When I first read the late Fr. John O’Malley’s survey text What Happened at Vatican II (2008), I was struck by a passage in the conclusion. O’Malley gave a tantalizing rundown of the “ghosts” present on the council floor—the popes, theologians, philosophers, and politicians whose lives and legacies had indelibly marked the Catholic world. These voices from the past had shaped, positively or negatively (sometimes both), the work of the council fathers:

Introduced here are three examples of lay women who were deeply influenced by Newman in particular as well as by the greater Oxford Movement. These three women had varying degrees of interaction with Newman personally. 

In what follows, I trace Newman's distinctive approach across four essential aspects of his contribution, specifically, conscience, faith, doctrine, and education. Furthermore, I gesture toward the pathways that Newman's method and insights offer to address some of today's urgent questions within and without the church.

This essay seeks to clarify the nature of science. It examines popular approaches to science, these approaches’ potential effects, and the perspective that theology can provide to our potential misunderstandings of science.

Part I presents “the public face of Newman’s educational endeavour,” while Part II provides “the behind-the-scenes picture by telling the reality of Newman’s experience in Ireland” (xv).

It was all the more remarkable when I discovered a collection of “Newman detractors” on the premises, a collection indicating the conflict between Newman, the champion of Roman Catholicism in England, and mainly evangelical Free Church academics around the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.

In the scholarly literature, John Locke (1632–1704) features as a formative influence on Newman’s philosophical thought. What usually gets highlighted, for example in the Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, are Newman’s criticism of Locke’s notion of degreed assent and his call for a broader and more nuanced account of the rationality of religious belief. However, some have argued that the Grammar largely focuses on the psychological conditions of religious belief.

Despite their differences, and although Newman and Browning never met, they shared similar life experiences, and literary techniques, and both were concerned with the justification of Christianity, as well as the struggle between faith and doubt.

The National Institute for Newman Studies (NINS) is pleased to announce the ongoing expansion of our digital collections through formal agreements with several institutions in England. 

An important theological theme in the Christian tradition is that of the divine ideas or <em>logoi</em> in the mind or Word of God by which God knows and loves in himself eternally all the ways that creatures can or do participate in a living likeness of him.