Pilgrim Journey: John Henry Newman 1801-1845

Pilgrim Journey: John Henry Newman 1801-1845 Vincent Ferrer Blehl, S.J. Paulist, $24.95, 452 pp.

The story of John Henry Newman's intellectual and spiritual development from his childhood until his conversion in 1845 has been told many times, most famously by Newman himself in Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Vincent Ferrer Blehl, who died last November, is one of the most famous names in Newman scholarship. He was the postulator for Newman's cause in Rome, and Newman was declared a fit subject for canonization in 1991.

Newman was a meticulous keeper of his own papers, a disciplined diarist, a prodigious publisher, and indefatigable letter writer. The facts of his life are easily available to those who are willing to master the huge corpus of Newmaniana. Since Blehl made the case for Newman's holiness to the Vatican, there is no question of his competence in this area; indeed, his scholarly writing on Newman goes back to the late 1950s.

What makes this book interesting is his angle of vision: Newman's slow evolution from the standard anti-Catholicism of the day, the development of his spiritual life (nourished by his lifelong meditation on the Scriptures), his single-minded fidelity to the liturgical sources of the Anglican Prayer Book and the Roman Breviary, his assiduous study of patristics, and his long engagement with Caroline Divines, especially the seventeenth-century bishop Lancelot Andrewes, who would later fascinate T. S. Eliot. Although he doesn't say so explicitly, Blehl wants to make a case for Newman the saint and wants to trace that sanctity back to its Anglican roots.

As an Anglican priest, Newman slowly came to appreciate Catholic forms of devotion (he even tried to do the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius, but without a director), but was skeptical of the more rococo forms of post-Tridentine devotionalism. Some of his best writing on the Christian life during his Anglican years took the form of sermons preached at Oxford, which were later issued as Parochial and Plain Sermons, handily available in a single volume from Ignatius Press. I must concur with Blehl (as well as Ian Ker, the best Newman scholar writing today) that the sermons' underlying theme is holiness of life. Reading sermons is not fashionable today, but a careful reading of Newman's sermons can yield brilliant insights into the Christian life.

This is an excellent and fair study by a devoted scholar of Newman. The work is enhanced by the inclusion of some of Newman's early prayers. As a study of Newman's spirituality, this is more detailed and focused than Louis Bouyer's Newman: His Life and Spirituality (1958) which follows Newman until his death. Who knows if Father Blehl intended a second volume on Newman's life after 1845? Such a work would be most welcome. If this was the only volume Blehl had in mind, one would rejoice that we have it. The book at hand is a fitting tribute to the memory of one of the greatest Newman scholars.

Lawrence S. Cunningham is the John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.

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