Today, however, the front page of L'Osservatore Romano features "John Henry Newman: The harmony of difference", a lengthy op-ed piece by HRH Charles, Prince of Wales, on the occasion of today's canonization of Cardinal Newman. He calls the canonization "a cause of celebration not merely in the United Kingdom, and not merely for Catholics, but for all who cherish the values by which he was inspired."John Henry Newman was a 19th-century Anglican priest and scholar who converted to Catholicism at the age of 44 and was later made a cardinal. He was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. Today he becomes the first Briton in four decades to be declared a saint. Prince Charles held him up as "a great Briton" and "one of the greatest theologians of the nineteenth century [who] applied his intellect to one of the most pressing questions of our era: what should be the relationship of faith to a sceptical, secular age?"
Prince Charles continues: "...first with Anglican theology, and then, after his conversion, Catholic theology, [Saint John Henry Newman] impressed even his opponents with its fearless honesty, its unsparing rigour and its originality of thought. Whatever our own beliefs, and no matter what our own tradition may be, we can only be grateful to Newman for the gifts, rooted in his Catholic faith, which he shared with wider society.
"His faith was truly catholic in that it embraced all aspects of life. It is in that same spirit that we, whether we are Catholics or not, can, in the tradition of the Christian Church throughout the ages, embrace the unique perspective, the particular wisdom and insight, brought to our universal experience by this one individual soul. We can draw inspiration from his writings and his life even as we recognise that, like all human lives, it was inevitably flawed. Newman himself was aware of his failings, such as pride and defensiveness which fell short of his own ideals, but which, ultimately, left him only more grateful for the mercy of God.
"Those of all traditions who seek to define and defend Christianity have found themselves grateful for the way he reconciled faith and reason. Those who seek the divine in what can seem like an increasingly hostile intellectual environment find in him a powerful ally who championed the individual conscience against an overwhelming relativism.
"And perhaps most relevantly of all at this time, when we have witnessed too many grievous assaults by the forces of intolerance on communities and individuals, including many Catholics, because of their beliefs, he is a figure who stood for his convictions despite the disadvantages of belonging to a religion whose adherents were denied full participation in public life. Through the whole process of Catholic emancipation and the restoration of the Catholic Church hierarchy, he was the leader his people, his church and his times needed."
Considering what has happened to the Church he loved in the 20th century, Saint John Henry Newman was blessed to have died in 1890, during the reign of Pope Leo XIII, mere moths before Leo's promulgation of Rerum Novarum, subtitled "On the Conditions of Labor", in which he articulated the Church's response to the social conflict that had risen in the wake of capitalism and industrialization and that had led to the rise of socialism and communism as ideologies.
The saint would surely not recognize today's world, dominated by leftist ideology, nor today's Catholic Church, ditto. Saint John Henry Newman, pray for Holy Mother Church, and pray that God will raise up a courageous leader like yourself, to confound the apostates and heretics who are perverting our Catholic Faith, and set His Church back on the right course. Amen.
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