Focus: The Life and Legacy of John Henry Cardinal Newman

[Music] [Music] hello and welcome to the heart of the matter my name is father Daniel Siebert I am a priest of the Oxford oratory and today we're here for this week's program at little more Oxford in England little more of course is the place where John Henry Cardinal Newman lived in his last years as an Anglican clergyman and it was here at little more that he was received into the Catholic Church by blessed Dominic Barbary in 1845 Newman of course now that he is being beatified becomes the Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman and today we have three guests who are all devoted to Newman we have father Ian Cathy world-famous Newman scholar and biographer and also Brett Lockhart who was a former Presbyterian who after reading Newman became a Catholic he is a lawyer from Northern Ireland and finally sister Mary - aunt of the spiritual family of the work the sisters of the work in fact look after the college here at little more sir really sister Mary is our host as well as our guest she's going to talk to us also about Newman's holiness and about some of the ways in which Newman speaks to us today so first of all we turned to father Ian's father Ian's car tell us briefly why is it that Newman is such a significant person for the Church of today and give us a little flavor of his life and why he is important for people now well Newman was born in 1801 and died in 1890 so his life spanned almost entire century and sort saw many changes he was born into an ordinary Church of England home he came to Oxford and was elected fellow at Oriel College which was in the intellectual centre of the University and while there he pioneered in effect the Oxford tutorial system idea and the ideas of that for that eventually became his famous classic the idea of university he was also Victor of the University Church where his sermons electrified the undergraduates and graduate students at Oxford and he became one of the most famous preachers that the Church of England has ever boasted of he is the most important Anglican theologian since Richard Hooker he became a Catholic as you said in 1845 so half his life was spent in the Church ring on the other half in the Catholic Church as a Catholic theologian he is the most seminal Catholic theologian of the 19th century and certainly one of the great Catholic theologians of all times who whose ideas anticipated in important ways the teachings of the Second Vatican Council thank you so he died in 1890 and as you say spans the century and yet he also foresaw many of the things that happened today in terms of secularization liberalism and so on yes there's a very the striking sermon he preached in Birmingham in the 1860s where he said he addresses the seminarians and says you're going into world that would make even sent half in Asia as dizzy and he he was talking of course about that secularized world which were only begun to appear in his own time where Christians will be dealing not with pagans but with post Christians people who who had come from a Christian background but had now become secularized race striking sermon because we tend to think of the 19th century at a time when Christianity was still at the forefront of national life and yet from Newman's perspective it was a time when faith was ebbing away and when so many factors were actually diminishing the hold of Christianity on people's minds sister Mary you are a group of four sisters here live at little more and the sisters of the work had been here since which year 1986 1986 and so you've been looking after at the college and and stocking the library with all these books by and about Newman perhaps you could just tell us a little bit about what is the spiritual family of the work yes the spiritual family of the work is an international community which is recognized the church is a family of consecrated life of Pontifical right and God used a lady from Belgium mother Julia for haha as his instrument to bring a new carries them into the church the charism for our time and the spirit affirmative work consists of a priest community and a sister's community forming one family and having the task to reflect something of the church's the family of God and our vocation is a synthesis of contemporary event apostolic life with the aim of penetrating the world with the mystery of the church and that's why mother Julia found it appropriate that resistors in daily life wear ordinary clothes as of being to be able to be in the world but not off the world this is stressed very much so you're like the leaven hidden in in the world and then but that deep life of prayer happening anything because you have a choir habit try inhabit on the day when we consecrate ourselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in virginal laughs we receive this beautiful choir dress which expresses our consecrated life and we also receive a ring as an outward sign that we belong to Christ and where are you in the english-speaking world where do you have houses in England of course and in Ireland in the Diocese of Rafal and in the United States we have two houses right yeah thank you Brett welcome onto the program you you've come over from Belfast today that's right and you're somebody really comes perhaps from the religious world which Newman would have been familiar with because Newman in his youth was a Calvinist he at the age of 15 had his first conversion and came under the influence of schoolteacher Walter mayor's who was a very kind of ferocious Protestant in many ways well you come from a Presbyterian background but I started wouldn't describe myself as a ferocious Protestant yeah I came back I came from a fairly liberal presbyterian background but was introduced to the works of Newman essentially through the charismatic renewal which I was involved with in the 1980s and as a part of my my reading at that time I was introduced to Muriel Travers biography of Newman and that was the sort of 19 1986 and the beginnings of just the introduction to this marvelous figure who spawned the whole century and who had this great precedence and and knowledge of what may occur in the church and I think particularly spoke to someone from my background because of the journey that he had made and because of the patristic biblical emphasis that he would have had did that make you feel uncomfortable well it's in Northern Ireland it certainly would have made you feel very uncomfortable which is perhaps one of the reasons why it was about 12 years after reading Newman initially then I then eventually decided to come into the church and it's not as it's a decision in Northern Ireland that one has to take very seriously because there's all sorts of cultural implications for that kind of decision it's not something that many people do which is perhaps why I say that you're familiar with Newman's world because for him when he sat here writing letters to people in October 1845 he wrote letters to say I've been received into the one folder of the Redeemer and many of them never spoke to him again is that your experience well I think what I could identify with with with Newman was the fact that it was a real cost to him to make the decisions that he had and I think obviously people don't like you rocking the boat particularly in a situation where you're religious and cultural identity are so inextricably linked so that was one of the reasons that when I read so much of his writings and the letters in his correspondence with so many people Enquirer's that it had quite a profound impact on me but again it certainly was one of those I also liked was that every decision that he took he never took in hissed and he was very encouraging almost to take time and to wit and to think through and I think that was that was one thing human probably took as long as you did that's quite reassuring well we'll come back later to that I idea of numinous the letter writer and somebody who had an influence on so many people by his correspondence now Newman for his beatification of course the church demands that a miracle should be worked as kind of like the proof that a person is in heaven that they're able to intercede for us and to work some mighty sign and the miracle which has brought about Newman's beatification is the curing of a deacon from Boston Massachusetts of a very serious spinal disorder and that man a deacon Jack Sullivan was recently in England came here to little more on to Oxford and Birmingham where Newman lived as an orator Ian and will be seeing an interview with Deacon Sullivan later on Deacon Jack was watching EWTN when he first heard about Newman and he saw an interview with father Ian Carr and his fist that led him to pray to Newman and to ask him to heal him so father and how does it feel to be an instrument in bringing about a miracle is there something you do often well I'm trying to find out what the right a theological term for it is but it is so far discovered I don't like to say I'm the agent I think that would be presumptuous not to say well that's for Macias they have a wonderful word in Italian for the person who is cured at the miracle ATO so we can find some word for you.they instrumentals anything well I don't if I said on that program that Jack Sullivan was watching but I always used to say to people when at the end of talks people would always ask me why is that the founder of Opus Dei has been canonized and Newman hasn't and I always used to say well because the people who were interested in human as scholars and intellectuals who don't do necessarily do very much praying so what we got to have his people praying and so here we have this American who was not a scholar or intellectual who began to pray to newest Newman for his intercession and and the miracle has happened isn't that one of the things that Newman shows us that theology scholarship ought to be united with prayer because one of the things he criticized in the 19th century and Oxford University was that fragmentation of off scholarship very previously people started science and literature and languages and theology and there was no sense that knowledge had to be divided up well it has been said that Newman picked up where Saint Bernard left off at to say that he was very much like one of the fathers of the church he wasn't a professional theologian in the sense which we would understand that he his theology as you say of course it was always linked to a pastoral needs I mean he never sat down to write books just because he wants to write a book he wrote books for particular needs and occasions so he of course his studies were incredibly broad I mean when we look at his idea at the University and of course he was writing this for the Catholic University in Dublin which he was the first director of and the breadth of his knowledge of things like mathematics so Wood has down people who would specialized in theology today well because he never he didn't have a theology degree himself yeah he his degrees here in Oxford were in classics and mathematics so he was not in that and of course he always said he wasn't a professional theologian but as I said he is the most he's certainly one of the greatest Catholic theologians who's ever lived and of course the most important easily far and away the most important Protestant theological figure to come into the church since the Reformation so Newman's theology his religious writing was always for a pastoral reason well sister Mary you're here at little more Newman was the vicar here in his last month's us as an Anglican and you live in a place which was so important for Newman do you feel his presence here oh yes very much very much of course it's a great privilege to live here to pray in the chapel where he prayed and to you our walk every day the way in the place where he was and I think especially what is what strikes you here is there his pastoral love for the people he had that was also the reason why he he moved to the College because although he needed a place for prayer and reflection in order to know how his future would be whether he should join the Catholic Church or not he still wanted to live at a place where he could do pasture work and the people in little more they would they weren't the intellectuals of the University were they there was ordinary people in Mary just an ordinary English village very much though and he found it to school and clothe their children in the school and build him a church and so that's what one learns here that in the at the heart of Newman's being was this your love for Christ and the love for the souls and of course when he was ordained a deacon already in the Church of England he said yeah I know I have responsibility for souls until the end of my life and whatever he did what it was education work as a priest it had almost his pastor out what's always striking about Newman is his gift of friendship his care for souls was exercised not in a remote way and even in in the writings it's always for somebody or for some specific reason and the letters which I think had a great influence on you well what I think is amazing about his letters is the way that he keeps touch with people they go right back throughout his life and he's always there even though there was some who he was completely alienated from because they rejected what he had done it was the care and the consideration and the kindness that he showed in so many small ways to people that he'd known over decades when he came back to little more even as a cardinal he was asking after people who lived in the Anglican parish and kept in touch with them or remembered their mind at the end so Newman speaks to us again not as a remote figure but as somebody quite directly you know and also he although he was such a great intellectual person and endowed with so many gifts he was very ordinary in his way of holiness and he also tried to help other people not to look for God sort of outside the round of the day but to find him and holiness in the daily duties perhaps later on you can tell us about his short route to perfection but you've got a special way of getting Newman to speak to us now I think haven't you yes we have because when people come here that's the beautiful thing we try also to approach them in a personal way quadcore loquitur according Newman's motto and so we let Newman speak to them so please father have a look what you want to say - he was going to speak to us now and I think we're going to take a break now so perhaps at the after break we can find out when and I promise we don't know watch on these bits of pain unless they will say the same I think they're all different there so we'll find out after the break what does Newman have to say to us today because a saint is made a saint not for any kind of abstract reason but so he can make us holy in our lives today you welcome back we're here in little more Oxford in England and we're talking about John Henry Cardinal Newman well what has Newman to say to us we've each got a little message from him and I think we'll go to Bret what does Newman say to you today well remarkably other sites in the church the true life is offered in its fullness and very special for me because I remember one of my teachers used to say that he wanted me to remain as a presbyterian even though I was in my heart I felt Catholic and I said to him you can't be introduced to the history of the church or read the fathers of the church without questioning the nature of the church and that was very much at the heart of my own understanding of what Newman was pointing to did you read the aryans like Newman did by the Japanese yes I got through part of the aryans but I certainly was impressed it was this tremendous I think someone coming from my background having a kind of strong biblical tradition and the absolute emphasis that he had there in the plain and parochial sermons on Scripture the way that he expanded Scripture me it made someone like me feel very comfortable and allied I think much greater much greater ability to consider what he was saying so he spoke a language that you are yes exactly well sister Mary what have you got what is your message well his ignorance speaks very beautiful it was it to me and he says here oh he prays I place myself in your presence I adore you my Saviour I praise you and give you praise and I offer myself wholly to you the true bread of my soul and my everlasting joy and I think that that shows beautifully the core of Newman's being his love for God his love for prayer because prayer as a saint was the basis of his life and also thinking of his Catholic time his love for the Holy Eucharist because as a Catholic he's always said it was also my consolation my joy when he first became a Catholic and specialist friends all abandon him all a lot of them did and he said the one consolation being under the same roof as our Lord and it also shows us their way to holiness we find it through Christ through the Blessed Sacrament well father Ian what does Newman have to say to you well his salutary words to me this afternoon are wonderful and tenders the Providence of God how solicitous is his care of us and I suppose that's most famously put in his own words lead kinda light amid the encircling gloom 1-step enough and I like thinking and looking at those words I think to myself must have indeed Providence that took me on that very arduous journey from near Oxford to on Dale Alabama to do this program do you contact Sullivan's you didn't have quite the same experience as Newman when he was ill off Sicily I hope in 1833 I just had querulously in the aeroplane but Newman had real trials in his life I'm not saying that your trials aren't real but into the Achille trial well he had many trials and a lot least in his Catholic life I mean he had many trials in his Anglican life but certainly yes I mean he suffered a great deal and and in his own way of course he he is the first he will be the first saint or b.o.b artists not to be a martyr since the Reformation in this country yes there is a sense in which he also he was Araya Martin though his enemies didn't actually put him to death no they just attacked him in the newspapers and also foiled him and from works that he could have done and again there takes us back to Providence that he well he wants to set up an oratory here in Oxford and he was prevented by higher ecclesiastical authority that was providential or not well maybe who can say I mean it didn't happen in fact until a century after his death in 1990 that fathers came from the Birmingham oratory where Newman had lived and and founded our our house actually I have my own little quotation from Newman that I've been given is quite appropriate its own my Lord and Savior support me in your strong arms let your sweet mother be with me and whisper peace to me when I die smile upon me that I may receive the gift of perseverance and die as I desire to live in your faith and in your love well this idea of perseverance quite a good one for an orator e'en because we don't take vows but we set out to live in the same place for the whole of our lives and so we pray for perseverance every day because we say the only good orator ian's are dead oratory you only know you've persevered when you're on your deathbed numa's life was very long and he persevered and as he grew old he said I'm much more advice at my old Saints now that I'm old myself where did he get that that strength from sister Mary Christ yes but in his daily life what was it that sustained him in a concrete way well I think he had a very regular life in a sentence and so it's also been the lift yet little more he drew up a certain order for the day when to pray when to study when to have recreation time and he was very regular and yeah that helped him to persevere he was not the man of doing spontaneous things I imagine but you know to have clear aims and clear yeah you mentioned that simple way to holiness because no others one forwards way he says you won't be perfect all you have to do is to get up on time in the morning and go to bed on time one need not go out of the ordinary round of things in order to provide to find perfection so it's an accessible holiness it's something that we can and because it's so simple icing sometimes isn't it people even laugh and smile about it so when we tell people here about the short road of perfection where also prayer cuts which people can take with them well first they smile because they think it's oh you're funny but really if we try to do it we know it's hard enough so again you have Newman bringing in a great theological insights down to the level of the ordinary person and making it something that's that's real to them Brett when you encountered Newman you found him a voice that you recognized that that had resonances for you and how is your own experience like his well I think he had to deal with the fact that he was moving from a situation in in Oxford where he was very much a part of religiously speaking the establishment and he was extremely you know he was identified with it and he was a champion in fact through the Oxford movement of the Anglican Church and really speaking to his own his own church and trying to if you like bring them back to catholicity and to the roots of the church I think in terms of my own experience I was very much a part of and some way still I am very much a part of my own culture my own background your part of the establishment well you're a Queen's Counsel which is a senior barrister lawyer yes well exactly and to some extent though my colleagues have been actually very it's not something that I disseminate that widely but I think my colleagues many of them know about it and many of them know that I did it you certainly wouldn't do it for preferment now you wouldn't do it for advancement in your career because I think in Northern Ireland in particular the watchword is that you stay where you are and you don't rock the boat and there are lines which are drawn at Birth that you must not ever cross do you find actually that perhaps sometimes the reaction from Catholics might be more difficult yes I think because you are because I think when you make that transition you have got to consider carefully all of the doctrines you can't be Alucard about it you can't take some of the doctrines and say well you know I quite like that one but I really have problems with this and I think for many Catholics they are dealing in a post-christian world with some of the contradictions of the church and they're struggling with it and therefore someone like me can sometimes be one's own sign of contradiction because that's interesting so you think that a convert like yourself or like Newman can sometimes bring a sense of the church into the Catholic Church because you've actually made a decision you've recognized what the church is yeah well you know the cradle Catholic you're not someone who has grown up with it you therefore have had to make a deliberate decision and I for some Catholics they have find that quite difficult because they they want to ask me how do I deal with the usual questions that some of them some of them may have and I think from some of my own colleagues and my deep friends many Christian friends they struggled with the fact that I had if you like wrong strongly with them and in in movements and charismatic with euro and in our own churches and they felt they find it very difficult I think too that I would that I would make this further step did you get letters like Newman did yes I did letters difficult letters yes difficult letters written in love written with great care and concern but that they had to be responded to and to say look let us pull together those things that we can hold together but let's not go down the road of controversy too much because we will be we will be divided and because I'm not doing this for some whim or Caprice I'm doing it because in conscience and this is again another great word good that is conscience in in conscience I feel that I but I have come to believe something particularly about the Eucharist that I had known for years father in people who've suggested that Newman might be made a doctor of the church have suggested the title he might be given is a doctor of conscience what's so important about conscience for Newman well yes that's often being said unfortunately the lot of misunderstandings about what Newman meant by conscience and it's frequently said not I'm afraid in the Catholic press to that Newman thought that one could conscientiously dissent from church teachings which is not the case in his famous letter the Dukan or from the famous toast there I'll drink to my conscience first Pope but I'll drink to my conscience for all the pain yes he what he means is that that if the Pope were who look at a context if the Pope were to issue an order that you considered to be immoral you'd be justified and for a new autumn habló you'd be obliged to disappeared but Newman never said that you could dissipate church teachings conscientiously in other words your conscious could make you stricter it couldn't just let you off the hook in the way that sometimes what he said his teaching that was purely a directives given and he did he would have said of course directors from other superheroes to but he followed his own conscience at a cost didn't very much and I think that's also people recognized also they older he became and when he died so many newspapers wrote about him that he was a saint and they wrote for example that he was so unworldly even if they couldn't understand fully why he became a Catholic but they had understood that it was out of a pure motive out of sincerity and this they respected very much I think somebody like Brett can perhaps understand what Newman gave up he he was he was like a celebrity in Oxford he was the most famous member of the University probably at that time he had a great following he had the status and then he became a Catholic and he had to queue up with the school boys at Oscar to go to confession did you find it culturally very hard I think yes because if you're in Northern Ireland if you are part of say the Protestant tradition you grew up in state grammar schools you play rugby football you you know you have a very something numa never never know but you know that way that was certainly a large part of my life but I mean I think in fairness I think most of my friends and colleagues have been very generous about about what I have done I think a lot of them however don't particularly want to investigate it too closely and there are a few who really want to unpick exactly what I have done and I think one has to respect that and talk to people as as one does when they're interested but they aren't just in that point of conscience I think you know it's particularly important to understand what what human did say about conscience because it's almost become that he's been hijacked by people today who who see him as a kind of a charter for a relativist you know I can basically do what because my conscience is is first and foremost therefore if I've carefully considered something that's fine yeah and that was totally the inten but human has brought the good point by the they'll bro wonderful definition that where he says for a lot of people today conscience simply means being consistent with one soul yes whereas Costco for Californian mentor listening to not the voice of God because he he was who you might hear the voice wrongly but the echo of the voice of God was he was careful to say Pope Benedict spoke about a dictatorship of relativism doesn't it when he was first inaugurated as as Pope do you think that that he sees numinous as a voice that we need to hear in in to stand up against that dictatorship well I think so I think that's a very important point question vast because it's often said that Newman was the father of the Second Vatican Council he was the great theologian who anticipated many of the council's teachings but I think today what's also that was more important really is that he is also somebody a theologian who stood absolutely for what Pope Benedict the 16th is called the hermeneutic of continuity that's to say that the Second Vatican Council in particular must be interpreted in the light of the past in the light of in connection with the church's tradition part of the develop yes and not in rupture yeah and I think numerous whole sense of tradition his whole methodology as a as a fundamentally historical theologian is all about that and and he said at the time the first Vatican Council the church doesn't move at the pace of railroads this did this deep sense that yes there must be change and development of course he's known as the the great theologian of development the first all Catholic theology development starts from humans great book but he always saw of course that was development was necessary and important in order that the church might remain the same it wasn't the church might be different but in order for to retain its identity it had to change and develop you know that is the hermeneutic of continuity of course those railroads were either faster than than they are now probably northern Newman stood up all through his life as an Anglican and as a Catholic for the idea of the supernatural and the idea of that God was first and most important in human life a very beautiful word when he says you can work much better when you don't look for human applause so to happen what we do for God is the first and perhaps the fact that a miracle has come about at his intercession is important well we're going to take a break after the break we're going to see an interview I recorded my father Sebastian Jones at the Birmingham oratory with deacon Jack Sullivan telling us about the miracle that happened to him after seeing father Ian on television but even more importantly after praying to John Henry Cardinal Newman so we'll see that after a break you I welcome you here today to the library at the Berlin oratory it's with great delight I welcome Deacon Jack Sullivan here to the oratory the home of Carl Newman and to have an object to speak with him about the events and the impact of Carl Newman in his life Jack welcome to Birmingham my pleasure good to be here thank you Jack your healing is intimately united to the work on mission of EWTN because isn't it right that you were watching EWTN and you heard about Cardinal Newman when you were in so much suffering and pain with your back yes it was the program that I'm a frequent view of EWTN but in this particular instance of course I was told that I could not return to my my DIAC in the classes because of severity of my back condition as the matter of fact they the doctors told me that I had to undergo immediate surgery or the result would be paralysis and I was despondent I went home from the doctor's office and I turned on the television set and there was a program on EWTN that provoked my interest my particular interest and this was the program involving the the process of the beatification of cattle John Henry Newman and the host of the program was father Jay John makovski with the father Ian Kerr was a Newman expert from Oxford as the guest speaker and they went over Newman's life they talked about his problems they talked about a tremendous courage in the face of many afflictions and most interesting of all at the end of the program they put on the screen a it's a series of statements saying that if you received some divine favor as the result of your prayers to Cardinal Newman contact the postulate for the Newman Newman's cause and Birmingham England and it was the result of my watching the program on EWTN learning about the Newman experience from both father of McCloskey and phylla curl that I prayed to doin please condo Newman helped me to walk so that I could return to classes and be ordained I didn't ask for healing that would be too much just to be able to watch just to be able to return to classes the following morning I woke up pain-free pain-free without that program I wouldn't appraise at noon so it was the program through father Kerr father McCloskey they introduced me to Newman and it was Newman then introduced me to new life it's a wonderfully heartening account for all of us working for EWTN and for all those watching the program that the work of Mother Angelica has had an impact in an extraordinary markable way in your life through her own extraordinary vision of this television network I gather jack that you recently met father John Jay McCluskey and for the car who were on that famed program that you first heard about Carla Newman and started praying to him maybe you'd relate some of that to us what an exciting moment to meet these two priests last summer I've got a call this is father Polanski and I'd like to meet with you Jack I'm going to be in the your neighborhood we met at the retreat center in Pembroke and we had a wonderful day first we started off with lunch with he and a group of priests from all over the country they asked me to tell the story which I did of my healing so you didn't meet father Carl on that occasion no you met him last night for the first time I met him last night was so excited he's a wonderful person he's a great woman when a wonderful priest and of course in the the Newman actually yes without without Pia and it was so kind of him to to make himself available to say hello to me it'd been so much to me after you've been cured and you went to see the doctor who perform your surgery what was his reaction well I I met him after the the first healing after watching the EWTN program with Fido klasky and father Kerr and then saying the prayed in prayer to no one please kind of Newman helped me to walk so that I can return to classes the following day I woke up pain-free and I was that which enabled me to go back to classes to study both through the first and second semesters without any problems whatsoever my condition hadn't changed but yet I was symptom free no pain right after the last class the pain came back at that point I had an appointment with my surgeon and we had to arrange for a date sometime in the summertime of 2001 before I was scheduled to begin my fourth year jacqueline studies and I said to him doctor how can you account for the fact that I went eight months without any pain and he said I have no medical explanation for you no scientific explanation for you what all the cases that I've heard about or read about I've never seen a case like yours if you want an answer ask God and then and then with the second event the most dramatic event of course I was faced with the same problem I just came off surgery I was told that it would be months and months and months up to a year before I could recover sufficiently to go to my classes and I wouldn't be able to return in time then I said the same prayer the second time as I did the first a month before I was to return to classes please kind of move and help me to walk so then I can return to classes and be ordained and as I explained I went through the as a series of his incredible experiences and my post-op appointment which was about a month after I began my final year classes I asked the same question I had before now doctor how can you explained that five days after my surgery with all of the complications that I've had the intensity of the pain all of a sudden was the pain was gone the moment I said this prayer right the moment I got out of bed I was in agony and then the next moment I was totally pain-free how do you explain it is there any medical explanation I have to know and he said again Jack there's not only no medical explanation of scientific explanation for what you went through if you want an answer ask God now in the process of the Vatican investigation doctors were also employed both by the local Tribunal in Boston and doctors brought in by the Vatican specialists that went over all of the films all of the medical evidence all of the doctors statements and to a person they declared in view of the severity the problems that was the severity of the problems indicated by the milligrams the cat scans and various other radiation therapy devices that were applied to my situation they ruled unanimously that there was no medical possible medical explanation no scientific explanation for all of us and they concluded that what happened to me was not natural that I endured an experience that was not a natural one hmm a miracle in other words well that's step one step two is is it a miracle is that was it the result of my intercession of my prayers the Newman and Newman's intercession with God that was the theological these were theological questions that had to be answered and they addressed they were addressed by the theological insulters now this process is you know what I'll cook about eight years and it was constant and consistent that frequently I was asked to send the Congregation for the causes those things affidavits and answering questions that they had the most intricate questions that they had there was no stone unturned believe me so it's a rigorous process extremely so for those who would say that it's special Catholics doing a Catholic thing you you're saying it's a scientific process that is followed transparent but has to be we're talking about a worldly situation without a parent explanation you have to exhaust all of the possibilities the natural possibilities and having exhausted them and not coming up with an answer then our next question is there's a supernatural event but even so that has to be investigated its authenticity the results of it the effects of it the church is putting its seal on this and they're not the church is not going to do that unless there's certain in legal circles a judge can make a finding beyond a reasonable doubt but that is the requirement a very tips that stiff standard the make of finding beyond a reasonable doubt but even with that there's there can be some doubt but can be some doubt in the process of beatification of the same there can be utterly no doubt and to that extent it must be exhaustive Thank You Jay okay well there we are that was Jack Sullivan telling us about the miracle which has enabled John Henry Newman to be beatified and I think all of us except for Bret of met Jack Sullivan he was in England recently he came to London to Birmingham and to Oxford and why this miracle now and why miracles at all father Ian well Newman wrote a couple of very long essays on miracles as an Anglican makeup book of nearly 200 pages and when I met Jack Sullivan that evening in London before we both spoke at the london oratory and i was delighted instantly to discovery has an excellent sense of humor which is very new mania i said that the humanists Englund in one of those essays had said that miracles seem to accompany developments in in church doctrine can give an example well I think the example I gave earlier is a perfect one well let me give you another example first I think the apparitions had Lourdes four years after the definition of Immaculate Conception 1854 - a young peasant girl who didn't even know what the imagined conception was and all the miracles have followed on from that that evening when I met Jack Sullivan I said that I said that he'd that this surely at this miracle and Jack Sullivan I think would be the first to say he's not a scholar or an intellectual but he did he did some praying and he prayed to Newman Newman was a great believer in intercessory prayer so nothing he was nothing onion about that but I said I'm sure this miracle has happened at this point because we've we seen him as a father the Second Vatican Council but now I think he's going to be the great you can be great he is the great and I Benedict the sixteenth in Pope Benedict's insistence which is really the key note of his pontificate on what I call what he has called the hermeneutic of continuity interpreting the council's teachings in continuity rather than rupture with the past do you think a miracle comes in and supports us at a time that's difficult for the church as well it encourages our faith well obviously it does and I think also the miracle as it happened to Deacon Sullivan and the purity of intention he had that his prayer was really that he could become a that he could be all day in the Deacons so to serve the church to serve the church and of course Newman's life was to serve the church and to have this attitude of faith to discern in the church between the divine and the human element and give himself wholly to the service of the church and I think also it comes out from the interview you feel Deacon Sullivan wants to serve with what she has received and that's a message for us all missing the married dear cadet of course was a reform of the Second Vatican Council and I think Deacon Sullivan was was was asked when he was in London you know aren't you embarrassed and he gave a beautiful answer he said well then you know God has done this for me through Newman and how can I not want to share it and that idea of sharing his faith it is actually it's Newman all over isn't it I mean Brett tell us about you know you've looked at some of the letters of Newman through reading Mariel Trevor and directly how are they influential for you well first of all was this capacity for friendship and his willingness to be extremely practical but for me one of the things that was profoundly moving was his ability to deal with the events of the day with great peace he wasn't he was a certain sense part of the Enlightenment generation and yet he wasn't confounded by the origin of the species he wasn't intellectually dwarfed by the power of the Enlightenment he was someone who understood faith and understood reason and who had who used reason assent in a sense to assist faith and was never never a skewed reason and I think that that enormously practical and yet supernatural aspect of Newman's life as well because he was a man of profane prayer of profound belief that God really did intervene in the affairs of men so his correspondence I think is replete with that yes how many letters did he write father in oh goodness I can't remember 34 36 30 30 plus or yes and incidentally some of the best letters in the English language because one thing we haven't touched on is a Newman of course won't the great English writers read prose writers and there's novels here eight letters and of course the great classics University and his autobiography they upload your previous so he was he was a great humanist and I do have to say this to father Dan you may not like this but in his Chapel the chapel that was set up for him when he became a cardinal of the berming monetary the pictures on the walls are not on the walls are not the pictures of the founder of the oratory st. Philip Neri but of Saint Francis to solve is the great humanist and then on on the right of his friends Francis de Salle was an orator Ian for a time was he yes so the he had to leave because he got made a bishop which was the only other way out other than death really I don't know which is worse but he was an arrival oratory wasn't it the burial oratory no no no that came later on the front yes Brett this is the first time you've bent a little more well it's a great privilege to be here it's a place that I suppose since I was received into the church that I've always wanted to be to go and to come my high society called little more after this after this place and it was quite a moving occasion today particularly to go to the chapel where Newman prayed and to be able to seek his intercession for my own intentions for the intentions of my family so it's a very moving time for me to be course there are many objects associated with Newman here sister Mary's put out just a couple of them do you want to tell us on on the table yes we have here an original letter which Newman wrote it's from 1868 from the first time he came back to little more brought after 20 years when he went round the village and was ever so pleased to see how it everything had how everything had developed and at that point also he met the wife of the week and she invited him for lunch but it was mrs. hunting hunting sport but he didn't accept her invitation for lunch and so the next thing he wrote a letter to apologize and his which is an example of his kindness isn't it also how much better the postal system was him apparently when the penny post was introduced his letters got much smaller and shorter because you could just scribble a note and it got there even the same day wondered what he would have done with email well I think do you think it had a block list now I think the fact that he was to reply to the most unimportant people even when he was known kartal and to the most tedious letters that alone I think I've always thought was a sign that he was a saint yes right up to the end what writing in his own hand sometimes almost I feel great pain we have here as well a rosary with which Newman used and Yuma had a great love for the Rosary especially in his time mr. your elderly priest and a great devotion to are they already angry and he founded the oratory on the Feast of the of the purification of Our Lady Merivale of course was named after our laity also little more he dedicated to Our Lady so everything he said I think you know our Lady seemed to follow him all the way through his life and in the background behalf of Newman's desk yes was the desk he used a little more so on et wrote among other sinks the development of Christian doctrine used to write standing up yeah how many hours a day would he spend writing well the apologia he spent on the pressure the hotel dame bit of the night because it had to be written at great speed and yeah in instalments forum it's what you do I know I sit in a comfortable chair at a computer what I do know yes so Newman why did he write the apologia father well it was one of those providential we don't know him talk about providence recently it was the attacked by Charles Kingsley on him although the water babies yes the very famous novelist at time and indeed and a professor of history at Cambridge University and well-known personality in the Victorian world and it was this some rather vicious attack on Newman which of course Anu was very grateful for because he enabled him at last to regain the right situation at last to reply to all those critics and there were many who see people who who really thought that it was such a going back to what Brett was saying I mean the conversion was such a cultural revolutionary cultural event and people within the church weren't always that welcoming him to him but but a lot of processes thought that he was had always been really it was a Jesuit in disguise that he was in the pay of Rome when he was in the Church of England and even that even Keeble and people that he had been so close to find it so difficult for yes and even tracked Aryans there ones who who had been so supportive of what it's unattractive where it's you know incredulous and and yeah well at the end of his life yes he had been accepted again but yes he came back to Oxford in 1880 when he was a cardinal and when he died 20,000 people lined the route in burning Birmingham to accompany his coffin to read No did you catch estimate interesting point about that the apathy apologia privy to sue in Ireland he said as soon as Newman written the apologia that was the end of this assumption a Protestant ascendancy in Ireland yes but even the bail flash warning news no the newsletter I thought sort of sort of even grudgingly recognized that Newman had sort of introduced Catholics back into the the fold again yes as a reasonable religion right Newman was a great friend of Ireland of course well he was a wonderful friend of Ireland and again but it was a mixed situation because I think he came over off scene fired at University College Dublin at the invitation of Cardinal column going back and forth across the Irish Channel Sumer and worked worked himself what so said you see to establish that but find it very difficult as well I think he was going to be made a bishop of course at that time and then that didn't happen and he thought that might give him mr. london oratory sent him might as wish yes yes but it was a mixed relationship with Ireland as well any garland wasn't quite ready for just the strength of his intellect but Newman did what the church asked I think that's that's the key thing that service of the church I think you suppiy you'd say that's what mother Julia found in Newman yes yes when she read his anthology she found in him a kindred spirit his love for the church yes fidelity to his conscience whatever was asked of him by God he did whatever the cost yes well I think that's a wonderful message for us to take away really from today and from little more this place where Newman made that great sacrifice and yet the sacrifice which continues to bear fruit in our own time and it's a wonderfully exciting time for everyone who loves Newman really to see this miracle that has happened and his beatification and him being held up therefore as a model to the church so thank you very much to our our three guests - Bret Lockhart - father Ian can especially - sister Mary who says made us so welcome here today and and we hope that to all of you who watching I will also draw inspiration from John Henry Cardinal Newman god bless [Music] you

Channel: EWTN

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Length: 58min 16sec (3496 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 24 2019