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:
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.
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.
For readers who are interested in using the Pusey House collections for their research, here is an overview of what we have. Only original materials have been digitized, so the digital collection is slightly smaller than the physical one, but every authentic Newman item we have should now be accessible online.
