Editing John Henry Newman (section)

===''Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England''===

[[Anti-Catholicism in the United Kingdom|Anti-Catholicism]] had been central to British culture since the 16th-century English Reformation. According to D. G. Paz, anti-Catholicism was "an integral part of what it meant to be a Victorian".<ref>Paz D.G., ''Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian England'' (Stanford, 1992), p. 299.</ref> Popular anti-Catholic feeling ran high at this time, partly in consequence of the papal bull ''[[Universalis Ecclesiae]]'' by which Pope Pius&nbsp;IX re-established the Catholic diocesan hierarchy in England on 29 September 1850. New episcopal sees were created and Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman was to be the first Archbishop of Westminster.<ref>{{cite DNB|wstitle=Wiseman, Nicholas Patrick Stephen |page=245 |first=William Charles Mark |last=Kent}}</ref> Wiseman announced the restoration of the hierarchy in England on 7 October in a pastoral letter dated "from out of the Flaminian Gate".<ref>{{EB1911|inline=1|wstitle=Wiseman, Nicholas Patrick Stephen|volume=28|pages=752–753 |first=Arthur Wollaston |last=Hutton |author-link=Arthur Wollaston Hutton |ref=HuttonWiseman}}</ref>

Led by ''[[The Times]]'' and ''[[Punch (magazine)|Punch]]'', the British press saw this as being an attempt by the papacy to reclaim jurisdiction over England. This was dubbed the "Papal Aggression". The prime minister, [[John Russell, 1st Earl Russell|John Russell]], wrote a public letter to the Bishop of Durham and denounced this "attempt to impose a foreign yoke upon our minds and consciences".<ref>Norman, E. R., ''Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England'' (London, 1968)</ref> Russell's stirring up of anti-Catholicism led to a national outcry. This "No Popery" uproar led to violence with Catholic priests being pelted in the streets and Catholic churches being attacked.<ref>[http://www.victorianweb.org/religion/Hierarchy_Reestablished.html Anthony S. Wohl, ''The Re-establishment of the Catholic Hierarchy in England, 1850'']</ref>

Newman was keen for lay people to be at the forefront of any public apologetics, writing that Catholics should "make the excuse of this persecution for getting up a great organization, going round the towns giving lectures, or making speeches".<ref name="diary">Newman, John Henry ''The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman'', Vol. XIV (London, 1963), p. 214.</ref> He supported John Capes in the committee he was organising for public lectures in February 1851. Due to ill health, Capes had to stop them halfway through.

Newman took the initiative and booked the Birmingham Corn Exchange for a series of public lectures. He decided to make their tone popular and provide cheap off-prints to those who attended. These lectures were his ''Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England'' and they were delivered weekly, beginning on 30 June and published on 1 September 1851.{{sfn|Hutton|1911|p=518}}<ref name = DNB/>

In total, there were nine lectures:
# Protestant view of the Catholic Church
# Tradition the sustaining power of the Protestant view
# Fable the basis of the Protestant view
# True testimony insufficient for the Protestant view
# Logical inconsistency of the Protestant view
# Prejudice the life of the Protestant view
# Assumed principles of the intellectual ground of the Protestant view
# Ignorance concerning Catholics the protection of the Protestant view
# Duties of Catholics towards the Protestant view
which form the nine chapters of the published book. Following the first edition, a number of paragraphs were removed following the [[#Achilli trial|Achilli trial]] as "they were decided by a jury to constitute a libel, June 24, 1852."<ref>Newman, John Henry, ''Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England'', The Works of Cardinal John Henry Newman Birmingham Oratory Millennium Edition Volume 1 (2000), p. 208</ref>

Andrew Nash describes the ''Lectures'' as "an analysis of this [anti-Catholic] ideology, satirising it, demonstrating the false traditions on which it was based and advising Catholics how they should respond to it. They were the first of their kind in English literature."{{sfn|Nash|2000|p=viii}}

John Wolffe assesses the ''Lectures'' as: <blockquote>an interesting treatment of the problem of anti-Catholicism from an observer whose partisan commitment did not cause him to slide into mere polemic and who had the advantage of viewing the religious battlefield from both sides of the tortured no man's land of Littlemore.<ref>Griffin, John R., ''A Historical Commentary on the Major Catholic Works of Cardinal Newman'', (New York, 1993), p. 66.</ref></blockquote>

The response to the ''Lectures'' was split between Catholics and Protestants. Generally, Catholics greeted them with enthusiasm. A review in ''[[The Rambler (Catholic periodical)|The Rambler]]'', a Catholic periodical, saw them as "furnishing a key to the whole mystery of anti-Catholic hostility and as shewing the special point of attack upon which our controversial energies should be concentrated."<ref>''The Rambler'', Vol. VIII, November 1851, Part XLVII, p. 387.</ref> However, some Catholic theologians, principally [[John Gillow]], president of [[Ushaw College]], perceived Newman's language as ascribing too much to the role of the laity. Gillow accused Newman of giving the impression that the church's [[infallibility]] resides in a partnership between the hierarchy and the faithful, rather than falling exclusively in the teaching office of the church, a concept described by [[Pope Pius IX]] as the "ordinary magisterium" of the church.<ref>{{Cite book | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=1UVvDwAAQBAJ&q=%22newman%22+%22Gillow%22&pg=PA339 | title = The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman | isbn = 9780198718284 | last1 = Aquino | first1 = Frederick D. | last2 = King | first2 = Benjamin J. | date = 25 October 2018 | publisher = Oxford University Press | access-date = 14 November 2020 | archive-date = 15 January 2023 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230115161206/https://books.google.com/books?id=1UVvDwAAQBAJ&q=%22newman%22+%22Gillow%22&pg=PA339 | url-status = live }}</ref> The Protestant response was less positive. Archdeacon Julius Hare said that Newman "is determined to say whatever he chooses, in spite of facts and reason".<ref>Hare, J.C., ''The Contest with Rome'', (London, 1852), p. 296</ref>

[[Wilfrid Ward]], Newman's first biographer, describes the ''Lectures'' as follows: <blockquote>We have the very curious spectacle of a grave religious apologist giving rein for the first time at the age of fifty to a sense of rollicking fun and gifts of humorous writing, which if expended on other subjects would naturally have adorned the pages of Thackeray's ''[[Punch (magazine)|Punch]]''.<ref>Ward, Wilfrid, ''Last Lectures'', (London, 1918), p. 113.</ref></blockquote>

Ian Ker has raised the profile of Newman's satire.<ref>Ker, I., "Newman the Satirist", in Ker, I. & Hill, A.G. (ed.), ''Newman after a Hundred Years'', (Oxford, 1990), p. 20.</ref> Ker notes that Newman's imagery has a "savage, Swiftian flavour" and can be "grotesque in the Dickens manner".{{sfn|Ker|2009|p=366}}

Newman himself described the ''Lectures'' as his "best-written book".<ref>Newman, John Henry, ''Letters and Diaries, Vol. XXVI'', p. 115.</ref>