Newman became the rector of the Catholic University of Ireland in 1851; first he opened the chapel for the university, Our Lady Seat of Wisdom in 1853; then the university opened for classes in 1854. Three years later, he resigned because the bishops of Ireland decided they really wanted a seminary for priests, not a university for laymen on the model of Oxford or Cambridge.
As Rev. Michael Sharkey explains:
The Irish bishops who had invited him were not yet ready for Newman's Idea of a University, which included appointing laymen to the professorships. In 1873 he recalled:
"One of the chief evils which I deplored in the management of the affairs of the University twenty years ago, was the resolute refusal with which my urgent representations ever met that the Catholic laity should be allowed to cooperate with the archbishops in the work. As far as I can see there are ecclesiastics all over Europe, whose policy is to keep the laity at arm's length, and hence the laity have been disgusted and become infidel, and only two parties exist, both ultras in opposite directions. I came away from Ireland with the distressing fear that in that Catholic country, in like manner, there was to be an antagonism, as time went on, between the hierarchy and the educated classes.
"You will be doing the greatest possible benefit to the Catholic cause all over the world, if you succeed in making the University a middle station at which clergy and laity can meet, so as to learn to understand, and to yield to each other—and from which, as from a common ground, they may act in union upon an age which is running into infidelity".
In 1859, Newman took over the editorship of The Rambler, a Catholic publication for and by the laity to save it from closure. As Father Paul Chavasse of the Birmingham, formerly postulator for Newman's Cause explains:
In May 1859 the first issue with Newman as editor was published. The magazines attitude was changed, and Newman published an apology for the previous criticism of the bishops but suggested that their Lordships really desire to know the opinion of the laity on subjects in which the laity are especially concerned. He added that if even in the preparation of a dogmatic definition, such as recently on that of the Immaculate Conception, the laity were consulted, how much more they should be in a practical matter that concerned them closely, such as education. A row developed, as some theologians, principally John Gillow of Ushaw College, Durham, thought Newman's language had implied too much to the role of the laity; and Dr. Ullathorne, Newman's bishop in Birmingham, asked him to give up the newly acquired editorship. Newman had one issue still in hand, that of July 1859, and he regarded it as his last remaining opportunity to explain both himself and the true place of the laity within the Church. He worked hard, his letters almost ceased, and in July there duly appeared On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine. What Newman taught in that article was to be taught in a more solemn manner some one hundred years later in the decrees of the Second Vatican Council. But in the Church of 1859 the reception to his words was very different, and eventually he was secretly delated to Rome for heresy by Bishop Brown of Newport. Early in 1860 Dr. Ullathorne informed Newman of this, and he at once offered to explain his writings in a Catholic sense. Due to a series of misunderstandings between Newman, Wiseman, and Manning, Rome gained the impression that Newman had refused to comply with the request. Much whispering against Newman in both Rome and London for years to come meant that his influence was both suspect and curtailed heavily. As John Coulson put it:
"His publication of this essay was an act of political suicide from which his career in the Church was never fully to recover; at one stroke he, whose reputation as the one honest broker between the extremes of English Catholic opinion had hitherto stood untarnished, gained the Popes personal displeasure, the reputation in Rome of being the most dangerous man in England, and a formal accusation of heresy proffered against him."
Newman had answered the charges of heresy but Bishop Ullathorne had not forwarded his answer to Rome! This was the cloud that hung over Newman for years.
Some of bishops and others in the newly formed hierarchy seemed to fear the laity or not understand us at all. Monsignor George Talbot wrote to Henry Manning, Archbishop of Westminster:
Even Newman's own bishop, Ullathorne, asked, "Who are the laity?" Newman reported that he "answered (not in these words) that the Church would look foolish without them". As if the church could be made up of only the ordained!
As Father Ian Ker explains in his book Newman on Vatican II, this is one of the ways that Newman anticipated the Second Vatican Council with its emphasis on holiness for all the baptized, not just the ordained or those who've taken religious vows, including the laity. The fact that the laity had a document dedicated to us and our in role the Church indicates that the bishops at Vatican II knew who they laity are and believed we have a mission beyond hunting, shooting, entertaining, praying, and paying.
