St. John Henry Newman is a Doctor of the Church!

[00:00:00] Foreign I bring you news of great joy. St. John Henry Newman is going to be a doctor of the church. [00:00:22] We just found this out this morning at St. John Henry Newman, one of my favorite saints. And in fact, I have a portrait of St John Henry Newman right up on the wall outside of the camera shot. But it's right there. I can look at it right now. He is going to be a doctor of the Church. And I have to admit, I'm ecstatic. I'm excited and I want to talk about it. I also want to talk a little bit about some of the pushback I've seen from some traditional circles against this declaration and also explain why I think St. John Henry Newman is the saint, the doctor for our modern doctrinal problems. Before I get into it, though, let me just go ahead and read the announcement. This is. This was from Diane Montana, her translation, and it was dated this morning, July 31, 2025, feast of seeing Ignatius of Loyola. So on July 31, 2025, the Holy Father Leo XIV received an audience. His Most Reverend Eminence, Cardinal Marcelo Seminaro, Prefect to the Diascorry for the Cause of Saints. During the same audience, the Holy Father confirmed the affirmative opinion of the plenary session of cardinals and bishops, members of Dioscre for the Causes of Saints, regarding the title of Doctor of the Universal Church, which will soon be conferred upon St John Henry Newman, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, founder of the Oratory of St Philip Neri in England, born in London on February 21, 1801, and died in Baston on August 11, 1890. [00:01:59] So that's all we've got so far. They said they will confer the title of Doctor of the Church soon. [00:02:05] Perhaps they'll wait till his feast day in October. Perhaps they'll do it in a few days, on August 11, the day of his death. We don't know yet. But the fact is he's going to be a doctor of the Church. [00:02:17] So let me just get into this a little bit. I'm obviously a big fan of St. John Henry Newman. Like a lot of converts from Protestantism, he had an impact on me becoming Catholic. So I'm very grateful to him for that. [00:02:31] But really, he helped me more after I became Catholic than before I became Catholic. I knew some of the basics about him and his writings before I became Catholic, but it was really after I became Catholic that I really dove into it and. And it helped me to understand Catholicism a lot better. So who is St. John Henry Newman? [00:02:48] Like that statement said, he was born in 1801, he had, he. He was brought up initially not really practicing a practicing Christian, very much in his family, but then he had an evangelical conversion experience in his teens. So this would have been around 1817 or 1818, something like that. I can't remember the exact date, but he. An evangelical conversion experience and then. And that really set him on his path towards where he ended up leading him, where the Holy Spirit led him. He eventually entered into the Anglican Church and really started to become more Catholic in his understanding of the Anglican Church. This is important to know. He did not become Catholic in the late 1820s, early, early 1930s, but his understanding of the Church, of ecclesiology and whatnot, became more and more Catholic. [00:03:44] And he was an Anglican. He became an Anglican priest in 1830s and he was one of the most famous men in England in the 1830s. I mean, we don't really think about that today because the fact we have social media, all that stuff, how can somebody become famous? But really he would have been. He was the equivalent of somebody who had millions of followers on social media today. He had great influence. He was an influencer, as they say. [00:04:08] And he was the leader of the Oxford movement, which was a movement within the Anglican Church in England, the Church of England within the Church of England, to basically make the English church more Catholic. A lot of people don't understand that the Anglican Church has always been somewhat of a hodgepodge of different theologies and viewpoints and ideologies, and it holds them all intention. I think it ends up falling apart because of this. But it basically has the. On one extreme, well, these days, on one extreme, very liberal, very. [00:04:42] Absolutely not really Christian. You also have. On another extreme, you have the more Catholic, Anglo Catholic views. You also have the evangelicals, so devout Christian believers, but they're more low church evangelical believers, all within the Anglican Church, the Church of England. [00:04:58] And so Newman was a leader of what we call the Anglo Catholic part of that. That's what the Oxford movement was during this time, especially in the beginning years. He still held prejudices against the Catholic, the Roman Catholic Church, which frankly was natural for an Englishman of his time because anti Catholic sentiment in England in the 19th century was early 19th century was extremely high. And it had been the breakaway in the 16th century. It's not like all of a sudden by the 1800s people were like they are today in England, where they didn't really care. No, they cared. And they looked at Roman Catholics as lower class. I mean, think about the English gentleman. [00:05:47] He obviously was going to be A member of the Church of England and the whole religion really kind of adapted to that. [00:05:56] And it looked at those, like those dirty Italians and those idiotic Irishmen, like, who are all Catholic. It looked down on them. They weren't really. [00:06:06] They were just something you look down your nose at. And Newman had some of that now. He grew out of that very much so. But that was definitely part of what was going on at the time. [00:06:16] Well, over time, as he started to read history and study history, this, by the way, Newman was one of the great scholars of his day. He was one of the great intellects in all of church history. [00:06:26] I mean, nobody really disputes his intellectual prowess. [00:06:30] The more he studied history though, the more he began to adapt and even embrace the Roman Catholic Church. [00:06:40] And in particular, when he did a study of the Arian crisis in the 4th century, that's in the case when the priest Arius started to proclaim that Jesus wasn't really God, just was an exalted creation and all that. And what he, when he saw that, he did a deep dive. He wrote a volume on this. [00:07:00] When he, he did deep dive, he realized, wait a minute, when he looked at the different camps in that, during that crisis, there was the Aryans, the semi Aryans, and then there's the Catholics. [00:07:11] He realized the Aryans were like the Protestants, the semi Aryans were like the Anglicans, and the Catholics were like the Catholics of his day. [00:07:21] And that was like a bolt of lightning to him when he realized that, that he would have been on the wrong side during the Arian crisis. [00:07:30] And so eventually he started to understand, like the big question was the big Anglican argument against Roman Catholicism in his time was, well, the Roman Catholic Church doesn't look like the Catholic Church looked in the second century, for example, or the fourth century. So they felt like the Anglicans felt like, oh, we're more like they were in the early Church because we look more like them than the, they didn't have this papal, this, you know, all this papal supremacy and all these different things like that. Anglicans were like Anglo Catholics were more like the early church than they are. [00:08:12] So as Newman studied it more and more, he started to see that perhaps on the outside things looked a little different in the 18th century Roman Catholic Church as compared to the 4th or 3rd century Catholic Church. [00:08:26] However, he recognized that this was due to development. And this is what he's most known for, the idea of development of doctrine. [00:08:35] And he wrote an essay, he wrote a book called An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Here's My copy here, it's from. I actually wrote when I got in December of 1994. [00:08:46] So that was about a year and a half after I became Catholic. So, like I said, I really dove into Newman after I became Catholic and helped me to understand Catholicism better. Anyway, an essay on Development of Christian Doctrine. He started that as a Anglican, but basically finished it, or by soon after it was finished, he became Catholic. And this was in 1845, because he understood that, yes, perhaps a very superficial look at the Roman Catholic church in the 18th century or 19th century in comparison to the Catholic Church and the early Church might appear that they're different on a superficial glance. But if you look deeper, what really is happening is doctrine has developed. Just like during the Arian crisis, the Church had to make very clear what she believed about the Trinity, about the divinity, humanity of Jesus Christ. [00:09:37] So also the Church has done that about a lot of different doctrines and teachings of the Church. It's made it more clear, it's dove into it more deeply, so there'd be less confusion. There was a lot of confusion during that time of the 4th century Arian crisis, and there was still confusion throughout Church history. It never, like, goes away. Confusion, doesn't go away completely. Doctrinal confusion. So the Church develops what. [00:10:01] What she believes. And we'll talk about more development in a minute because that's. That's super important here when we're talking about him as a doctor of the Church. Well, his conversion was a huge deal. A huge. As Donald Trump's a huge, huge deal in England of his time, because, like I said, he was one of the great influencers of his time. He was one of the most prominent and famous men in England of his time, and definitely one of those prominent and famous religious figures of his time. And here he is, he becomes Catholic. And so it was a huge deal. And all the Anglicans basically disowned him. They rejected him, they attacked him. However, what's interesting is a lot of Catholics did not embrace him. [00:10:46] They were suspicious, including a lot of Catholic leaders, like bishops. [00:10:52] They didn't really know if they could trust him. Was he really Catholic? I mean, we see this here today. [00:10:58] I mean, this. It's not like things are brand new today, with converts being somewhat held in suspicion at times. Well, this definitely happened to Newman, in fact, because of, like, the challenges to his beliefs. He wrote another book about, a biography, autobiography, Apologia Pro Vita Sua. I have my copy here. When. When did I get. I got this a long time ago, too. Let me see what my version I got, let me see, this is a 1976, oh, 1989 version. I got it a couple years after that. But apology of Pro via vita suda sua. And that basically was his autobiography. He wrote this in 1860, so he still had another 30 years to live. But basically he defended his conversion to the Catholic faith. And he was defending it primarily, yes, against Anglicans, but I think also he was defending it against Catholics who might have questioned whether he was really fully Catholic or if he still had one foot, one toe maybe in the Anglican world. [00:11:55] Now he soon became a Catholic priest after he converted and he found it and he looked around like how she joined a religious order, she become diocese priest. Ultimately, he founded the Oratory of St Philip Neri in England. This is the first English speaking oratory, St Philip Neri in the world. In fact, the parish I go to is run by oratorian priests. And they look at St. Philip Neri and St. St. John Henry Newman is kind of their founders because they're an English speaking oratory. Every English speaking oratory, St. Philip Neri really has two founders, St. Philip Neri and St. John Henry Newman. [00:12:30] And so he found this and he started and he basically brought other men, a lot of them converts to him and founded this, the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. [00:12:40] Now, after his conversion, Newman remained a controversialist, meaning, you know, he was involved in a lot of controversies. [00:12:47] Now he really did prefer the quiet life. I mean, if you look, if you've read any biography of him and understand Newman at all, he preferred the quiet night, quiet life. He did not want to be out there debating with people and fighting with people and trying, you know, being involved in all these controversies. He would have preferred much better just stay at where they, you know, where the oratory, the or the oratory where he lived, you know, live the religious life and not be involved. In fact, he, he made it one of his things. He, he, one of his principles he lived by was he never wanted to defend himself. The problem was those often he was brought into debates because people would attack him, but really it was an attack against the faith, the Catholic faith. And he felt like, I don't, I can't, I don't have to defend myself, but I do have to defend the Catholic faith. [00:13:36] And so he got involved with a lot of controversies, wrote about many subjects. He was obviously, he wrote about, you know, development, Christian doctrine. We also wrote a lot about Christian education, Catholic education, especially higher education, what that really means. And that's a major contribution he gave. [00:13:52] He also wrote about the role of the Pope because this was first and foremost on the minds of many Catholics at that time. Obviously, Vatican II, I'm sorry, Vatican I was held in 1870. [00:14:05] And so this is, you know, 22, 25 years after he converted. So this was something discussed a lot. [00:14:13] And to be honest, John Henry Newman differed in many ways from some of the bishops in England, most prominently Cardinal Manning, who was the Archbishop of Westminster during this time. [00:14:27] And Cardinal Manning, there's no other way to put it than to say he was a hyper papalist, he was an ultramontanist. He very much believed in the power of the papacy and that essentially the Pope was a. [00:14:40] I mean, the equivalent of a dictator. I mean, Cardinal Manning, you know, God rest his soul, not saying, Trying to say anything against him, but his theology was very much hyper papalist. And so what happened was, is leading up to Vatican ii. Cardinal Sorry, Father, at the time, John Henry Newman was invited to be an advisor at Vatican 1, but he. He turned it down. He said, no, I'm not going to go. He'd written. He'd written about the papacy. [00:15:05] And so when Vatican I happened, really, it wasn't a vindication for either Cardinal Manning or John Henry Newman. It was more in the middle, maybe leaning a bit more towards Cardinal Manning. But ultimately it did affirm the authority of the Pope, obviously the infallibility of the Pope, things like that. But it didn't go as far as Cardinal Manning wanted to go. I mean, Cardinal Manning wanted to make it where any statement the Pope makes is infallible, essentially. [00:15:31] And so that didn't happen either. [00:15:35] John Henry Newman, he did struggle a bit with what was going on with Vatican I, but he ultimately did accept Vatican I. [00:15:43] Now, he wrote a letter. This is another recommendation I have for you a letter addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on the occasion of Mr. Gladstone's recent expostulation. [00:15:55] Now, when I say it's a letter, if you're watching, you can see it's a book. I mean, the letter in this, you know, in this book format is over 100 pages. So this was kind of just a way in which Newman could make his views known without actually writing a book. It was like. It was. The conceit was, it was this letter to the Duke of Norfolk. [00:16:15] In it, he details a lot about the papacy, about the kind of the proper view of the papacy. And he wrote this. [00:16:24] I don't want to get the date wrong. I want to make sure I get this correct. When he wrote this. [00:16:30] Oh, shoot. I Don't have it right here. [00:16:34] I wish I did. [00:16:36] Anyway the point is though he talks a lot. He goes in a lot of detail about the papacy. I mean a few places here. I've highlighted a few things in here about the, you know, about what he says. For example, you know, he says so little does the Pope come into this whole system of moral theology by which as by our conscience our lives are regulated that the weight of his hand upon us as private men is absolutely unappreciable. Meaning like teaching of the Catholic Church on morality the Pope is so little like part of that in the sense that it exists because it's always existed. It's what the Church always teaches. So the Pope has very little, you know, his hand is very little upon us on a day to day in our moral life and then he's arguing against Mr. Gladstone who had done a. This is an Anglican who had attacked the papacy in Issac. He said Gladstone three times. Does he make the Pope say that no one can disobey him without risking his salvation Whereas what the Pope does say is that no one can disbelieve the duty of obedience and unity without such a risk. In other words, he's not saying. [00:17:44] The Pope isn't saying we have to do anything and everything he says. Instead what he's saying is you can't reject the idea of obedience and unity without risking your salvation. In other words there are times in which we don't have to obey the Pope and I've talked about this a lot in the past he quotes Bellarmine other times he said and others. So he has a lot of things in here like this quote from Bellarmine says in order to resist and defend oneself no authority is required. Therefore, as it is lawful to resist the Pope if he assaulted a man's person so it is lawful to resist him if he assaulted souls or troubled the state and much more if he strove to destroy the Church. It is lawful, I say, to resist him by not doing what he commands and hindering the execution of his will. This is Newman quoting Bellarmine. So you see his view of the papacy. [00:18:40] You could call him in some ways the first papal minimalist. This is a term that's thrown around these days. I'm one of them. I've been categorized as a papal minimalist and I'm fine with that. Meaning we accept the teaching of Vatican ii? Absolutely. However, our interpretation of it is much more minimal than somebody like a Cardinal Manning or like a lot of the hyper papalists today. [00:19:02] So this Is, you know, something he. And I'll talk about that more in a second. So this. And so Cardinal John Henry Newman was then named a cardinal in I believe right before his death, like maybe a year or two before his death in 1890. And this was a honorary degree appointment, I should say, because he was already past the age of voting and everything. And so it was like to, to acknowledge the greatness of John Henry Newman. And this was, this is Leo the 13th who, who made him a cardinal. So it's, I guess, appropriate that Leo XIV has named him a doctor of the Church. [00:19:39] And it really was a vindication because throughout Newman's Catholic life he very much was held in suspicion by many Catholic authorities and many resisted him. They felt like his teachings on development but also on the papacy and other areas were really him maintaining his kind of Anglican Protestant background. But here's Pope Leo basically saying is, I'm not saying Leo didn't say okay. Every single thing he wrote is okay. What he is saying though is listen, this is a son of the Church. This is somebody who loves the church, who is a faithful member, an obedient member of the Catholic Church. I think that's very important for us to remember that him being made a cardinal was really the contemporary church of his time saying he was always a faithful member of the Church. And now that he's canonized and is going to be a doctor of church, I think we can say that for sure. [00:20:30] So now of course he's going to be a doctor. And like I said, I'm ecstatic and I am ecstatic because I really believe that John Henry Newman is the modern saint for our, our debates in the Church today, primarily for two of his, his most important subjects he talked about which I've already mentioned, development of doctrine and the role of the papacy. [00:20:54] So when it comes to development of doctrine, like I said, it's ways most known for. It's also the thing that many trads and even maybe conservative Catholics might get a little nervous about. [00:21:04] In fact, I saw some resistance, some opposition to this announcement today on social media from some trad corners. Now, not all trads. I mean, you know, I'm considered trad. I'm ecstatic. Peter Kwasniewski was, is very happy in others. So I'm not saying it's like all traits, but there is a segment of traditionalists who are concerned or maybe even oppose this announcement. And the reason is, is because let's be honest, progressive Catholics in modern times have abused and misused Newman's idea of doctrinal development. [00:21:41] And it's important to note the misuse of something does not negate or invalidate the proper use of it. [00:21:48] If I take a kitchen knife and I cut carrots with it, great. If I cut somebody's throat with it, that doesn't mean you shouldn't have kitchen knives to cut carrots. It just means don't put it in the hands of somebody who's going to misuse it, who's going to abuse it. [00:22:01] And likewise with Newman's teaching on doctrinal development, yes, it's been misused and it's been abused and yes, it has been abused by Pope Francis himself and many of his followers. People who like, basically agreed with his ideology in all things. They have, they have misused it, they have abused it. Because basically, it's important to note in Newman's idea of doctrinal development, things do not change from one thing to something different. [00:22:30] What happens is our understanding of that thing has always been the same and our knowledge of it, our understanding of it deepens. [00:22:38] So it's like the classic metaphor is a seed that becomes an acorn, seed that become an acorn, that becomes a tree that grows into tree. It doesn't change something. It's not. So X can't equal not X. So if the Church has always said, and she has, that something like contracept, artificial contraception is immoral, it can't all of a sudden tomorrow say it's now moral. [00:23:03] Likewise something like the death penalty. This is where Pope Francis abused it. [00:23:07] The Church has always said that there's legitimate uses of the death penalty. We can debate on the edges, you know, when it's properly be used, but it is legit. It can be morally legitimate for a state to use a death penalty. [00:23:21] You can also say now, okay, now, it's not legitimate for the State to use ever. It's never morally legitimate for the state to use a death penalty. It's simply, you can't do that. That's not development of doctrine, that's change of doctrine. [00:23:35] And that's really where we have a problem here, is that people today want to change doctrine and they put it under the COVID of Newman's development of doctrine. In fact, some people are claiming that's why he's canonized, that's why he's being a doctor of church, in order to promote this idea of change of doctrine under the guise of development of doctrine. Well, I just say that to that I would just say that first of all, I just don't think it's healthy to have an attitude where every single thing the Vatican does you look at as a bad news. I mean, it just, it's a poor way. It's a poor way to live, frankly. But more importantly, I would just say is it's a good thing. Newman was a great man, a faithful Catholic, and his development of doctrine understand, you know, his teaching on that is true. So whether or not people abuse it or not, that's something we have to, we have to address. [00:24:28] But it doesn't mean he shouldn't be a saint or shouldn't be a doctor, even if they did it. I don't believe, by the way, that leo's making him Dr. Church in order to promote idea of changing doctrine. But even if that were true, it doesn't mean he shouldn't be a doctor. It simply means that we have to fight against the misuse of that. And here's the, here's the fact. [00:24:47] Doctrine does develop. [00:24:50] Doctrine does develop. This is simply a historical fact. If you have even the slightest understanding of Church history, you have to accept there's no question that doctrine develops. It does not change. [00:25:03] What happens is our understanding of it deepens. There's actually a great five volume series of books about this that actually goes through the development of doctrine. It's by Jaroslav Pelikim. It's called the Christian A History of the Development of Doctrine. Here's volume one. [00:25:19] I have a copy. I have all, all five volumes here. This is another book I got in the 90s, I'm sure. Let me see. When did I get this one? Yeah, I think I got this one in the 90s as well. [00:25:28] And it basically goes through the development doctrine. What's ironic about this, this series, it's written by an Orthodox pelican actually converted from, I think Lutheranism to Orthodox Eastern Orthodoxy, which I say it's ironic because it's where it's an Eastern Orthodox. You get the most resistance to this idea of development of doctrine you will find in Orthodox, not all Orthodox, but in some Orthodox corners, this idea that they believe that the Church has always proclaimed doctrine in the exact Same way over 2000 years, which is just not true. I mean, it's. You might not like that, you may not want that to be the case, but it's just simply not true that the Church has proclaimed her doctrines in the exact same format, exact same way for 2000 years. It's not like in 50 A.D. the way people, Peter and Paul and others were proclaiming doctrine is identical to how it's been proclaimed every year since. I mean, that's just a reality now. Again, it does not mean it changes. So I think Newman becoming a doctor is very good because this will help us understand, it will give an impetus to understanding, even better, how doctrine really does develop over time. That does not change. It does not evolve. X cannot become not X. [00:26:41] We really do need to grapple with what it means to say doctrine develops and Newman is our guide. Again, I would encourage people to read an essay on the development of Christian doctrine. One thing I just want to mention when I'm kind of throwing off these books by Newman, Newman's not an easy read. [00:26:59] I mean, I love Newman. I think he's great, and I struggle at times to read him. [00:27:04] His way he presents things is very deep. It's very. [00:27:09] I mean, he's not. He lived in a time when people could think. I mean, people weren't on social media, people weren't on their phones, weren't watching videos all the time. They could follow an argument, they could follow a discussion very deeply in books. And so Newman was part of that. That society, and he wrote for it. So I will chat, I will say it is a challenge, but I think it's well worth it. It's well worth it. First of all, it just helps your brain to work, but also just well worth it because you get a lot deeper understanding of these issues. [00:27:39] Now, the second subject that Newman, I think is very good or guide for us today is the role of the papacy. I've talked about this. He was the first modern, I would say papal minimalist. [00:27:51] And he was suspicious of too much power given to the papacy and the way it could be abused. And I think this is something we have seen happen. I mean, in a sense, Newman's almost a prophet because we've seen it happen in the Church today. He accepted Vatican I, and I absolutely, positively believe every Catholic must accept Vatican one as true. [00:28:12] But his interpretation of Vatican One didn't follow the norm of many Catholic leaders and frankly, of the. He wasn't the dominant strain. How the Church, how actual bishops and popes and theologians interpreted Vatican I after the Council was not the same as Newman did. Yet Newman is a doctor of the Church, and Cardinal Manning is not, and many other of those men are not. I think that should tell us something that I would argue, in a sense, this is making papal minimalism a definite, legitimate view in the Church. I'm the first to say there's debate about the exact role of the papacy in the Catholic Church today. I'm not claiming that the Papal minimalist view is the ordained, canonized view of all Catholics. Obviously it's not. [00:29:06] We're in the minority even today. Very much would have been the minority in Newman's time in the early 20th century. But I do believe that the Council, meaning Vatican I, can be interpreted in light of Newman's views of the papacy. I think that's a legitimate path forward. And I think this is something that I'm hopeful that the Church will resolve over time, that there will be more writing, perhaps a council, even that kind of. That makes it more clear exactly what the limitations of the papacy are. And yes, there are limitations even in the. In. I mean, even the most. Well, not the most hyper. Papalist, because they're insane. But even those who really don't see a lot of limitations would agree there's limitations. The Pope, for example, tomorrow can't say, I declare and define that there are four persons in the Holy Trinity and Mary's fourth person. I mean, it just can't. That's a limitation. [00:29:58] The question is, what is the. Where. Where are the boundaries of limitation? And I'm. I'm hopeful that with Newman being declared a Doctor of Church, that his views of those limitations are. Are considered more seriously within this debate, and that one day the Church will define it to make it more clear what exactly a Pope can and cannot do when it comes to doctrine and the teachings of the faith. [00:30:21] Okay, so I'm going to wrap it up there. I just want to say don't. There's a small minority of people who are not happy Catholics who are not happy about this. Just don't listen to them. They're not going to be happy with anything, unfortunately. There's just certain personalities that will literally find something wrong with everything. [00:30:37] This is a day for Catholics to rejoice. This is a day to be very happy, to be excited. I was sending my family chat and my adult children, our family chat. I was sending them a gift of, like, doing a happy dance, saying, this was your dad this morning when he heard that. That Newman was declared a Doctor of the Church. So this is something that I've been praying for. And I'm very. I'm very happy, and I'm very thankful to Pope Leo that he has named him a Doctor of the Church. And so let's pray for his intercession, St. John Henry Newman. Pray for us that we would, in this time of doctrinal confusion, that he would be our guide to a deeper understanding of Church teaching. I think that's a great prayer for all of us to have. And so. And now we can pray to a doctor of the church. So amen and hallelujah. So, okay, I'll wrap it up there. Until next time, everybody. God love you.