On the first of November this year, the day when the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of All the Saints – the reason why we have All Hallow’s Eve – Pope Leo XIV declared St. John Henry Newman a Doctor of the Church.
What does it take to become a Doctor of the Church? Essentially, the Pope, aided by his counselors, does so if he determines that the writings of a particular saint constitute a body of work that speaks to the universal Church, not just to the particular area from which the saint hails, and across various times. In other words, their writings must be timeless.
Who is John Henry Newman? This was the very question I asked myself when I moved to Rome for seminary studies. I had arrived in Rome a weekend before John Henry Newman was to be canonized – recognized as a saint of the Catholic Church. But who is he, I asked myself, as the English run seminary I was in was aflutter with the many visitors who had come in for the canonization.
Born in 1801, Newman comes across as something of a polymath - theologian, academic, philosopher, historian, writer, poet, an amateur musician even. But this was to come later. The first fact of a telling of his life must be that he was not born Catholic. After initial encounters with Evangelical Christianity, he was ordained an Anglican minister in 1824, while still an academic at Oxford, before throwing it all away to become a Catholic in 1845. Those unfamiliar with the history of England will not know that ever since the reign of Elizabeth I, being Catholic was not easy. Indeed, it was not until The Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, which removed the civil and political restrictions that were placed on Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland, that things began to get better. When Newman embraced Catholicism, things were still not easy, and Newman could not continue in Oxford as a Catholic.
Life as a Catholic was not easy for Newman, because being a convert, and particularly because of the debates he generated, he encountered much suspicion, and it was only when he was made Cardinal in 1879 that he came to be unproblematically accepted by the Catholic church in England.
I did not know who Newman was when he was canonized, but I should have, because he has been a great influence in the intellectual life of Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, whose works I poured over, and has greatly influenced my own intellectual and other ecclesial positions. In fact, I heartily recommend Ratzinger/ Benedict XVI to all Catholics; and the Catholic curious. In the mind of this man, you will find the answers to the philosophical crises of our times. And much of this edifice is constructed on Newman’s own work.
One of the great contributions of Newman is the opposition to liberalism, or liberality, in religion. As outlined by Newman, liberalism in religion is marked by idea that the Truth (truth with a capital T) is not available via religion, and that consequently no creed can be recognized as true. As a result, we also arrive at the conclusion that one creed, or faith, is as good as another, since they are all merely matters of opinion.
The astute reader will recognize these tenets as the basis of the secularism established in India since independence. This reader will also recognize that there is much in the Church in India that has accommodated itself to this liberal understanding. This accommodation can be said to be the result of two beliefs, the first being the belief that the insistence on the truth – in this case the Catholic faith – will result in a certain fundamentalism and an inability to cooperate with persons of other creeds and thus lead to social conflict. Any well-read person will clarify, however, that history is replete with the cases of plural societies, even those marked by groups that see their own creed as true, being able to live with persons of other creeds. The fear of Catholics, or other Christians, or Muslims, for that matter, that they risk compromising the peace of the republic if they assert the truth value of their creed, is without basis. It is when one disrespects the rights of the other that one lays the foundation for social unrest.
The second reason for the accommodation to the liberal understanding is fear. Fear that if one does not toe the line, and dares to stand up and be different, one will make the ruling dispensation cross. This is, however, no good reason to accept the liberal proposition. No one respects a pushover, as is in fact abundantly clear with the way in which Christians in our country are being increasingly mistreated, despite their accommodation to the liberal proposition. Shorn of their distinctiveness, as the clerics and hierarchs push accommodative practices, they are still bullied and pushed to the corner. And this abuse takes place not just in some distant parts of the country, but even in the urbanized spaces. Part of the accommodation to the liberal proposition has meant that the Catholic church has by and large accepted that it will seek to survive in India by offering services as its contribution to the nation. In many ways, this is the reason that has spurred the Catholic Church in India into an NGO-isation. And yet, as the nation-state enters into areas that were hitherto ignored by all and catered to solely by Christian charity – education, health care – one sees how even venerable institutions are now being viewed as dispensable.
We would gain much by turning to the works of St. John Henry Newman to investigate how it is we may respond to the challenge of liberalism in religion. One thing we can already glean from St. Newman’s life. Once one finds the Truth, it is worth following it to its logical conclusion, no matter the consequences. This was the mark of Newman’s life, perhaps it should be ours too.
(A version of this text was first published in the O Heraldo on 18 November 2025.)
(Image reference: John Henry Newman, Sir John Everett Millais, 1881, National Portrait Gallery, London.)
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