The Virtual Oratory

 Newman on Conscience:

I add one remark. Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts, (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please,—still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.

So indeed it is; did the Pope speak against Conscience in the true sense of the word, he would commit a suicidal act. He would be cutting the ground from under his feet. His very mission is to proclaim the moral law, and to protect and strengthen that "Light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world."

Newman's Sermon on Disappointment:

I call resignation a more blessed frame of mind than sanguine hope of present success, because it is the truer, and the more consistent with our fallen state of being, and the more improving to our hearts; and because it is that for which the most eminent servants of God have been conspicuous. To expect great effects from our exertions for religious objects is natural indeed, and innocent, but it arises from inexperience of the kind of work we have to do,—to change the heart and will of man. It is a far nobler frame of mind, to labour, not with the hope of seeing the fruit of our labour, but for  conscience' sake, as a matter of duty; and again, in faith, trusting good will be done, though we see it not. Look through the Bible, and you will find God's servants, even though they began with success, end with disappointment; not that God's purposes or His instruments fail, but that the time for reaping what we have sown is hereafter, not here; that here there is no great visible fruit in any one man's lifetime. Moses, for instance, began with leading the Israelites out of Egypt in triumph; he ended at the age of an hundred and twenty years, before his journey was finished and Canaan gained, one among the offending multitudes who were overthrown in the wilderness [1 Cor. x. 5.]. Samuel's reformations ended in the people's wilfully choosing a king like the nations around them. Elijah, after his successes, fled from Jezebel into the wilderness to mourn over his disappointments. Isaiah, after Hezekiah's religious reign, and the miraculous destruction of Sennacherib's army, fell upon the evil days of his son Manasseh. Even in the successes of the first Christian teachers, the Apostles, the same rule is observed. After all the great works God enabled them to accomplish, they confessed before their death that what they experienced, and what they saw before them, was reverse and calamity, and that the fruit of their labour would not be seen, till Christ came to open the books and collect His saints from the four corners of the earth. "Evil men and seducers shall wax worse  and worse, deceiving and being deceived," [2 Tim. iii. 13.] is the testimony of St. Peter, St. Paul, St. John, and St. Jude.

A Meditation

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission---I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the nexdt. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it---if I but keep His Commandments. Therefore i will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am. I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends; He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, may my spirits sink, hide my future from me---still He knows what he is about.

Cardinal Newman

 Newman as young professor at Oxford...

This page will bring you resources from John Henry Newman. Pope Benedict XVI said that we can understand the true spirit of Vatican II if we read Newman.

Here are dates and brief notes of contributions...

1801      Born on February 21 in London, England.

1816      Enters Trinity College, Oxford

1820      Receives B.A. degree but does very poorly on exams.

1822      Elected Fellow of Oriel College. He obtained this position through his ability to write original and challenging essays. That same ability got him into trouble as an undergraduate. 

1824      Ordained to the diaconate on June 13
                      Becomes curate of St. Clement's, Oxford the same day. He is rather effective in this poor parish but he does have to battle what are today known as the music ministers.

1825       Ordained to the priesthood on May 29.

1826      Becomes tutor of Oriel. Oriel was a center of educational reform in the University. Small group tutorials and essay writing, real examinations, and a defined curriculum were being restored after centuries of neglect. Newman was a leader in this reform. 

1828      Succeeds Edward Hawkins as vicar of St. Mary's. This post, the University Church, would save Newman who was deprived of pupils in a struggle with the authorities who were opposed to his church reform ideas. Newman used a side chapel to teach and the pulpit to preach at evensong. He did not, though, use the pulpit for causes...only the lectures in the side chapel. His sermons are still in print and were hugely successful with the undergraduates. 

1833      "Lead, Kindly Light" was a poem written during a great crisis in his life as he became a leader in Church of England renewal. In the book,   The Arians of the Fourth Century, he developed the idea that the laity were as often the protectors of faith as were the Bishops who sometimes lost their balance and their clarity.
                      Publication of Tracts for the Times begins in September. The Tracts were the chief work of the Oxford Movement of church reform. They were written by a number of people who did not have to agree on everything.Since they could take actual positions instead of the lowest common denominator, they were very provocative and sold very well.

1837 Publishes his lectures on the teaching office and the Anglican Church as a via media...neither Roman nor Protestant but a reformed Catholic Church. Originally published as Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, they are better known as the VIA MEDIA of the Anglican Church. Fr. Hal was the editor of the Oxford University edition of the Via Media. He provided notes and a long introduction. 

1838      Becomes editor of The British Critic. This gave Newman a plat form to publish poetry, historical criticism and take on the issues of the day.                        Lectures on Justification were part of a series he gave on the differences between Lutheran and Anglican theologies.

1839      Doubts about via media begin.

1841      Tract 90 published on February 27. Newman was roasted for this tract which said that it was possible to give a Catholic interpretation to the Anglican Articles of Religion...usually a set of official beliefs interpreted as Calvinistic.

1842      Moves to Littlemore. Newman bought a set of stables and converted them into a house of prayer and study.

1843      Retracts anti-Catholic statements in February
                      Resigns from St. Mary's in September
                      Sermons, Bearing on Subjects of the Day
                      Sermons Before the University of Oxford

1845      Received into the Catholic Church on October 9
                      Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. This essay got him into trouble all around because the stated orthodox position of the day was no development had taken place. Each church believed that its particular set of beliefs were there from the beginning.

1846      Ordained to the priesthood in May

1848      Establishes Birmingham Oratory. Newman brought the Oratory of St Philip Neri to England. Originally started as a movement in the 1840s and established by 1575.    Loss and Gain us an autobiographical novel about the Oxford movement. 

1849      Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations is Newman's little classic on Church life. 

1851      Becomes Rector of Catholic University of Ireland
The rector ship was a disaster because the Bishops wanted the lay students to live like seminarians who in those days were fed very restricted ideas.                  Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England were very witty comments on religion in England.

1852      The Idea of a University is THE great classic on education. It is still central to the canon of western thought. 

1856       Callista: A Sketch of the Third Century is Newman's second novel. 

1857       Sermons Preached on Various Occasions. Not the best of the sermons since his Anglican period is considered the supreme moment of his preaching but of some interest still.

1864       Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Along with the sermons and the Idea of a University, another title in the western canon.

1865       "The Dream of Gerontius". Elgar put this poem to music. It is about death and is a kind of Catholic version of the Tibetan classics on death and dying.

1868       Parochial and Plain Sermons.Newman republished all his Anglican sermons.

1870       Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. If it were not so dense it would be a great classic. As it is, it cannot be ignored by philosophers and theologians.

1877       Elected honorary fellow of Trinity College. Newman was the first honorary fellow! He was a graduate of Trinity which he held more affectionately than Oriel where all the battles took place. 

1879       Becomes a cardinal. He had been under a cloud in the long days of Piux IX. Now with Leo XIII he emerged as that Pope's first cardinal.
                      Motto is "Cor ad cor loquitor" — "Heart speaks to heart"

1890       Dies on August 11
                      Epitaph reads "Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem" — "Out of shadows and imgages into truth".

2008 Probable beatification. His body is already being moved by order of the Vatican from the Oratorian cemetery to a shrine in the Oratory Church. 

Newman lived and died in England from 1801-1890. He spent half his life in the Church of England and half in the Roman Catholic Church.

...Fr Hal spent the summer rereading Newman...and among the selections he chose Newman's very personal journal printed only once...in the 1950s...and never again. In it he poured out his heart. He had been a Catholic for over 15 years and basically maltreated and then shelved. He is scheduled for beatification after all and it is fitting that someone who suffered so much should be acknowledged.

He wrote when he was 65: "This morning, when I woke, the feeling that I was cumbering the ground came on me so strongly, that I could not myself to go to my shower-bath. I said, What is the good of trying to preserve or increase strength, when nothing comes of it?what is the good of living for nothing?"

This feeling did not pass away...it was not a mood but an assessment of his place in the Church. He lived until he was 89...dying August 11 1890. He was made a cardinal in his late seventies by the new Pope, Leo XIII, but only after an effort of his enemies to block the honor. 

Newman is going to be beatified so Rome asked the Oratorians of Birmingham to dig up the body and prepare it for a shrine. There was to be a special re-internment Mass BUT Newman's body had totally disintegrated. There was absolutely no trace of any body or clothing except a bit of tassle from the Cardinal's hat. He was buried over 100 years ago in very damp ground in a wooden coffin...so...Some said that was exactly the way Newman would have wanted it.

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Fr Hal Weidner's Oxford dissertation and later his edition and introduction to Newman's Via Media (Oxford University Press, 1990) were about Newman's theology of church and even, Newman's theology of abuses in the Church. He became a Catholic by writing the Essay on Development of Doctrine where he found his way to accepting the changes from the early Church to the current one as matters of development and not corruption which had been his Anglican position. Before he wrote a preface to the republished Anglican work the Via Media he had not answered his charge of pastoral corruption in the Roman Church. 

In fact, he did not deny the corruption but said that it was a fulfillment of Matthew 13. The Church was not a sect and weeds and wheat were sure to grow together in it. In his preface he says about the current Roman Church of his time: 

"It is so ordered on high that in our day Holy Church should present just that aspect to my countrymen which is most consonant with their ingrained prejudices against her, most unpromising for their conversion; and what can one writer do to counteract this misfortune? But enough of this; whatever comes of it, I must be content to have done what I feel it an obligation to do."

 He said that the three offices of the Church were the teaching of truth, the priestly ministries, and governance. He believed the Holy Spirit protected the Church from ultimately teaching error, but only impeccability, the lack of sin would protect the Church from abuses in the other two offices. No such impeccability was granted.