The central and determining fights of Newman’s age, both within and outside the Church, were over education.

Teacher of Teachers: Blessed John Henry Newman

by Christopher Blum

If John Henry Newman should be declared a Doctor of the Church, the honor will be in large part due to his work as an educator. As Benedict XVI has pointed out, the “definite service” that he gave to the Church was to apply “his keen intellect and prolific pen to many of the most pressing subjects of the day.” In other words, Newman (1801-1890) is not so much an authority in his own right as he is a witness to the tradition he strove so mightily to inherit and to communicate. This distinction is particularly apt when applied to his writings on education.

The Holy Father has characterized Newman’s educational vision as one in which “intellectual training, moral discipline, and religious commitment would come together.” Newman himself would be the first to acknowledge that this integrated conception owed everything to the great teachers and traditions of schooling that had nourished and inspired him. For apostolic spirit joined to a sense of the duties of a gentleman, what could exceed the Ratio Studiorum of the Jesuits? For speculative rigor, who could surpass St. Thomas Aquinas, his brother friars, and their exemplar among the pagans, Aristotle? For the quenchless thirst for holiness guided and regulated by pastoral good sense, is not the Benedictine and Augustinian heritage a twin peak not to be overshadowed? And what of Newman’s own beloved Fathers of the third and fourth centuries, especially the school of Alexandria? There, too, the philosophical spirit and the desire for union with God were happily married.

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