‘It is very important to prepare spiritually for the beatification of Cardinal Newman and I think there are some very good ways of doing that. Trying to get to know him through some of his writing, for example. Now some of his works are quite demanding: the big books like The Idea of a University, The Dream of Gerontius or even his Parochial Sermons, for example. But there are lots of small books about Newman on the market, especially Newman’s prayer books. There is a new one – to pray some of Newman’s own prayers and own words. Newman always said that he prayed with a pen in his hand. He wrote lots of prayers for the use of the boys [he was the founder of The Oratory School, near Reading], and so they’re accessible.
‘In a sense he lays forth his own conscience, his own doubts, his own difficulties, his troubles, his sense of not always knowing where his life was going but trusting in Providence. So when you pray with Newman’s prayers it’s as if you’re entering Newman’s own soul and you find there that his problems are your problems. How, for example, do I know what God wants me to do? That’s such a common question for all of us. We hear all over the world that people don’t believe in God, but I don’t believe that. I don’t think people’s problem is believing in God. It’s more about how do we know about him? How do I know what he wants me to do? I don’t think people have doubts about believing in God, and I think Newman would have said that.
‘But we don’t know much about God really. We need the Church to teach us, because God reveals himself through the Church, through the Scriptures, through Tradition. That’s what Newman latched on to, by becoming a Catholic. When he was a young man he toyed with atheism. He read the writings of sceptics, but he then had an experience that converted him to belief in God and to a sense of a necessity for dogma, which is a very difficult word for today. But really what Newman meant was that it’s important that we know clear things about God, because if we don’t have some clear ideas about God, that affects how we relate and come to know him.
‘Well, he chose for his Cardinal’s motto Cor ad Cor Loquitur – heart speaks to heart. I think one of the things he meant by this is that it’s my heart speaking to God’s heart. At that first conversion at the age of fifteen, he had a profound conviction that there were only two luminously self-evident beings in the universe, himself and God. Which isn’t a denial of the rest of creation, but it’s a profound realization of the important relation between God’s heart and our own heart.
It is very important to prepare spiritually for the beatification of Cardinal Newman‘So on one level, heart speaks to heart is about the heart of God speaking to the heart of the individual Christian. But on another level, it’s about Newman’s profound conviction of how we convince people.
He is often presented as this great intellectual, which indeed he was; but he wasn’t a great intellectual in the sense that he believed that you can argue people into faith by reasoning alone. It was much more about personal conviction, about the culmination of probabilities, about kindness, about how we relate to each other, about witness, and he said you’ll never win people with syllogisms, but by heart speaking to heart.
‘Carnial Newman had a great devotion to St Francis de Sales and he gets the quote from St Francis de Sales. Newman had a great love of St Francis – his chapel here [at the Oratory, Birmingham] is dedicated to St Francis de Sales. St Francis de Sales knew people who had known St Philip Neri [who founded the first Oratory, a congregation of Catholic priests and lay-brothers who live together in a community bound together by no formal vows but only with the bond of charity]. Another thing about ‘heart to heart’ is that it’s a very Philippine motto. St Philip’s way of converting people was always through personal contact, through joy and kindness, and his heart was full of the Holy Spirit – so much that his heart was physically enlarged by it.
Cardinal Newman always said that he prayed with a pen in his hand‘A lot of intellectuals are interested in Newman, but I think once he’s prayed to and once his prayers are used in our Church, he takes on a more human dimension. His feast is always celebrated on 9 October, the anniversary of his reception into the Church. So hopefully he will start to become part of the furniture in our calendar. We are delighted to have an English saint. And of course, Newman is in a great tradition about English saints, about saints of conscience, saints who stand up and are counted and do the right thing. Like St Thomas Beckett who was a very worldly man, and in with the king, but as soon as he became bishop he said he must do the right thing and take his stand. He was a saint who died for conscience and for truth. Like St Thomas More and St John Fisher – they were men who had great careers but when the chips were down, they had to go first and foremost with their conscience, with the revelation they had received of God through the Church.
‘Cardinal Newman is exactly in this tradition, with his recognition that the Church is the authentic voice of God guiding him what to do. And that, of course, meant real pain, because you don’t always want to do what you’re told to do. And this links to Newman’s whole doctrine of conscience. Not my conscience first, then the Pope afterwards, as if somehow our consciences were sovereign, and anything our conscience tells us to do is going to be fine – because that’s not the case. It’s about who has the right to inform the conscience. Of course we believe that the Church and the Pope assist us in informing our conscience.
‘On the day he died in 1890 the streets of Birmingham were full of ordinary men and women expressing their heartfelt grief at the loss of such a wonderful priest, bishop and brother Christian. In the same way thousands upon thousands of people will not just be there when Pope Benedict beatifies Cardinal Newman but millions around the world will watch the event on TV. It will be a wonderful and joyous celebration and recognition of the heroic sanctity of this servant of God.
‘At the heart of Newman’s vision was how great, mysterious and glorious is the God and Father revealed by the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit which is why on September 19 we will all sing with heartfelt praise, “Praise to the holiest in the height”.
