Pope Leo has announced that he will proclaim St. John Henry Newman a ‘doctor’ of the Church on November 1st, a title reserved for those whose theological writings have had a profound impact within the church. Currently there are only some three dozen ‘doctors of the church’, a designation which includes such saints as Augustine, Francis de Sales, and Teresa of Avila.

Described by Richard Hurrell Froude, as “one of the acutest, cleverest and deepest men” he had ever met, Newman was appointed a tutor and fellow of Oriel College, Oxford in 1826. He was an evangelical academic and ordained priest in the Church of England, becoming in 1828, the Vicar of St Mary the Virgin, the University Church in Oxford.

But over time he was drawn to the more high church tradition of Anglicanism – more ritual, more catholic, perhaps more traditional/conservative, a reaction to the giving up of what many believed were older Christian traditions in favour of a more evangelical Christianity – and became one of the leaders of what was known as the ‘Oxford Movement’.

When he converted from the Church of England to the Catholic Church in 1845, he gave up a brilliant academic career at Oxford University as well as the pulpit of the University Church, and lost friends, work and even family ties, but believed the truth he was searching for could only be found in the Catholic faith.

This was not an easy move. Anti-Catholicism was, according to DG Paz, “an integral part of what it meant to be a Victorian”. Almost inevitably, Newman became something on an apologist for the Catholic Church in England, founding the Birmingham, and then the London (Brompton), Oratories, and later the Catholic University of Ireland, now University College Dublin.

Picture above: Statue of John Henry Newman at the Brompton Oratory. Part of a picture by Oosoom at English Wikipedia and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.