St. John Henry Newman on Friendship

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“Be you perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48), Our Lord tells us in the Gospel.

As a keen student of the writers of antiquity, St. John Henry Newman had a great appreciation for the nobility of human virtues, which he saw very clearly in the literature and history of ancient Greece and Rome.

At the same time, the saints that he most admired—St. Paul, the ancient fathers, St. Francis de Sales, and his spiritual father St. Philip Neri, founder of the Oratory—could all be described as humanly attractive on account of their many virtues.

“So both in the secular and religious sense, Newman was educated and formed to appreciate the goodness of an integral human nature that grace could be called upon to perfect” (See John McCloskey, III, Newman: Laity, Priesthood, and Holiness).

He realized that all human virtue was the result of many years, not only of formation, but also of personal struggle on the part of the individual, in order to gain those good habits which could make sanctity an attractive way.

He wrote a definition of a gentleman, which in many ways describes the human qualities of the modern apostle.

“It is almost,” he says, “the definition of a gentleman that he never inflicts pain. … The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast—all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to put everyone at ease and at home.

“He has eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable illusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome” (John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University).

He proceeds with that particular definition. He extends himself quite extensively. And then he goes on to talk a lot about friendship.

“His ideal of the gentleman is in a sense a look at the ordinary and perhaps the most effective means by which the layperson shares their love of God with others, by the apostolate of personal influence, or friendship” (John McCloskey III, “The apostolate of personal influence in the work of Cardinal Newman,” Annales Theologici, 1990).

Newman himself had an extraordinary gift for friendship, which often translated itself into leadership.

He had an even temperament that was pleasant and winning, but at the same time was prone to occasional moodiness or to what some might call over-sensitivity. Most people would not have described him as an extrovert or lighthearted, which makes his influence all the more mysterious.

But if you look at the many volumes of letters and diaries that he wrote and that he kept, the index of names in his autobiographical works, you can see that he shared deep friendships with hundreds of people throughout his life. His personal influence was exerted powerfully to the millions of persons who have read his works, now who have been hypnotized by his holy spell.

Rare is the English or American intellectual convert to Catholicism during the last 150 years who has not given a large share of the credit for their conversion to Newman's influence. He truly speaks heart to heart, as his motto says, cor ad cor loquitur.

When speaking of Newman, we're dealing with a powerful personality, a religious genius whose virtues have already been recognized by the Church. A contemporary bishop of his, his own bishop for a long time, used to say, “There is a saint in that man” (William Bernard Ullathorne, Letters of Archbishop Ullathorne).

This ideal forms the basis of Newman's conception of the integrated personalities of the saints, which were a determining factor in their attractiveness and heightened their personal influence on others. In other words, their human virtues.

He himself practiced very much what he recommended to others. He had a gift for friendship that began with those about him at school and extended through correspondence to at least many hundreds of others.

You can see from his writings how many of those friendships lasted through the decades and were only cut short by death. His loyalty to his friends extended beyond the grave.

He kept a meticulous list of deceased friends and remembered them frequently in his daily celebration of the Mass, particularly on their anniversaries.

He extolled in many ways the different apostolates that were carried out by many religious congregations and supernatural families in the Church, and also the initiatives of the laity.

But he always insisted that at the root of it all, there must be personal holiness.

He would have understood very clearly the centrality of the need to make a ‘sincere gift of self,’ a term that devo II was to use over a century later very frequently.

He would have understood that that “sincere gift of self” (John Paul II, Letter to Families, Point 11, February 2, 1994) was very necessary in order to effect the new evangelization that later Pope John Paul was to speak about so much.

This task has to principally be taken on by the Catholic layperson, the whole person: well-formed and totally faithful to the teaching authority of the Church, devout, hardworking, firmly centered in the family, cultured according to his circumstances, and educated in virtue with a great desire to share his faith with others, principally through friendship.

As a Catholic priest, Newman was noted for his love of the Mass and for his devotion to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

He said in one of his writings, “To me nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling, so overwhelming as the Mass, said as it is among us. I could attend Masses forever, and not be tired. It is not a mere form of words—it is a great action, the greatest action that can be on earth. He becomes present on the altar in flesh and blood, before whom the angels bow and devils tremble” (J. H. Newman, Loss and Gain).

In his priestly life, Newman spent hours each week over the course of decades at the Birmingham Oratory hearing confessions.

He wrote, “If there is a heavenly idea in the Catholic Church, looking at it simply as an idea, surely, next after the Blessed Sacrament, Confession is such. And such it is ever found in fact—the very act of kneeling, the low and contrite voice, the sign of the cross hanging, so to say, over the head bowed low, and the words of peace and blessing.

“What a soothing charm is there, which the world can neither give nor take away! What piercing, heart-subduing tranquility, provoking tears of joy, is poured out almost substantially and physically upon the soul, the oil of gladness, as Scripture calls it, when at length the penitent rises, his God reconciled to him, his sins rolled away forever! This is Confession as it is in fact” (J. H. Newman, Present Position of Catholics).

Newman's preaching in Mass, both as an Anglican and also as a Catholic was simple in style, content, and the impression that he left on his hearers.

Often he expressed the most profound in English of the 19th century, producing innumerable conversions and changes of heart. Short of the Fathers of the Church, or perhaps [Bishop Jacques Bénigne] Bossuet, it's hard to think of any man who had a better sense of the proper use of Scripture in preaching, anticipating in many ways the new emphasis on Scriptural preaching, put forth by the Church in the Second Vatican Council.

Newman was a confessor and spiritual director to hundreds of people in the course of his life. Much of his priestly work had to do with the poor people of Birmingham, ignorant and in some cases, diseased.

He wrote, “No state of things comes amiss to a Catholic priest; he always has a work to do, and a harvest to reap. … The disease is sin; all men have sinned; all men need a recovery in Christ; to all must that recovery be preached and dispensed.

“If then there be a preacher and dispenser of recovery, sent from God, that messenger must speak, not to one, but to all; he must be suited to all, he must have a mission to the whole race of Adam, and be cognizable by every individual of it.

“I do not mean that he must persuade all and prevail with all—for that depends on the will of each; but he must show his capabilities for converting all by actually converting some of every time, and every place, and every rank, and every age of life, and every character of mind” (J. H. Newman, Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations).

At the end of his very long life. Newman was able to look back over the decades and realize the prophetic truth, in his case, of some words that he had written a long time previously as a young Anglican clergyman.

He wrote, “So again they who enter Holy Orders promise they know not what, engage themselves they know not how deeply, debar themselves of the world's ways they know not how intimately, find perchance they must cut off from them the right hand, sacrifice the desire of their eyes and the stirring of their hearts at the foot of the Cross, while they thought, in their simplicity, they were but choosing the quiet easy life of ‘plain men dwelling in tents’” (Gen. 25:27; J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons).

Newman rejects wholeheartedly both a self-appointed priesthood not proceeding directly through the apostolic succession and the priesthood whereby religion and its ministers have become an appendage of the state, as in the Anglican Church.

He had the highest estimation of the dignity of the priesthood, but at the same time realized the frailty of the men called to that high office.

He writes about this perhaps most completely in one of his revealing sermons of the priesthood where he talks about “Men, not Angels, the Priests of the Gospel” (J. H. Newman, Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations).

His desire for the priesthood and the laity was that each person would live up to the privilege and the duty of the high calling of being a Christian. No one who approaches the writings of Newman can be left unchallenged in bettering their relationships with God and with their neighbor.

At the heart of his message for today's Catholics is very much the sense of personal vocation. He writes, “God has created me to do him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another.

“I have my mission—I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for nothing, I shall do good. I shall do his work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep his commandments and serve him in my calling” (J. H. Newman, Prayers, Verses, Devotions).

The miracle that was used for the beatification of Cardinal Newman was the miraculous recovery from chronic back pain of an American seminarian in the South Shore of Boston.

He submitted his miracle to the office of the cause of postulation and it was eventually approved by the Church.

As we look to the future after the canonization of Cardinal Newman, we could pray that “one day he might be declared a Doctor of the Church—for his preaching, for his great works of theology, and also for the profound influence that he has had on the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and on so many souls” (John McCloskey, Heart Speaking to Heart, On the Influence of the John Henry Newman).

In 1990, the then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that Cardinal Newman had the chief characteristic of a Doctor of the Church: one who taught not only by word and thought but by the totality of his life.

Some authors have written about “The Spell of Newman.” He cast a spell on people. He was arguably the greatest English prose stylist ever, certainly of the Victorian era, and it's difficult to think of an author who has expressed their views more clearly. And what views!

“To read Newman is to encounter a holy soul, a powerful mind, providing deep theological and psychological insights” (Ibid.).

He has been widely accepted as the invisible expert behind the Second Vatican Council’s reconsideration of the role of the laity in the Church—pretty much a precursor of all the teachings of the founder of Opus Dei.

When he was alive, some people in the church misinterpreted Newman's words and writings. They looked upon him as a dangerous liberal because of his insistence on the role of the laity in the Church.

But we're reminded that there is one vocation to which we're all called: the vocation of friendship by which we influence others, thus bringing them closer to Christ and His Church. Because it's universal, that role is not restricted to the clergy.

Any consideration of the life of Newman has to lead us to look again at our own personal apostolate of friendship and confidence, to look at his example that God has given to us in the course of his life of how he kept the contact warm. He kept up with his friends.

The equivalent nowadays might be to have phone numbers, WhatsApp groups, and emails, so that with the press of a button, we can send them good things, or find out how they are, or where they are, or what they’re up to, so that we prove to our friends, with our constancy and the warmth of our friendship, that we are truly their friends—someone they can always turn to, that they can rely on; someone who thinks about them, prays for them, looks after them; in other words, who loves them and who wants to show the authenticity of that love by trying to make sure that they get to heaven.

All those ideas of Newman seem very normal to us today. We're very well-versed in these ideas. But it was a dramatic contrast with the clericalism of his day, which tended to see all matters of the faith as the domain of the clergy, with the laity serving the completely subservient role of obedient followers.

His desire, and what his whole ministry tried to bring about, was an intelligent well-instructed laity. Newman realized that the laity have always been the measure of the Catholic spirit in every day and age.

His ideal of an educated well-formed layperson—a layperson who knows their faith and who is completely faithful to the Magisterium of the Church—was very much the idea that prefigured the renewed emphasis on the laity in the Second Vatican Council.

It also prefigured the call of Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul and Pope Francis for a new evangelization, with lay people and clergy working together to advance Christ’s Church.

It was an interesting detail of Divine Providence that the one called to beatify Cardinal Newman was Pope Benedict, the German cardinal who became Pope.

During the time of Pope Benedict, it became customary for the Prefect for the Cause of the Beatification of Saints to be the one to perform the ceremony of beatification. But in Newman's case, Pope Benedict wanted to make an exception.

He wanted himself to be the one to beatify a person to whom he had great esteem, reverence, and gratitude. Pope Benedict went all the way to the United Kingdom and to Birmingham to beatify Cardinal Newman.

Just think about that for a moment: the German Pope goes to the United Kingdom. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the very day which was chosen for the beatification was the day that commemorated The Battle of Britain, when Nazi Germany tried to attack the United Kingdom.

Here you have the German Pope on English soil on this particular day, having to perform the ceremony. In his homily, he said some beautiful things that sort of foretold his ability to handle that particular moment, which could have been a bit difficult.

He said, “This Sunday also marks a significant moment in the life of the British nation, as it is the day chosen to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

“For me, as one who lived and suffered through the dark days of the Nazi regime in Germany, it is deeply moving to be here with you on this occasion, and to recall how many of your fellow citizens sacrificed their lives, courageously resisting the forces of that evil ideology” (Benedict XVI, Homily on the Beatification of John H. Newman, September 19, 2010).

Notice how Pope Benedict very cleverly captures the hearts of every Englishman and every person of goodwill all over the world.

He said, “My thoughts go in particular to nearby Coventry, which suffered such heavy bombardment and massive loss of life in November 1940” (Ibid.).

He goes out to embrace this particular situation in this difficult moment in the lives of the British nation, and of so many minds and hearts of people present and following the ceremony who may have lost loved ones in that conflict.

He said, “Seventy years later, we recall with shame and horror the dreadful toll of death and destruction that war brings in its wake, and we renew our resolve to work for peace and reconciliation wherever the threat of conflict looms.

“Yet there is another, more joyful reason, why this is an auspicious day for Great Britain, for the Midlands, and for Birmingham. It is the day that sees Cardinal John Henry Newman formally raised to the altars and declared Blessed” (Ibid.).

It is about a beautiful way in which Pope Benedict lifts those hearts that might be saddened or broken in remembrance of the things gone by, and lifts them up onto a whole new supernatural plane with the joy of this auspicious day, with the great figure of Newman as we look to the future.

He said, “Cardinal Newman’s motto, ‘Heart speaks unto heart,’ gives us an insight into his understanding of the Christian life as a call to holiness, experienced as the profound desire of the human heart to enter into intimate communion with the Heart of God. … Today’s Gospel tells us that no one can be the servant of two masters (cf. Lk 16:13), and [Blessed] John Henry’s teaching on prayer explains how the faithful Christian is definitively taken into the service of the one true Master, who alone has a claim on our unconditional devotion” (Ibid.).

In 1851, Newman went to Dublin in Ireland at the invitation of the Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin Paul Cullen and the bishops of Ireland to be rector of the first Catholic University. He was rector there from 1851 to 1858.

Bear in mind there had been no Catholic education for 300 years in Ireland. There were two Protestant universities, but no Catholic one. This was a whole new beginning.

Newman took on this role with enthusiasm. One of his first actions in this new role was to deliver lectures in a theater which is now called the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin on five consecutive Mondays during May and June in 1852.

When they were later published, those lectures formed part of the ‘Discourses’ of his book The Idea of a University, for which Newman is famous.

At the time Irish secondary schools were not producing sufficient numbers of students qualified to attend the university, and to make matters worse for Newman's university, its degrees were not recognized by the state.

The university degrees of the two other universities, Trinity and Queen’s in Dublin and in Belfast, were. His university had no state funding.

During his tenure, he was committed to recruiting educated laity to the teaching staff of the university, saying the Church would look foolish without them.

Notice his emphasis on educated laity. He didn't just want priests or bishops lecturing at the university. He recognized the need for professional schools within the university.

He established the Catholic University Medical School. He proposed a Faculty of Law, appointed a Professor of Engineering, and understanding the importance of a university to the wider community.

Another milestone of Newman's was his introduction of the first evening lectures for students who were employed during the day.

However, regardless of all these many accomplishments, after his resignation as rector of the university, he felt a sense of failure, frustrated that he didn't meet his and Cardinal Cullen’s objective of creating the intellectual headquarters for Catholics of the English-speaking world.

However, as University College Dublin has evolved, the name of Newman has never been forgotten. With a great sense of indebtedness to him, which is often gratefully and proudly recalled, we can look to the life of Newman as we look to the future centuries as one of the greatest figures of the past centuries.

He has blazed a trail, opened horizons and milestones: the education of the laity, the sanctification of the laity, the importance of the apostolate of friendship and confidence, the evangelization of culture.

We can ask St. John Henry Newman to help us in all those initiatives and endeavors that we try to put into practice.

Our Lady, Queen of all the Saints, will watch over us always.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW