A LESSON FOR THE IRISH CHURCH FROM ST JOHN HENRY NEWMAN – DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH

Fr Billy Swan

This Saturday, 1st November, Pope Leo XIV will declare St John Henry Newman (1801-1890) to be a ‘Doctor of the Church’. The English saint will then join a small group of saints in the history of the Church with that title, including Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross and Therese of Lisieux – all of whom were renowned for their outstanding holiness, deep doctrinal insight, and a large body of scholarly work that the Church can recommend as a trustworthy expression of her faith tradition.

Newman’s association with Ireland comes from his time as rector of University College Dublin (1854-1858) and although this period in Ireland was not a particularly happy one for him, it did produce his great treatise on higher education entitled ‘The Idea of a University’ – a work that is as relevant and visionary today as it was when first published.

The God Question

As we celebrate his elevation as a doctor of the universal Church and as we are represented at the ceremony in Rome, this article suggests that perhaps the most important lesson that Newman can teach the Irish Church right now concerns the God question and the possibility of a reasonable and mature faith. This is the issue behind all the issues – the hinge around which everything else turns. It concerns the basic question of whether or not we are merely rational creatures and products of evolution; or if we are transcendent beings connected and open to a God beyond space and time – yet a God who created us, knows us, loves us and sustains us in being within time.

The God question is the key theme of the Bible and is often overlooked, understated and presumed by many today. To summarise it simply – a mature faith in God leads to right worship that in turn leads to human fulfilment, justice, happiness, unity and right order. A lack of faith inevitably leads to worship of false gods that produces the bitter fruit of alienation, sadness and division. In our age and every age, the God question remains the fundamental question regarding how we human beings understand who we are, our relationship to each other and our place within the universe. In the words of Irish theologian Dermot Lane, ‘The question of God is ultimately the question of life. It is the single most important question facing men and women of the world today’ (D. Lane, The Experience of God, 12).

In Newman’s homeland of England, there are signs of a ‘Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God’. This is the title of a recent book by English journalist and broadcaster Justin Brierley that traces the rise and fall of the New Atheism, the crisis of meaning, liberal lifestyles that are not delivering on happiness and how a new conversation on God is emerging. Further evidence of a religious and spiritual renewal in Britain comes from recent studies that have been published in a new book from the Catholic Truth Society with the title ‘After Secularisation: The Present and Future of British Catholicism’ (by Stephen Buttivant, Hannah Vaughan-Spruce and Bernadette Durcan, CTS, London, 2025). This book offers both principled and statistical reasons for hope regarding of the future of faith and the Church in Britain.

This is good news for the Church in Britain and an opportunity for her to evangelise by re-proposing the Good News to hearts that have become tired, disconnected and sad in a world without God. In her mission to meet this challenge, the insights and wisdom of St John Henry Newman are invaluable in helping sceptics and non-believers to look again at the God question and address the obstacles to faith that stubbornly remain.

Here, I reflect on the challenges to faith that Newman faced that are familiar to us today and how he can help us face those challenges in the Irish cultural landscape.

A Faith that Engages the Whole Person

In England during the Nineteenth century, Newman found himself opposing a narrow rationalism associated with scientific verification. In our day, this is known as scientism that claims that the only truth worthy of acceptance is that which can be empirically proven. But this is a self-defeating philosophical principle because the principle of ‘the only truth we can accept is that which is scientifically verifiable’ is not itself scientifically verifiable.

With this in mind, we understand there are other sources of truth we must explore. Yes, the Church’s fresh proclamation of the truth of the Gospel must be done through rational argument but also through other means. It is communicated through music, poetry, drama, story and theology. This is something that resonates with the Irish psyche and our national history of songs, stories, poetry and a truth that includes science but is not limited to it. As we instinctively know, truth is more than cold facts or information. As Pope St John Paul II wrote in Fides et Ratio, both faith and reason are needed for both are the wings on which the human spirit rises to find the truth (Fides et Ratio, 1). It is this fuller grasp of truth that gives life to the human heart and expands the human soul that searches for love and meaning.

For Newman, if faith is to meet the challenge of rationalism, it too had to adapt and be less narrow and defensive. For Newman, faith was not merely an intellectual assent to doctrinal statements but a disposition with a full existential range that involved engagement with the whole person. Faith is never merely a conclusion of the mind. Rather it involves a word of revelation that encounters us in the depths of our humanity and thus initiates an adventure and change that lasts a lifetime.

The Role of Imagination

For Newman, the faculty of human imagination was key to the gift of faith. He famously claimed that “the heart is commonly reached, not through reason, but through the imagination” (Grammar of Assent, 92). For Newman, imagination did not mean importing what is imaginary but concerned the enlargement of thought that sought a higher viewpoint that enabled us to have a fuller grasp of things. He famously used the analogy of the mountain climber who scales difficult slopes one step at a time on the way to seeing the panoramic view of reality that could not be seen below (Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford, 13, 7, 1909). The imagination's grasp of the whole enables one to come to the point of real assent. Faith expands the mind and dilates the heart, preparing one’s life for adventure and prompts to give one’s life for something or someone other than the self. Faith in God matters because it sets one’s life in a definitive direction and takes us beyond our own needs, fears and desires, to live a noble and beautiful life of charity and service.

An Infinite Love

So, what can Irish Christians learn from this? Perhaps that we need to be more bold and convinced in proclaiming Christ crucified and risen as the greatest story ever told and how the music of the Gospel harmonizes with the deepest longings of the human soul. Also, that faith is a gift that enables us to grasp all there is in a way that engages both the reason and imagination.

Inspired by his thought, Newman urges the Irish Church to become more creative and imaginative in the way we understand God and witness to our faith in Him. He certainly sees a place for reason in our faith for as he once wrote: “One cannot attain faith to reason but once a person becomes a believer reason becomes part of face for life” (Sermons Before the University of Oxford, 11-17). In this light, it is reasonable to believe in a Creator God in a contingent universe that cannot explain itself. Yet, as Newman insisted, God is not an impersonal force ‘up there’ or ‘out there’ removed from human existence and experience. This is the caricature that atheists hurry to dismiss.

Rather faith in the mystery of God can only be grasped by the initiative of the Spirit who draws us into its own life. In the words of St Paul, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). St Catherine of Siena once said that for the Christian to ask ‘where is God?’ is like a fish to ask where is water – we are already within the divine love we seek to understand (Dialogue 2). That is why the word baptism comes from the Greek word baptizo meaning to plunge or immerse. The baptized Christian is immersed in the life of Father, Son and the Holy Spirit and faith is a constant acceptance of the invitation to conform to the dynamics of divine love.

In this spirit, Newman urges us to proclaim the Gospel as a life-giving force that challenges us to conform to its truth rather than we conforming it to ours. The mystery of God is the mystery of life, love and Being itself. Yet, this source of life and love is not an impersonal higher power. It is a God who knows us and is present to us intimately. No one is interested in a dull or second-hand God. Those of us who believe in God should not be shy in sharing how and why the love and mercy of God has touched and transformed our lives. Here is the boldness called for by the late Pope Francis when he said about the faith:

“We have a treasure of life and love which cannot deceive, and a message which cannot mislead or disappoint. It penetrates to the depths of our hearts, sustaining and ennobling us. It is a truth which is never out of date because it reaches that part of us which nothing else can reach. Our infinite sadness can only be cured by an infinite love” (Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel, 265).

Here is the living faith that is anything but cold, boring and static. It is dangerous, challenging, life-changing and life-giving.

Conclusion

With the universal Church, we rejoice and celebrate the elevation of St John Henry Newman as doctor of the Church. May it also be moment of reflection that leads Irish Christians beyond a mere conceptual notion of God to a living faith that fires the imagination to grasp the bigger picture of reality and life. In the words of St Gregory the Great, we pray for the grace “to see life whole”. May Newman’s legacy and insights light the fire of faith in our hearts leading to a new zeal to evangelise in a way that stirs the heart and speaks to the soul.

St John Henry Newman, Doctor of the Church, pray for us!