In November 1851, John Henry Newman was appointed President of the new Catholic University of Ireland, with a vague brief as to structure and personnel. He commented, “I mean to be Chancellor, Rector, Provost, Professor, Tutor all at once, and no one else anything.” He had to wait until June 1854 for the bishops to approve the university’s statutes before he was installed as Rector. The first eight sermons collected in this volume were preached during Mass in the University Church on St. Stephen’s Green between May 4, 1856, and February 22, 1857. By the time the first edition of Sermons Preached on Various Occasions was published, Newman had already written to the Irish bishops that he intended to resign in November 1857—he was finally convinced that his seven-year commitment to Ireland was sufficient. He was to leave behind not only the nascent new Catholic University, but also the University Church, designed by his friend John Hungerford Pollen, and which he had paid for himself.
The remaining sermons were written for the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales, the Risorgimento in Italy and its repercussions on the papacy, and the death of two friends, Dr. Weedall and James Hope Scott. The sermons on the situation of the church in England and Wales, and then of the papacy itself in Italy, reflect a redefinition of the role of Catholicism in the development of the modern world.
“Now, my Brethren, observe, the strength of this delusion lies in there being a sort of truth in it. Young men feel a consciousness of certain faculties within them, which demand exercise, aspirations which must have an object, for which they do not commonly find exercise or object in religious circles.” (Page 16)
“All things are good in their place: human learning and science, the works of genius, the wonders of nature, all, as I have said, have their use, when kept in subordination to the faith and worship of God; but it is nothing else but an abuse, if they are suffered to engross the mind, and if religion is made secondary to them.” (Page 281)
“evil follows good as its shadow; human nature perverting and corrupting what is intrinsically innocent or praiseworthy” (Page 278)
“the influence of sanctity is the greater on the long run; the influence of intellect is the greater at the moment” (Page 18)
“Do penance, while the sword is in the scabbard, and ere it is imbrued in your blood.” (Page 291)
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)