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An English Visitor's Comments on The American Religious Scene, 1846

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

John Tracy Ellis
John Tracy Ellis
Affiliation:
Professor of Church History, University of San Francisco
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Extract

Few religious thinkers in modern times displayed a keener foresight and perception than John Henry Newman. The extraordinary talent he possessed in that regard rarely showed to better advantage than during Vatican Council II when repeated approbation was expressed in both the formal debates and in the private discussions of the bishops, the periti, and others in attendance at Rome for the theological views that Newman had held—often at the price of grave misunderstanding—a century or more ago. The two particulars which perhaps received more notice than any others were the ideas set forth in his famous essay in The Rambler for July, 1859, “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine,” a new edition of which was published as recently as 1961, and the Essay on the Dcvelopnient of Christian Doctrine, written while Newman was still an Anglican, and which was published in November, 1845, a few weeks after he had been received into the Roman Catholic Church.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , March 1967 , pp. 36 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1967

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References

1. Thanks are due to Father Michael Crowdy, Archivist of the Brompton Oratory, London, for permission to publish this letter, and Father C. Stephen Dessain, editor of The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, for sending a photostatic copy of the letter,

2. Newman to Bowles, Mary's, Saint, Oscott, , 11 25, 1845, Dessain, Charles Stephen (Ed.), The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman (London, 1961). XI, 43–44.Google Scholar

3. John B. Fitzpatrick (1812–1866) was the third Roman Catholic Bishop of Boston.

4. Orestes Brownson (1803–1876), founder and editor of Brownson's Quarterly Review, had been received into the Roman Catholic Church in October, 1844, by Bishop Fitzpatrick.

5. Dionysius Petavius (1583–1652) was a Jesuit church historian and theologian.

6. Joseph Coolidge Shaw, scion of a prominent Boston family, graduate of Harvard College in 1840, was influenced in his conversion to Catholicism in 1843 by Frederick Faber; he was ordained to the priesthood in 1847, entered the novitiate of the Jesuits, but died suddenly shortly after on March 10, 1851.

7. Frederick William Faber (1814–1863) was superior of the London Oratory.

8. William Kyan (1814–1852?) was a Roman Catholic priest who served for some years at Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, was chaplain to the Eyston family in East Hendred, and was associated with Newman and his circle.

9. The American bishops of the Silxth Provincial Council of Baltimore petitioned the Holy See in May, 1846, for the Mother of God under her title of Immaculate Conception as patroness of the Church in the United States.

10. Johann Adam Moeller (1796–1838), was a Roman Catholic church historian and theologian.

11. Joseph Butler (1696–1752) was Bishop of Durham and author of Analogy of Religion (1736).

12. Frederick Oakeley (1802–1880), an Anglican divine, was received into the Roman Catholic Church the same month as Newman.

13. Leonard Woods (1807–1878) was President of Bowdoin College at Brunswick, Maine.

14. Thomas Cogswell Upham (1799–1872) was for many years professor of philosophy in Bowdoin College; his outstanding book was A Philosophical and Practical Treatise on the Will (1834); the work to which Knox referred was Principles of the Interior or Hidden Life (1843).

15. The New York community of the Sisters of Mercy was established by John Hughes, Bishop of New York, from the London convent in May, 1846.

16. Catherine Josephine Seton (1800–1891), youngest daughter of Blessed Elizabeth Bayley Seton (1774–1821) who founded the Sisters of Charity of Saint Joseph in 1809, was the first American to enter the Sisters of Mercy in New York; she died at Saint Catherine's Convent in that city.

17. Emily Bowles (1818–1904), friend and correspondent of Newman, was for a time a member of the Religious of the Holy Child Jesus founded in England in 1846 by the American convert to Catholicism, Cornelia Connelly (1809–1879).

18. Frederick Sellwood Bowles (1818–1900) became a Catholic at the same time as Newman and was a member of the Oratory until 1860.

19. Morris could have been either John Morris (1862–1893) or John Brande Morris (1812–1880), both of whom were converts to Catholicism and friends of Newman.

20. Henry Bowles, an older brother of Frederick and Emily, was at Oriel with Newman; he died in 1842.

21. Ambrose Saint John (1815–1875) was Newman's closest friend among the Anglican converts to Catholicism in this period.

22. Georgetown Academy which began classes in November, 1791, and evolved into the first Catholic college in the United States, had admitted boys of all religions from the outset. A prospectus printed late in 1786 read in part: Agreeably to the Liberal Principle of our Constitution, the Seminary will be open to Students of every religious profession. They, who, in this Respect differ from the Superintendent of the Academy, will be at Liberty to frequent the places of Worship and Instruction appointed by their Parents; but with Respect to their moral Conduct, all must be subject to general and uniform Discipline. [Quoted in Daley, John M., S.J., Georgetown University: Origin and Early Years. (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1957), p. 35].Google Scholar

23. The College of the Holy Cross had opened on November 1, 1843, but because of the anti-Catholic feeling in Massachusetts at the time an application to the legislature for a charter was denied in 1849, and it was not until 1865 that the college received its Masschusetts charter; in the interval the students had received their degrees from Georgetown College in Washington, D.C.