Don’t try to sugarcoat St John Henry

Catholic Herald, 17 October 2019

The canonisation of John Henry Newman was a glorious affair and, for this writer – the chaplain for Newman House at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, since 2004 – a moment of deep personal joy.

Canonisations in Rome in recent years have been rather flat affairs, even last year’s which included Pope St Paul VI and St Oscar Romero. Thanks, though, to the English Oratories and the British embassy to the Holy See, there was a whole series of splendid events which extended and elevated the days in Rome, and which continue this week in England.

Now that Cardinal Newman is St John Henry, it is important that he not be domesticated, turned into a figure admirable and comforting, but shorn of his capacity to challenge. Something of that danger appeared in the very generous editorial which the Prince of Wales wrote for L’Osservatore Romano on the eve of the canonisation.

Let there be no doubt; the presence of Prince Charles and his lavish praise for Newman and, by extension, the contribution of Catholics to British life, was a significant historical moment. And one would expect that the Prince of Wales would emphasise those matters of greater public esteem, namely Newman’s capacity to see all sides of an argument, to argue with attacking, to see in differences the potential for harmony, to be a bridge between Anglicans and Catholics.

Newman though, like all the saints, had some sharp edges too. And we should not lose those. The temptation to domesticate the saints, to remake them over in our own image, is strong. Consider Francis of Assisi, whose Canticle of the Creatures – “Laudato Si’ ”, it begins – is endlessly invoked today in Rome. But rarely is any attention given, after hymning “Brother Sun” and “Sister Moon”, to the lines which follow: “Woe to those who die in mortal sin!”

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