Cardinal Henry Newman Source of pic: Wikipedia
Fr. C. John McCloskey, III, discloses to us the amazing personality of Cardinal Newman. Here is a portion of what he wrote about this clergy whose beatification was first celebrated on the 8th of this month.
That Newman was profoundly religious by temperament is quite clear from his autobiography, in which he speaks of his religious sense from a very early age. Unlike a goodly number of his contemporaries of the Oxford Movement he did not come from a long line of clergymen. During his university years he felt a call to the clerical life and even to celibacy, not common at that time. Yet, in many other ways he was a man of the world. He drank deeply of the study of the classics and history during his undergraduate years, formed many deep friendships, and had a keen interest in the world of music, literature, and politics, as is evidenced by his letters and diaries. Indeed, he even chose the wine for his college. He played the violin, a hobby to which he returned in later life. He exercised vigorously by frighteningly long walks and enjoyed the fresh air of the sea while sailing with his close friend, Hurrell Froude. He was a poet, a novelist and a Latinist of the highest order. (The curia officials of the Vatican were astonished at the level of his classical Latin in their correspondence with him. He was able to express in a paragraph what took them a page!) He was also, arguably, the greatest master of English prose style of the nineteenth century.5 This emphasizes that while Newman was eminently religious, he was not monastic. He had a keen appreciation for the world in all its positive aspects and enjoyed the company and friendship of many laymen, as is evidenced particularly by his letters and diaries.
Read here.
Thanks to Sr. Margaret Kerry, fsp, for this info!
Sr. Margaret Kerry, fsp
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Boston, MA 02130
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Association of Pauline Cooperators
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