Happy Birthday, Cardinal Newman!

Happy Birthday, Cardinal Newman! February 20, 2009

Saturday, February 21, is the birthday of the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Cardinal Newman (1801-1890). A graduate of Oxford, he was ordained an Anglican priest in 1824. Newman’s preaching and his writing made him one of the rising stars among the Anglican clergy of his day, and that’s why it was such a shock when he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1845. After his conversion he was sent to Rome, where he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1847. He then joined the Oratorians, a group of secular priests living together in community under the aegis of St. Philip Neri. For Newman, the Oratorians provided a desired balance between communal and individual. In 1848 he moved to Birmingham and set up the Oratory where he lived for the rest of his life. There were many in the Anglican community who considered Newman a renegade, questioning his real motives for becoming a Catholic. In 1864, he answered these accusations with Apologia Pro Vita Sua, which many consider the finest spiritual autobiography in the English language. In 1879, Pope Leo XIII named him a Cardinal. Until his death he continued to write and preach. His tombstone, which reads Ex Umbris et Imaginibus in Veritatem (“out of shadows and images into the truth”), sums up his lifelong striving.


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