ST JOHN HENRY NEWMAN is to be declared a Doctor of the Church, the Pope has announced, in an acknowledgement of the significance of Newman’s teaching.
The announcement, on Thursday, was welcomed by the Archbishop of York, who wrote on social media that Newman was a “profound teacher both to Anglicans & Catholics, spiritual guide, and model of holiness”.
Roman Catholic churchmen in England also welcomed the announcement. The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, said: “This recognition that the writings of St John Henry Newman are a true expression of the faith of the Church is of huge encouragement to all who appreciate not only his great learning but also his heroic sanctity in following the call of God in his journey of faith, which he described as ‘heart speaking unto heart’.”
The RC Archbishop of Birmingham, the Most Revd Bernard Longley, said: “It is remarkable that his writings, first as an Anglican and then as a Roman Catholic, but considered as one entire corpus of written work, have led to him being declared a Doctor of the Church.”
Newman was canonised in 2019 (News, 25 October 2019).
Born in 1801, he was a priest in the Church of England and one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement or the Tractarians, together with John Keble and E. B. Pusey. His authorship of Tract XC, concerning the possibility of a Catholic interpretation of the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles, in the Tractarians’ series Tracts for the Times, received episcopal denunciation, the series was ended and he withdrew to a small community in Littlemore, just outside Oxford.
After his secession in 1845, he joined the Birmingham Oratory and was later created a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. A prominent figure in the RC Church in England and Ireland, he promoted university education for Roman Catholics in Ireland, and opposed the proposal to define papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council. He is remembered as writing that he would drink “to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards”.
There have long been calls for Newman to be made a Doctor of the Church. At the time of his canonisation, the RC Archbishop of Sydney, the most Revd Anthony Fisher, said that the honour should be bestowed (News, 18 October 2019).
Newman is the 38th Doctor of the Church recognised by the Vatican, and the third of them to be associated with England, after the Venerable Bede and St Anselm of Canterbury.
The Provost of Oriel College, Lord Mendoza, said that he was delighted by the announcement. In a statement, he paid tribute to the “profound impact Newman made as a Fellow of Oriel College from 1822 until 1845, on the study of theology, on the university and on daily academic life here and across Oxford”.
