The Doctor’s Prescription for a Secular Age
When Pope Leo XIII made St. John Henry Newman a cardinal in 1879, it was an exciting moment for English Catholics! They had suffered more than 300 years of suppression and persecution. But the Church was rising once again in England—what Newman called a miraculous “second spring.”
Newman, however, saw dark clouds on the horizon: an age of infidelity and secularism, in which much of the world would be “simply irreligious” and hostile to the resurgent Church. He devoted his life to confronting this threat by educating lay Catholics, preparing them to evangelize the culture.
Now Pope Leo XIV has declared our holy patron the 38th Doctor of the Church! It’s another exciting moment for Catholics worldwide, and especially for The Cardinal Newman Society and educators who have embraced Newman’s vision.
The Church in the United States is enjoying a “second spring.” We rejoice over the exciting reforms in Catholic education—modeled by the schools, colleges, and other programs recommended in The Newman Guide—as well as the inspiring renewal of fidelity and reverence in many areas of the country.
At the same time, however, Newman’s predictions of hostility toward the Church are coming true. Just as Newman experienced in his own time, faithful Catholics across the West are confronted by:
- increasing hostility from a secular and corrupted society
- belligerent demands for conformity to radical ideologies
- violations of religious freedom by state and government agencies, and
- confusion and hopelessness among young people
And today as much as ever, Newman’s witness remains a powerful prescription for a secular age: obey the will of God with every step, trust in His Providence, and ensure that the Faithful are well-formed in truth and wisdom to better know, love, and serve God. If we desire authentic reform and renewal of the Church, Newman can be a great intercessor for our times.
A light in darkness
In 1531, King Henry VIII declared himself head of the English Church and looted Catholic monasteries. He and his successors banished, imprisoned, and even martyred many Catholic priests and lay Faithful. Catholic properties—churches, schools, universities—were seized and became “Anglican.” The Catholic Church was outlawed, and Catholics were barred from most social circles and positions.
Three centuries after Henry VIII, when Newman attended Oxford University as an evangelical Christian, Catholics still were not permitted to attend most English schools or the great universities established by the English Church. Oxford banned Catholic students until 1871, and its affiliated colleges retained many barriers to Catholic students until 1896. Under Anglican auspices, Oxford University became increasingly secular and morally ambiguous, despite more than half its graduates becoming Anglican clergymen.
That’s the path Newman followed. He became an Anglican priest and tutor of Oriel College, and he strived to reform the University and the Anglican Church as a leader in the Oxford Movement. Increasingly, however, he realized that the Anglican Church was Protestant and not the true Church, and in 1845 he became Catholic.
It was no easy thing to do in those days! There was still widespread hatred of Catholics in England. Although the Oxford Movement had made him a prominent figure in the Anglican Church, he was rejected by many countrymen, including members of his own family, when he became Catholic. He lost social status, the prospect of a substantial income, and the likelihood of a prominent position at Oxford.
In short, Newman chose to give up his notoriety and academic career—but God had other plans. Newman was sent to study in Rome, was ordained a Catholic priest, and quickly founded his Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Birmingham and London. Then, in 1850, Queen Victoria responded to floods of Irish immigrants by begrudgingly allowing the Pope to reestablish 14 Catholic dioceses in England.
For Catholics, it was a time for rejoicing! The newly ordained Newman was given the singular honor of preaching to the English bishops at their 1852 conclave, the first such gathering in over three centuries. And Newman delivered his famous “Second Spring” sermon, describing the English Church’s renewal as a certain miracle of God. Everything accomplished by man is corrupted and falls to dust, he said—but here was the Church rising again, like the blooming of flowers and the return of the warm sunshine.
Still, Newman issued to the bishops a dire warning of what was to come. Before springtime brings sunshine and flowers, it brings storms—and those storms can be terrible and violent. Even amid the Catholic renewal in England, Newman said—in fact, precisely because of the Church’s progress—Catholics should expect intensified persecution even to martyrdom. But Newman had great trust in God’s Providence, and he counseled the bishops to welcome the storms and be grateful to endure them, as difficult as that may be.
Today, American Catholics can certainly see the storms gathering against the Church and specifically Catholic education. The last many years of fighting for religious freedom may be the worst of it, but we still see much hostility against teachers who uphold the truth of the Catholic faith. The light that faithful graduates bring to a darkened world will surely be hated by many and perhaps even attacked by some, even as reforms take hold.
A future of infidelity
Two decades later, St. John Henry Cardinal Newman delivered another sermon at the opening of St. Bernard’s Seminary—the first seminary in the diocese after three centuries of suppression. Again, it was a time for rejoicing.
But that’s not what Newman did. He delivered a sober prediction about “The Infidelity of the Future” and the need to prepare well for the coming difficulties.
Fixed on the Church’s mission of evangelization and salvation, Newman knew that the Church still faced many trials ahead. Many Anglicans resented the Crown’s charity toward Catholics. As the Church grew, and more Catholic priests would be ordained, they would be scrutinized and judged harshly in everything. Opponents would expose the smallest scandal, eager to stir up more opposition.
“There is an immense store of curiosity directed upon us in this country,” Newman said, “and in great measure an unkind, a malicious curiosity. If there ever was a time when one priest will be a spectacle to men and angels it is in the age now opening upon us.”
That age is not simply dangerous because of resistance against the Church, but because of moral relativism and declining adherence to any religious faith.
“I know that all times are perilous,” he said, but “ours has a darkness different in kind from any that has been before it.” The Church had confronted paganism, Protestantism, and other dissent and heresy, but never had it faced a society that was “simply irreligious.”
This Newman saw especially among the educated classes, those who had been formed by a highly secular education: “the educated world, scientific, literary, political, professional, artistic” and the growing urban populations. Here the great champion of education returned to his oft-ignored warning in The Idea of a University—that an education without the influence of the Church would produce the English gentleman, whose worship of the mind and genteel conversation would replace devotion to God and a firm embrace of the truth.
Newman counseled that priests need to be well-prepared for the challenges they would certainly face, growing in holiness and a right understanding of the Faith. Just as he proposed faithful Catholic education as the solution for Catholic laity facing a secular age, a complete seminary formation is of the greatest importance to priests—”the primary and true weapon for meeting the age.”
An appeal to education
In 1879, when Pope Leo XIII honored Newman by naming the humble priest a cardinal, Newman found another opportunity to both rejoice and remind his friends of the work to be done for God’s glory.
He said, “to one great mischief I have from the first opposed myself. For thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted, to the best of my powers, the spirit of Liberalism in religion. Never did the Holy Church need champions against it more sorely than now, when, alas! it is an error overspreading as a snare the whole earth…”
This “liberalism in religion,” he explained, “is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another… It is inconsistent with the recognition of any religion as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, as all are matters of opinion.”
And from where does this evil spirit arise? From “secular education, calculated to bring home to every individual that to be orderly, industrious, and sober is his personal interest.”
It was during Newman’s lifetime that American bishops like St. John Neumann of Philadelphia and Archbishop John Hughes of New York established the great Catholic parochial school system. They knew the public schools, dominated by Protestant ideas, were dangerous to Catholic immigrants striving to assimilate into American society. They were well aware of what Newman experienced in the hostile Anglican society of Victorian England.
In fact, religious freedom in the United States was never secure for Catholics while England ruled the original colonies. Catholics suffered state-sponsored discrimination and even occasional violence until the First Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1791. Still, anti-Catholicism persisted, and the rise of Catholic parochial schools followed the rise of the hateful Know Nothing Party and the Ku Klux Klan.
Today, Catholics have much greater freedom in both the United States and England, and yet both nations have become highly secular and increasingly “irreligious.” Catholic school enrollment has declined precipitously—more than two-thirds in the last 60 years—and most Catholic colleges have nearly erased any resemblance to Newman’s vision for the university. The age of infidelity is upon us!
And so is the reform and renewal of Catholic education, found especially in Newman Guide recommended schools, colleges, and graduate programs as well as faithful Catholic homeschooling. This is Newman’s prescription, for which he is declared a Doctor of the Church. His intercession and his witness to the importance of Catholic formation in faith and reason are sure guides for the Church in this difficult but exciting age.
