Words, hymns and moderation: Newman and the genius of English Catholicism

Catholic Herald, 24 October 2019

One might suggest that the kindly light of English Catholicism shines more brightly now through the witness of the heroic life of St. John Henry Newman.

Does the canonisation of St John Henry Newman mean approbation for something more than a single, splendid, sanctified life? Does it celebrate a particularly English way of being Catholic? On the evening of the Holy Mass of thanksgiving at the London Oratory, Cardinal Vincent Nichols suggested as much, noting that Newman both symbolised and helped to bring about a flowering of English Catholicism.  

The Archbishop of Canterbury, preaching at vespers in Westminster Cathedral to celebrate the canonisation, proposed that Newman exemplified the best of English Christianity, in both of its Anglican and Catholic expressions.  

On the Sunday evening of the canonisation at Rome’s Chiesa Nuova, the founding church of the Congregation of the Oratory of St Philip Neri, Fr Ignatius Harrison (provost of Newman’s own Birmingham Oratory) noted that St John Henry was recognised as the father of the English Oratories. The emphasis, Fr Harrison insisted, should be on the “Oratory” not the “English”. He may well have been offering a gentle correction to those who reverse the emphasis.  

The English Oratories are very, well, English – and not just those in England. Visitors to other English-speaking Oratories around the world may well think they have taken a stroll down the Brompton Road or wandered into Edgbaston. 

Writing about Newman for L’Osservatore Romano, the Prince of Wales noted that in the Oratory he brought something of Rome to England. True enough, but at the same time Newman made the Oratory wholly English. 

And what is that Englishness, the particular genius of English Catholicism? 

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