\u201cCelebrating Cardinal Newman, one of the \u2018great teachers of the Church\u2019\u201d<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\nI\u2019m pleased because I\u2019m an admirer. \u00a0(Incidentally, the term doctor<\/em>\u00a0is being used here in the sense of \u201cteacher,\u201d from the Latin verb docere<\/em>, \u201cto teach.\u201d)<\/p>\nJohn Henry Newman (1801-1890) \u00a0\u2014 more properly, perhaps, St. John Henry Cardinal Newman \u2014 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:<\/p>\n
Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th\u2019encircling gloom,
\nLead Thou me on!
\nThe night is dark, and I am far from home,
\nLead Thou me on!
\nKeep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
\nThe distant scene; one step enough for me.<\/p>\n
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
\nShouldst lead me on;
\nI loved to choose and see my path; but now
\nLead Thou me on!
\nI loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
\nPride ruled my will. Remember not past years!<\/p>\n
So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
\nWill lead me on.
\nO\u2019er moor and fen, o\u2019er crag and torrent, till
\nThe night is gone,
\nAnd with the morn those angel faces smile,
\nWhich I have loved long since, and lost awhile!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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. \u00a0He 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 \u201cOxford movement\u201d or \u201cTractarian movement.\u201d \u00a0In 1845, however, when he was working on his never-fully-completed Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine<\/em><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>he resigned his position at Oxford and was received into the Catholic Church. \u00a0(\u201cTo be deep in history,\u201d he wrote, \u201cis to cease to be a Protestant.\u201d) \u00a0Almost 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. \u00a0His 1864 autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua<\/i> is still read today, and is still worth reading, as is his 1870 book, the Grammar of Assent.<\/i> \u00a0His 1865\u00a0poem The Dream of Gerontius<\/i> was set to music in 1900 by Sir Edward Elgar.<\/p>\n\u201cTo live is to change,\u201d Newman wrote, \u201cand to be perfect is to have changed often.\u201d \u00a0\u201cGrowth is the only evidence of life.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2019, Cardinal Newman was canonized as a Catholic saint and, just today, he was declared a \u201cDoctor of the Church.\u201d \u00a0He is the thirty-eighth person to be so declared. \u00a0It\u2019s a title that is given by the Catholic Church to saints whose research or writing is deemed to have made an exceptional contribution \u00a0to the theology or doctrine of the Church. \u00a0To 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 \u00c1vila, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux, and St. Hildegard von Bingen. \u00a0It\u2019s very heady company.<\/p>\n
For what it\u2019s 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. \u00a0The new pope sees addressing the challenges of the new industrial revolution that is being brought about by artificial intelligence as one of his priorities. \u00a0And, plainly, he\u2019s not the only thoughtful religious leader out there who is thinking about the subject: \u00a0\u201cElder Gong Calls for Faith Communities to Help Safe, Ethical, Trustworthy AI:\u00a0Apostle suggests three ways global faith leaders can act on AI-centered issues.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 Things are obviously becoming desperate at the nearly fossilized Interpreter Foundation. \u00a0They\u2019ve been obliged to resort, in their series of chapter reprints, to a reprint \u2014 and, in fact, to a reprint that comes from a distinctly sketchy author: \u00a0Seek Ye Words of Wisdom: \u201cA Great Leap Backwards: Where Matters Stand Now Regarding the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":112148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[56,1863,1860,2905,788,20269],"class_list":["post-112145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book-of-mormon","tag-cardinal-newman","tag-john-henry-newman","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-mormon","tag-secret-combination"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>