Cardinal Newman Cardinal Newman – Special Supplement
John Henry Newman wasn’t always an obvious friend of this country, writes Fr Bernard Healy
When we look at the beginning of John Henry Newman’s public life, it would be hard to imagine a less likely friend of the Irish. In 1829, he was an up-and-coming Oxford academic and Anglican clergyman.
This was the time when Daniel O’Connell secured the passing of Catholic Emancipation at Westminster. Fear of Irish unrest meant that the Tory MP for Oxford University Sir Robert Peel broke an election promise to resist Emancipation and resigned his seat; Newman came to prominence campaigning in favour of the candidate who defeated Peel. Whilst Newman himself seems to have supported Emancipation in 1828 he could not tolerate Peel’s reversal on a point of principle touching the welfare of the Anglican Church.
Newman worried about the power of O’Connell. As a political conservative by nature, O’Connell’s populism sat uneasily with him and tainted his view of Catholics. He could admire Pope Gregory XVI for standing squarely against the spirit of liberal populism in Europe. O’Connell, however, harnessed that populism for the sake of the Catholic Irish and allied himself with political and religious liberals in Britain.
These liberals were the very people that Newman blamed for undermining the religious and social order. This alliance persuaded Newman that the Papacy and Catholics (both English and Irish) were opportunistic rather than principled. That being said, even though he deplored what he saw as O’Connell’s bullying, he was uneasy about injustices committed against Irish Catholics.
Burdens
Newman’s rise to prominence would continue to be fuelled by Irish affairs. With a growing understanding in England of the burdens placed on the Irish poor, the ruling Whig government of 1830-1834 drew up plans for reform.
Newman’s closest Irish friend in Oxford was the well-regarded theologian William Palmer of Worcester College. Palmer was the son of a Dublin army officer and took orders following studies at Trinity College, Dublin. In Oxford, he would be a stout defender of the Church of Ireland. Under Palmer’s influence, any doubts Newman previously had about the legitimacy of the Church of Ireland were assuaged and this strengthened his resistance to change.
Writing to a friend he said that he was “truly glad the Orange Spirit is up, and hope those vermin [the Whig party] will have enough to do with them”.
When Parliament passed the Church Temporalities Act in 1833, radically reorganising the Church of Ireland, Newman was moved to action. This was to lead to surprising results. Despite Palmer’s influence, Newman professed himself agnostic about the reforms themselves. The key objection was that this reform was effected by the State rather than the by Irish Anglican hierarchy. If this could be done to the Irish Church, then surely the Church of England was next!
In 1841, Russell wrote to Newman gently correcting various misunderstandings about Catholicism. A correspondence and a life-long friendship developed”
In preparation for a Church-State showdown, Newman saw the need for a spiritual and theological renewal, a “second reformation”. Through publications, personal influence and preaching, Newman and others sought to strengthen Anglicanism. He sought a Via Media of a Reformed Catholicism, faithful to the Catholicism of the early Church but purified of superstition and corruption by the Reformation.
To the horror of those around him, including Palmer, this project of renewal within the Church of England was to lead Newman and a number of companions to the Roman Catholic Communion, with Newman converting in 1845 at what would be the midpoint of his life.
A recent article by Patrick Manning in The Furrow points out O’Connell’s ironic role in that conversion. The Liberator financed the 1836 establishment of the Catholic magazine The Dublin Review. The Review took an interest in the Oxford Movement, both challenging it and encouraging its Rome-ward drift. An August 1839 article in the Review by Dr Nicholas Wiseman would shatter Newman’s conviction that the Church of England was fully part of the one true Church.
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If The Dublin Review pushed Newman out of Anglicanism, a young Maynooth professor, Dr Charles Russell, did much to smooth Newman’s path to Rome. Newman wrote that Russell “had perhaps more to do with my conversion than any one else”.
In 1841, Russell wrote to Newman gently correcting various misunderstandings about Catholicism. A correspondence and a life-long friendship developed, with Russell putting Newman in touch with the realities of Catholic thought. Russell’s delicacy and reserve can be judged from the fact that when he visited Oxford, Newman and he spent their time sightseeing rather than debating theology.
Having converted to Catholicism, Newman went to Rome in 1846 to study for the priesthood. Probably the most significant Irish contact that Newman made in Rome was Paul Cullen, then Rector of the Irish College. Cullen and Newman seem to have hit it off well. Newman visited the Irish College a number of times and probably attended Cullen’s lectures in Hebrew and Scripture.
When Newman translated some of his theology into Latin to be better understood by the Italians, Cullen was one of the two censors who approved it. A copy of that book with a note of thanks from Newman can be found in the Pontifical Irish College Library.
Newman preached his first sermon as a Catholic (before he was even ordained a deacon) in the Irish Franciscan church of St Isidoro for the funeral of an aristocratic Irish girl Octavia Catherine Bryan who died in Rome. Newman thought the sermon a failure, but a contemporary French account refers to his “most touching and consoling words”.
After ordination, Newman returned to England to found the Birmingham Oratory. He gradually acquired a whole circle of clerical and lay Catholic friends, including some Irish.
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Of most note, perhaps, was Dr David Moriarty of All Hallows’ College (later Bishop of Kerry) who visited Newman in 1849 and would become one of Newman’s best friends and supporters, and John Stanislas Flanagan, who joined the Birmingham Oratory in 1848. Flanagan served effectively and energetically as an Oratorian priest until ill-health caused his departure for Italy in 1860.
Ultimately he would return to Ireland as Parish Priest of Adare in Co. Limerick but remained on very friendly terms with Newman.
Although the foundation brief of the Oratory mentioned an apostolate to the upper classes, its location meant serving the Irish immigrant population of Birmingham.
Newman’s Anglican parish ministry in Oxford involved working with the poorer classes, but this was a new phenomenon for him. Hundreds of Irish sought out Newman, and the Oratorians ministered as best they could. Some resented this ministry and Newman himself was disgusted by the crude manners of his new flock who left the passage outside the Oratory stinking like a public toilet, but despite worrying that the Irish might drive away more affluent English inquirers, he accepted the ministry given to him and stayed with the Irish poor in Birmingham rather than move to London where there was easier access to the educated classes of English society.
Newman argued that a great weakness of the Irish Church was that the bishops would not allow the laity their proper place”
At the Synod of Thurles in 1850, the Irish hierarchy decided to open a university in response to the British Government’s establishment of the non-denominational Queen’s Colleges in Belfast, Cork and Galway. Paul Cullen, then Archbishop of Armagh, tapped his friend Newman for the task. Newman would therefore split his time and his energies between the university and the Birmingham Oratory from 1851 until 1858, crossing the Irish Sea 56 times in that period.
He did not have an easy time of it. Working in a country he did not know well, he was entangled in various disputes. As Fergal McGrath SJ put it, the feuding Archbishops Cullen – from May 1852 Archbishop of Dublin – and MacHale “were like two old country fiddlers playing on the delicate Stradivarius of Newman’s temperament”.
He couldn’t direct university affairs as he wished, although he admitted later that he did not know enough about Ireland to make a thorough success of the project. Even the most supportive bishops (Moriarty of Kerry and Ryan of Limerick) differed from him in educational vision. MacHale of Tuam was suspicious of the English appointments that Newman made to the University staff, while Cullen thought some Irish academics were tainted by association with the Young Ireland movement.
As well as the University itself, Newman founded what is now UCD’s Literary and Historical (Debating) Society, and the beautiful University Church on St Stephen’s Green”
Cullen and Newman could not work well together; Cullen was frequently neglecting to reply to Newman’s letters and disapproving of the relatively mild regime that Newman had in mind for the students. It is worth noting that one of these first students was a grandson of Daniel O’Connell!
Newman’s letters home have a comical character as he describes his difficulties. Hospitality is warm but not to his taste. The bloody mutton, served as a delicacy in his honour, turns his stomach. At his lodgings in Harcourt Street, the cleaning lady takes it upon herself not only to tidy his room, but to Newman’s horror, decides to re-arrange the scholar’s papers, sorting them not by subject or by date, but by size!
Nonetheless, Newman appreciated the Irish people, their “cleverness” and their welcome. The experience of being a Catholic priest amongst a Catholic people gave him a great respect for them. He would hold up Dublin as an exemplar of a place where the Catholic faith was lived and communicated by the common people in contrast to those regimes where Catholicism was imposed from above.
Newman had two particular reasons for gratitude. When on trial in London in 1852 for criminal libel for denouncing sexual abuse committed by the apostate Dominican Giacinto Achilli, the ordinary people of Ireland supported his legal defence fund. Secondly, he knew that the regular parishioners of Ireland contributed to the collections for his university when the gentry did not.
Newman argued that a great weakness of the Irish Church was that the bishops would not allow the laity their proper place, with Cullen forbidding a lay committee for university finances. The gentry were therefore lukewarm in supplying money and students. Newman said they “were treated like good little boys, were told to shut their eyes and open their mouths, and take what we gave to them, and this they did not relish”.
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Amongst the prominent laity Newman was to cultivate a number of friends. He persuaded the poet Aubrey de Vere to take a professorship in the university, whilst the Limerick MP William Monsell afforded him the use of his home at Tervoe, Clarina as a retreat.
Newman left Ireland in 1858, never to return and somewhat frustrated at his treatment at the hands of Cullen and MacHale. Although the University did not thrive, as an academic community it made a fair contribution to the life of the nation prior to incorporation into UCD in the early 20th Century.
After his time in Ireland, Newman kept up his friendships and through them continued to develop his understanding of Irish affairs”
As well as the University itself, Newman founded what is now UCD’s Literary and Historical (Debating) Society, and the beautiful University Church on St Stephen’s Green. Lectures given by Newman in Dublin form the nucleus of what is now known as
The Idea of a University, the classic exposition of what a university should be, as well as an incisive critique of secularism in education. These four fruits of his time as rector are relatively well-known. A fifth is more surprising. To assist the work of Prof. Eugene O’Curry, Newman commissioned a typeface for printing the Irish language. This font was to prove influential in the history of Irish printing and is now known as Newman Irish Type.
After his time in Ireland, Newman kept up his friendships and through them continued to develop his understanding of Irish affairs. Despite their difficulties, Cullen would later speak up for Newman in Rome on a couple of occasions, reassuring the Curia of the Englishman’s orthodoxy when English enemies were trying to undermine him.
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One of the most striking developments in Newman’s life was the change in his political views with respect to the Irish. In Ireland he felt shame for what his country had done, and was touched to the core by those who welcomed him warmly despite having every reason to hate the English.
In 1881, lamenting the slow progress towards land reform, he speculated that Ireland, being a separate nation, would ultimately attain some kind of independence. Part of the reason for British maltreatment of the Irish was, he mused, that English liberalism was not religiously neutral, and had a prejudicial fear of Irish Catholicism, much as the young Newman had.
Thus, when Gladstone sought his influence as cardinal in lobbying the Vatican to condemn certain Irish priests for their political activities, he refused. He even went so far as to speculate privately that the Irish had maintained a such a consistent resistance to English rule that they might be justified in rebellion! A far cry indeed from where Newman began his public career!
Ultimately Newman’s relationship with the Irish is a story of sympathy and personal experience leading to friendship and understanding. Irish kindnesses led Newman out of prejudice and in return this most English of saints poured himself out for the Irish people, developing a true appreciation for them.
In return, the Irish sometimes valued him more than the Catholic establishment in England. Newman’s personal sacrifices for the sake of the faith, his role as underdog who ran afoul of English justice and the work he did in Ireland made Newman an Englishman with a unique claim on Irish affections.