By Jonathan Luxmoore, OSV News
OXFORD, England (OSV News) — British Catholics welcomed a papal decision to elevate St. John Henry Newman, a former Protestant and Oxford University chaplain, to the historic status of doctor of the universal church.
“This request has been before the Holy See for some time, having received declarations of support from many different parts of the world,” said Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster, president of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.
It 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,” he said.
The cardinal was reacting to the July 31 confirmation by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Saints’ Causes that Pope Leo XIV had accepted an “affirmative opinion” by cardinals and bishops that the church’s 38th title of doctor of the church should be conferred on St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890).
In a statement, Cardinal Nichols said he was “delighted and thrilled” by the move, which would bring “great joy to all who strive to follow Christ today,” adding that it was “of particular importance” the move was also supported by bishops from the Anglican Church of England.
The saint was an Anglican who came into full communion with the Catholic Church, became a cardinal and is known as the most influential English-speaking Catholic theologian of the 19th century.
Britain’s Oxford-based Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe also welcomed the “excellent news,” telling OSV News that Cardinal Newman’s thought had been a key influence at the church’s 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council, helping Catholics “understand how the church’s teaching on the mystery of God unfolds in history.”
Meanwhile, a prominent biographer told OSV News Cardinal Newman had sought to “lead people back to the sources of Christian revelation,” and had bequeathed key Catholic teachings on ecclesiology, ecumenism, conscience rights and role of laypeople which anticipated synodality and remained important for English-speaking countries.
“In pioneering Vatican II ideas, he provided guidance for how today’s church seeks to renew itself,” said Msgr. Roderick Strange, rector of London’s Mater Ecclesiae College, who also edited Cardinal Newman’s letters.
“This raising of his profile will provide a great renewal impulse, prompting people to appreciate his influence on so many important features of church life today,” he told OSV News.
Born in London in 1801, John Henry Newman was ordained an Anglican priest at Oxford’s Christ Church Cathedral in 1825, serving as vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin at Oxford in 1828-1843 before becoming a Catholic at age 44.
His vast output, which included poetry, hymns and classic works such as his “Meditations and Devotions” and autobiographical “Apologia Pro Vita Sua,” as well as 32 volumes of letters and 250,000 folios of notes and reflections, has made him one of the Christian world’s most studied figures.
In a July 31 statement, Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham, who hosted Cardinal Newman’s beatification by Pope Benedict XVI in September 2010, said the saint’s personal motto, “Heart speaks to heart,” communicated “to us at the deepest level of our being.”
He added that Pope Leo’s gesture would make Cardinal Newman the third doctor of the church from England after the eighth-century St. Bede the Venerable and St. Anselm of Canterbury, who died in 1109.
Meanwhile, the Westminster-based bishops’ conference said Cardinal Newman’s teaching had been acclaimed by every pope since Leo XIII (1810-1903).
“There are … Saints who continue to speak to the Church of today, despite the passage of time and the social and cultural boundaries that divide us from them, because of their own faithful discipleship, and responsiveness to the Holy Spirit,” said the conference, which has set up a website guide to Newman’s work.
“While many Doctors of the Church are notable for one particular aspect of their teaching, St. John Henry Newman is especially remarkable for the breadth of his teaching … his influence upon various branches of doctrine and theology, and his engagement with problems of faith which remain burning issues in our own time.”
Cardinal Newman became the first British non-martyr saint for six centuries when he was canonized by Pope Francis in October 2019, and has given his name to schools and colleges in England, as well as an oratory and university in Birmingham, where 15,000 people lined his funeral route in August 1890.
Besides inspiring Catholicism’s revival in England after three centuries of persecution and restriction, his work on patristic tradition has been praised by Orthodox theologians, with many Protestants lauding his defense of doctrinal change and development.
Poland’s foremost Newman expert told OSV News the decision was a “nod to Anglo-Saxon culture,” adding that the saint’s stress on humanity’s “temporal and eternal” identities was of great contemporary relevance.
“We are witnessing the growing position of the state, which seeks to reduce all morality and life purpose to legalism — what’s good and right is what accords with the law, and this law is changeable,” said Jan Klos, a philosophy professor at Poland’s Catholic University of Lublin.
“Newman called for a system, a meaningful whole, based on a well-formed conscience rather than momentary whims — an integral, complete human being under one roof. Only from such shared roots of intellect and morality can a mature and peaceful society grow.”
Cardinal Newman’s successor as Anglican vicar of Oxford’s St. Mary university church, the Rev. William Lamb, told OSV News the saint had been key to renewing worship and ministry in the Church of England before becoming a Catholic.
He added that Pope Leo’s move recognized Cardinal Newman’s teaching “as both an Anglican and a Roman Catholic,” and would be celebrated “with the same joy” thanks to “great friendship” between the churches.
However, the director of the International Center of Newman Friends at Littlemore, where the saint was received as a Catholic in 1845 by Blessed Dominic Barberi, predicted the advent of a “major saint” in England would have a “big impact” on wider church life.
“While sainthood is highly unusual, the proclamation of a doctor of the church is very rare indeed,” Sister Mary-Birgit Dechant, vocations promoter for the Sisters Community of the Work Spiritual Family, told OSV News.
“Newman was guided by a longing for the truth, which he found and encouraged others to find. After so many historical sufferings, I think this should offer England’s Catholics some consolation.”
Jonathan Luxmoore writes for OSV News from Oxford, England.
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