On October 13th this year Cardinal John Henry Newman was canonized in Rome. Before entering the Catholic Church in 1845 he had been a very prominent person in Anglicanism, mainly due to his participation in the Oxford Movement, and to his influential tracts on theological, historical, cultural, and liturgical issues. His admission in the Catholic Church therefore had a very wide repercussion. Cardinal Newman stood out as theologian, Church historian and moralist, and as apologist and novelist as well. He was the first Rector of the Catholic University of Ireland (1854-1858), now University College of Dublin.
His famed The Idea of a University is a result of his extensive academic experience. In that book he advocates the philosophical and humanistic roots of the University, which explain not only the study of the different sciences, but also and especially of philosophy and theology. Academic education cultivates the intellect at the highest level, and seeks the education proper of a gentleman, as Newman liked to say. In 2011 some important scholars took part in a symposium about the English Cardinal, organized by the Philosophy Institute. Dr. Pádraic Conway (Dublin, Ireland) lectured on Newman’s vision of the university and Mons. Dr. Fernando Cavaller (Asociación Amigos de Newman en la Argentina) on the influence of university professors in disseminating truth, expressed in the new saint’s moto cor ad cor loquitur (the heart speaks to the heart).
You can watch the lectures here.
