The tender heart and Christlike struggles of Saint John Henry Newman

Ever since Pope Leo XIV announced his plans to declare Saint John Henry Newman a Doctor of the Church on November 1, Catholic writers have been gushing in their admiration of this nineteenth-century English saint. When Pope Francis conferred that title on Saints Gregory of Narek and Irenaeus of Lyon, there was great rejoicing among Armenian and Eastern Catholics (in 2015 and 2022, respectively), who believed the honor was long overdue. English speakers have been demonstrating a similar strong reaction, wondering why this took so long.

For those who are not acquainted with Newman’s biography, he was born in 1801 in London, England, and was one of six children. His father was a banker and was named John, which is why everyone called his eldest son John Henry. Although he grew up in a nominally Anglican family, John Henry experienced a spiritual conversion to evangelical Christianity when he was fifteen years old. He studied at Oxford University, where he made many friends and worked hard, so hard that he was overcome by anxiety and failed an important examination.

However, this setback did not keep him from becoming a fellow at Oxford at the age of twenty-two. The shy but brilliant young man also became an Anglican priest, but he was deeply troubled by attitudes in the government and even within the Church of England that were “progressive, liberal, and hostile to tradition.”¹ He and some other scholars who were serious about their faith began to write publicly about their concerns. This eventually became known as the Oxford Movement. Their writings, published as pamphlets or tracts, caused considerable controversy. The tracts also began to inspire prominent Anglicans to consider joining the Catholic Church.

Newman, on the other hand, remained strongly opposed to Roman Catholicism. In 1832, he took a trip to the Mediterranean and remarked on the beautiful scenes he saw. But he hated travel, was homesick, became deathly ill from a fever, and was apparently only negatively affected by the sight of Catholic piety. Instead, he continued to propose in his writings that it was possible to take a middle way between extreme Christian positions. As he put it,

The glory of the English Church is, that it has taken the via media … It lies between the (so called) Reformers and the Romanists.²

But as Newman began to study the Fathers of the Church, he gradually came to the realization that his search for a middle way was futile. There was no middle way. When he realized he could no longer argue against the teachings of the Catholic Faith, he resigned his position as an Anglican pastor and gave up his fellowship at Oriel College.

On October 9, 1845, Newman was received into the Catholic Church by Blessed Dominic Barberi. Barberi was an Italian Passionist priest who believed that God had told him in a vision that he would “bring the light of the Gospel to a foreign nation.”³ From the time Fr. Barberi arrived in England, his preaching and personal witness fulfilled that prophecy by bringing about many conversions.

One might have expected that John Henry’s conversion to Catholicism and his later ordination as a Catholic priest would have been the beginning of a lifetime of prominent leadership in the Catholic Church in England. That was not to be. Instead, his life as a Catholic was one long, painful crucifixion, or as one biographer put it, “Newman was a man who was sacrificed. He was a âme détruite [a shattered soul].”⁴

Granted, Newman was an inspiring preacher, and his sermons dramatically affected his listeners. As another biographer described it:

It is impossible to count the numerous eulogies written about these sermons and their preacher. There seemed to emanate an almost electric influence from him, first from his appearance, more still from his way of praying and reading the Bible, but most of all from his words in the pulpit. He did not use tricks to keep the attention of his audience. He read his sermons and never looked up from his papers. His high-pitched voice was not powerful. He had a strange way of pausing a long time after every quickly spoken sentence. Nevertheless, he kept his congregation spellbound.⁵

Newman’s writings were influential throughout the universal Church during his own lifetime. He published essays, lectures, poetry, novels, and collections of his sermons. In one of his most famous works, The Idea of a University, he examined the essentials of a truly Catholic university and why those essentials should matter both to students and to the broader culture. In his An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, he analyzed how the human mind understands reality and gives assent to religious belief; scholars have been studying it ever since.

But Catholics in England, including those in the hierarchy, had been enduring persecution for their faith for three centuries. Even if Catholics were not being hanged, drawn, and quartered in downtown London as entertainment during Newman’s lifetime, Catholics were still treated like second-class citizens, deprived of many opportunities for advancement, and vilified by the press and general society. Catholics weren’t even allowed to attend Oxford until 1871, which is probably why the convert Newman’s Oxford credentials rankled some educated Catholics.

It took time for the bishop of Newman’s diocese, William Ullathorne, to trust him. But after Newman demonstrated his humble obedience to his bishop’s orders on multiple occasions, Ullathorne became one of his strongest supporters. On the other hand, Archbishop Henry Manning of Westminster, though a good bishop in many ways, never trusted Newman. When the pope decided to make the seventy-eight-year-old Newman a cardinal, Manning either tried to sabotage the appointment or (in the kindest possible interpretation) simply took Newman’s polite response to the pope as a refusal. Fortunately, Bishop Ullathorne intervened.

On the other hand, we can be almost grateful that Newman was so mistreated and misunderstood by his contemporaries. If Anglican priest and writer Charles Kingsley had not publicly attacked Newman in print, Newman would not have felt the need to compose his autobiographical Apologia Pro Vita Sua, in which he explained the reasons for his conversion to Catholicism. Initially published in monthly installments, Newman’s response to Kingsley’s allegations was widely read throughout England—today we would say it “went viral”—and earned him the respect of even non-Catholics.

On another occasion, Newman publicly pointed out that Giacinto Achilli, an ex-Dominican friar who was making a living in England by giving speeches that lambasted Catholic life, was also a seducer of women. Achilli sued him for libel. Even though Achilli was clearly guilty of everything that Newman said and worse, the jury inexplicably ruled against Newman, and the judge gave him a lecture about morality, along with a modest fine. Newman had incurred serious debts to defend himself in court, but after the blatantly unjust sentence was handed down against him, there was a popular outpouring of support. His reputation was even higher than it had been before, and the donations he received more than covered his court expenses.

Newman’s immediate family was horrified when he became a Catholic, and those relationships never fully recovered. However, his decision to establish a community of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri in Birmingham gave him brother Oratorian priests who became his trusted friends, particularly in his old age. Human nature being what it is, he still had some problematic relationships within the Oratorians, most notably with the talented but sensitive Fr. William Faber.

Like Faber, one of Newman’s greatest strengths—and weaknesses—was his sensitive nature. This made Newman a gifted poet, writer, and homilist, and, in private life, it also made him an affectionate friend, gentle guide, and true spiritual father. When he was hurt by a friend, he could become distant, but he was always ready to forgive. He cared deeply about what people thought and how they felt, and he was able to discuss serious differences with others, but without rancor.

Newman’s tenderheartedness makes it all the more heroic that he did not leave the Catholic Church. After all, his Anglican friends abandoned him, Catholic bishops and priests distrusted him, and the newspapers were filled with misrepresentations of his words and actions. His life was a long, slow martyrdom. As he poured his heart, mind, and soul into his writing over the decades, he was constantly vilified and misunderstood, even by those who should have supported him.

In Loss and Gain, Newman’s semi-autobiographical novel, he placed the following line in the mouth of Charles Reding, the protagonist who represents Newman himself as a young man:

“I am for taking every one for what he is, and not for what he is not: one has this excellence, another that; no one is everything. Why should we not drop what we don’t like, and admire what we like?”⁶

Newman seemed to live this maxim in true charity. His heart was big enough to admire the good qualities, personal challenges, and valid arguments of his opponents as well as those of his friends. His patience and charity toward others, as much as his intellectual brilliance, made him an effective proponent of the Catholic Faith in an anti-Catholic culture. Most of us do not have to have the creative talents and wisdom of a Doctor of the Church like John Henry Newman, but we only need to love our enemies with the heart of Jesus Christ.

Related at CWR:
• “Worldwide mind and shattered soul: Ida Görres’s Newman (Feb. 21, 2025) by David Paul Deavel
• “Meeting Doctor Newman” (Aug. 2, 2025) by Fr. Peter M.J. Stravinskas
• “John Henry Newman’s long war on liberalism” (July 31, 2025) by Dr. Samuel Gregg
• “Dr. Newman’s guide to being a good convert” (Aug. 30, 2025) by David Paul Deavel

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