THE P RTAL
December 2014
UK Pages - page 14
Where to start when
reading Blessed John
Henry Newman?
Dr Stephen Morgan offers some suggestions about what to do
with your Christmas book-tokens
One of
the occupational hazards of having worked on the theology of a particular individual is
answering the question from interested enquirers, “He wrote so much: what would you recommend as
a way into his thinking?” The Universal Edition of Bl. John Henry Newman’s writings takes up fully seven
feet of shelf space on my book cases.
Taken with earlier editions of his works and a fair
selection of the secondary literature, anyone seeking
a route into Newman is faced with comfortably more
than a hundred titles to consider. I’ve been asked the
question hundreds of times - at least four times in the
last month - but a chance conversation with an old
friend has caused me to rethink my stock answer.
works: one by Newman and one about him, neither
easy to read and yet both extraordinarily rich and
complete introductions to what makes Newman so
important.”
How to Accomplish it
The first, my old professor suggested, was first
published in March 1836 as ‘Home thoughts from
read his novel
abroad”, although Newman later gave it the more
I have, for many years, suggested to those who have gnomic title “How to Accomplish it”. It consists of a
read no Newman or, as is more often the case, read the discussion between two Anglican friends who wish to
Apologia and found it difficult, that a very good way revitalise their Church, the one by uniting it to Rome
into his thinking, into his ethos, is to read his novel the other by developing a nineteenth-century AngloCallista. Written in 1855, ten years after Newman Catholicism.
became a Catholic, it is the story of a woman in thirdcentury North Africa, who comes into contact with
The narrator, who we can presume is Newman, sides
Christians and the claims of their faith.
on the whole with the latter. The irony of the piece is
that in attempting the latter, Newman accomplished,
To tell any more would risk “spoilers” but suffice it at least for himself, the former. One wonders what
to say that it has the most wonderful plot twist at the Newman would have made of the expression “God
very end, which still takes my breath away. Although writes straight with crooked lines.”?
an unconventional one, I was pleased to learn that the
great librarian of the Birmingham Oratory, Fr Charles Newman and Vatican II
The second book that Fr Fenlon suggested as a
Stephen Dessain, was wont to make the same suggestion.
worthwhile and reliable way into Newman was Fr Ian
It is often worthwhile to sit again at the feet of the Ker’s latest book: Newman on Vatican II. Published
teachers of your youth. Being reminded of how they this year, it considers the influence that Newman had
inspired and influenced you, how their views so shaped on the Council: on its themes, approach, teaching and
your own and how, full of years, your own views have interpretation.
developed, distinguished and departed from what
they had taught you. November brought just one such
Quite apart from demonstrating conclusively, for the
experience for me.
first time in a published work, how very early Newman
was aware of the development of doctrine and the need
Twenty-six years on from my first experience of the for a coherent explanation for it. His encyclopaedic
academic study of Church History, I had the enormous knowledge of Newman’s life and work mean that the
pleasure of a couple of days in the company of the man book is as reliable a guide to the man and his thinking
whose lectures introduced me to the subject. “By all as the much longer biography for which Fr Ker will
means read Callista”, he said, “but consider two other surely be long remembered.
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