The Thinker in the Church: The Spirit of Newman

Extract

RecentReports reach us from England that a notable element in support of the cause of Cardinal Newman's canonization is the unusual extent of American devotion to him and to his thought. Certainly the name of Newman is great among us. Most American Catholic thinkers would agree with Otto Karrer, writing in April, 1947, for The Review of Politics on Newman and the spiritual crisis of the Occident, that Newman is probably “the most illustrious religious mind in the modern Anglo-Saxon world.” It is clear that he is the truly great eminence at the start of the Catholic intellectual renascence of the past hundred years. In our devotion to him and in our praise of him as a foremost thinker in the Church, it is well to consider what is the justification for the esteem in which we hold him.