St. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (Cluny Media)
Purchase at https://clunymedia.com/products/the-idea-of-a-university
Online at https://newmanreader.org/works/idea/index.html
This is a compilation of Newman’s lectures and some additional essays upon founding a Catholic university in Dublin. It is very important not to concentrate on any one portion, as if it captures Newman’s thought on Catholic university education. Each lecture/essay is a single part of a complete argument for Catholic education, and it can even seem at times that he advocates a secular education, which is opposite of his intention and misses the whole point of the book.
Also be cautious of other editions of this book. Some editors have discarded portions, especially those completing the argument for faithful Catholic education. Some editions are edited poorly. The online free edition (linked above) is good, and the Cluny edition for purchase (linked above) includes an excellent introduction by Don Briel and foreword by Christopher Blum.
St. John Henry Newman, Intellect, the Instrument of Religious Training (Feast of St. Monica,
1856)
Online at https://www.newmanreader.org/works/occasions/sermon1.html
Includes some of Newman’s most important writing on education: The student “has all these separate powers warring in his own breast,—appetite, passion, secular ambition, intellect, and conscience, and trying severally to get possession of him… Here, then, I conceive, is the object of the Holy See and the Catholic Church in setting up Universities; it is to reunite things which were in the beginning joined together by God, and have been put asunder by man. …It will not satisfy me, what satisfies so many, to have two independent systems, intellectual and religious, going at once side by side….
St. John Henry Newman, “Duties of Catholics Towards the Protestant View,” Lectures on the
Present Position of Catholics in England (Longman, Green & Co., 1908)
Online at https://www.newmanreader.org/works/england/lecture9.html
“I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold, and what they do not, who know their creed so well, that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity; I am not denying you are such already: but I mean to be severe, and, as some would say, exorbitant in my demands, I wish you to enlarge your knowledge, to cultivate your reason, to get an insight into the relation of truth to truth, to learn to view things as they are, to understand how faith and reason stand to each other, what are the bases and principles of
Catholicism, and where lie the main inconsistences and absurdities of the Protestant theory.”
St. John Henry Newman, “Personal Influence, the Means of Propagating the Truth” (Jan. 22,
1832), in Oxford University Sermons (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909), 75-98.
Online at https://www.newmanreader.org/works/oxford/sermon5.html
Argues for personal witness as the best teacher.
St. John Henry Newman, Rise and Progress of Universities and Benedictine Essays (University
of Notre Dame Press, 2001)
Purchase at https://www.amazon.com/Progress-Universities-Benedictine-Essays-Cardinal/dp/0268040052/
Online at https://newmanreader.org/works/historical/volume3/universities/index.html and
https://newmanreader.org/works/historical/volume2/benedictine/mission.html and
https://newmanreader.org/works/historical/volume2/benedictine/schools.html
Newman’s essays on Benedictine education, plus his history of Catholic universities was published a few years after Idea of a University.
St. John Henry Newman, My Campaign in Ireland Volumes I & II (Gracewing, 2021 and 2022)
Purchase at https://www.amazon.com/My-Campaign-Ireland-Newman-Millennium/dp/0852444095/ and
https://www.amazon.com/Campaign-Connection-Catholic-University-Millennium/dp/0852449666/
Edited by Newman historian Paul Shrimpton, these are the first published volumes of Newman’s collected papers related to his founding of a Catholic university in Dublin. They provide much insight into Newman’s thought on university education.
St. John Henry Newman, Loss and Gain (Ignatius Press, 2012)
Purchase at https://www.amazon.com/Loss-Gain-Ignatius-Critical-Editions/dp/1586177052/
Online at https://newmanreader.org/works/gain/index.html
This is one of Newman’s two novels, describing the conversations and conversion of a student at Anglican Oxford university. Semi-autobiographical.
St. John Henry Newman, Biglietto Speech (May 17, 1879)
Online at https://newmanreader.org/works/sayings/file1.html#biglietto
Speech given following Newman’s designation as Cardinal. “…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… Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. 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. …Instead of the Church’s authority and
teaching they would substitute, first of all, a universal and a thoroughly secular education, calculated to bring home to every individual that to be orderly, industrious, and sober is his personal interest.”
St. John Henry Newman, From a letter about education (Aug. 15, 1879)
Online at https://newmanreader.org/works/sayings/file1.html#education
Newman describes his work in education as “pastoral”: “I have ever joined together faith and knowledge.”
St. John Henry Newman, Pillar of the Coud (or Lead, Kindly Light) (June 16, 1833)
Online at https://newmanreader.org/works/verses/verse90.html
St. John Henry Newman, Substance and Shadow (Dec. 7, 1832)
Online at https://newmanreader.org/works/verses/verse32.html