Selected Sermons

John Henry Newman

ene 1994 · Paulist Press

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English-speaking Christians owe Paulist Press an enormous debt of gratitude for their continuing efforts to help us gain a deeper appreciation of our spiritual heritage. Spiritual Life John Henry Newman: Selected Sermons edited, with an introduction by Ian Ker preface by Henry Chadwick To attempt to be guided by love alone, would be like attempting to walk in a straight line by steadily gazing at some star. It is too high-we must take nearer objects to steady our course...Love must be wrought out by fear and trembling. It is the offspring of self abasement and self discipline... John Henry Newman (1801-1890) John Henry Newman, the most seminal of modern Catholic theologians, is often called "the Father of the Second Vatican Council," the teachings of which he anticipated in so many ways, especially in his ecclesiology, with its emphasis on the role of the laity, but also in his theory of the development doctrine, his ecumenism, and his concern for the renewal of Catholicism in the modern world. Without that so-called ressourcement or return to the Scriptures and the Fathers, which has characterized so much of the most invigorating Catholic theology of the 20th century, the reforms of Vatican II would hardly have been possible. Similarly, Newman's though owes its originality paradoxically to his returning to the past to recover and revitalize those forgotten truths of Christianity, which he found preeminently in early Greek Fathers. It is this profoundly Biblical and Patristic theology that lies at the heart of Newman's spirituality, which is to be found above all in that great classic of Christian spirituality, his Parochial and Plain Sermons, preached from the pulpit of the university church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, and from which the most of the selections in this volume are taken. +

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English clergyman John Henry Newman was born on February 21, 1801. He was educated at Trinity College, University of Oxford. He was the leader of the Oxford movement and cardinal after his conversion to the Roman Catholic Church. In 1822, he received an Oriel College fellowship, which was then the highest distinction of Oxford scholarship, and was appointed a tutor at Oriel. Two years later, he became vicar of St. Mary's, the Anglican church of the University of Oxford, and exerted influence on the religious thought through his sermons. When Newman resigned his tutorship in 1832, he made a tour of the Mediterranean region and wrote the hymn "Lead Kindly Light." He was also one of the chief contributors to "Tracts for the Times" (1833-1841), writing 29 papers including "Tract 90", which terminated the series. The final tract was met with opposition because of its claim that the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England are aimed primarily at the abuses of Roman Catholicism. Newman retired from Oxford in 1842 to the village of Littlemore. He spent three years in seclusion and resigned his post as vicar of St. Mary's on October 9, 1845. During this time, he wrote a retraction of his criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church and after writing his "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine," he became a Roman Catholic. The following year, he went to Rome and was ordained a priest and entered the Congregation of the Oratory. The remainder of Newman's life was spent in the house of the Oratory that he established near Birmingham. He also served as rector of a Roman Catholic university that the bishops of Ireland were trying to establish in Dublin from 1854-1858. While there, he delivered a series of lectures that were later published as "The Idea of a University Defined" (1873), which says the function of a university is the training of the mind instead of the giving of practical information. In 1864, Newman published "Apologia pro Vita Sua (Apology for His Life)" in response to the charge that Roman Catholicism was indifferent to the truth. It is an account of his spiritual development and regarded as both a religious autobiography and English prose. Newman also wrote "An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent" (1870), and the novels "Loss and Gain" (1848), Callista" (1856) and "The Dream of Gerontius" (1865). Newman was elected an honorary fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, in 1877 and was made cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in 1879. He died on August 11, 1890.