According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, he was:
born at Naples, 6 March, 1803; died at Naples, 23 June, 1847. He was the second son of Sir John Francis Acton, Bart. The family, a cadet branch of the Actons of Aldenham Hall, near Bridgnorth, in Shropshire, had settled in Naples some time before his birth. His father was engaged in the Neapolitan trade when he succeeded to the family estate and title through the death of his cousin, Sir Richard Acton, Bart. The Cardinal's education was English, as he and his elder brother were sent to England on their father's death in 1811, to a school near London kept by the Abbé Quéqué. They were then sent to Westminster School, with the understanding that their religion was not to be interfered with. Yet, they not only were sent to this Protestant school, but they had a Protestant clergyman as tutor. In 1819 they went to Magdalen College, Cambridge, where they finished their education. After this strange schooling for a future cardinal, Charles went to Rome when he was twenty and entered the Academia Ecclesiastica, where ecclesiastics intending to be candidates for public offices receive a special training. An essay of his attracted the attention of the Secretary of State, della Somaglia, and Leo XII made him a chamberlain and attaché to the Paris Nunciature, where he had the best opportunity to become acquainted with diplomacy. Pius VIII recalled him and named him vice-legate, granting him choice of any of the four legations over which cardinals presided. He chose Bologna, as affording most opportunity for improvement. He left there at the close of Pius VIII's brief pontificate, and went to England, in 1829, to marry his sister to Sir Richard Throckmorton. Gregory XVI made him assistant judge in the Civil Court of Rome. In 1837 he was made Auditor to the Apostolic Chamber, the highest Roman dignity after the cardinalate. Probably this was the first time it was even offered to a foreigner. Acton declined it, but was commanded to retain it. He was proclaimed Cardinal-Priest, with the title of Santa Maria della Pace, in 1842; having been created nearly three years previously. His strength, never very great, began to decline, and a severe attack of ague made him seek rest and recuperation, first at Palermo and then at Naples. But without avail, for he died in the latter city. His sterling worth was little known through his modesty and humility. In his youth his musical talent and genial wit supplied much innocent gaiety, but the pressure of serious responsibilities and the adoption of a spiritual life somewhat subdued its exercise.
His judgment and legal ability were such that advocates of the first rank said that could they know his view of a case they could tell how it would be decided. When he communicated anything in writing, Pope Gregory used to say he never had occasion to read it more than once. He was selected as interpreter in the interview which the Pope had with the Czar of Russia. The Cardinal never said anything about this except that when he had interpreted the Pope's first sentence the Czar said: "It will be agreeable to me, if your Eminence will act as my interpreter, also." After the conference Cardinal Acton, by request of the Pope, wrote out a minute account of it; but he never permitted it to be seen. The King of Naples urged him earnestly to become Archbishop of Naples, but he inexorably refused. His charities were unbounded. He once wrote from Naples that he actually tasted the distress which he sought to solace. He may be said to have departed this life in all the wealth of a willing poverty.
The Encyclopedia Britannica article on his father, linked above, has this comment about Cardinal Acton and English Catholics:
Cardinal Acton was protector of the English College at Rome, and had been mainly instrumental in the increase, in 1840, of the English vicariates-general to eight, which paved the way for the restoration of the hierarchy by Pius IX. in 1850. . . .
The recent converts John Henry Newman and Ambrose St. John met with Cardinal Acton when they studied for the priesthood at the College of Propaganda from September of 1846 to May of 1847 (they were ordained to the priesthood on May 30, 1847), less than a month before Acton died on June 23 that year. Their contacts with the Cardinal are mentioned twice in Michael Ffinch's 1992 biography, Newman: Towards the Second Spring, published by Ignatius, which I read earlier this week, after purchasing a used copy at Eighth Day Books.
This biography covers Newman's early years, his leadership of the Tractarians/the Oxford Movement, the controversies over Tract 90 and his gradual retirement from Oxford to Littlemore, leading up to his conversion in 1845. Then Ffinch surveys Newman's study for the priesthood in Rome, his decision to become an Oratorian, and his establishment of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Birmingham. The Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850 and Newman's preaching of the Second Spring sermon on July 13, 1852 at the first Synod held since the Restoration of the Hierarchy brings this biography to a close, with a chronological table of dates for the rest of Newman's long life.
Ffinch covers the Tractarian period of Newman's life very well, but I particularly appreciated how he detailed the founding of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in England, highlighting the difficulties the inclusion of Faber's Wilfridians caused from the start because of different arrangements and commitments made without Newman's knowledge. Pope Pius IX had approved the foundation of the Oratory in Birmingham under Newman, but Bishop Wiseman wanted one in London and Faber's benefactor, the Earl of Shrewsbury, wanted the Oratory to serve a rural community--not the charism of the Oratory at all. Newman had to work with Wiseman, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and Faber to establish the Oratory in Birmingham, and its second house in London. The two would soon be independent of each other because of differences between Faber and Newman in their visions of what the Oratory should be and do.
Ffinch neglects, however, I think to highlight Newman's concern for the Catholic laity; he mentions that Newman gave some talks in 1851 at the Birmingham Oratory on Catholics in England at that time, but he does not name them in the text, as these were the lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England; nor does he highlight the purpose of the talks, to prepare the Little Brothers of the Oratory in Birmingham to defend what they believed in a hostile environment. This seemed a strange omission to me since the book's supposed terminus is Newman's Second Spring sermon in which he celebrates the renewal of Catholic life in England. Ffinch concludes the book, skipping over a few decades, with some later remarks by Cardinal Newman in 1880 about Catholics in England 30 years after the Restoration of the Hierarchy, the reason for that great 1852 sermon. His goals for the laity seem an essential part of that narrative that Ffinch omits from consideration.
Nevertheless, this a good introduction to Newman's life, up to the events of 1852. I'd recommend the book, provisionally, within its limitations.
Image Credit: Public Domain (painter not identified)
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