Full Interview: Cardinal Nichols on Cardinal Newman

This interview took place on September 4th at Archbishops’ House, Westminster. You can watch the film which encompasses some of this conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiUhWQrj2zQ

What was the first time you came across the life and works of John Henry Newman?

Well, as a young man, growing up we were introduced to one or two of his prayers. When I was studying for the priesthood he figured into our theology. I did some extra studies through the libraries in Oxford and obviously that reinforced my sense of understanding of his presence there. And then, probably my closest involvement was the time during which I was Archbishop of Birmingham, because that included a great deal of the work done with Fr Gregory Winterton for taking forward the cause for his beatification. And then, when that cause was coming to its conclusion, I had the rather strange responsibility for going to see if we could recover his body from the cemetery in Rednal in order to bring it and enshrine it in the oratory church in Birmingham. And then, when I came to Westminster, I hosted the visit of Pope Benedict to Great Britain, including a helicopter ride from here up to Birmingham, to Cofton park, in anticipation of the celebration of the Mass there in which the Pope declared John Henry Newman to be a blessed, among the blessed of the Church. And now, we’re on the verge of him being canonised – that’s great.

As you mentioned, you served as Archbishop of Birmingham, and you were recently quoted saying to the BBC that he is remembered, ‘for his kindness and compassion, and for his ministry to the people of Birmingham’ – could you tell us what he means to the people of Birmingham?

I think, the people of Birmingham probably remember him most through the places. Through St. Anne’s on Ulster Street which is still a parish in Birmingham and they will know that he moved there when he wanted, as a newcomer to the Catholic Church, to establish his first community, his first oratory. And I think they know that the pattern of oratory life in Newman’s mind was very, very much to do with the rhythm of prayer, the quality and the focus on the celebration of the sacraments and the service of the poor – and it was these three elements that he wanted so much to hold together. I think that was seen in its embryonic form in St Anne’s parish in Birmingham before he then moved to the present parish in Edgbaston.

As far as I know, when he was first ordained as a priest in the Church of England his first curacy was characterised by a very, very systematic visiting of people in their homes. And so, at the beginning of his life of ministry there was this emphasis on sharing and contacting people in their ordinary, everyday lives. I think in all the years in which he ministered in Birmingham, that remained a crucial part of his understanding of priesthood – and there were very profound reasons for it! Very profound reasons. He firmly believed that the signs of Gods’ work in our lives are to be seen in our everyday experience, both for good and for difficulty. So to be close to people was his way of helping them to read how God was at work in their lives and that he then refined into reflection of enormous detail and depth about his own experiences and his own movements of spirit, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, but he saw that as at the heart of his pastoral ministry. So he wanted always to encourage people to be attentive to what was going on in their lives, not in a self-regarding way, but in a way which was looking for the presence of God and the call to holiness. That was the topic of his first sermon as a young Anglican priest, the call to holiness, and I think that was a kind of leitmotif that went right through his whole life.

I was also very, very struck by the fact that at his funeral, when the cortege, the coffin and horses, travelled the six or seven miles from the oratory south to Rednal where he was buried in the Oratorian summer house in the graveyard there -  those miles of road were lined by the people of Birmingham. Contemporary comments say that they had come to salute somebody whom they knew ‘as their father’, as their father in God. And I think that tells a great story about a crucial aspect of the life of Cardinal Newman.

If one episode, if one incident illustrates it, it was the day in the winter of 1889 I think, on his ninetieth birthday, when he went from the Oratory down to Bourneville where the Cadbury factory was thriving. It was owned by Quakers, and the Quakers were very keen that their workforce would have a Christian input and so they organised for Bible studies for the workforce at the beginning of the day. And this was upsetting to Catholics because, at that point, we had a rather different approach to the reading of the Bible and how you open it and understand it. And Cardinal Newman went down there as an old, old man and pleaded with the leadership of Cadburys’ and they then agreed that the Catholics could have a separate gathering, a separate room set up to the side so that they could pray in a way that was familiar and acceptable to them. So in that he is a man right at the end of his days, bothered about the simple people and their spiritual needs and still, still attentive to them. No wonder they came out to thank him as his coffin passed by.

Newman is obviously a very interesting figure between Christian traditions, between the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church. In a sense, he was formed by both of those different churches but at the time he became Catholic in Britain he was very much exiled from the Anglican Church. What does it mean to have him as someone who can be a bridge between those communities and what does it mean for us to have progressed so far from that place of division to a place where those relations are strong?

I think it’s actually quite a delicate area and it’s an area which we should approach with real sensitivity. From our point of view we have to acknowledge and emphasise that Cardinal Newman sought the full communion of the Catholic Church in his insistent search for truth and where it would be found. He did that on the basis of enormous study, so in many ways it was the impulse of history that gave the force to his quest and to his decision. And as we know, it was a very, very costly decision. It cost him in terms of prestige within the University of Oxford, it cost him greatly in terms of his circle of friends, but he made that journey out of an absolute inner conviction that the fullness of the intention of Christ was to be found in communion with the Bishop of Rome and within the visible Catholic Church.

Now, we’ve journeyed a long way together, the Anglican communion and the Catholic communion, and much of that has been helped by shared historical study. It’s very important that that study continues and that we continue to address the areas of difference that still exist between us at a doctrinal level in particular. But what we also see in Cardinal Newman is a man who was dedicated to the presenting, the announcing, the explaining of the Christian faith to a British society, and in a way that probably roots back to his younger days, his evangelical days. So you have this combination in Cardinal Newman of the Evangelical, the Anglican and the Catholic. And maybe it is that Evangelical spirit that kind of tells us where we are now, because what our Churches strive to share more and more is the task of presenting the call of Christ, the beauty of Christ, the compassion of Christ, the generosity of those who want to follow Christ in our community.

Newman did that through his actions and he did that especially through his later writings. There were all sorts of challenges at the time to the credibility of faith, challenges that were emerging towards the end of Newman’s life and which are still solidly in front of us. One of his last works talked about the reasonableness of faith and that’s a problem that we all face today. There’s so many easy opinions that will say, ‘well, of course, faith is irrational’ or, ‘faith goes against what’s sensible’ – ‘people who have a Christian faith as the basis of their life will grow up one day’. But Newman teaches us today to understand the nature of faith, the grammar of the ascent of faith and he helps us to understand that it’s not simply the conclusion of logical argument. It’s not, as one image has it, it’s not an iron bar of certainty. The life of faith and the choice of faith is much more like a cable, a steel cable that is made up of very, very many different strands, woven together and then together they give this great strength of the certainty of faith. And some of those strands are experiential, some of them are emotional, some of them are the fruit of study, some of them are indeed the force of logic, but no one of those stands on its own. I think, he helps us today to grasp the wholeness of faith and to see ultimately that it is deeply personal or, in one of his favourite phrases, it is a matter of the heart.

As the cardinal, what does it mean for this country to now gain this great saint and what does it mean to you as the cardinal in terms of guiding the mission of the church in this country?

Well it is a wonderful moment there’s no doubt at all! This is the first saint since the whole of the reformation saints to be declared by the church, but now someone coming from the pastoral and academic work of the church, not a martyr in that sense of having shed his blood but someone who teaches us the importance and the richness of the life of faith and interprets it in such a sensitive way into our English context.

So I think this new saint, Saint John Henry Newman, can be a great inspiration for every priest working in the parishes of England and Wales. He is a man who did what we do, he visited his people, he taught them how to pray, he provided them with the sacraments, he called them to holiness, he did his best to keep going when there were great difficulties against him, he had immense periods of a sense of failure – and all of these things every priest experiences. But here is someone who the Church now holds up for our inspiration, as a priest, as a pastoral father, to the people of this country.

I think he is also a patron for theologians as well and I mean this because he was the most academic of men, but he knew that academic work was not enough. He delved like no other into the history of the Church, into the teaching of the Fathers, to try and understand its rootedness, but he did that so that he could spring forward into the life of faith. And so I think he is a reminder to every theologian that they are to be much more than a professional theologian, that theology is a service for the life of faith and I hope that theologians today will be inspired by this great theologian to see that their work is never just for the lecture hall, is never just for academia but it is to give fresh impetus and fresh insight and fresh appeal to the truths of faith. And again, Cardinal Newman said that nobody will become a Catholic, nobody will be converted to Christ through argument, we have to touch their hearts.

Cardinal Newman is one of history’s most famous cardinals. What do you think it meant to him to be elevated to this position in the Church? And are there ways you can relate to him as an English cardinal yourself?

One thing, which in a funny sort of way I like to think I share, is the experience of being appointed by a pope to be a cardinal. For John Henry Newman this was a moment of huge significance. He had become a Catholic and for many, many years had found it far from easy. He had struggled to find a foothold in the Catholic Church, he had struggled to find acceptance. He had launched a number of projects which he saw as essentially expressive of the needs of the Church and the needs of the world and they didn’t work, he was not successful.

I think this final accolade of him being appointed as a Cardinal must have been oh such a moment of joy! Relief, but joy more than anything, that now he could really relax, not just into his oratory community, not just into the way of life that he had fashioned as he had been asked to by the Holy Father, but into that wider, universal Catholic Church. And it’s interesting that his being made a cardinal came just a little while after he was reinstated in his prestige in Oxford University as well, so in these later years in his life he found this fresh start almost.

Another thing that possibly he experienced and I experienced on being made a cardinal, is that it is a title, it is a position, which is universally respected.  I was surprised when I was made a cardinal that I had as many letters of congratulation from people who were not Catholics as from Catholics and all of those people assured me of their pleasure and of their prayers. So, there is something about being a cardinal that has an appeal that goes beyond the community of the church. I believe it was said at the time of Cardinal Newman’s appointment as a cardinal that there would not be a protestant in this land who did not rejoice in this singular honour that had been granted to him. So being drawn into the membership of the college of cardinals is both a personal privilege but it is also a very public affirmation and I am sure that the present college of cardinals will rejoice greatly in this canonisation of one of their own.