1 Why did Newman become a Catholic? A review of his Apologia Pro Vita Sua - Peter Dobbing – 10.01.

04

CTC401: Catholic Identity and Its Main Themes

Assessment Task 2 (Essay/Book Review)

Why did Newman become a Catholic? A review of Newman’s Apologia

Pro Vita Sua

John Henry Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church on 9th
October 1845. His Apologia Pro Vita Sua1 was produced in just over two
months in 1864. Newman was a prolific and industrious writer with a masterly
command of prose. He was more than able to communicate persuasively and
elegantly on any issue that mattered to him. So why did interested parties
have to wait nearly twenty years for a full account of his conversion? There
are two answers, one that refers to events in Newman’s life in the 1860’s and
the other that relates to an inner necessity to explain himself fully and
honestly, both to a generally uncomprehending and distrustful public, and, just
as importantly, to himself. Unlike the proximate causes, this inner necessity
required a period of gestation before it could emerge into his consciousness
and become the principal motive for his self-explanation.

The proximate causes are not, however, without interest or relevance.

Newman once joked that the vicissitudes of his career could almost be
marked out in decades2. He barely scraped through Trinity with a third in
1820. He had been forced out of his Oriel tutorship in 1830. ‘Then again I set
to work and by 1840 had become somebody once more, when on February
27, 1841, [Tract] Number 90 was attacked, and I fell down again.’ In 1850 he
became a Roman DD but in 1851 became embroiled in the Achilli court case
that caused much personal anxiety. He was not altogether accurate in saying
that, in the 1860’s, he would be ‘had up’ before Rome, but that decade was to

1
John Henry Newman: Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Penguin Classics 1994)
2
See Sheridan Gilley: Newman and his Age (Darton Longman & Todd 2003) p. 317
2 Why did Newman become a Catholic? A review of his Apologia Pro Vita Sua - Peter Dobbing – 10.01.04

prove an extremely trying period for him, indeed one that would bring him to
the brink of a breakdown.

The caricature of Newman drawn by Punch magazine was of a slippery

Roman cleric, expert in all the requisite skills of equivocation and verbal
dexterity. Certainly his conversion had cost him his good standing among
many reputable Anglicans who regarded him as either calculating or
profoundly deluded. What is more, his reception by Catholics, with a few
notable exceptions, had been generally cool and occasionally distrustful and
even hostile. By the 1860’s rumours were rife that Newman was on the point
of returning to the Anglican Church. In all honesty Newman had written that
‘as a Protestant, I felt my religion dreary, but not my life – but, as a Catholic,
my life dreary, not my religion’.3 Newman’s search for a new sort of via media
between anti-authoritarian elements in the English Catholic Church and the
Ultramontaneism espoused by so many in the hierarchy made him vulnerable
to censure and put him outside the mainstream. Other relevant factors
contributing to Newman’s eventual decision to publish an autobiographical
self-explanation would include the bad odour that remained from the failure to
establish an Irish university, the frustration of his attempt to produce a new
English translation of the Bible for Catholics, his then controversial view that
‘the divine tradition committed to the infallible Church was proclaimed and
maintained far more by the faithful than by the Episcopate’ 4 and his
comments on the Catholic Church in Latin countries that managed to upset
both the Church of England and the Catholic Church simultaneously. Once
the problematic character for Newman of this 1860’s context is made explicit
then what is usually referred to as the main stimulus for the Apologia, namely
Charles Kingsley’s jibe in Macmillan’s Magazine that ‘Truth … had never been
a virtue of the Roman clergy’5 can be seen as the final trigger that propelled
Newman into a response that was polemical but essentially deeply humane.
The Apologia, however, is much much more than a clever riposte by a

3
Henry Tristram (ed.), John Henry Newman: Autobiographical Writings (New York, 1957),
p254
4
John Coulson (ed.), On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine (London, 1961) pp 75-
76
5
See JH Newman: ApologiaPro Vita Sua (Collins, Fontana 1959) p14
3 Why did Newman become a Catholic? A review of his Apologia Pro Vita Sua - Peter Dobbing – 10.01.04

beleaguered Catholic cleric to his critics. Chadwick writes ‘[Newman] needed

to explain himself to himself; to try to understand what happened, and how it
happened, at Littlemore on 9th October 1845. And he had the occasion to set
the image of the Church of Rome in a light new to British history since the
Reformation.’ 6 The Apologia succeeded in striking a particularly consonant
chord in the religious sensibilities of the nation. In the pages of this work was
recounted the journey of a Christian soul following with aid of the kindly light
of conscience the path of truth wherever it led. This was no clever justification
of a conversion to a faith to which the author had always been committed. ‘For
the first time in English history’ Chadwick writes, ‘a Roman Catholic priest
rejoiced publicly in many of the truths taught by Protestants’.7

Newman once wrote ‘I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough
for me’ 8 Newman’s conversion was not a Damascene moment that occurred
on an October morning at Littlemore. The Apologia suggests that Newman’s
life was a gradual and painful working out of the implications for faith and
belief of a realisation that came into focus in his late teenage years that there
were ‘two and only two absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself
and my Creator’.9 Much later, in the narrative leading up to the account of his
reception at Littlemore, Newman affirms that ‘I am a Catholic by virtue of my
believing in a God; and if I am asked why I believe in a God, I answer that it is
because I believe in myself, for I feel it is impossible to believe in my own
existence … without believing also in the existence of Him who lives … in my
conscience’. 10

Newman’s early Calvinism impressed upon him the importance of dogma to

the Christian faith, an issue of the most critical importance during the
Tractarian period and during the time of his gradual conversion to Roman
Catholicism. Influenced by the Provost of Oriel, Dr Edward Hawkins, Newman
moved away decisively from Calvinism by accepting that baptismal

6
Owen Chadwick: Newman (OUP 1983) p.60
7
Op. cit p. 62
8
From his hymn: Lead, kindly Light.
9
Apologia (Penguin edition) p. 25
10
Apologia (Penguin edition) p.182
4 Why did Newman become a Catholic? A review of his Apologia Pro Vita Sua - Peter Dobbing – 10.01.04

regeneration requires effort on the part of the baptised in order for that person
to remain in a state of grace. For Newman, the Church of England with its
established, dogmatic foundation (including the doctrine of Tradition, also
learned from Hawkins11), its skilled and persuasive exponents (including the
Oriel Fellow William James who taught Newman about the Apostolic
Succession, Bishop Joseph Butler (1692-1752) who wrote on the visible
Church and whose Analogy was a major influence on Newman’s own Essay
on Development and Grammar of Assent and the Oxford don Dr Whately who
helped to shape Newman’s anti-Erastian views), its emphasis on the
sacraments and its English distrust of excessive emotionalism, was the
natural choice of spiritual home for this stage of his religious development.
Newman was ordained a priest in 1824 and in 1828 was appointed Vicar of St
Mary’s, the university church of Oxford.

In the Long Vacation of 1828 Newman decided to read the works of the major
Church Fathers ‘beginning with St Ignatius’ 12. Later he began work on a
history of the principal Church Councils that eventually appeared under the
title of The Arians of the Fourth Century. In the course of his reading and
studies he became convinced that ‘Antiquity was the true exponent of the
doctrines of Christianity’ 13 The Church of England, pulled in one direction by
the doctrinal extremes of evangelical Protestantism and in another by the
Erastian forces of liberalism was in need, Newman believed, of a ‘second
reformation’ 14 and it was Antiquity that would provide the inspiration and the
direction: ‘With the Establishment thus divided and threatened … I compared
that fresh vigorous Power of which I was reading in the first centuries. In her
triumphant zeal … I recognised the movement of my Spiritual Mother’ 15

Following a trip to Italy in 1832, Newman returned home and with great
alacrity and some trepidation abandoned himself to his divine mission of
restoring the Primitive Church in England. On Sunday, July 14th 1833, John

11
Apologia p 29
12
Apologia p 43
13
Apologia p 43
14
Apologia p 47
15
Apologia p 47
5 Why did Newman become a Catholic? A review of his Apologia Pro Vita Sua - Peter Dobbing – 10.01.04

Keble preached a sermon on ‘National Apostasy’ in Oxford, advocating a

return to the dogmas of the Primitive Church, thus marking the beginning of
the Oxford Movement. The central plank of this ‘second reformation’ would be
the re-establishment of an Anglican Via Media that was firmly rooted in the
dogmas and doctrines of the Primitive Church. Newman concedes that the
Via Media doctrine had already been applied to the Anglican system by many
writers of repute. 16 The essence of the Via Media was that Anglicanism stood
in the orthodox middle ground between the heresies of the Protestant
reformers and the excrescences on primitive truth that characterised the
teachings of the Roman Church. Newman supported this position until 1839
when he came across an article by the catholic Dr Wiseman in the Dublin
Review that had a seismic effect on his confidence in the Via Media. In the
article St Augustine is quoted as writing in reference to the fourth century
Donatists in Africa, a group that created a schism in the African Church.
Newman said the phrase securus judicat orbis terrarum (which may be
interpreted ‘Catholic consent is the judge of controversy’) ‘kept ringing in my
ears’ 17 . He understood this to mean that only a ‘deliberate judgement, in
which the whole Church at length rests and acquiesces, is an infallible
prescription and a final sentence against such portions of it as protest and
secede’. 18 This applied not only to the Donatists but to the Anglicans as well.
As far as Newman was concerned, the Via Media was ‘absolutely
pulverized’.19

Newman’s faith in Anglicanism had been shaken to the foundations, but he

was not about to head, Pied Piper style, a mass exodus from Canterbury to
Rome. Indeed, it was to reassure some of his more anxious disciples in the
latter stages of convertitis that he composed his most well-known and final
Tract 90. As he wrote ‘I had been enjoined to keep [Anglicans favourable to
Rome] straight, and I wished to do so; but their tangible difficulty was
subscription to the [39] Articles; and thus the questions of the Articles came

16
See Apologia p 76 and Richard Hooker’s Via Media Doctrine of Scripture and Tradtion – a
paper by Lee W Gibbs in the Harvard Theological Review, April, 2002.
17
Apologia p 115
18
Apologia p 115
19
Apologia p 116
6 Why did Newman become a Catholic? A review of his Apologia Pro Vita Sua - Peter Dobbing – 10.01.04

before me … ‘How can you manage to sign the Articles? They are directly
against Rome.’ 20 In studying the Articles Newman concluded that they were
‘evidently framed on the principle of leaving open large questions on which
the controversy hinges. They state broadly extreme truths, and are silent
about their adjustment.’ 21 He concluded that the prevalent Protestant
interpretation was not the only valid one and that the polemical Articles were
largely concerned with ‘Romish’ notions – the popular corruptions of Catholic
doctrines – and not with formal doctrines. The Anglican Church had split from
Rome primarily in response to these abuses and not because of any
fundamental disagreement with the authentic Roman Church. Needless to
say, this interpretation was greeted with consternation and condemnation by
many members of the Established Church.

Now that the last remaining defence of the Via Media had broken down,
Newman was left with little choice other than to withdraw from the Anglican
community. He retreated, along with a few disciples, to Littlemore near
Oxford. While there, he experienced yet another blow that completely
shattered his faith in the Anglican Church. In studying the history of the Arians
he saw a clear parallel with the Church of his own time, identifying the Arians
with the Protestants, the semi-Arians with the Anglicans and Rome with the
Catholic Church. 22 The similarities were all the more conspicuous because
the Arians had proposed their own Via Media referring themselves back to
Tradition and Antiquity rather than to Catholicism. Newman decided to deal
with the issue of Roman doctrinal excrescences by writing on the subject at
length in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Any final
hesitations about joining the Catholic Church were overcome while he wrote:
‘as I advanced, my difficulties so cleared away that I ceased to speak of ‘the
Roman Catholics’ and boldly called them Catholics. Before I got to the end, I
was resolved to be received …’ 23

20
Apologia p 84
21
Apologia p 91
22
See Apologia p 134
23
Apologia p 211
7 Why did Newman become a Catholic? A review of his Apologia Pro Vita Sua - Peter Dobbing – 10.01.04

Whatever the British public may have thought about Newman, it was clear
from the Apologia that his conversion was the act of a man of the highest
integrity who, like one of his childhood heroes, Thomas Scott, ‘followed truth
wherever it led him’ 24. His journey in search of the kindly light of truth, and his
capacity to communicate this with honesty and sensitivity, touched the hearts
of many of his own people, irrespective of denominational background.

2044 words

BIBLIOGRAPHY

John Henry Newman: Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Penguin 1994)

John Henry Newman: Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Collins 1962)
Sheridan Gilley: Newman and his Age (DLT 2003)
Owen Chadwick: Newman (OUP 1983)
Hallie Riedel: A lover of Truth – the story of John Henry Newman, from The
Word Among Us (www.wau.org/about/authors/riedel1.html)
John Henry Newman from the Online Catholic Encyclopaedia.
Michael Davies: Why John Henry Newman converted to Catholicism from
AD2000 Vol 14 No 4 (May 2001) p 10
Adam Parod: The Conversion of John Henry Newman from Religious Studies
347 – see www.newmanfoundation.org/institute/relst347/papers/parod
Lee W Gibbs: Richard Hooker’s Via Media Doctrine of Scripture and Tradition
– Harvard Theological Review, April 2002.
Tristram Hunt: Cardinal Spin – review of John Henry Newman: The Challenge
to Evangelical Religion by Frank M Turner, published in The Guardian,
Saturday January 4th 2003.

24
Apologia p 26
8 Why did Newman become a Catholic? A review of his Apologia Pro Vita Sua - Peter Dobbing – 10.01.04