The Church is ever militant; sometimes she gains, sometimes she loses; and more often she is at once gaining and losing in different parts of her territory. What is ecclesiastical history but a record of the ever-doubtful fortune of the battle, though its issue is not doubtful? Scarcely are we singing Te Deum, when we have to turn to our Misereres; scarcely are we in peace, when we are in persecution; scarcely have we gained a triumph, when we are visited by a scandal. Nay, we make progress by means of reverses; our griefs are our consolations; we lose Stephen to gain Paul, and Matthias replaces the traitor Judas.
These words of St. John Henry Newman introduce a reflection on the fourth-century Church Fathers and exemplify an abiding theme in the saint’s life and work: the interplay of grief and consolation, of darkness and light, guided by a plan not our own.
I had the great honor of being asked in 2016 by Rev. John I. Jenkins, CSC, ’76, ’78M.A., to take up the invitation of the Archdiocese of Dublin to create a center for faith and reason at Newman University Church on St. Stephen’s Green. The Notre Dame-Newman Centre for Faith and Reason, now directed by Rev. Gary Chamberland, CSC, ’84, continues its work of presenting the faith in all its glory through liturgy, lectures, music and poetry in what we hope is a fitting reflection of Newman’s legacy. This July, the Vatican announced that Newman will be formally declared a doctor of the Church, further confirming the enduring value of his many works of preaching, prayer,
poetry, history, philosophy and theology.
Notre Dame’s center is housed in a church of Newman’s design that embodies this central theme: one enters through a spare, narrow atrium into a dim rear of the Church under the choir loft. Only upon passing into the full nave is one able to behold the vibrant decorations of marble, mosaic, gold and green representing Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, great saints of Ireland, and scenes from the ministry of St. Peter and St. Paul that Newman chose to highlight in this church. Any pilgrim slipping into the church even for a quick peek experiences this move from darkness into wondrous light.
In a broader sense, this beautiful, quirky little church represents loss and gain for the universal Church. It exists because Newman was invited to found a Catholic University of Ireland. The University project failed, but the chapel he designed continues to host vibrant liturgies, many baptisms and weddings, gorgeous choral music and profound lectures. Human plans were foiled, but grace abounds nonetheless.
Newman’s professional life could fairly be described as a series of spectacular, inspiring failures. Prior to his becoming Catholic, he was a leader of the Oxford Movement, an effort to reform Anglicanism as a bridge between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. He left the movement and the Anglican communion, but his writings along the way remain invaluable. There is no “Catholic University of Ireland,” but we have The Idea of the University, an enduring classic first delivered as lectures in Dublin to support the project. Other projects in Britain were beset by struggle and failure as well. One scholar has described Newman as having had a “reverse Midas touch,” adding that “hardly anyone today thinks of Newman as anything but a rousing success story.” Advance and retreat, loss and gain.
To declare Newman a doctor of the Church is to commend his works to the faithful as sources of insight, inspiration and instruction to illumine their life of faith. He left an extraordinary treasury of writings that challenged readers in his own day, that resist facile ideological categorization, and that ultimately led (along with his evident holiness) to his being named a cardinal, his being beatified and canonized, and now his being declared a doctor.
During my days in Dublin one of my great joys was opening up Newman’s sermons as I prepared my own. I would often head into the church to sit near the splendid Thomas Farrell bust of Newman that has adorned it since 1892 and marvel at the blessing of walking in the footsteps of this saint, and I always feel a special grace there, as I have when visiting Assisi or the Oratory of St. Joseph in Montreal where St. André Bessette, CSC, served. The reality of the saints is often palpable.
When I want to ground myself in Newman’s approach and find myself somehow sharing his path, I remember one simple, luminous phrase that he wrote in a period of darkness. In his early 30s, prior to becoming Catholic, Newman found himself sick and stranded in Sicily for several weeks, longing for England. He began visiting Catholic churches, where he found calm. When he finally managed to sail to Marseilles, he wrote “The Pillar of the Cloud,” a poem known to many as “Lead, Kindly Light.” There he humbly acknowledged and embraced our limited human vision, our incapacity to comprehend the whole, declaring: “I do not ask to see / the distant scene — one step enough for me.”
If a man possessed of Newman’s encyclopedic learning and prodigious gifts for prose, poetry and even church design could be satisfied to ask for just one step, we might hopefully, trustingly follow him through the gloom.
Father Bill Dailey, CSC, is the rector of Graham Family Hall and the Thomas More Fellow of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at Notre Dame. He is at work on a book about faith and reason.