Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations examines Catholicism from the inside and deals with the popular prejudices which John Henry Newman's contemporaries entertained of it. Newman uses the same touch he displayed in the pulpit of St. Mary's to explain the truths of the faith which he had embraced. His humour and irony enable him to reach those "who do not narrow their belief to their experience." This edition reveals the context of the Discourses and contains a wealth of references.
“Moses, when he saw the burning bush, turned aside to see ‘that great sight;’ Nathanael, though he thought no good could come out of Nazareth, at least followed Philip to Christ, when Philip said to him, ‘Come and see;’” (Page 144)
“The views, the principles, the aims of the world are very definite, are every where acknowledged, and are generally acted on.” (Pages 1–2)
“walks forth into a mental agony with as definite an action as if it were some bodily torture, the fire or the wheel” (Page 249)
“They cannot put themselves into the position of a man simply striving, in all he does, to please God.” (Page 4)
“He gave Himself to suffering; He did not come to suffer as little as He could;” (Page 245)
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)