Newman's unquiet grave : the reluctant saint / John Cornwell
- Author
- Cornwell, John, 1940-
- Published
- London : Continuum, 2010.
- Physical Description
- xii, 273 pages, 8 unnumbered of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm
- Contents
- PART ONE -- Chapter 1. Who is John Henry Newman? -- Chapter 2. Meeting Doctor Newman -- Chapter 3. Dreams and imagination -- Chapter 4. Fellow of Oriel -- Chapter 5. To The Mediterranean -- Chapter 6. The Oxford Movement -- Chapter 7. Parting of friends -- Chapter 8. How doctrine develops -- PART TWO -- Chapter 9. Rome at last -- Chapter 10. Oratory -- Chapter 11. Idea of a University -- Chapter 12. Tribulations, heresy and the faithful -- Chapter 13. Apologia -- Chapter 14. The Dream of Gerontius -- Chapter 15. The Grammar of Assent -- Chapter 16. Papal infallibility -- PART THREE -- Chapter 17. Death of Ambrose St John -- Chapter 18. Last years and death -- Chapter 19. Connubium in death -- Chapter 20. Newman's legacy.
- Summary
- "Hailed by James Joyce as the greatest prose stylist of the Victorian age, John Henry Newman was the most eminent English-speaking Christian thinker of the past two hundred years. Fifty years ago a problematic campaign to canonise Newman was started. After many delays John Paul II declared him a V̀enerable'. Then Pope Benedict XVI, a keen student of Newman's works, pressed for his beatification. But was Newman a S̀aint'?" "John Henry Newman was the most brilliant and controversial churchman of the Victorian Age, praised by Catholics and reviled by Protestants for converting to Rome in middle-age. Not until he explained himself in his autobiography, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, one of the world's great spiritual classics, did he shake off accusations of dishonesty and betrayal." "Cornwell, an award-winning historian of the modern Catholic Church, presents Newman as an independent, highly original genius, powerfully relevant for all Christian denominations and for all faiths. As an Anglican, Newman renewed the spirituality of the Church of England; as a Catholic he shaped the reforming spirit of the Catholic Church. One of the earliest Christian supporters of Darwin's theory of evolution, he emphasized the role of conscience over authority, and the obligation to seek religious truth wherever it might lead." "Cornwell begins with the announcement of Newman's impending beatification in 2008. According to his dying wish, Newman had been buried in the same grave as his life-long friend and companion, Father Ambrose St John. The attempt to exhume him prompted suggestions that Newman was gay, thrusting him into the media limelight after several generations of neglect. Cornwell explores the question of Newman's emotional life, while drawing a complex warts-and-all portrait of à literary workaholic'." "Newman's literary output was prodigious. James Joyce thought him England's greatest prose writer. His Idea of a University remains the most powerful critique of the ideal of tertiary education across many cultures. His Grammar of Assent is a masterpiece of justification of belief. Cornwell's absorbing portrait reveals a man whose claim to eminence consists not in his status as a churchman, nor in claims for conventional sancity, but his genius for creating new ways of imagining and writing about religion."--BOOK JACKET.
- Subject(s)
- ISBN
- 9781441150844 (hbk.)
1441150846 (hbk.) - Bibliography Note
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
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