In the archives of Propaganda there is an evocative letter in which John Henry Newman urges the Cardinal Prefect not to grant permission for Catholic youths to attend Oxford or Cambridge. It is of significance because the views evinced are not those commonly associated with Newman in the years after 1865:

Without controversy ecclesiastical biography could scarcely exist and it is the exasperation of conflict unresolved and of continuing debate that adds piquancy to the genre. This is well illustrated by two substantial studies of churchmen that appeared before the public in the last year.* It is curious to note that only thirty-five years elapsed between the death of Luke Joseph Hooke, a man who attempted to interpret the method of the Enlightenment to Catholic orthodoxy in eighteenthcentury France, and the birth of Herbert Alfred Vaughan, a child destined to effect a curious amalgam of recusant fervour, ultramontane commitment and missionary enterprise.

In his new book James Arthur has chosen a title that is controversial but befits his central thesis*: Catholic schools are in crisis, under pressure from the unsympathetic secular State (to include both the Local Education Authority and central government’s Department for Education) and lacking coherent support and direction from the Catholic community (to include bishops, school trustees and governors and teachers). The author traces how this has come about but stops short of offering a detailed manifesto for how the decline might be arrested.