Benedict XVI's first beatification: John Henry Newman, in England, September 2010

From Catholic News Service:

Pope Benedict XVI will preside at the beatification ceremony of Cardinal John Henry Newman in Coventry, England, during a four-day visit to the United Kingdom Sept. 16-19, British Catholic leaders said.

The step is an unusual one because under Pope Benedict's own rules, a beatification is to be performed by a cardinal in the diocese where the candidate for sainthood died.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, president of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, told a March 16 press conference in London that to see Cardinal Newman "declared 'blessed' -- a step toward sainthood -- will be a very, very important moment."

"Cardinal John Henry Newman is a figure of great literary culture, a poet and a pastor," he said. "He is a towering figure in English history over the last 200 years.

"Pope Benedict has a particular attentiveness to the writings of Cardinal Newman," the archbishop added. "He is making an exception to his own rules to do this. ... This will be the first beatification he has carried out as pope."

Read the entire piece. The official website for Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United Kingdom has further information, as well as some selections from Newman's writings.

Here is a wonderful poem from Newman, from the collection, Flowers of Heaven : One Thousand Years of Christian Verse, compiled by Joseph Pearce:

The Sign of the Cross

Whene’er across this sinful flesh of mine
I draw the Holy Sign,
All good thoughts stir within me, and renew
Their slumbering strength divine;
Till there springs up a courage high and true
To suffer and to do.

And who shall say, but hateful spirits around,
For their brief hour unbound,
Shudder to see, and wail their overthrow?
While on far heathen ground
Some lonely Saint hails the fresh odor, though
Its source he cannot know.

Last year I wrote a piece about Newman for The Catholic Answer. Here is part of that article:

It is Newman’s dramatic conversion that captured and still captures the attention and imagination of so many. Born into a family of bankers, the eldest of six children, the shy and studious Newman had a fondness for reading the Bible and the novels of Sir Walter Scott. The religion of his youth was Anglican and evangelical in nature; he described it in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864) as “Bible religion.” (It was also quite anti-Catholic.) He wrote that he “had no formed religious convictions till I was fifteen. Of course I had a perfect knowledge of my Catechism.”

He experienced a profound crisis of faith in 1816, but emerged from it with a newfound fervor, evidenced by his frequent reception of communion in the Anglican Church and taking a private vow of celibacy. At twenty-one he was a professor at Oriel College, Oxford, and he was ordained in June 1824 as a priest in the Anglican Communion. He was a curate of Saint Clement’s, Oxford, for two years, and was then vicar of Saint Mary the Virgin, the university church, where he overcame his shyness, stating: “I came out of my shell.” Several years of impressive scholarly work followed, including his first major publication, The Arians of the Fourth Century (1833). Much of that work had to do with early Church history and the Church fathers; such study would eventually lead him to communion with Rome.

During the 1830s Newman became a leader in the Oxford Movement, which consisted of several Oxford theologians who addressed key issues relating to the authority, nature, and history of the Anglican Church. They also sought to reinvigorate what they thought was a spiritually lethargic Communion. Because of the many tracts produced by Newman and others, the movement became known as Tractarianism. In Tract 90, published in 1841, Newman argued that the Thirty-Nine Articles—the defining creedal statements of Anglicanism established in 1563—were essentially Catholic teachings. This led to controversy and to Newman’s forced resignation from Oxford. “From the end of 1841,” he wrote in Apologia, “I was on my death-bed, as regards my membership with the Anglican Church.”

Newman retired to Littlemore with a small group of followers and lived a semi-monastic life as he worked on his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. It was during his years there that he worked through his various concerns and questions about Catholic doctrine. He preached his last sermon at St. Mary’s in September 1843 and shortly thereafter published a retraction of his previous attacks on the Catholic Church. On October 8, 1845, his Essay still not completed (he never did finish it), he wrote: “I am this night expecting Father Dominic, the Passionist. … I mean to ask of him admission into the One Fold of Christ.” Blessed Dominic Barberi, an Italian Passionist, received Newman into the Catholic Church the next day. The following October he traveled to Rome, where he was ordained a Catholic priest and given a doctorate in divinity by Pope Pius IX. He joined the Congregation of the Oratory and, having been given a papal brief, set up an Oratory in Birmingham.

Newman’s life was nearly equally divided between being a non-Catholic and a Catholic, and the second half of his life, like the first, didn’t lack for controversy. His Apologia Pro Vita Sua was published in response to personal attacks made by novelist Charles Kingsly. He defended the civic loyalty of English Catholics against the accusations of William Gladstone. In addition, many Catholics remained wary of Newman, who some considered to be a liberal, in part because of his concerns about the First Vatican Council formally defining the doctrine of papal infallibility; in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (1875), he affirmed that he had always believed in the doctrine. In 1879 he was named a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII.

Ignatius Press has published Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons (1781 pages!), as well as his Prayers, Verses, and Devotions (with an introduction by Louis Bouyer). And Ignatius Press recently republished this important book:

John Henry Newman: His Inner Life

by Fr. Zeno van den Barselaar, O.F.M. Cap.

This book is a culmination of Father Zeno’s life work. With the cooperation of the Oratorian Fathers, he was given full access to all of Newman’s letters, diaries, and complete published and unpublished sermons. From all this he has drawn together the interior struggles Newman faced from childhood until his death. Zeno allows Newman to speak through his work and writings, an exceedingly rich source. This is a landmark work considered one of the best spiritual biographies of John Henry Newman ever written.

This book was first published in Dutch and met with immediate and extensive acclaim. It covers Newman’s young life as an Anglican, the doubts he faced in light of his historical studies, his conversion to Catholicism, the trials he faced as a result of his conversion, and his remarkable growth in holiness and the interior life.

“It took me, all in all, fifteen months to examine the 430 files of letters in the Archivium and the formidable collection of papers, journals and memoranda in the cupboards of the Cardinal’s room... Studying the forty-five volumes of Newman’s works which had up to then been published also required much time. While I read and copied out what threw light on his inner life, the outlines of Newman’s soul gradually became clear to me: the following pages are the result of this labor of love.” — From the Introduction

Father Zeno, O.F.M. Cap., one of the world’s foremost Newman scholars, obtained a Ph.D. in English language and literature and did his doctoral thesis on Newman’s epistemology.