One Step Is Enough | Cardinal John Henry Newman | Full Movie | Alex Cassiers

England at the beginning of the 19th century the French Revolution on the European continent is barely over the Age of Enlightenment spreads further the Industrial Revolution achieves a definitive break through the center of London 21st of February 1801 John Henry Newman is born no one can foresee what special kind of life lies in store for this first born of six a few weeks later John Henry is baptised and becomes a member of the Church of England the Anglican Church his father a banker is more of a man of the world the devil also needs his share he says he's open-minded and critical at the same time and has broad cultural interests he introduces John Henry at a very young age to Shakespeare and a great many other authors he also passes on his great love of music to his eldest son [Music] I used to wish the Arabian tales were true my imagination ran on unknown influences on magical powers and talismans I thought life might be a dream or I an angel and all this world a deception my fellow angels by a playful device concealing themselves from me and deceiving me with a semblance of a material world his mother introduces him to religion her reliance on the protection of divine providence catches on her son will resort to this time and again John Henry is very clever at age seven he sent to the boarding school of Ealing a few years on he already reads of it and Virgil he has a wide range of interests he takes violin lessons learns to dance and plays billiards he very early on reveals himself as a leader with a sense of initiative enlightenment thinking which unmasks religion through reason also has an effect on the young Newman he becomes skeptical when I was 14 I read Payne's tracts against the Old Testament and found pleasure and thinking of the objections which were contained in them also I read some of Humes essays and perhaps that on miracles so at least I gave my father to understand but perhaps it was a brag also I recollect copying out some French versus perhaps ball tears in denial of the immortality of the soul and saying to myself something like how dreadful but how plausible [Music] in 1816 his father's Bank gets into trouble John Henry is sent to boarding school for the summer months there are no classes he has too much time on his hands old doubts accumulate in his mind a teacher an Anglican clergyman takes care of him he introduces him to the best of Protestant writers during the following months John Henry undergoes an inner change my first conversion as he will put it later to him God is no longer the result of brain work but synonymous with encounter and personal commitment this insight will stay with him forever when I was 15 in the autumn of 1816 a great change of thought took place in me I believe that the inward conversion of which I was conscious and of which I am still more certain than that I have hands and feet had some influence on my opinions in the direction of those childish imaginations which I have already mentioned namely in isolating me from the objects which surrounded me in confirming me in my mistrust of the reality of material phenomena and making me rest in the thought of to and to only absolute and luminously self-evident beings myself and my creator when we talk about Newman's first conversion it's very important to bear in mind that this was not some instantaneous moment it's in fact the fruit of a process that had lasted about six months and which involved a whole range of elements in the first place of course no one's illness and the fact that he had to come to terms with the crisis in his own family the failure of his father's business which of course in Victorian England was something regarded as rather shameful in addition to that it depended very much on his contacts with some of his teachers men who inspired him and who introduced him to the Christian tradition to the Bible and then on the basis of that his own period of reflection and the development of his own prayer life so we're talking about an extended period he describes it of course in his autobiography in these famous words where he speaks of the realization of these two persons that these luminously self-evident person himself and his creator but it's important to bear in mind that what he means here is an insight into the fact that his own life is a life lived in the presence of God the realization that he is responsible before God that he has a duty to live in a certain way he speaks about it also as the discovery of truth of religious truth in other words truth that's disclosed in the scripture in the Christian tradition and that taking this truth seriously means reordering his life so again it's not some sort of mystical encounter some sort of intense religious experience in fact in later years Newman was criticized by some evangelicals who said that the experience was not intense enough for Newman it's much more it was much more a case of realizing of coming to insight into the truth of who he was and that he was a person responsible before the person of God and here we have the basis of Newman's so-called personal is amazing this notion that the identity of a person is determined by his attitude towards his fellow men and women and his responsibility to behave towards them in a particular way because of his relationship to God so to be a per in relationship to others in the presence of God in the with the aim of living constantly in this presence [Music] 18:17 Newman goes to Oxford the place to be for the intellectual elite having started at Trinity College he later obtains the fellowship from the prestigious Oriel College he is immediately assured of a place among the Oxford intelligentsia he does not set out to become a priest but this calling grows I am a servant of Christ he says at age 23 he is ordained deacon and in 1825 priests in the Anglican Church at first Newman can relate to the range of thought of the evangelicals they emphasize an inner conversion based on an overwhelming experience Newman however believes that insights grow slowly his numerous pastoral house calls also caused him to abandoned the ideas of the evangelicals in his opinion the Oval is simple breakdown of people into the chosen and the others is not tenable the piety in the life of John Henry becomes less and less important the narrowly intellectual istic approach to faith taken by many colleagues at Oriel College is effective two events bring Newman back to earth at the end of 1827 he's exhausted by the strenuous intellectual work and the immense efforts made on behalf of students and his family but more importantly there's the sudden death of his favorite sister Mary at the beginning of 1828 here Newman's intellect hits a wall thrown upon his own resources Jiri focuses on the unseen world for him this is an indisputable reality life passes riches fly away popularity is fickle the senses decay the world changes friends die one alone is constant one alone is true to us one alone can be true one alone can be all things to us one alone can supply our needs one alone can train us up to a full perfection one alone can give a meaning to our complex and intricate nature one alone can give us tune and harmony one alone can form and possess us it's always interesting to note that certainly in the first half of Newman's life at some of his most important insights arise in moments of crisis in his own life a classical example of this is as a period in the 1820s when his sister whom he dearly loved died and when he had a sort of intellectual crisis which was prompted among other things by another illness but also by the death of his sister and at this point in his life Neumann began to question what had been developing in his life namely a strong interest in intellectual reflection a strong interest in what we would today call academic theology and on the basis of this crisis in his life and the death of his sister he comes to the realization that intellectual reflection alone or rationalism alone is not sufficient to provide an answer to the the basic problems the real realities of human life especially illness and death and this leads him again to a period of critical reflection and this is sometimes wrongly portrayed I think as a Newman's abandonment of critical reflection in favor of a flight into religion but this is not true I think that what happens in this period is that Newman realizes that ration a rationalistic approach to human existence will not provide the answers that human beings need so it's not a reaction against critical thought it's much more a question of the need to combine critical thought with the insights and the truths of religion and we see this in new in a sense in his insistence on the need for critical reflection and religious devotion religious practice Newman sees religion as a way to make the truths of theology the truths of the church's tradition to make them personally real one of the most important words in his vocabulary is this verb this word to realize by which Newman means to make something real and living for yourself and his whole quest throughout his his own religious life was to make the truths of Christianity the basic claims of Christianity existentially real to make them to let them have an influence on the way one lives one's own life and so for Newman throughout his life he acknowledges that there's a tension between the need to think critically and reflectively and the need to practice religion and to engage in devotional practices practices and he never really resolves this tension and he's not alarmed by this tension for Newman lived religion is a religion that constantly moves between reflection and prayer between study and devotion and this tension is always there it even forms the heart of Newman's understanding of the church so that in Newman's case he learns to live with these tensions in his life and he recommends that the church come to terms with the need for both critical reflection and intense prayerful devotion [Music] Numan turns his back on rational liberalism for good by virtue of the omnipotent of reason this vision reduces faith to easily digestible chunks he will continue to combat this type of free thinking for the rest of his life in 1831 Newman is vicar of st. Mary's in Oxford and captivates a growing number of people with his critically acclaimed sermons it's nothing short of amazing that after some time the whole elite crowd of Oxford are on hand after all Newman is anything but a born orator he reads everything from his papers and makes no eye contact moreover he has the strange habit of leaving a long pause after each sentence yet he touches the hearts of the audience like no one else [Music] after being appointed tutored or real college Newman encounters opposition he's criticised for placing too much emphasis on moral and religious development no more new students are assigned to him Newman however does not throw in the towel during the extra free time available to him he sinks his teeth into church history upon reading the church fathers he as he puts it almost falls in love with the Church of the first centuries [Music] at the end of 1832 a friend and his father invite Newman to go on a trip with them to the Mediterranean region this journey takes them to Gibraltar Greece Malta Sicily Rome and Naples Newman does not return to England with his travel companions he insists on traversing Sicily once again on this hiking trip he falls gravely ill hovering between life and death he learns a lot about himself I felt and kept saying to myself I have not sinned against light and at one time I had a most consoling overpowering thought of God's electing love and seemed to feel I was his next day the self-reproaching feelings increased I seemed to see more and more my utter hollowness I began to think of all my professed principles and felt they were mere intellectual deductions from one or two admitted truths [Music] but Neumann emerges from this crisis much stronger his profound doubt turns to certainty this dark night has made him realize he has a special mission as he gets ready to return to England he's delayed by a lull during the wait while staring at the small lamp on the deck of the ship Neumann writes his most famous prayer lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom lead thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home lead thou me on keep thou my feet I do not ask to see the distant scene one step enough for me I was not ever thus nor prayed that thou should lead me on I loved to choose and see my path but now lead thou me on I loved the garish day and spite of fears pride ruled my will remember not past years so long thy power hath blessed me sure it still will lead me on our more and fen our Craig and torrent till the night is gone and with the morn those angel faces smile which I have loved long since and lost awhile there's quite a bit of under misunderstanding about Newman's doctrine or Newman's teaching on conscience and especially in the light of contemporary attitudes to what conscience is in Newman's case conscience you could say is a two-fold process or involves a two-fold process in the first place it's a consciousness that we have to act that we have to make a decision about how we are going to act according to Newman it is the essence of the human person that he is constantly called to make decisions in this sense you could say that for Newman the person is in the depths of his being as an ethical being he's constantly being challenged to make a decision so there's this sense of having to make a decision but at the same time there is this sense of having to make a decision that is correct which is not the same as always knowing what is right or wrong so you have these two elements being called to act and to decide and being called to make the right decision which of course means a conscience involves a process of reflection according to Newman the decisions that one makes will inevitably influence the way that one thinks so the way we decide to act the judgments that we make are never neutral they will shape our whole view of the world so for Newman conscience is basic to determining someone's personality it's certainly not intended to be understood as the right to do whatever one feels is best on the contrary Newman thinks faithfulness to conscience will lead us to greater insight into what is right and good and that unfaithfulness to conscience inevitably leads to a darkening of our ability to distinguish right and good and in this sense for Newman perhaps if you ask for what is a test of what is right and good in Newman's teaching if you look at it in its totality following conscience is always in a sense directed outwards towards the other when following conscience is acting in your own interest in Newman's terms you can almost be absolutely certain that you're not being faithful to the impulse of conscience in fact Newman recognized that for the person who wishes to follow their conscience they will at some point feel almost overwhelmed by the responsibilities that they carry and for him this is a reason why faithfulness to conscience can be almost overwhelming if it's not complemented by faith in Christ or faith in the Christian tradition which enables one to cope with the great responsibility so in a nutshell for Newman conscience is in fact being called to responsibility being called to act and to take responsibility not only for ourselves but for those with whom we live and work every day [Music] in 1833 Newman arrives in England a different man though he's shy and sensitive by Nature he resolutely chooses the public forum after considering which position to take he does not mince his words in a sermon which has become famous people whom Newman greatly admires expresses his displeasure over the influence of the state on the church the right words at the right time it seems they bring together like-minded people who decide to write tracts for The Times one-third of the 90 tracts are written by Newman they are a huge success as the leader of this Oxford movement Newman advocates the Via Media finding the right position of the Church of England the middle course between Protestantism and Catholicism Newman stays loyal to the model of the primitive church but increasingly he has doubts as to whether the Anglican Church is in line with that when he claims that thirty-nine articles of the Anglican Creed can be interpreted in a Catholic manner the genie is out of the bottle there is no going back now the response by the Anglican Church to this Roman admission is allergic to say the least the position of Newman in Oxford becomes untenable he retreats with a few people to little more at a few kilometers from Oxford there he leads a simple life devoted to study and prayer two years later the time has come his inner struggle comes to an end in 1845 he switches over to Catholicism Newman is 44 at the time a clear conviction of the substantial identity of Christianity and the Roman system has now been on my mind for a full three years it is more than five years since the conviction first came on me though I struggled against it and overcame it I believe all my feelings and wishes are against change I have nothing to draw me elsewhere I hardly ever was at a Roman service even abroad I know no Roman Catholics I have no sympathy with them as a party I am giving up everything I have no dreams whatever far from it of what I could do in another position far from it indeed I seem to be throwing myself away [Music] lumen was of course in our terms we would call gnome today a church historian perhaps even a Patrol adjust he was an an expert in the Church Fathers and one of the most wonderful things I think about humans is certainly for me personally is the fact that he was very sensitive to the movement of history and he took very seriously the importance of history for human thought and for theology in particular I think although it sounds rather odd in the beginning perhaps I think we could say that according to Newman God takes history seriously in the sense that if God wishes to engage with us to enter into an encounter with us then God has to do it on the terms of that of our terms on human terms which means in time and space and so for Newman it's not surprising that the central doctrine of Christianity is the Incarnation that God becomes human precisely to show us almost in history and in time who he is and how he wishes to relate to us of course this sensitivity to history meant for Newman that shifting times new questions new contexts would lead to new challenges being made new ways were needed to interpret the essential message of Christianity so Newman was very sensitive to the fact that in different contexts in different places and times it would be necessary to reinterpret to think again about the meaning of Christian revelation about the meaning of the Christ event to use a theological term and in this sense Newman was conscious of the fact that the shape of Christian doctrine would change over time and in our terms that in the modern world we could say that in different contexts the Christian message would look somewhat differently in other words that different aspects of this message would be highlighted depending on the questions that people asked and in this regard is very interesting that Newman for example who thought about this idea of human history as a developing process human beings as creatures who were themselves in a process of development that Newman had no problem for example with Darwin's theory of evolution when this was published some twenty thirty years after Newman had begun his own work Numan felt that the whole of human history was a developmental process and that therefore the understanding of the Christian tradition was also a developmental process this is his famous idea of the development of Christian doctrine and basically you could say that what it comes down to is that in and through the course of history our understanding and our apprehension of who God is and how we are to relate to him will always be shaped to some degree by the times in place in which we find ourselves so that we constantly need to rethink reinterpret and re understand the meaning of the Christian message according to the time and place in which we find ourselves having retired to old Ascot he and five friends lead a type of community life Newman realizes that his conversion to the Catholic faith raises questions and causes pain among many people but he has no choice but to follow the voice of the kindly light [Music] his preparation in Rome in 1846 for his priesthood forces him to choose how he's going to experience being a priest he asks himself what he wants to be a Jesuit a Redemptorist or a Dominican a stay at the Roman oratory decides otherwise not by accident this foundation created by Philip as Neri is just right for Newman and his companions in 1848 Newman becomes the founder and superior of the first English oratory in Birmingham oratory ins combined pastoral diligence with intellectual zeal and the emphasis on community life does not preclude personal development high winds blow on high hills the ordeals and newman's are waiting to occur in rapid succession for one thing he responds to the strong anti papal sentiment as a result a complaint for defamation is filed against him the exhausting trial is nothing short of a torment for him a prejudiced jury convicts Newman of libel [Music] the offer in 1851 to become rector of the Catholic University of Dublin constitutes a bright spot like no one else Newman realizes the need to have adequate education for laymen but whereas the Archbishop of Dublin deems it important to protect the students against the dangers of the world Newman wants to prepare them for these this fundamental difference of opinion is one of the reasons why Newman resigns from his duties as rector after six years if then a university is a direct preparation for this world let it be what it professes it is not a convent it is not a seminary it is a place to fit men of the world for the world we cannot possibly keep them from plunging into the world with all its ways and principles and Maxim's when their time comes but we can prepare them against what is inevitable and it is not the way to learn to swim in troubled waters never to have gone into them [Music] it's often said that Newman exercised a great influence on Vatican 2 although he's almost never actually explicitly mentioned but Newman's thinking had a great deal of influence on a lot of the thinkers for example Eve conga who had a great role at Vatican 2 and I think it's certainly fair to say that Newman was a prophetic thinker in many many respects not only in terms of his understanding of the importance of history for theology but also in terms of his sense of the times Newman for example anticipated and you could say even predicted the crises of religion that we find ourselves in 20th and 21st centuries Newman was aware of the fact as he even so to say prophesied that we were entering an unusual in fact an unknown age in the life of the church namely an age in which air religion or atheism would be more dominant than religion knew and felt that the the source or the cause of this shift away from religion was a very narrow rationalistic scientistic understanding of reason but he also realized that to cope with this crises which he felt was coming he felt that it was absolutely essential that the laity be educated that they know their faith but that they also be educated in the human sciences and this was one of his ambitions for example when he became rector of the Catholic University of Ireland he envisioned a university in which all areas of knowledge would be taught all the sciences and people would receive at the same time a grounding in their own religious tradition of course this was not always appreciated in in Newman's day Newman felt also that the laity not only had to know their faith to be able to defend it but also for themselves so that they would have insight into it and be able to cope with a modern challenges in that sense of course Newman had from the very beginning a very profound sense of the role of the laity in the life of the church and some of the conflicts during his life came from his determination to support the cause of the laity in a time when the church was extremely central istic and extremely clerical Newman felt that the laity had its own competence not saying as people in the world but that also their faith life was significant for helping us understand the meaning of the gospel this is his notion of consulting the faithful in matters of doctrine which meant of course that the practice of the faithful their dedication to their faith could be an indication of the nature of the faith of what we believe Numan reaches for his pen to defend his sincerity when in 1864 he's wrongly accused by a mr. Kingsley he writes his 562 page defense his apologia pro Vita sua in just 10 weeks in it he's very open and shares with the readers his sincere religious quest the book is widely applauded by friend and foe alike when papal infallibility is established in 1870 people are curious as to how Newman will respond he questions whether the time is right but he's relieved when he gets hold of the final version it turns out to be much more moderate than he has feared Newman's life is characterized by opposition and conflicts including with the ecclesiastical authorities consequently it comes as a very big surprise when he's proclaimed Cardinal by Pope Leo the 13th in 1879 it is the ultimate recognition of his great merits for Newman it feels like the break of dawn after all his lonely struggles [Music] Numan lives another 11 years at his oratory in birmingham he dies on the 11th of August 1890 in the way described by him in a sermon I come to thee who art my life and my all I come to thee on the thought of whom I have lived all my life long I sought thee for my chief good early for early didst thou teach me that good elsewhere there was none whom have I in heaven but thee whom have I desired on earth whom have I had on earth but thee I will fear no ill for thou art with me I have seen thee this day face to face and it's suffice earth [Music] his Cardinals device heart speak son to heart summarizes in a single phrase his life has one big consultation with God on the 19th of September 2010 but Benedict the sixteenth beatified John Henry Newman during his visit to England [Music] you [Music] you [Music]

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Id: t16-AHJweUE

Length: 34min 51sec (2091 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 16 2020