9 methods John Henry Newman Is a model for today’s college students

college students who attend secular faculties and pray at campus Newman centers have John Henry Newman to thank. below, Pope Benedict XVI celebrates the beatification Mass of Cardinal John Henry Newman at Cofton Park on Sept. 19, 2010, in Birmingham, England, in front of greater than 60,000 trustworthy. Cardinal Newman should be canonized a saint Oct. 13 in Rome. (main image, public area/Wikipedia; beatification Mass, Peter Nicholls/WPA Pool/Getty photos)

COMMENTARY: The soon-to-be saint relentlessly sought the reality, and he had the courage to follow where it led.

Father Raymond J. de Souza

John Henry Newman changed into a talented student and theologian, professor, preacher, poet, musician, author, servant of the negative, controversialist, institution founder, priest and, ultimately, cardinal. particularly, he became an indefatigable seeker of truth and had indomitable courage to comply with where it led. For those factors, tuition chaplaincies all through Canada and the USA had been named after him; certainly, in some locations, inquirers without difficulty ask where the “Newman core” is after they are seeking the chaplaincy.

those chaplaincies will now have a blessing awfully infrequent in Church background: witnessing their customer be canonized. The regular observe in Catholic existence is to name apostolates after already-existing saints. So luminous turned into Newman’s example that he earned the patronages first and the reliable veneration later on.

What does Newman must present students on campus today, apart from his heavenly intercession? I actually have spent my total priesthood at Newman residence at Queen’s college, and that i would imply nine ways in which Newman, who should be canonized with four others Oct. 13 on the Vatican, is a model for college kids these days.

John Henry Newman was a model pupil.

No scholar will possess the natural brilliance of Newman; he changed into one of the crucial proficient intellects in the whole heritage of Christianity. but he complemented his mind with diligent examine, figuring out that intellectual presents are only that, and the proper manifestation of gratitude is to look at tough. It has by no means been effortless to analyze hard, but these days’s students face extra digital distractions, which are challenging to prevent. They need models of diligent look at.

together with Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Newman is the first rate contemporary exemplar of the harmony of faith and motive.

On the two hundredth anniversary of Newman’s beginning in 2001, St. John Paul II offered Newman as a picture of the “two wings” with which he opened his 1998 encyclical, Fides et Ratio (faith and intent). Newman’s self assurance in intent as an ally of faith become evident in two ways. First, the primary role of rationale in faith â€" what we call theology. Newman become rigorous in laying out an inexpensive faith and turned to different disciplines, primarily background, to be able to be mindful Revelation more desirable.

second, Newman insisted on proper competencies of other disciplines with their personal proper autonomy; his vision of a college became now not of a theological academy.

“In his Irish institution he deploy not best a faculty of arts and sciences, however additionally schools of medication and engineering,” wrote Cardinal Avery Dulles, an extra noted convert theologian. “He made provision for a chemical laboratory and an astronomical observatory. All these points, in his view, had a rightful region in the college as a spot of general discovering. however the very multiplicity of disciplines increased the need of a precept of order, governing the complete, in order that the scholar can be able to perceive the significance of every selected department of advantage in relation to the rest.” college students who wonder what their secular reviews (cause) ought to do with their advantage of God (faith) have in Newman their first rate mannequin and instructor.

Newman had ardour for reality, as one the choicest contemporary biographies become titled.

It isn't any accident that Benedict XVI, who did not want to commute and didn't do beatifications himself, made only 1 shuttle for a beatification in his preach, going to England to beatify Newman in 2010. The theologian-pope who decried the “dictatorship of relativism” saw in Newman a good defender of the existence of truth and that we can come to understand it with sure bet, if no longer completely. The dictatorship of relativism is extra advanced on university campuses than most other places. college students can discover in Newman a fellow disciple who confirms that the certainty will also be favourite and that the reality can set one free.

Newman was, in particular, a utterly transformed disciple.

The young John Henry had a teenage conversion. He grew to become convinced of the certainty of the Christian faith with a rock-strong simple task that marked his complete lifestyles.

he is noted for his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism in 1845 â€" his feast day, Oct. 9, is the day of his reception into full communion with the Catholic Church â€" but that prior conversion, in the context of Anglican evangelicalism, changed into standard, for it become then that he put Jesus Christ at the core of his existence.

All children and younger adults should make a similar choice about where God fits of their lives; even these from Catholic households need a second of indoors determination, of conversion or at the least deeper conversion. When college students on campus these days talk about “conversion,” they usually suggest what happened at Newman’s first conversion, now not his 2nd.

Newman knew the need of the Church.

Making a decision about Christ means making a choice about the Church. It was this that caused Newman splendid agony and to which he dedicated his formidable energies. If Christ centered a Church, where may that Church be discovered? Newman at last grew to become convinced, after certain study, that the Catholic Church become most fully in continuity with the apostolic Church founded via Jesus himself. The fashionable option of being “spiritual but not spiritual” is, for Christians, the desire to have Christ with out his Church. it is eye-catching firstly look, for Christ is all-holy, and the Church, which shares in the holiness of Christ, often appears to be the rest however holy. Christ without the Church additionally becomes a Christianity that makes few calls for, for there is no community of disciples in which to reside. college students who live amongst friends who profess to be spiritual however now not spiritual need Newman to exhibit that both are indispensable, as a head has its physique, a bridegroom has his bride, and a shepherd has his flock.

Newman made super sacrifices for fitting Catholic, for seeking Christ precisely within the Catholic Church.

In mid-19th-century England, that intended giving up his professorship at Oxford and being forged out of the English institution. He misplaced many colleagues and even expensive friends; possibly his most relocating sermon is entitled “The Parting of pals”  about the cost of his conversion to Catholicism.

And the Church into which Newman entered both honored and tormented him. What area was there for a sophisticated English scholar in a Church of the working-class Irish? We remember that, in making Newman a cardinal, Pope Leo XIII gave definitive approval to his lifestyles and work, nonetheless it got here when he became 78 years historic. For lots of Newman’s Catholic existence, he became requested to make wonderful sacrifices for a Church that commonly looked ungrateful.

college students who decide to be serious about their Catholic faith can predict to pay a value even whereas on campus, from professors who disdain spiritual perception to scholar unions that are trying to find to restrict the free speech and affiliation of Christian golf equipment. certain jobs, even professions, may be conveniently closed to people who want to live their Catholic religion in full. Newman knew smartly that reality more than one hundred fifty years in the past.

Newman confronted a selected type of anti-Catholic hostility, given his prominence.

He was falsely convicted of calumny, which had a undeniable irony to it, since Newman become area to public vilification. His magisterial autobiography, Apologia professional Vita Sua, become brought on by way of public accusations that he became a disreputable liar. The Catholic pupil who's called a bigot quite simply for being Catholic has a consumer in Newman, whose delicate soul became grieved with the aid of the slanders slung his means.

it is a extensively observed phenomenon of campus ministry that students are frequently greater conservative than their folks. The chaplaincy is commonly regarded greater conservative than surrounding parishes, a complete reversal of what would had been the case within the Seventies.

Newman is a reminder that the totality of the Catholic culture consists of facets each liberal and conservative, simply because the biblical steward brings out treasures both new and historic from his storehouse.

students, being inexperienced, can now and again unthinkingly opt for what's historical simply as a result of their elders rejected it. those elders in turn regularly rejected what changed into historic simply as a result of their elders held to it. Plus ça transformation …

Newman not ever did the rest unthinkingly. Being completely Catholic, he diagnosed the simple need for culture, however a tradition that developed, no longer corrupted, the deposit of religion. he is an outstanding figure of stability, conserving a tradition for the purpose of creating it liberally available.

today within the Church we locate plenty of mindless liberalism, even on the highest stages, and also senseless conservatism, which, notwithstanding less influential in the meanwhile, is regularly no longer less vocal for being so. Newman features the style forward.

at last, at a time when college students are often introduced with a typical of straightforward mediocrity, Newman stands for excellence.

He became no longer only a preacher, however the surest preacher of his time.

He become now not only a priest, but a zealous priest who visited the ailing and the bad, living out Matthew 25 to the letter. He become not just a creator, however an outstanding author of prose within the historical past of the English language â€" a judgment confirmed with the aid of at least James Joyce, who flatly noted:

“nobody has ever written English prose that can also be in comparison with that of a tiresome footling little Anglican parson who later on grew to be a prince of the simplest actual church.”

Newman pursued excellence in all issues. The Church now acknowledges his excellence in discipleship, which is known as sanctity.

Father Raymond J. de Souza

is the editor in chief  of

Convivium magazine.