We're going to interrupt our series on the
Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, October 9 to discuss the feast of Saint John Henry Newman. I'll be on the show at my usual time, around 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern, to talk with Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim.
Please listen live
here or listen to the podcast at your convenience
here.
Saint John Henry Newman died on August 11, 1890 and usually his feast would be celebrated on the date of his death, but it was already the feast of Saint Clare of Assisi. So the anniversary of his joining the Catholic Church on October 9 in 1845 was chosen instead when his beatification was announced.
In England and Wales October 9 is celebrated as a Feast now (with the Gloria recited or sung at Mass). There were already three
optional memorials on October 9 (St. Denis and Companions, St. John Leonardi, and St. Paulinus of York, an English saint) before his canonization in 2019, meaning that either the Weekday or Ordinary Time, or the memorial of one of those three saints, could be celebrated. The English Bishops moved those three
optional memorials to October 10 to make room for Newman's Feast on October 9. (
The Anglican Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter in the United States also celebrates this Feast day.)
I propose that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops do something similar to make room for Newman on our Liturgical Calendar and offer three reasons, in ascending order of importance.
At this time, his feast is not on the Liturgical Calendar at all, not even as an optional memorial.
I'm not going to be greedy enough to propose his feast as a Feast in the USA, but as the Memorial, thus the only feast to be celebrated on October 9--and that St. Denis and St. John Leonardi be moved as optional memorials on October 10.
My three reasons: First:
Newman and the New Evangelization: After teaching a graduate class on Newman and the New Evangelization for our local Newman University the past two summers, I'm convinced that he is an excellent patron saint for this project, which includes the Eucharistic Revival, to renew the faith of Catholics, particularly the laity.
Newman offers many insights into how to revive and re-enforce Catholics' belief in what they believe and what the Church teaches, and to integrate it more firmly in their lives. He encouraged both growth of knowledge of the truths of the Catholic Faith and the actions that demonstrated that knowledge and belief. As he told the Little Brothers of the Oratory in Birmingham:
I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity. I wish you to enlarge your knowledge, to cultivate your reason, to get an insight into the relation of truth to truth, to learn to view things as they are, to understand how faith and reason stand to each other, what are the bases and principles of Catholicism and where lies the main inconsistencies and absurdities of the Protestant theory. I have no apprehension you will be the worse Catholics for familiarity with these subjects, provided you cherish a vivid sense of God above and keep in mind that you have souls to be judged and saved. In all times the laity have been the measure of the Catholic spirit; they saved the Irish Church three centuries ago and they betrayed the Church in England. You ought to be able to bring out what you feel and what you mean, as well as to feel and mean it; to expose to the comprehension of others the fictions and fallacies of your opponents; to explain the charges brought against the Church, to the satisfaction, not, indeed, of bigots, but of men of sense, of whatever cast of opinion.
By preparing those Little Brothers of the Oratory with vibrant knowledge and conviction of the Faith, Newman wanted them to use their personal influence to help others gain that assurance. Quoting an earlier work from his Anglican days (The Tamworth Reading Room letters of 1841) in the Grammar of Assent (1870), he proposed:
The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma: no man will be a martyr for a conclusion.
He dedicated an entire
sermon to this theme, "Personal Influence, the Means of Propagating the Truth" as an Anglican, so it was a constant in his life that he wanted to prepare Christians to share their Faith effectively through formal education, sermons, literature, friendships, and arguments and apologetics--in that order. Thus they would be able to move others to embrace the Truth.
The Newman Centers at secular universities in the USA: Since the first Newman Club was founded at the University of Pennsylvania in 1893--just three years after his death!--Newman Centers at secular universities have provided students with Holy Mass and the other Sacraments, continuing religious education, social activities, a place a study, etc.
The National Catholic Register just published an
article about them last month.
As the Newman Ministry website
notes:
Over 80% of students stop practicing the faith in college—that’s most of the campus! The problem is, many students struggle to find great friends that share their faith.
It can be overwhelming to walk onto a new campus with no friends. There’s so many opportunities and decisions to make. Faith usually isn’t at the top of the list.
That’s where we come in. Newman Ministry connects students with a Catholic community on campus, so their faith thrives in college and beyond.
So Saint John Henry Newman has had an influence in the USA since the late 19th century through these campus centers for Catholics, even though not all of them still use his name. I attended the Newman Center at Wichita State University and learned about Saint John Henry Newman there (it now does not use his name, but that's still the way I think of it!).
My Third Reason:
Newman's Miracles
Both the miracle accepted for his Beatification in 2010, and the miracle accepted for his Canonization in 2019 occurred in the United States of America, and both of them through the influence of EWTN!
Deacon Jack Sullivan had watched a program on then-Venerable John Henry Newman on EWTN and decided to ask Newman's intercession for his back problems:
“They were discussing not only Newman’s teachings, but the process of beatification,” Sullivan explained to EWTN. “At the end of the program, they had on screen an address of the Oratory in Birmingham [England] and they said, ‘if you receive any Divine favors, please contact that Oratory.’
“I happened to have a piece of paper and a pen on the table in front of me and I wrote it down. Then, I thought, ‘If I wrote it down, I might as well pray to Newman.”
“I prayed, ‘Please Cardinal Newman, help me with God so that I might walk and go back to classes and be ordained.’”
After a later surgery that found greater damage to his spine than thought:
On August 15, 2001, four days after his surgery, Sullivan again prayed to Cardinal Newman.
“I felt tremendous heat and a tingling feeling all over that lasted for five or 10 minutes,” Sullivan said. “After I experienced this, I immediately stood up straight. I was able to walk, not with a walker or cane, but on my own, without any difficulty or pain. I walked all over the hospital, just joyful. I never needed any pain medication after that.”
Melissa Villalobos was inspired by the same program to ask Newman's intercession in the
second miracle:
Soon after graduating in 2000, she watched a TV show on EWTN called ‘Newman At 2000’. In 2010 she watched the Beatification of Cardinal Newman on EWTN, and remembers being very moved. She was given a prayer card with the face of Newman, and she began to read his works on the Internet and her devotion to him grew, so that she would turn in prayer often to ask him for favours and inspiration. . .
When she was pregnant with her fifth child, Gemma, Villalobos began to experience bleeding from uterus. During a particularly dangerous hemorrhage, she prayed:
"Please Cardinal Newman make the bleeding stop!” As soon as she had finished her sentence the bleeding stopped. She immediately thanked Cardinal Newman, convinced that she had been healed by his intercession. She was then able to hurry downstairs and check on her children with no further bleeding.
On a visit to the doctor later that very same day, 15 May, he confirmed with an ultrasound that Melissa had been cured of her condition, and her placenta was no longer torn. The bleeding never returned. . . .
These two miracles are further evidence of devotion to Newman in the United States.
There's at least one more reason I've thought of: the many American converts, especially from the Episcopalian church, who have been influenced by Saint John Henry Newman. Like the late Thomas Howard, Holly Ordway, Father Dwight Longenecker, Deacon Scott Carson, Monsignor Jeffrey Stinson, etc., etc., many have attested to Newman's influence on them. Just peruse the stories collected on the
Coming Home Network website and you'll see what he has meant to converts in the 20th and 21st centuries in the United States.
Finally, I do have a very personal reason for this proposal: after studying the works of Saint John Henry Newman since I first learned about him as a college sophomore, writing about him, teaching about him, and praying for his intercession, I'd like to attend a daily Mass on his feast day on October 9 in the next year or so.
Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!
