RITE AND REASON:Blessed John Henry Newman's experience in Ireland was decidedly 'wintry', in many senses of that word, writes DERMOT MANSFIELD
THE MONTH of November figured prominently in John Henry Newman’s time in Ireland, when he came to Dublin to set up the Catholic University, at the behest of Pope Pius IX and many of the Irish bishops.
Recently declared Blessed during the papal visit to Britain, Newman in fact is a figure of continuing significance in the Catholic and Anglican world.
In November 1851, he was appointed first president or rector of the proposed Catholic University of Ireland.
At the beginning of November 1854, the university opened its doors to its first students in 86 St Stephen’s Green, in what is now Newman House. And in November 1858 Newman resigned and finally returned to England and to his community of Oratorian priests in Birmingham.
The first half of Newman’s long life (1801-90) had been spent in the Anglican Church, the highlight being his leadership of the Oxford or Tractarian Movement in the 1830s.
When he came first to Ireland, he had been in the Catholic Church for just six years, and latterly was ministering to the immigrant Irish flooding into Birmingham in the wake of the Great Famine.
His years in Dublin were active and strife-torn, with genuine achievement at the end. In the summer of 1852, he gave some of the lectures, in the Rotunda, which formed his Discourses on the Nature and Scope of University Education.
While preparing and delivering these, he was in the middle of the celebrated Achilli trial in London – which resulted in his being found guilty of criminal libel, although he escaped imprisonment.
Other matters claimed his attention, above all his Oratorian foundations in Birmingham and London and, which throughout his time in Ireland, were a cause for serious concern.
Significant people, including his friends David Moriarty of All Hallows College in Dublin and Charles Russell of Maynooth, warned him that the Catholic University venture could not be a success at that time in post-Famine Ireland.
In addition, the archbishop of Dublin Paul Cullen, his patron, began leaving him in the dark about important issues and would fail to answer his letters.
Even so, Newman went ahead energetically, recruiting a talented staff of lay professors, and including among them the great scholar Eugene O’Curry, for whom he funded the casting of an Irish-language type and whose lectures he would constantly attend himself.
Five faculties were decreed to be set up: theology, law, medicine, philosophy and letters, and science. On November 3rd, 1854, the university opened its doors to a modest number of students, with more pledged.
Later his University Church on Stephen’s Green, adorned by Irish craftsmen in Byzantine style, was consecrated.
Matters back home in England claimed more and more of Newman’s attention. It was where his first responsibilities lay. Archbishop Cullen in any case mistrusted him and warned him, for instance, to prevent any incipient “Young Irelandism” among his lay staff.
Newman in turn was repeatedly rebuffed in his requests for a lay vice-rector and for a lay finance committee. He believed it all boiled down to the laity being treated “like good little boys – told to shut their eyes and open their mouths and take what we give them”.
He felt frustrated and thwarted, especially by Cullen, and the time he could give to the venture was running out.
Yet further good developments included the launch of the scientific journal Atlantis and the setting up of innovative and successful evening classes.
He ceased taking his salary in early 1858 and, in November of that year, he resigned and finally went back to England. Later he would combine many of his lectures in Dublin into his classic book The Idea of a University, which can still stand its ground today as a clarion call to all those who have responsibility for higher education. The university would struggle on after him, and eventually become the University College Dublin we know today.
Newman’s own story continued to be a fascinating one, as he held out against Catholic extremism, at huge personal cost, and became a great upholder of religious faith, respected across Europe, in an age of increasing scepticism.
Fr Dermot Mansfield SJ is author of Heart Speaks to Heart: The Story of Blessed John Henry Newman, recently published by Veritas.