The Convert

John Henry Newman began as an Evangelical, turned into an Anglican high churchman and ended as a Roman Catholic cardinal. The incandescent path" of that spiritual journey dazzled and confounded 19th Century England and left its imprint upon the Anglican Church. Just published is a balanced, well-written study of Newman: Journey into Faith (Norton, $4). In it Author Eleanor Ruggles (a Unitarian) deals only with the first 44 years of Newman's life, which brought the brilliant churchman to his knees as a confessed heretic.

One of the Few. Born in 1801 to a prosperous, self-made businessman and his Huguenot-descended wife, Newman was the eldest of six children. His father was a freethinker who knew his Shakespeare better than his Bible, and often shocked his sober-sided son with such secular saws as "Give the Devil his due." Even as a schoolboy, young Newman burned with zeal for a moral and intellectual life.

"The writings of Newman's childhood alone," says Author Ruggles, "laid sheet to sheet, would cover the floors of Westminster." At home for the holidays, young Newman used to love expounding and reading aloud to his family or the servants. His parents decided that he would be a lawyer.

But under the influence of a young Evangelical clergyman at school, Newman began to concern himself with his duty to God. The Calvinist doctrine of predestination offered no difficulty for him; he "recognized without hesitation that he was one of the [chosen] few." At 15 he was already contemplating a celibate life.

After graduating from Oxford, Newman won a coveted appointment as fellow of Oriel College. The Oxford of the 1820s still kept many of the characteristics of a medieval university; members of the faculty were clergymen, and fellows were celibate. Newman was duly ordained a deacon of the Church of England in 1824. Liberalism, both secular and ecclesiastical, was his chief enemy ("To all those who are perplexed in any way soever . . . one precept must be given--obey."). But he was still a long way from the Roman Church, which he considered a tool of Anti-Christ. On his first visit to Rome, in 1833, he cried, "Really, this is a cruel place! . . . A union with [Rome] is impossible." Returning from that trip to Italy, Newman composed the poem that has since heartened many a wanderer: "Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom . . ."

One True Church. Newman came back to England with a new sense of mission--to defend his church by a counteroffensive against the growing threat of liberalism. Together with his friends and colleagues, John Keble and Edward Pusey, he launched the campaign of sermonizing, tract-writing and personal persuasion that became famed as the Oxford Movement.* Making the Anglican claim to Apostolic Succession the cornerstone of their teaching, Newman and his friends maintained that the Church of England was the one true church, steering a middle way between the extremes of Romanism and Protestantism.

Anglican Newman, a sensitive, handsome man gliding through Oxford's quadrangles in his long-tailed coat, became a powerful influence among the undergraduates. They packed the ancient church of St. Mary's to hear his sermons. "As he began to preach, his voice was faint but musical, its pitch rising, though always controlled, till 'the very tones . . . seemed as if they were something more than his own,' as if a power beyond him spoke through him."

But Newman's attitude toward Rome gradually changed. In studying early Christian history, he began to suspect that his beloved Church of England was in schism. For six agonizing years Newman tortured himself with questioning and doubt. Many of his friends deserted him. .In 1842 he left Oxford to retire to a life of monastic asceticism with a few young followers.

Three years later a Roman Catholic divine, impatient for the long-expected conversion, sent a scout to the Newman camp. "He will come soon," was the excited report. The emissary had noticed that punctilious Newman was wearing a layman's grey trousers--a sign that he considered himself no longer a clergyman.

One day, when one of his followers was about to leave for Oxford to meet a visiting Italian priest, Newman drew him aside and said softly: "When you see your friend, will you tell him that I wish him to receive me into the Church of Christ?"

* Not to be confused with Dr. Frank Buchman's Oxford Group--a prestigious misnomer.

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