Australian scholars have welcomed news that St John Henry Newman, the 19th-century saint who is probably the greatest Catholic English intellectual of the past 500 years, will soon become a Doctor of the Church. Source: The Catholic Weekly.
Only six years after he was canonised, St Cardinal Newman will be formally declared a Doctor of the Universal Church by Pope Leo. He will join Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, Thérèse of Lisieux, and 33 others as one of the learned saints whose writings contain exceptionally valuable insights.
Bishop Emeritus Peter Elliot, a former auxiliary bishop of Melbourne, said he was thrilled.
Bishop Elliott has a special connection to the saint, as he made the same journey from the Anglican Church to the Catholic Church.
“He made it in the 1840s and I made it in the 1980s and both of us had strong connections with Oxford,” he said. “He had a big influence on me, because the last book I read before I became a Catholic was Newman’s Development of Christian Doctrine.”
Newman’s religious journey is an extraordinary story of interior struggle, public controversy, and immense literary output. He was not only a zealous priest, but a theologian, preacher, controversialist, philosopher, historian, novelist, and poet.
Tracey Rowland, a world-renowned theologian at the University of Notre Dame Australia (UNDA) was “delighted”.
“It’s fitting that one Pope Leo gave Newman a red hat, and the next Pope Leo declared him a Church Doctor. It is particularly good news for Catholics in the UK,” Professor Rowland said.
“For each Church Doctor there is usually a subtitle. It will be interesting to see if Pope Leo suggests a sub-title for Newman such as Doctor of the Second Spring or Doctor of Doctrinal Development or Doctor of Conscience. Pope Benedict was a very enthusiastic endorser of Newman’s idea of conscience.”
Shaun Blanchard, of UNDA in Fremantle, was part of a team which outlined the case for declaring Newman a doctor of the Church to the Vatican. He felt elated.
“I felt the same kind of joy and connection to the global church that I felt when Pope Leo was elected,” Dr Blanchard said.
FULL STORY
Australian scholars thrilled to see Cardinal Newman become a Doctor of the Church (By Michael Cook, The Catholic Weekly)
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