Journeying With Newman

Today's 'Journeying With Newman' podcast, a new offering to mark the first anniversary of the Canonisation of Saint John Henry Newman, looks back ten years to the Oratorian's Beatification in Birmingham.

These words come from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's homily at Cofton Park when the then-Holy Father declared Newman 'Blessed'.

Brother Emmanuel Durant is a Dominican academic who teaches theology at the Angelicum in Rome. In this podcast, he examines John Henry Newman's teaching on Divine Providence and Human Agency.

Today's reflection for our 'Journeying With Newman' podcast series is notable as it's the first episode released after the canonisation. John Henry Newman is now a saint.

Dr. Andrew Meszaros is a lecturer in Systematic Theology at Ireland’s Pontifical University, Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth. His focus falls today on Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.

"The power of Newman’s prose comes, in part, from the cumulative weight that accrues from all his examples of how the various elements of the Christian tradition all stand and fall together... Newman reminds us that to pick one aspect of Christianity, and reject another is tantamount to a false Christianity. And conversely, we should remember that all that we believe and do as Catholics is in some way related to the core of our faith. Nothing authentically Catholic is insignificant." 

Historian and commentator Joanna Bogle gives us an entertaining and insightful reflection on Newman and the Church with a particular historical focus on the Church as the guardian of truth.

"[The Church] is glorious in her cherishing of truth: we cannot, we must not, ever allow ourselves to do less than honour her. Her story is a great one. Saints and martyrs, heroes and heroines, great missionary endeavours, glorious art and music, the foundations of modern sciences and of the great universities… and much, much more. We cannot, we must not, dismiss or ignore all of this, muddled though it all is – and muddied too by cruelty and injustice, by human sin and error.

"In John Henry Newman, we find a passion for truth that we should follow. It is his greatest single gift to us."

Our contributor for today's 'Journeying With Newman' podcast is Elizabeth Huddleston, the Managing Editor of the Newman Studies Journal – an interdisciplinary research publication dedicated to the life, work, and thought of John Henry Newman and its relevance for our time.

Elizabeth is looking at Sermon 16 of Cardinal Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons. It examines 'The Church Visible and Invisible'.

"Newman emphasised throughout his writings that the church is comprised of both of our Earthly Church - made up of the Magisterium, the laity - and what Newman calls the Schola Theologorum - which is best described as theologians throughout history who helped to investigate and interpret divine revelation.

"The church is comprised of both living sinners and saints, those in purgatory, and those already blessed with the beatific vision - the saints. So often we think of our reality as what we experience through our senses, however, our actual experience of the Church goes much deeper. As Newman reminds us, we are in communion with the saints whose experience of God helps to reveal God's love to us today.

"Newman's words are encouraging to me because they act as a constant reminder that the Trinitarian God is always present and active in the church through the continuously invigorating words of the saints."

Fr Paul Pearson of the Toronto Oratory looks at John Henry Newman's reflections on conscience.

"Conscience bows to no man, it acknowledges no authority but that of truth itself. It grants us a freedom for the truth but not a freedom from the truth. Catholics live up to their human freedom and dignity by searching diligently for the truth. They are not to be denigrated as slaves because they are convinced that they have found truth at its very source.

"The same dignity of conscience that calls us to search for the truth also impels us to kneel before it once we have discovered it. Newman found that truth in the Catholic Church headed by the successor of St Peter. It was his greatest freedom to submit himself to it."