A Newman anniversary and a new website

On this day in 1991, Pope John Paul the Great recognized John Henry Cardinal Newman was indeed a man who possessed heroic virtue. This recognition carried with it an ecclesial title of "Venerable Servant of God." Henceforth, we say "Venerable Servant of God John Henry Newman."

The process of determining whether Cardinal Newman is a saint continues along. To assist our understanding of the process of canonization and to have a better appreciation for the great work of Newman, a new website was recently launched. Visit the JHN website here.

Read John Henry Newman one step closer to sainthood

 The Prayer for John Henry Newman's Beatification

God, our father, your servant John Henry Newman upheld the faith by his teaching and example. May his loyalty to Christ and the Church, his love for the Immaculate Mother of God, and his compassion for the perplexed give guidance to Christian people today. We beg you to grant the favors we ask through his intercession so that his holiness may be recognized by all and the Church may proclaim him a Saint. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Church, dogma and certainty

There is but one rule of faith for all; and it would be a greater difficulty to allow of an uncertain rule of faith, than (if that was the alternative, as it is not), to impose upon uneducated minds a profession which they cannot understand. But it is not the necessary result of unity of profession, nor is it the fact, that the Church imposes dogmatic statements on the interior assent of those who cannot apprehend them. The difficulty is removed by the dogma of the Church's infallibility, and of the consequent duty of "implicit faith" in her word. The "One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church" is an article of the Creed, and an article, which, inclusive of her infallibility, all men, high and low, can easily master and accept with a real and operative assent. It stands in the place of all abstruse propositions in a Catholic's mind, for to believe in her word is virtually to believe in them all. Even what he cannot understand, at least he can believe to be true; and he believes it to be true because he believes in the Church.

A Grammar of Assent, Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1955 (orig. 1870), p. 129.