John Henry Newman, Priest, Tractarian
11 August -- Commemoration
If celebrated as a Lesser Festival,
Common of Pastors, page 483
John Henry Newman was born in 1801. His intellectual
brilliance saw him appointed to a Fellowship in
Oxford at the young age of
twenty-one. His Evangelical roots gradually gave way to a
more Catholic view of the Church, particularly after liberal
trends both in politics and theology appeared to undermine
the Church of England's authority. Newman was one of the
leaders of the Tractarians who defended the Church and he is
associated especially with the idea of Anglicanism as a Via
Media or middle way between Roman Catholicism and
Protestantism. He continued to make an original and
influential contribution to theology after he joined the
Roman Catholic Church in 1845. He established an Oratorian
community in Birmingham in 1849 and towards the end of his
life was made a Cardinal. He died on this day in 1890.