Image of CardinalJohn Henry Newman via WikipediaIf you would like to know more about Cardinal Henry Newman who is being beatified by the Pope when he visits the UK later this week ,
John Cornwell has written a book called Newman’s Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint’, published by Continuum
Cornwell claims that Newman has been hijacked and revised by the Vatican and this is his recent interesting article which draws heavily from the book : click hereJohn Cornwell has written a book called Newman’s Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint’, published by Continuum
Below is an extract from one of Cornwell's newspaper columns :
"When addressing Britain’s bishops earlier this year the Pope cited Newman as an enemy to Catholic dissidence in any shape or form. As the Pope prepares for his visit to the UK, he is clearly bent on sanitising Newman’s progressive Catholicism in preparation for the beatification.
But Newman was certainly a dissident when it came to overbearing papal authority, creeping infallibility, the downgrading of the laity, the primacy of papal dogma over individual conscience. He wrote of an ageing pope: “He becomes a god, has no one to contradict him, does not know facts, and does cruel things without meaning it.”
If Newman is in heaven, as all Catholics surely believe, he is likely to be exerting his influence with the Almighty — not to produce miracles, but to stop his own transmogrification into an official plaster saint. He once wrote: “I have no tendency to be a saint — it is a sad thing to say so. Saints are not literary men...” Newman knew his own conscience, and he knew the difference between a saint and sinner.
He was also secure in his priorities. “I shall drink to the Pope if you please,” he once wrote, “... still to conscience first and the Pope afterwards.” Pope Benedict is unlikely to preach to that text.
Other articles on Newman from here
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