EditorialNewman for the nation Authorities in Rome have indicated that they want next year’s beatification of John Henry Newman to be conducted in Birmingham, his adopted city. This is a challenge that raises deeper questions – what is the real significance of Newman’s life and work; what is it that should be celebrated? In Britain and elsewhere, Newman’s name is often invoked in support of various causes of the moment. This is a chance, therefore, to claim him back for the mainstream, as one of English Christianity’s brightest stars. It should be the responsibility of the entire Church in England and Wales and handled by its bishops’ conference. Indeed its president, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, who only recently transferred from Birmingham to Westminster, is still the best person to preside over the preparations, particularly as his former see is vacant.
What would Newman himself advise? The most famous of all his sermons, known as the “Second Spring”, was preached to the newly appointed Catholic bishops of England and Wales in July 1852. In it he remarked upon the furore that had gripped the nation since the announcement of the restoration of the hierarchy two years earlier. “But what is it, my Fathers, my Brothers, what is it that has happened in England just at this time? Something strange is passing over this land, by the very surprise, by the very commotion, which it excites … almost without parallel, more violent than has happened here for centuries…” Goaded by a somewhat triumphalist presentation, that event set off a tidal wave of conflicting emotion in Church and State from Crown and Parliament to the smallest country village. He felt that this unexpected demonstration that relations between England and Rome still touched a sensitive national nerve could nevertheless be a sign of hope and a point of growth, the start of a second spring for the English Catholic cause. Indeed, his own beatification and subsequent canonisation could be a second “second spring” moment. But that sensitivity is a good reason why preparations for the event should not be approached as if all that was required was a jamboree of Catholic self-congratulation.
It would make sense to hire a stadium for the event itself. But it is important to explain fully to the nation that it is as much for a celebration of Newman’s Englishness, in which all can take pride, as of his Catholicism, a potentially divisive issue particularly with reference to the Church of England. Newman’s appeal is popular as well as cerebral, and his funeral procession was lined by thousands of local people who revered him for his dedication to the Birmingham poor.
As a theologian, he is among the greatest. Intellectually, he is admired for his still unsurpassed defence of the value of
learning for its own sake in his Idea of a University; for his most famous poem, The Dream of Gerontius, set to music by Edward Elgar; and for his masterpiece of English biography, Apologia pro Vita Sua. Like the previously most illustrious Englishman to be raised to the altar, St Thomas More, he is indeed a man for all seasons. The challenge is simply to put that message across. Back to the front page
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