Why Are We Called the "Newman Centre"?
spiritual life
" I am an old man; my hair white, my eyes sunk in ... but when I shut my eyes and merely think, I can't believe I am no more than 25 years old, and smile to think how differently strangers must think of me from my own internal feelings".
(The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Charles Stephen Dessain et al, Vol 20; London 1961-1972 p. 409)
History of the McGill Newman Centre
Newman Who?John Henry Newman was a famous Englishman whose brief history is as follows:
Cardinal Newman was born in 1801 and raised in a comfortable middle-class family. At age 15 and helped by a school tutor, he became an Evangelical Christian. He had his first personal grasp of Christ and of the phrases of the Creed.
1816
He went to Oxford University to study, and in the course of this studies felt called to church work.
1824
We was ordained a deacon of the Church of England and in 1825, was ordained a priest.
1828-1843
He as pastor of St. Mary's University Church at Oxford. This service to the Oxford community makes him a good patron of Campus ministries.
During this period in the year 1833, he fell seriously ill while travelling in Sicily. Once recovered he returned to England and felt convinced that God had prepared him for some key role in the life of England.
He was a devoted pastor to his people, and eager student, and continual reader and a prolific writer. His sermons, his poems, his journal articles and this theological publications made him famous and controversial.
ESPECIALLY CONTROVERSIAL was his entering into full communion with the Catholic Church in the year 1845.
In subsequent years, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood, became the leader of a group of priests working in Birmingham, England and was appointed Cardinal
A biographer said of him:
" He wanted Catholics to accept responsibilities in the world, exert their influence for the good, assert themselves, broaden their minds, knowing all the time where the truth lay; and he wanted them to be guided like fully responsible people by their educated and enlightened consciences."
(Brian Martin, John Henry Newman, His Life and Work, N.Y. Oxford University Press, 1982, p. 155)
Some of Newman's Thoughts
Sparkling extracts from "Recovering Christian classics: Newman's "Idea of a University" by Dr. Daniel Cere)
" The Idea of a University"
The broad strokes of Newman's discussion of faith, reason and the university have had an appeal well beyond Catholic of even Christian circles.
1. The University and God
Newman argues that debates about nature and the existence of God have played a vital role in the intellectual life of the Western university. He points out that the modern academic culture tends to marginalize and suppress the longstanding tradition of theological inquiry. Secular world views are not checked or challenged by articulate theistic world views - religion and science are disconnected. Scholars may have deep religious beliefs, but they are compelled to abide by a strict methodological atheism in academic life. Newman argues that the grounds for marginalizing theological inquiry are not justified, and warns that silencing theological questions cramps intellectual debate and distorts our view of reality. The university, he insists, needs to reprise its critical role of providing a forum for rational discussion of competing religious claims, and in so doing, restore vibrant theological debate in the academy.
2. The University as a Lay Institution
While Newman argues for the need to engage the question of the presence and nature of God in the academic milieu, he insists that universities are essentially lay institutions.
" If then a university is a direct preparation for this world, let it be what is professes. It is not a Convent, it is not a Seminary; it is a place to fit men (and women) of the world for the world. We cannot possibly keep them from plunging into the world, with all its ways and principles and maxims, when their time comes; but we can prepare them against what in inevitable; and it is not the way to lean to swim in troubled waters, never to have gone into them."
John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, ed. Martin J. Svaglic, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1982.
3. The University and Liberal Arts
Perhaps the most famous section of "The Idea of a University" is Newman's sparkling discussion and defence of the liberal arts education. Newman rejects the modern collapse of liberal arts into the "humanities". He insists upon a classical interdisciplinary formation which embraces the sciences and mathematics as well as literature and philosophy. Authentic liberal education, he argues, must lay a foundation of basic intellectual skills in logic, languages, grammar, textual analysis and argumentation.
Newman produced an extensive corpus that includes a number of classic works:
- Parochial and Plain Sermons: 1834-1843 *8 volumes (Spirituality)
- Oxford University Sermons: 1843 (Philosophy of Religion)
- Apologia Pro Vita Sua: 1864 (Autobiography)
- An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine: 1845 *revised in 1878 (intellectual historiography)
- An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent: 1870 (Epistemology)
- The Idea of a University: 1854 (Education)