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Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien received a great welcome as he arrived as the Papal Legate of Pope Benedict XVI at St Columba’s Church Long Tower on the feast of St Columba and the centenary of Long Tower.
Cardinal O’Brien arrived in cappa magna, seen in Derry for the first time since Vatican II.

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- Servant of God John Henry Newman, English cardinal and founder of the Oratories of St. Philip Neri in England (1801-1890).

Rose of York

Sunday, 26. July 2009, 23:53

The Cardinal Newman Memorial Church in Edgbaston, situated next to the Oratory House, opened by Fr Newman in February 1852, is not sufficiently large to host the beatification ceremony that will attract people from across the world.

Derekap

Wednesday, 29. July 2009, 11:34

As John Newman was an Englishman surely the ceremony should be in England rather than Rome?

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It is just this that is true of Newman. He created a Movement--the great movement which we know as Anglo-Catholicism. As we have seen, he gained his inspiration from Keble and Froude. As he was never tired of teaching, Anglo-Catholicism was no new thing; it was latent in the English Church, enshrined and preserved in the Prayer Book, claiming rightly to be the true expression of the religion of the English Church, supported by the teaching of her great Divines. But the Catholic Revival was something more than a Revival. It was new in the sense that it made English religion, for the first time since the Reformation, a living, vital, potent, energizing force. It gathered up the fragments of past religious movements, and created out of them a new spiritual feast. And the eye that could see the vision, the brain that could formulate the plan, the energy and resolution that could transfer the vision to the canvas of reality, were the eye, the brain, the energy, the resolution of Newman. No better tribute to the greatness and enduring power of his work could be paid than this, that the edifice he had raised withstood triumphantly the earthquake shock of his secession, and stands today, weather-beaten and defaced by many a storm, but secure and strong on its foundations.

Of his power as a preacher we have already spoken. One who was an undergraduate at the time, Principal Shairp, from whom we have quoted above, has described how men felt when it was known that Newman had ceased to be Vicar of St. Mary's: 'Looking over an interval of five-and-twenty years, how vividly comes back the remembrance of the aching blank, the awful pause which fell on Oxford, when that voice had ceased, and we knew that we should hear it no more. It was as when, to one kneeling by night in the silence of some vast cathedral, the great bell tolling solemnly overhead has suddenly gone still. Since then many voices of powerful teachers may have been heard, but none that ever penetrated the soul like his.'

As a writer, Newman is even more eminent than as a preacher. Had he written nothing else, 'Lead! kindly Light' and 'Praise to the holiest in the height' would have been sufficient to preserve his name, while his exquisite style has given him a place among the classic writers of English prose. His Apologia is an English classic. It has given him, says Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, a complete right to be in any book on modern English literature.

Greater than his sermons or his writings was the personality that expressed itself through them. He had not the humility of Keble, or the self-forgetfulness of Pusey; indeed, the history of the English Church during the last hundred years would have been very different if he had been able to forget himself in his cause as they did. He suffered from an extreme over-sensitiveness which in a less holy man might easily have degenerated into egoism, and which rendered him an easy victim to scorn and reproach. He was more apt to make passionate disciples than friends, and he seems to have had few intimates. Yet he was loved and honoured by men whose love is an honour, and he is admired by all who can appreciate a consistently holy and unworldly life.

Perhaps the supreme test of his greatness is this--like only the very greatest men, he has transmitted a personality. It is with him as with Napoleon, and Francis of Assissi, and Dr. Johnson, and Emily Bronte; people are interested in him, not only, indeed not chiefly, in what he has done. There is a tradition about him at Oxford. The place is still filled with the odour of the ointment of his personality. The quad at Oriel still seems to echo with his footsteps. Dean Inge, by no means a sympathetic witness, says in his Outspoken Essays that the Church of Rome has been less unpopular in England since she made Newman a Cardinal.

It is the clearness with which Newman realized and proclaimed the two complementary ideas of devotion to Christ and devotion to the Church which lifts his teaching above the limitations of time and circumstance. It is in proportion as the Catholic Movement remains true to those ideas and holds them together, that it will succeed in its great task of converting England to the Faith.

Carlo

 

Recently I attended an important Mass

OsullivanB

Wednesday, 29. July 2009, 20:31

Carlo

 

Recently I attended an important Mass

Just out of interest what is an unimportant Mass?

OsullivanB

Wednesday, 29. July 2009, 20:31

Carlo

 

Recently I attended an important Mass

Just out of interest what is an unimportant Mass?

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A former Green Beret Major has been appointed Logistics Manager for the visit of the relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux to England and Wales.

Major David Baldwin, will be overseeing the organisation of the historic one-month tour which begins on 16 September.

Major Baldwin said: “One of my jobs was the logistic planner responsible for taking the Commando Brigade out to Norway in the winter – 5,000 men with associated equipment. I hope that my brain can get around the logistics of taking reliquary around many destinations in this country in a reasonably short space of time.”