News about John Henry Newman

Things are obviously becoming desperate at the nearly fossilized Interpreter Foundation.  They’ve been obliged to resort, in their series of chapter reprints, to a reprint — and, in fact, to a reprint that comes from a distinctly sketchy author:  Seek Ye Words of Wisdom: “A Great Leap Backwards: Where Matters Stand Now Regarding the Book of Mormon’s “Secret Combinations,” written by one Daniel C. Peterson:

Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Seek Ye Words of Wisdom: Studies of the Book of Mormon, Bible, and Temple in Honor of Stephen D. Ricks, edited by Donald W. Parry, Gaye Strathearn, and Shon D. Hopkin. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/seek-ye-words-of-wisdom/.

“Publishing on February 10, 1831, Alexander Campbell was probably the first writer to allege that the Gadianton bands of the Book of Mormon reflect the Masonry of Joseph Smith’s day. However, although he didn’t really develop the idea and even seems fairly soon to have abandoned it, he was far from the last to confidently assert it.”

From the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:  “Learn More About Book of Mormon Translation, Joseph Smith and Plural Marriage: Three new pages are added to Topics and Questions”

“The latest round of simple answers to important questions about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is now available.”

I really appreciate graciousness and civility in public political discourse, as so beautifully illustrated here.  Also, in distantly related news:  Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has evidently proposed former Representative Matt Gaetz to head up an investigation into lingering questions about the late billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.  (See here.)  It think it’s an intriguing idea, not least because Matt Gaetz may currently have time on his hands and also because he is exceptionally well acquainted with Florida-focused investigations into sexual misconduct.

Although I’m neither Protestant nor Catholic — whereas (in succession) he was, very importantly, both — I’m pleased to see these items:

• “Newman to be declared Doctor of the Church: The Vatican said the title would be formally conferred ‘soon.”’
• “Celebrating Cardinal Newman, one of the ‘great teachers of the Church’”

I’m pleased because I’m an admirer.  (Incidentally, the term doctor is being used here in the sense of “teacher,” from the Latin verb docere, “to teach.”)

John Henry Newman (1801-1890)  — more properly, perhaps, St. John Henry Cardinal Newman — is almost certainly best known to the majority of Latter-day Saints as the author of the lyrics (written in 1833, and somewhat autobiographical) to one of our familiar hymns:

Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th’encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!

So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!

But he is important in many other respects, too, as a theologian, writer, historian, philosopher, and poet, and he is central to the nineteenth-century religious history of the British Isles.  He was already nationally known by the mid-1830s; while an academic at the University of Oxford and a priest of the Church of England, he was a leader in the so-called “Oxford movement” or “Tractarian movement.”  In 1845, however, when he was working on his never-fully-completed Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, he resigned his position at Oxford and was received into the Catholic Church.  (“To be deep in history,” he wrote, “is to cease to be a Protestant.”)  Almost immediately after his entry into the Church of Rome, he was ordained a Catholic priest and then, in 1879, he was created a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII.  His 1864 autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua is still read today, and is still worth reading, as is his 1870 book, the Grammar of Assent.  His 1865 poem The Dream of Gerontius was set to music in 1900 by Sir Edward Elgar.

“To live is to change,” Newman wrote, “and to be perfect is to have changed often.”  “Growth is the only evidence of life.”

In 2019, Cardinal Newman was canonized as a Catholic saint and, just today, he was declared a “Doctor of the Church.”  He is the thirty-eighth person to be so declared.  It’s a title that is given by the Catholic Church to saints whose research or writing is deemed to have made an exceptional contribution  to the theology or doctrine of the Church.  To be named a Doctor of the Church is to join the ranks of such people as St. Gregory the Great, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Anselm of Canterbury, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. John of the Cross, and St. Albertus Magnus, as well as, since 1970, such women as St. Teresa of Ávila, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and St. Hildegard von Bingen.  It’s very heady company.

For what it’s worth, by the way, Robert Francis Prevost, the recently-elected Pope Leo XIV, took his papal name in honor of Leo XIII, who elevated John Henry Newman to the cardinalate and who is generally credited with having developed modern Catholic social teaching in the midst of the Second Industrial Revolution.  The new pope sees addressing the challenges of the new industrial revolution that is being brought about by artificial intelligence as one of his priorities.  And, plainly, he’s not the only thoughtful religious leader out there who is thinking about the subject:  “Elder Gong Calls for Faith Communities to Help Safe, Ethical, Trustworthy AI: Apostle suggests three ways global faith leaders can act on AI-centered issues.”