One of the Best Books of 2025: "The Most Dangerous Man in England"

I've read many, many books about Saint John Henry Newman and nearly all them have added to my knowledge of this great saint and Doctor of the Church. Last year, I bought and read a copy of "The Most Dangerous Man in England": Newman and the Laity by Paul Shrimpton, published by Word on Fire Academic, and it certainly did fulfill that purpose. The publisher's book description:

Once described by the papal chamberlain George Talbot as “the most dangerous man in England,” John Henry Newman held bold views on the laity that challenged the ecclesial status quo of his day. But what exactly made his ideas so provocative? And what relevance do they have today?

In “The Most Dangerous Man in England”: Newman and the Laity, Paul Shrimpton examines Newman’s revolutionary perspective on the laity’s role in the Church and in the world. More than just an analysis of Newman’s writings, this work tells the story of the great saint’s dealings with lay men and women throughout his long and eventful life, revealing Newman’s lively insights, genius for friendship, and deep humanity. Shrimpton traces Newman’s journey from his influential years at Oxford to his leadership at the Birmingham Oratory, from the founding of the Catholic University in Ireland to his controversial efforts to establish a “Catholic Eton,” a boys’ school attached to the Birmingham Oratory. Through these episodes, Newman emerges as an example to pastors for how to work with and for the laity, as well as an example to laypeople for how to carry out a Christian apostolate through friendship. Shrimpton also shows how Newman’s emphasis on education for laypeople and the universal call to holiness anticipates the teachings of Vatican II by well over a century.

The whole Church, pastors and laity, should take note of the words and works of this great modern intellectual and Christian humanist. Newman’s vision has the potential to revitalize and empower every man and woman to embrace their mission to sanctify the world.

Paul Shrimpton has brought together his studies (A Catholic Eton? Newman's Oratory School (2005) and The “Making of Men”: The Idea and Reality of Newman's University in Oxford and Dublin (2015)) of Newman, his schools and a wide range of Newman's Anglican and Catholic interactions with and interventions for the laity in this magnificently comprehensive study.

There were probably some Anglicans who thought Newman was a dangerous man as he wrote the Tracts for the Times and argued for the apostolic authority of the Anglican bishops. After he became a Catholic, some Anglicans deplored the men and women who followed him as converts. But it was among the English Catholic hierarchy, some of the more ultramontane Catholic converts, and some of the old Recusant Catholic families that he was regarded as "the most dangerous man in England" because of their fear of the young, well-educated (Oxford and Cambridge) lay men and women whom Newman wanted to help, mostly through education and formation.

Shrimpton begins in Chapter 2, "Newman's Anglican Years, 1801-1845", with the Oxford years, highlighting Newman's service as a pastor to the Anglican congregations in matters of life and death, his efforts to educate his pupils as Tutor at Oriel College (in which he was thwarted by Whately), and of course his Tractarian movement efforts.

After Newman's conversion, Shrimpton emphasizes as much or more than Placid Murray, OSB in Newman the Oratorian: Oratory Papers 1846-1878, how and why Newman chose the Oratorian model of Saint Philip Neri. He chose the Oratorian vocation for himself and his Oxford converts as much for Neri's model for service to the laity in formation and education as for the Common Room community it provided them. The Little Brothers of the Oratory met to learn and share, both didactically and socially, with music and prayer. Newman wanted to do more for the ladies and girls of the Oratory too, and in course founded a "Catholic Eton" for the sons of many prominent Catholic families, certain of the need for the motherly touch at a boarding school. (Chapter 3, "Catholic and Oratorian, 1845-1890)

Shrimpton ably covers territory familiar to me from previous biographies and studies--the struggles to establish a true Catholic university for the laity in Ireland, the efforts to save The Rambler, and the mutiny at the first Oratory school, adding details throughout the episodes. Those details demonstrate Newman's comprehensive energy and the range and depth of his personal concern for his students, employees, and contacts. He was always ready to act, to advise, and to confront as necessary. (Chapters 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8)*

Chapter 9, "Opposition to Newman and His Influence of the Laity, 1862-67", demonstrating how out of favor Newman was in those years is balanced by Chapter 11, "Vatican I, the Cardinalate, Newman's Last Years", when honors at Trinity College in Oxford, and at Rome, and in Catholic England (his "victory lap" when coming home with the Cardinal's hat) finally come to Newman. 

Chapter 10, "Dublin Revisited: Newman's Reflections on His "Campaign in Ireland", 1858-74) , could be subtitled "Newman's Second Apologia", as Newman looks back on what he wanted to achieve, how misunderstood and feared those goals were, and how he deprecates the effects on the laity of Ireland of the failure of that campaign--a battle on many fronts.

Then in Chapter 12, "At the Service of the Laity", Shrimpton offers great examples of Newman's personal and written contact with lay men and women, families, parishioners, etc., reminding me a little of Peter C. Wilcox's John Henry Newman: Spiritual Director, 1845-1890. The section on "The geography of Newman's Prayer" is beautifully moving.

Shrimpton's chapter on Newman and Vatican II acknowledges the Reverend Ian Ker's insights in Newman and Vatican II in Chapter 13, but focuses more on the laity (especially in the universal call to holiness and evangelization) with an appropriate emphasis on the laity in the Body of Christ, the Church, and the triple roles of priest, prophet, and king.

In the last chapter, "Newman Today", Shrimpton offers insights into how Newman is a guide for the laity in the Church as we are "Living in a world turned irreligious", highlights Newman's personalism via John F. Crosby and others, discusses the formation and education of the laity "as if truth really mattered", etc., but I found it somewhat repetitious, especially the section on Vatican II, "Both precursor and interpreter of Vatican II", since I'd just read about that.

Nevertheless and notwithstanding, this is a great and comprehensive exploration of Newman and the Laity. It filled gaps in my knowledge--or reminded me--of certain important aspects of his efforts to aid the formerly ostracized Catholic laity of England, the recent lay converts, and the Irish in both Ireland and England. He wanted both to form them more fully in the Catholic Faith and to prepare them for evangelization and the defense of what they believed and lived. Highly recommended.

* Chapter 4, "Establishing a University in Ireland, 1851-54"; Chapter 5, "Running a Catholic University, 1854-58"; Chapter 6, "Establishing a Catholic Eton, 1857-59"; Chapter 7, "Rescuing "The Rambler" 1859; Chapter 8, "The Oratory School: Its Early Years and the Staff Mutiny, 1859-62".

Edward Short Interviews Paul Shrimpton

Newman scholar Edward Short interviews Paul Shrimpton for The Catholic World Report (Short had previously reviewed Shrimpton's book for The Weekly Standard). Two questions piqued my interest: a look at other books about Newman and university education and a discussion of the misunderstanding of Newman's purposes and achievement in founding the Catholic University in Ireland:

CWR: You mention a few highly regarded studies in The “Making of Men”—those by Fergal McGrath, for example, and A.D. Culler. How does your study differ from those? Are there other scholars from whom you have benefited in your work on Newman?

Shrimpton: Fergal McGrath’s Newman’s University (1951) is an impressive piece of scholarship, and it has been the definitive work on the Catholic University for 60 years, but it does have important gaps. McGrath says nothing about Newman’s previous educational activity in Oxford; he does not really give a picture of day-to-day life at the Catholic University while Newman was rector (which is surprising, because the book is full of detail); and he says very little about what happened after Newman’s departure. I was able to fill in the gaps using the archival material that McGrath could not find or did not know about, and so bring out the pastoral dimension of Newman’s vision.

The other major study, Dwight Culler’s Imperial Intellect (1955), focuses on Newman’s idea of a liberal education and his theory of knowledge, but the section dealing with Dublin is actually quite short. A lot of new material has appeared since the studies of Culler and McGrath were published; and the development of the history of higher education means that we can now put the subject within a broader context.

Besides the leading Newman scholar, Ian Ker, I have drawn ideas from the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre and the historian of education Sheldon Rothblatt. Of course, I have benefitted in countless ways from many others, and I have credited their input in my copious footnotes and bibliography.

CWR: Two vulgar errors dog Newman and his educational work. One, that he was an advocate for a kind of education for the sake of education, with no concern for the practical implications of education; and two, that his work in Dublin with the Catholic University was an immitigable failure. What do you have to say about these two misconceptions?

Shrimpton: In the first place I think Newman was very much alive to the practical side of education. I think that few people today realize that the most successful faculty of the Catholic University—by far—was the medical faculty: when the Catholic University Medical School was absorbed into University College Dublin in 1909, it was the largest medical school in the country. Newman had a good understanding of the dynamics of science and its need for “elbow room”: you can see that in some of his lectures in the Idea of a University. He set up the faculty of science in Dublin 20 years before Maxwell opened the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge; he had chemistry and physics laboratories and ensured that the library was well-stocked with scientific papers and journals, he offered scholarships and prizes for science students, and he urged the scientists at the university to undertake research. And the chemistry laboratory was not just for medical students or those doing pure scientific research, but also for practical purposes—agriculture, mining, metallurgy, bleaching, even brewing and sugar-boiling and paper-making. He also tried to set up a faculty of law, though he did not succeed. But despite all this, Newman believed that a university “should be formally based (as it really is), and should emphatically live in, the Faculty of Arts.”

It is true that the Catholic University failed to take off; but it does not follow that this was Newman’s fault. In fact the venture was simply impossible: no one could have made it work. Ireland was devastated after the Great Famine of the 1840s; the British Government would not give the university either a charter or an endowment; there was no tradition of university education among Irish Catholics, and people failed to understand what it meant; Irish society was deeply divided politically, and clericalism and anti-clericalism were prevalent too. Interestingly, Newman was sanguine about the long-term prospects of the university. On leaving Dublin he remarked, “It does not prove that what I have written and planned will not take effect sometime and somewhere because it does not at once. […] When I am gone, something may come of what I have done at Dublin.” He also explained that the Dublin “disaster” fitted a pattern that was not man’s, but of a higher order: “It is the rule of God’s Providence that we should succeed by failure.”

Read the rest there.