October 9: ST. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN: In Search of the Truth

Nancy Bandzuch (0:00)

Welcome back to the Catholic Sprouts Podcast, where we know that every day is a feast day.

It's October 9th, so join us for St. John Henry Newman, Finding the Truth.

Father Dominic's boots were wet from the rain when he stepped through the door at Littlemore. He had been summoned urgently, called to a small stone house at the edge of Oxford to receive someone into the Catholic Church, and he knew who that someone was. Most of England knew who it was. When he entered the room, he found one of the most celebrated scholars in the country, waiting on his knees with his head bowed in prayer. His name was John Henry Newman. He was 44 years old, and he had spent the last 10 years trying not to reach this moment. But here he was.

Welcome back, Sprouts. Today is October 9th, the feast of St. John Henry Newman, an Oxford professor and Anglican preacher, whose years of searching for truth led him at great personal cost through the door of the Catholic Church. Stay tuned as we follow him from the lecture halls of Oxford to a rainy night in Littlemore and discover what happens when someone loves truth more than they love anything else.

St. John Henry Newman lived in the 1800s in England. Years before this, England had broken away from the Catholic Church, and by Newman's time, being Catholic was still a real social stigma. Newman grew up in the Anglican Church and was a member of the Church of England. He was brilliant from childhood, and he went to Oxford University as a young man. He became a professor there, and eventually one of its most famous preachers. On Sunday afternoons, when he preached at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, people crowded in from all over the city just to hear him. His voice, his mind, his words, they moved people in a way few preachers were able to. He was by every measure at the top of his world. But he kept reading, determined to dive deeper into the truth and find more meaning. John Henry Newman became fascinated with the early church, the world of the apostles and the great fathers who came after them. He read everything he could find, works from St. Augustine, St. Athanasius, St. Cyprian, the great councils, the letters and sermons of the first and early Christians. He wanted to understand what the Church of Christ had looked like back then and what it had taught. The more he read, the more uncomfortable he became. In all of this writing, he had expected to find the Church of England. Instead, he found the Roman Catholic Church. He found the authority of the Pope. He found the real presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. He also found the intercession of the Saints. The teachings Newman had always assumed were late invention and therefore wrong, turned out to be ancient and apostolic.

John Henry Newman tried to resist the conclusion his studies were forcing on him. He wrote, argued, proposed other explanations, but finally, he retreated to Littlemore and spent three years in prayer and study, hoping to find a way where he didn't have to become Catholic. The cost of admitting that the Catholic faith contained the fullness of the truth was immense. Newman was a beloved professor at Oxford. He was respected, admired at the center of a rich circle of friends. To become Catholic would mean losing his fellowship, his position, his home.

It would mean losing friends who would see his conversion as a betrayal. It would mean joining a church that England still treated with suspicion. He carefully and prayerfully counted the cost and then he paid it. On the rainy night of October 9th, 1845, Father Dominic knelt with John Henry Newman on the stone floor at Littlemore and received him into the Catholic Church. Newman wept. He had traveled a long road to arrive at that point, and he knew exactly what it had cost him and what he had gained. In the coming years, he never looked back. John Henry Newman was ordained a Catholic priest and returned to England to found the Birmingham Oratory, a community of priests dedicated to preaching and pastoral care. He spent the rest of his life writing, counseling and corresponding with an extraordinary range of people. He believed that holiness passes from one person to another, not through arguments alone, but through real human contact, one heart reaching another. His motto as Cardinal captured it perfectly, heart speaks to heart.

Newman wrote thousands of personal letters. He answered questions. He walked alongside people who were struggling with the faith, with doubt, and with grief. He met people where they were again and again because he knew what it was to search in the dark. The story of St. John Henry Newman teaches us that following truth, even when the road is long and dark and costly, is one of the most courageous acts of love we can offer Jesus. St. John Henry Newman, pray for us.