Few people in history can so accurately outline the reservations of Anglicans toward the Catholic Church as John Henry Newman. Newman was given opportunity to share these lectures—after his conversion to Catholicism—before a Catholic audience. He reflects upon his role in the Oxford (Tractarian) Movement of 1833. During this crucial period in Anglican history, high Anglican churches were caught between the imposing English government and the strict rule of Rome. Throughout this series of lectures, Newman clearly articulates the opposition of Anglicans to certain Catholic institutions like the Catholic priesthood and Marian doctrines.
“She regards this world, and all that is in it, as a mere shade, as dust and ashes, compared with the value of one single soul. She holds that, unless she can, in her own way, do good to souls, it is no use her doing any thing; she holds that it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse.” (Page 199)
The quality of his literary style is so successful that it succeeds in escaping definition. The quality of his logic is that of a long but passionate patience, which waits until he has fixed all corners of an iron trap. But the quality of his moral comment on the age remains what I have said: a protest of the rationality of religion as against the increasing irrationality of mere Victorian comfort and compromise.
The philosophical and theological thought and the spirituality of Cardinal Newman, so deeply rooted in and enriched by Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Fathers, still retain their particular originality and value.
—Pope John Paul II
Newman placed the key in our hand to build historical thought into theology, or much more, he taught us to think historically in theology and so to recognize the identity of faith in all developments.
—Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)