in reflecting on the miracles of Christ, Newman noted how they were typically directed to ‘the infirmities of human nature, to show He was its redeemer … He had to do with sin; and bodily diseases are at once its symptoms and its representations’ (from notes for the 1851 sermon ‘On Disease as the Type of Sin’: Sermon Notes of John Henry Cardinal Newman 1849-1878). In these words, does not Newman disclose the foundation of the healing miracles of the saints (and a fortiori of ‘canonisation miracles’) in the redemptive mission of Christ Himself?

Mr Longley will find in Newman a good deal of material by which his anxieties about ‘canonisation miracles’ can be relieved.

The question of scepticism

Not unreasonably – for it is a vast topic – Mr Longley does not tell us what he thinks about the miraculous as such. But his reflections on ‘canonisation miracles’ naturally lead to consideration of what he calls ‘the concept of divine intervention in the world’ that is implied by the miraculous in general. Towards the end of his article Mr Longley approvingly invokes the spirit of ’scepticism’ – quite naturally, in a way, because in our times being ’sceptical’ is intimately connected to widely shared assumptions about what it means to be ‘reasonable’. But does thinking reasonably about the miraculous require us to be ’sceptical’? Here again Newman can help us to think these things through.

Newman considered how we ought to approach the question of the miraculous in his Grammar of Assent (Part II Chapter 8 Part 2) in the course of examining Hume’s sceptical argument that

we may establish it as a maxim that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any…system of religion.

Newman’s answer to Hume was as follows:

I will accept the general proposition, but I resist its application. Doubtless it is abstractedly more likely that men should lie than that the order of nature should be infringed; but what is abstract reasoning to a question of concrete fact? To arrive at the fact of any matter, we must eschew generalities, and take things as they stand, with all their circumstances.

As Newman’s answer unfolds, we see how his treatment of Hume’s scepticism exposes a double evasiveness. Not only does Hume favour abstract principle over the examination of particular cases; he also seeks to erase the sense in which thinking about a potential miracle requires deeper and more personal resources than mere skill in abstract reasoning. These resources are moral and religious, and this is the category to which miracles themselves essentially belong. For Newman, taking ‘things as they stand, with all their circumstances’ points us not only to the particular facts comprising a possible miracle, but also to the moral and religious ‘personality’ of the one who confronts it. Indeed, ‘facts’ and ‘personality’ are partially interdependent. Some of the ‘facts’ will not necessarily be even visible to someone who is morally and religiously impoverished. Hume’s ’scepticism’ obscures this interdependence. It treats the possibility of the miraculous as something which can be dismissed without any consideration of the moral and religious presuppositions of the enquiry.

In Newman’s view, such scepticism is not confined to Hume’s treatment of the miraculous. It represents nothing less than our culture’s dominant conception of rationality. Being ‘reasonable’ requires assent to the idea that the apparently impersonal and objective procedures of scientific enquiry are uniquely capable of disclosing the truth. Being ‘reasonable’ thus involves ’scepticism’ towards anything which cannot be considered impersonally and objectively. Moral and religious truths, which are pre-eminently of this kind, are therefore culturally marginalised. To accomplish and maintain this marginalisation has become one of the chief functions of the theories and practices which in our culture cluster around the complementary concepts of ‘rationality’ and ’scepticism’.

Despite the prestige in our culture of the ‘purely rational enquirer’, the idea is no more than an abstract fantasy. Real human beings are always already orientated, in one direction or the other, upon the spectrum of conscience and Faith: either alert to God, seeking Him and listening for Him – or not (or only restrictedly and incompletely). It is from such personal resources that we must face the possibility of miracles.

So Newman insists that there is no such thing as an impersonal (’scientific’) enquiry into whether something is possibly or even likely to be miraculous. One’s sense of what is possible or likely originates in the dense and intricate network of one’s antecedent desires, intuitions and convictions concerning such things as humanity and its condition, the reality of God and our need of Him, what revelation we may expect from Him, and so on. The fact that impersonal reason – essentially the same in every one – cannot apprehend a miracle, but only a complex network of personal and subjective desires, intuitions and convictions, does not undermine the reality of miracles; dependence on subjectivity does not turn something into a mere mental construct. The point is simply that miracles are not open to just anyone to discover, regardless of his or her moral and religious character.

As Newman make clear, this does not mean that ‘anything goes’. Mr Longley rightly criticises ’simplistic’ and ‘credulous’ dispositions, and there are indeed unworthy conceptions of God and His action in the world, which a properly sensitised person will instinctively repudiate. But he or she will not do so out of ’scepticism’. Such judgements will involve what Newman calls

a great complex argument, which so far can be put into propositions, but which, even between, and around, and behind these, still is implicit and secret, and cannot by any ingenuity be imprisoned in a formula, and packed into a nut-shell.

So as Mr Longley continues to reflect about these things, he will find that Newman offers a challenging reason to be suspicious of a settled or instinctive ’scepticism’ towards the miraculous.

As Mr Longley recognises, this is more than a merely theoretical question. He ends by wondering whether ‘the vast majority of English Catholics’ today are not inclined to be sceptical, at least about ‘canonisation miracles’. This touches on another important theme in Newman: the feeling or ’sense’ of the faithful for Catholic truth, especially in matters of devotion. Should we be concerned? The almost 300,000 people in England and Wales who recently made pilgrimage to the relics of St Therese of Lisieux suggest not.

Want to see the Newman Cause desktop calendar for February? (it’s a downloadable Windows wallpaper) If so, click here.

Bishops of England and Wales, Ad limina visit 2010 (Credit: Mazur/catholicchurch.org.uk)

We reproduce here on the Cause site the address given yesterday by Pope Benedict XVI to the Bishops of England and Wales, at the end of their ad limina visit to Rome. In advance of his visit to England later this year, the Holy Father referred to Cardinal Newman as a model for all Catholics in his love of truth. He spoke of the faithfulness of Catholics to the Church, noting that it is ‘important to recognize dissent for what it is, and not to mistake it for a mature contribution to a balanced and wide-ranging debate’. He went on: ‘it is the truth revealed through Scripture and Tradition and articulated by the Church’s Magisterium that sets us free’, adding: ‘Cardinal Newman realized this, and he left us an outstanding example of faithfulness to revealed truth by following that “kindly light” wherever it led him, even at considerable personal cost’. He also highlights, in this ‘Year for Priests’, the special importance of Newman’s theology of the priesthood:

Dear Brother Bishops,

I welcome all of you on your ad Limina visit to Rome, where you have come to venerate the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul. I thank you for the kind words that Archbishop Vincent Nichols has addressed to me on your behalf, and I offer you my warmest good wishes and prayers for yourselves and all the faithful of England and Wales entrusted to your pastoral care. Your visit to Rome strengthens the bonds of communion between the Catholic community in your country and the Apostolic See, a communion that sustained your people’s faith for centuries, and today provides fresh energies for renewal and evangelization. Even amid the pressures of a secular age, there are many signs of living faith and devotion among the Catholics of England and Wales. I am thinking, for example, of the enthusiasm generated by the visit of the relics of Saint Thérèse, the interest aroused by the prospect of Cardinal Newman’s beatification, and the eagerness of young people to take part in pilgrimages and World Youth Days. On the occasion of my forthcoming Apostolic Visit to Great Britain, I shall be able to witness that faith for myself and, as Successor of Peter, to strengthen and confirm it. During the months of preparation that lie ahead, be sure to encourage the Catholics of England and Wales in their devotion, and assure them that the Pope constantly remembers them in his prayers and holds them in his heart.

Your country is well known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society. Yet as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed. I urge you as Pastors to ensure that the Church’s moral teaching be always presented in its entirety and convincingly defended. Fidelity to the Gospel in no way restricts the freedom of others – on the contrary, it serves their freedom by offering them the truth.

Continue to insist upon your right to participate in national debate through respectful dialogue with other elements in society. In doing so, you are not only maintaining longstanding British traditions of freedom of expression and honest exchange of opinion, but you are actually giving voice to the convictions of many people who lack the means to express them: when so many of the population claim to be Christian, how could anyone dispute the Gospel’s right to be heard?

If the full saving message of Christ is to be presented effectively and convincingly to the world, the Catholic community in your country needs to speak with a united voice. This requires not only you, the Bishops, but also priests, teachers, catechists, writers – in short all who are engaged in the task of communicating the Gospel – to be attentive to the promptings of the Spirit, who guides the whole Church into the truth, gathers her into unity and inspires her with missionary zeal.

Make it your concern, then, to draw on the considerable gifts of the lay faithful in England and Wales and see that they are equipped to hand on the faith to new generations comprehensively, accurately, and with a keen awareness that in so doing they are playing their part in the Church’s mission. In a social milieu that encourages the expression of a variety of opinions on every question that arises, it is important to recognize dissent for what it is, and not to mistake it for a mature contribution to a balanced and wide-ranging debate. It is the truth revealed through Scripture and Tradition and articulated by the Church’s Magisterium that sets us free. Cardinal Newman realized this, and he left us an outstanding example of faithfulness to revealed truth by following that “kindly light” wherever it led him, even at considerable personal cost. Great writers and communicators of his stature and integrity are needed in the Church today, and it is my hope that devotion to him will inspire many to follow in his footsteps.

Much attention has rightly been given to Newman’s scholarship and to his extensive writings, but it is important to remember that he saw himself first and foremost as a priest. In this Annus Sacerdotalis, I urge you to hold up to your priests his example of dedication to prayer, pastoral sensitivity towards the needs of his flock, and passion for preaching the Gospel.

You yourselves should set a similar example. Be close to your priests, and rekindle their sense of the enormous privilege and joy of standing among the people of God as alter Christus. In Newman’s words, “Christ’s priests have no priesthood but His … what they do, He does; when they baptize, He is baptizing; when they bless, He is blessing” (Parochial and Plain Sermons, VI 242). Indeed, since the priest plays an irreplaceable role in the life of the Church, spare no effort in encouraging priestly vocations and emphasizing to the faithful the true meaning and necessity of the priesthood. Encourage the lay faithful to express their appreciation of the priests who serve them, and to recognize the difficulties they sometimes face on account of their declining numbers and increasing pressures. The support and understanding of the faithful is particularly necessary when parishes have to be merged or Mass times adjusted. Help them to avoid any temptation to view the clergy as mere functionaries but rather to rejoice in the gift of priestly ministry, a gift that can never be taken for granted.

Ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue assume great importance in England and Wales, given the varied demographic profile of the population. As well as encouraging you in your important work in these areas, I would ask you to be generous in implementing the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, so as to assist those groups of Anglicans who wish to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. I am convinced that, if given a warm and open-hearted welcome, such groups will be a blessing for the entire Church.

With these thoughts, I commend your apostolic ministry to the intercession of Saint David, Saint George and all the saints and martyrs of England and Wales. May Our Lady of Walsingham guide and protect you always. To all of you, and to the priests, religious and lay faithful of your country, I cordially impart my Apostolic Blessing as a pledge of peace and joy in the Lord Jesus Christ.

POPE BENEDICT XVI

Revd Jack Sullivan in the Library at Littlemore, with a copy of the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine

During his trip to Oxford, Jack Sullivan and his wife Carol were staying at Littlemore, in the ‘College’ where Newman lived from 1842 to 1845. Littlemore was part of the parish of the Oxford University church, so Newman had pastoral responsibilities there too. He built a school, a new church, and finally converted some stables into what he called ‘the house of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Littlemore’. It was here that he was received into the Catholic Church in October 1845. The College is owned by the Birmingham Oratory and run on its behalf by the Spiritual Family of the Work.

Jack visited Newman’s library where he welcomed Blessed Dominic Barberi, kneeling before him and asking of him admission into the Catholic Church. Today, this room contains an extensive library of books by and about Newman. His Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine was written here at Littlemore. In this work we can perceive the reasons for Newman’s gradual realisation that, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Catholic Church has developed her understanding of the Faith, in dogmas (such as Transubstantiation or Papal Infallibility) which over the passage of time she has defined. For a long time, Newman had believed that many Catholic doctrines were corruptions of the original Faith. But as early as 4 May 1843 he wrote: “As far as I can analyze my own convictions, I consider the Roman Catholic Communion to be the Church of the Apostles, and that what grace is [in the Anglican Church] (which, through God’s mercy, is not little) is extraordinary, and from the over-flowings of His dispensation. I am very far more sure that England is in schism, than that the Roman additions to the Primitive Creed may not be developments, arising out of a keen and vivid realizing of the Divine Depositum of Faith.” When Newman became certain of these truths, he asked for admission into the Catholic Church.

Revd Jack Sullivan in Newman's room at Littlemore

Jack Sullivan visited Newman’s own room, and, sitting at Newman’s desk, read aloud Newman’s letter of 8^th October 1845 to Charles Russell, an Irish Catholic priest who had influenced his thinking: “My dear Sir, you have felt that interest in me, that you will be glad to know that I am expecting this evening Father Dominic the Passionist, whom I shall ask to admit me into the bosom of the Catholic Church. I shall not send this to you till it is all over. Perhaps you will excuse my abruptness, on the score of the number of letters I have to write. Yours, My dear Sir, Most sincerely, John H Newman.”

Mass in Newman's Chapel at Littlemore celebrated by Father John Hancock, Revd Jack Sullivan assisting as deacon

Every Friday morning the local parish priest, Father John Hancock, celebrates Mass for his parishioners in Newman’s chapel at Littlemore, and at last Friday’s Mass Jack Sullivan assisted as deacon and in his homily recounted the story of his healing at Newman’s intercession. It was in this same chapel that Newman was received into the Church on 9^th October 1845. After receiving Newman, Blessed Dominic celebrated Mass on Newman’s desk, still preserved at the College.

Revd Jack Sullivan at Newman's desk, that was used by Blessed Dominic Barberi as an altar to celebrate Mass after Newman's reception into the Catholic Church

In the Anglican church of St Mary and St Nicholas, which Newman had had built, Jack Sullivan was welcomed by parishoners who showed him a memorial to Newman’s mother (it was she who laid the foundation stone) and a contemporary Newman icon. In a very moving and spontaneous gesture, Jack Sullivan mounted the pulpit of St Mary and St Nicholas and talked at length of his story. He said: “When I heard about Newman on television, I thought ‘Why don’t I pray to him?’ I said, ‘Please Cardinal Newman help me to be well so that I can return to classes and be ordained’. Now I call him “my intercessor and special friend”. Speaking from the pulpit in which Newman had delivered his final sermon as an Anglican (‘The Parting of Friends’ in 1843), Sullivan said: “This was Newman’s Anglican parish, and you are the descendants of his parishioners.”

Revd Jack and Mrs Carol Sullivan with the sisters of the Spiritual Family of the Work

Revd Jack Sullivan tells the story of his healing from the pulpit in St Mary and St Nicholas Anglican Church, Littlemore

Revd Jack Sullivan in front of a memorial to Newman's mother Jemima, in St Mary and St Nicholas Anglican Church, Littlemore

Want to know more about Newman and Littlemore? Click here for a recent interview with the custodian of Newman’s ‘College’.

Like to read more about Deacon Jack Sullivan, who was healed through Newman’s intercession, and his visit to England? Click here to read the story of Jack’s healing. Click here to read about Jack’s lecture at the London Oratory, here for his visit to the Birmingham Oratory, or here to read more about his trip to Oxford.

Interested in the significance of Newman’s Beatification? Click here to read about Newman and the Tablet Editorial on the Apostolic Constitution, here to read Deacon Jack Sullivan on the importance of Newman for today, or here to read about Tony Blair and Newman.

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His Eminence Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), with Father Paul Chavasse, Actor for Newman's Cause, photographed together last month at the CDF in Rome. It is the CDF which worked on the Apostolic Constitution on behalf of the Holy Father

As has been recently suggested on this site, Pope Benedict’s Apostolic Constitution, providing for the union of Anglican groups with the Catholic Church, can be interpreted as reinstating the fundamental priority of authentic ecumenism. Beyond ‘dialogue’ and ‘co-operation’, authentic ecumenism is ordered to non-Catholic Christians entering into full communion with the Catholic Church. It is this which, in the Apostolic Constitution, the Holy Father has above all desired to bring about.

With extraordinary pastoral imagination and generosity, Pope Benedict has understood that Anglican communities desiring full communion with the Catholic Church embody a liturgical and spiritual tradition differing significantly from typical Anglophone Roman Catholicism, but which is in essence authentically Catholic. Against many voices raised in contradiction, he has insisted that it would be profoundly wrong to require the abandonment of this tradition as a condition of entering into full communion with the Catholic Church.

Indeed, Pope Benedict may believe that the liturgical and spiritual tradition embodied in these Anglican communities has preserved things of importance which English-speaking Roman Catholicism, at the present time, typically repudiates or fails to understand. Perhaps Pope Benedict envisages that such impoverishment will be challenged, and even overcome, when exposed to the authentically Catholic elements which he is allowing former Anglican communities to maintain?

It has been axiomatic for Catholic ecumenists that the Church must learn from those with whom she is in ‘dialogue’. What is right in this way of thinking need not be abandoned, once it is recognised, as the Holy Father has recognised, that ‘dialogue’ cannot be an end in itself. Even when ‘dialogue’ is ordered, as it must be, towards conversion to the Catholic Faith, the Church may still stand to learn from those whom she receives into full communion. English-speaking Catholics, surveying the present state of their liturgical and devotional life, should not lose sight of this when they reflect on the deeper implications of the Apostolic Constitution.

If Pope Benedict is right to hope that former Anglican communities will assist in relieving the impoverishment of English-speaking Catholicism, it is only to be expected that some English-speaking Catholics will find it difficult to come to terms with the Apostolic Constitution. The Tablet, for example, in its latest Editorial on the Holy Father’s initiative, sounds uncharacteristically fierce – dare we say, even narrow-minded?

The Tablet’s basic argument is worth pondering. They believe that the Apostolic Constitution demands too little of the Anglican groups whom it is designed to assist. The Tablet suggests that these would-be converts should resist the easy path laid out for them by Benedict XVI. They must instead feel ‘transformed’ in becoming Catholic, with a sharpened consciousness of needing to leave their past behind them in order to come to terms with the radically new demands of Roman Catholicism.

It has to be admitted, this doesn’t sound like The Tablet. Nor (though for very different reasons) does it sound like Cardinal Newman. In 1864, almost twenty years after becoming a Roman Catholic, Newman wrote:

Newman knew nothing of what The Tablet legislates (in rather mechanical imagery) as the authentic experience of conversion: namely, that ‘the person coming out of it at the end does not feel the same as the person going in.’ What The Tablet describes as conversion sounds disconcertingly like brainwashing.

Reflecting further on The Tablet’s Editorial brings to light the extraordinary fact that in order to be ‘transformed’ into real Catholics, The Tablet is suggesting that these Anglican groups must be induced to relinquish the Catholic Faith. For the Editorial is quite open about the kinds of belief and practice which the Apostolic Constitution will, in The Tablet’s opinion wrongly, permit former Anglican communities to preserve:

In this inventory, surely, The Tablet’s distance from authentic Catholicism is laid bare? We can be confident that it is towards the healing of such wounds in English-speaking Roman Catholicism that the Holy Father’s determination to allow former Anglican groups to preserve their liturgical and spiritual tradition is directed.

We should be grateful to The Tablet for making the issue so clear. At stake are traditional beliefs about the Liturgy, the Priesthood and our Blessed Lady. For The Tablet, such beliefs, tragically, provoke conflict and repudiation. But for the Anglican communities addressed by the Apostolic Constitution, such beliefs represent hard-won convictions, which because discovering and adhering to them has been so difficult, are correspondingly precious. What has been so difficult? It is this: Anglicanism’s Protestant roots go very deep, yet as Anglicans these communities have fought to articulate beliefs which cut against Protestantism, embodying a Catholic truth which, at last, they have realised that Anglicanism cannot accommodate. It betrays a truly momentous failure of understanding for The Tablet to suggest that becoming Catholic requires such convictions to be left behind.

This is the reason The Tablet cannot see why these Anglican groups seem very ready to sign the 2,865 paragraphs of the definitive Catechism of the Catholic Church, rather than what The Tablet would prefer, the ‘far less elaborate’ profession of faith made by individual converts. Here The Tablet seems unable to get its position straight: on the one hand it says that the Apostolic Constitution makes conversion too easy, and on the other suggests that imposing the Catechism is too arduous. What The Tablet doesn’t get is that these Anglican communities want the Faith of the Catholic Church, nothing more and nothing less. Would The Tablet care to propose to interested Anglicans which parts of the Catechism they would be better off without?

If The Tablet had a better grasp of ‘Anglo-Catholicism’, it would be in a better position to see how much it has to learn from the Anglican groups towards which it is, at present, so severe. The Tablet claims that the ‘fundamental aim’ of Anglo-Catholicism

Such an analysis is profoundly misconceived. The Anglican Newman explored the ‘Anglo-Catholic’ position more profoundly than anyone else, and he never believed that the ‘Catholic credentials’ of the Church of England were simply there to be ‘reasserted’ through recreating in the present an idyllic medieval Church. What was ‘there’ for Newman was a conception of the Faith of Apostolic Christianity, the true Faith of the Catholic Church. This conception was engendered in him by grace and by his study of the Fathers and the Councils. This, he knew, was authentic Christianity, and therefore not just an idea but a living reality. Newman’s question was where this Faith and this Church are to be found today. This is always the question at the heart of ‘Anglo-Catholicism’. It is not, as The Tablet implies, a matter of the nostalgic recreation of a vanished past, but of something searched for and awaited. ‘Anglo-Catholicism’ is essentially interrogative. Can Anglicanism’s entanglement in the distortions of the Reformation be overcome, so as to vindicate its ‘Catholic credentials’? One remains an ‘Anglo-Catholic’ for as long as one believes that this question can be given an affirmative answer.

The Anglican communities addressed by the Apostolic Constitution have concluded that an affirmative answer is impossible. The Tablet’s desire to impose upon them a model of conversion as ‘transformation’ is irrelevant to their experience. It is Newman’s description of his conversion – ‘it was like coming into port after a rough sea’ – which will better capture these communities’ embrace of Roman Catholicism. For ‘Anglo-Catholics’ typically have the Catholic Faith; what they lack, until they become Roman Catholics, is the Church in which that Faith is truly at home. The Tablet’s own position inverts this progression, and this is why it misunderstands ‘Anglo-Catholicism’ and fears the Apostolic Constitution. The Tablet has the Catholic Church; what it is all too clearly unsure about is whether it wants the Catholic Faith.

Interested in the significance of Newman’s Beatification? Click here to read more about Newman and the new Apostolic Constitution for Anglicans. Click here to read Deacon Jack Sullivan on the importance of Newman for today, or here to read about Tony Blair and Newman.

Like to read more about Deacon Jack Sullivan, who was healed through Newman’s intercession, and his visit to England? Click here to read the story of Jack’s healing. Click here to read about Jack’s lecture at the London Oratory, here for his visit to the Birmingham Oratory, or here to read about his trip to Oxford.

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Sir Ivor Roberts, Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent, Revd Jack Sullivan, Father Paul Chavasse

From Thursday 14^th to Saturday 16^th November Deacon Jack Sullivan and his wife Carol visited Oxford. Jack Sullivan, whose healing through Cardinal Newman’s intercession will lead to his beatification next year, visited places linked to Newman’s life and influence in the city. Jack and his wife Carol were staying at the College at Littlemore, where Newman was received into the Catholic Church in 1845 (a separate article on their visit to Littlemore will be published soon).

On Thursday evening Jack was the guest of honour at a dinner in Trinity College, given by College President Sir Ivor Roberts. Newman was an undergraduate at Trinity in 1817, before winning a Fellowship at Oriel College in 1822. In 1887 Trinity elected Newman to its very first honorary fellowship. Present at the dinner was Princess Michael of Kent, a Newman devotee and friend of the Birmingham Oratory. Among other guests were the Catholic Chaplain to the University, Father John Moffatt, S.J., and Father Paul Chavasse, Actor of Newman’s Cause and Provost of the Birmingham Oratory.

On Friday Jack attended a reception at Oriel College, where as a Fellow he had a powerful academic and religious influence on his students and colleagues. Jack then visited the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, where Newman was Vicar from 1828-43. It was here that Newman preached many of his famous Parochial and Plain Sermons, and where the Assize Sermon was preached by John Keble in 1833, reckoned by Newman as the beginning of the ‘Oxford Movement’ and its eloquent resistance to State interference in the affairs the Church. Against the politicisation of the Faith, the ‘Movement’ insisted upon the divine nature of the Church and authentic spiritual renewal. Newman was ultimately to decide that these aspirations could not be fulfilled in the Church of England.

On Friday afternoon Jack returned to Trinity to view Newman’s own rooms, the Newman family Bible and a copy of the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845) that he presented to the College. Trinity also has some of Newman’s hair, among the few primary relics in existence. Among those in attendance was the Principal of St Stephen’s House Anglican Theological College, Canon Robin Ward. Afterwards, Jack and Carol Sullivan went to the College Chapel where the Anglican Chaplain, Revd Emma Percy, led a ‘Reflection in words and music’ on aspects of Newman’s life and association with Trinity. As well as singing Newman hymns, an extract was read from one of Newman’s sermons: “What have we to do with its gifts and honours, who, having been already baptized into the world to come, are no longer citizens of this? Why should we be anxious for a long life, or wealth, or credit, or comfort, who know that the next world will be every thing which our hearts can wish, and that not in appearance only, but truly and everlastingly? Why should we rest in this world, when it is the token and promise of another? Why should we be content with its surface, instead of appropriating what is stored beneath it?”

On Saturday morning Jack visited the Oxford Oratory, where he was at the Deacon at the 10am Mass, celebrated by the Parish Priest, Father Daniel Seward. The Church of St Aloysius was served for most of its history by the Society of Jesus, who welcomed Newman himself to their Church to preach in 1880. The creation of the Oratory there in 1993 was the fulfilment of Newman’s desire to establish a Catholic mission in the city. In 1882 Newman wrote to Lord Braye: “The cardinal question for the moment is the Oxford question … The Undergraduates and Junior Fellows are like sheep without a shepherd. They are sceptics or inquirers, quite open for religious influences. It is a moment for the Catholic Mission in Oxford to seize an opportunity which never may come again … The Liberals are sweeping along in triumph, without any Catholic or religious influence to stem them now that Pusey and Liddon [Anglo-Catholic leaders] are gone.” In this letter, which Braye in Italian translation read out in person to Pope Leo XIII on 13 April 1883, Newman continued: “It is only one out of various manifestations of what may be called Nihilism in the Catholic Body, and its rulers. They forbid, but they do not direct or create. I should fill many sheets of paper if I continued my exposure of this fact … The Holy Father must be put up to this fact, and must be made to understand the state of things with us.”

Jack Sullivan’s final public engagement will be today, Sunday 15^th November, when he will attend a performance of the ‘Dream of Gerontius’ at the Oratory School near Reading, which Newman founded first in Edgbaston in 1859, and is now one of the best-known Catholic Schools in the country.

Clare Hopkins, Trinity College Archivist, shows Revd Jack Sullivan the Newman family Bible

Revd Jack Sullivan looks out of the window of Newman's room at Trinity

Mass at the Oxford Oratory Church, at which Revd Jack Sullivan was deacon

The Blessed Sacrament is exposed in the Oxford Oratory Church after Mass

Jack Sullivan with Tricia and Mary Curran, from Braintree M.A., near to Jack's home

Father Paul Chavasse celebrates Mass in Newman's private chapel, with Revd Jack Sullivan assisting as deacon, Feast of St Josaphat

Jack Sullivan has visited the Birmingham Oratory in England, the focus of his week-long stay in England. On Wednesday morning, Jack, with his wife Carol, visited Rednal, where Newman was buried among his Oratorian brethren. Jack also visited the Oratory Primary School, where he was interviewed by some of the pupils. He then came to the Oratory, on the Hagley Road, where Newman lived from 1852-1890. Jack Sullivan was deacon at a well-attended Mass in the Oratory Church. In the afternoon, he visited Newman’s room and library, and did an interview with EWTN, the American Catholic television network. Jack Sullivan also spent time in prayer before Newman’s remains, now venerated in the Oratory Church.

This morning, Thursday, Father Paul Chavasse, Actor of Newman’s Cause, celebrated Mass in Newman’s private chapel, with Jack Sullivan assisting as deacon. Today’s liturgical feast is of St Josaphat (1580-1623), the Lithuanian bishop who worked tirelessly for the union of his own people with the Church of Rome. For this reason his life was in danger, but he wrote courageously to those who threatened him: “Here I am; I came to you as a shepherd. You know I would be happy to give my life for you. I am ready to die for union of the Church under St Peter and his successor the Pope.” St Josaphat was finally martyred for the Faith and was canonized in 1867 by Pope Pius IX, who also gave to Cardinal Newman his special mission to found the English Oratories.

With his Apostolic Constitution on the reception of Anglican groups into communion with the Catholic Church, which Newman in an important way anticipated, Pope Benedict XVI can be seen as reviving the authentic ecumenism exemplified by St Josaphat. Placing in its proper context the modern ecumenical preoccupation with ‘dialogue’ and ‘co-operation’, the Holy Father has restated the Holy See’s enduring mission of calling men and women into communion with Christ in His Church.

In his Cathedra Sempiterna Newman wrote of the vocation of the Pope: “Peter is no recluse, no abstracted student, no dreamer about the past, no doter upon the dead and gone, no projector of the visionary. … If there ever was a power on earth who had an eye for the times, who has confined himself to the practicable, and has been happy in his anticipations, whose words have been deeds, and whose commands prophecies, such is he in the history of ages, who sits from generation to generation in the Chair of the Apostles, as the Vicar of Christ and Doctor of His Church.”

In his homily at Mass in the Oratory Church, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, Jack Sullivan said: “This is Newman’s home, he lived here, he who changed my life. So now I have come home, yes come home, to the Oratory.”

Revd Jack and Carol Sullivan at Newman's Gravestone, Rednal

Revd Jack Sullivan meets children at the Oratory Primary School

Father Paul Chavasse and Revd Jack Sullivan at Newman's memorial plaque in the Oratory cloisters

Revd Jack Sullivan preaches at Mass in the Birmingham Oratory

Father Paul Chavasse celebrates Mass at the High Altar at the Birmingham Oratory, Revd Jack Sullivan assisting as deacon

Revd Jack Sullivan in Newman's private chapel in the Oratory House

Sanctuary, the Brompton Oratory

At the Brompton Oratory in London, hundreds of people from all over England came yesterday (10th November) to hear the powerful testimony of Deacon Jack Sullivan, whose healing through Newman’s intercession will culminate in his Beatification next year.

Deacon Sullivan was delivering the 2009 Catholic Truth Society Lecture in the London Oratory on the evening of his second full day in England, before his pilgrimage to the Oratory in Birmingham and tours of sites associated with Newman in Oxford.

Yesterday afternoon Jack Sullivan was welcomed to the Oratory by Provost Father Ignatius Harrison. Sullivan’s historic lecture was given in the large and beautiful Oratory church, in which John Henry Newman himself preached. The London Oratory was founded by Newman after Father Frederick William Faber first established a London community of Oratorians in early 1849. They were initially based in King William Street (now William IV Street) near Charing Cross, before moving to their present location next to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

After opening words from Fergal Martin, General Secretary of the Catholic Truth Society, Father Ian Ker, the Newman scholar, gave an introductory address, speaking about the power and meaning of miracles. He said: “In the past I have often been asked why it was that Newman had not been canonised. I was asked this especially when Josemaría Escrivá was canonised: why not Newman? The answer I was inclined to give was that Escriva’s followers actually prayed for his Canonisation, whereas Newman’s enthusiasts perhaps prayed less. Well now it seems that the praying had been left to Jack Sullivan: he is the one in whose hands God had placed the prayer needed for Newman’s Cause to make progress.”

“It has often been said that Newman would be uninterested in miracles. This is a mistake. Jack was healed at Newman’s intercession, and Newman regarded intercessory prayer as the great privilege of the Christian”.

Father Ker concluded: “I have long been convinced that Newman should be declared a Doctor of the Church. The word Doctor means ‘Teacher’: for a person to be a Doctor of the Church means that the faithful can approach his or her teaching as a reliable guide to Christian truth. And Newman is perhaps especially suited to be a Doctor of the troubled times in which we live. He undoubtedly inspired much of the thinking of the Second Vatican Council (October 1962 – December 1965). But his theology was also deeply informed by history, and this means that he gives us the resources we need for understanding the continuity of Vatican II with tradition. So often since the Council, its theological and pastoral developments have been treated as creating a rupture with the past. Newman, the great theologian of development, can show us that they do not. In this, he is pre-eminently the theologian of what Pope Benedict XVI has called the ‘hermeneutic of continuity’.”

Jack delivered his lecture in the sanctuary of the Oratory church. Behind him was the original High Altar, on which the London Oratorians celebrate Mass ad orientem, just as at the Oratory in Birmingham. This contemporary testimony in London and Birmingham to the liturgical tradition of the Church gives concrete focus to Fr Ker’s characterisation of Newman as a collaborator with the Holy Father in the ‘hermeneutic of continuity’. Alongside Jack on the London Oratory sanctuary was placed a new copy of the portrait of Newman by Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896), recently obtained by the London Fathers.

In his lecture, Jack Sullivan vividly and movingly recounted to a full church the story of his miraculous healing. He added: “When I asked my surgeon – one of the top spinal surgeons in the United States – how he could account for the remarkable nature of my healing, he said: ‘Jack, there’s no medical explanation for what happened to you: if you want an answer, ask God!’

Jack Sullivan delivers the 2009 Catholic Truth Society Lecture

He explained at length the Vatican process for recognising a miracle. “First, medical documents, scans, and all available records are collected as part of a Diocesan Process. All the relevant people are interviewed – besides me and my wife Carol, they quizzed doctors, nurses, friends, work colleagues – quite an undertaking. Then all this was sent to the Congregation of the Causes of Saints in Rome. There, seven doctors – experts in their field – examined all the evidence and pronounced to a man that my healing was scientifically truly inexplicable. That was the first part. Then it all had to be sent to the  Theological Consultors, who agreed that this healing indeed came from Cardinal Newman’s intercession. Then the Cardinals of the Congregations of Saints accepted this finding, and Pope Benedict XVI himself approved the miracle in July of this year.”

Jack reflected on what others could learn from his miracle. He said: “Heaven is a reality even though it’s a dimension that we can’t see or in normal terms experience. Heaven is real – I caught a piece of it, a little bit of it. Life after death is a reality – the evidence is in Newman’s response to my prayer. What more evidence do we need than the communion of saints? They are in heaven with God enjoying eternal bliss. They are there for us as well. We need help to communicate with the Divine. They are there to help us. They know the bumps and the detours of our road in this life. They know what this life means and they have experienced the difficulties that we do.”

“Because this dimension can’t be seen, we shouldn’t try to see it, we’re human, all we have it our senses. But, when we lift our hearts and minds to God in prayer, then we can meet him. We are not self-sufficient. We need all the help we can get. Every prayer is heard, every prayer is answered.”

Sullivan added: “God wants Cardinal Newman to be prayed to, to be thought about, to be emulated, here and now. Have faith in God’s Providence. Have faith in the Providence that God has in store for us. We will persevere because we know that God has promised us eternal salvation. God loves those who are poor in spirit and who turn to Him with tears in their eyes and say, ‘God, please be with me.’”

Father Paul Chavasse, Actor of Newman's Cause, talks about Jack Sullivan's healing

Visiting the London Oratory, which has a world-famous choir and school, was the culmination of Jack Sullivan’s visit to the capital, before his arrival at the Oratory in Birmingham, the heart of his trip to the UK, fulfilling his long-held desire to spend time in Newman’s own home and with his community.

Want to read about Jack Sullivan’s sermon in Westminster Cathedral on 9 November? Click here.

Interested in the significance of Newman’s Beatification? Click here to read about Tony Blair and Newman, or here to read about Newman and the new Apostolic Constitution for Anglicans.

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