Editing John Henry Newman (section)

===Discussion about potential homosexuality===
David Hilliard characterises Geoffrey Faber's description of Newman, in his 1933 book ''Oxford Apostles'', as a "portrait of Newman as a [[sublimation (psychology)|sublimated]] homosexual (though the word itself was not used)".<ref>David Hilliard. [http://anglicanhistory.org/academic/hilliard_unenglish.pdf "UnEnglish and Unmanly: Anglo-Catholicism and Homosexuality"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110717052631/http://anglicanhistory.org/academic/hilliard_unenglish.pdf |date=17 July 2011 }}, p. 4. Originally published in ''Victorian Studies'', Winter 1982, pp. 181–210.</ref> On Newman's relations with Hurrell Froude, Faber wrote: "Of all his friends Froude filled the deepest place in his heart, and I'm not the first to point out that his occasional notions of marrying definitely ceased with the beginning of his real intimacy with Froude".<ref>''Oxford Apostles'', p. 218 of the Pelican (1954) edition.</ref> However, while Faber's theory has had considerable popular influence, scholars of the Oxford Movement tend either to dismiss it entirely or to view it with great scepticism,<ref>Buckton (p. 36) cites [[Piers Brendon]] and Sheridan Gilley as scholars who dismiss Faber's theory.</ref> with even scholars specifically concerned with same-sex desire hesitating to endorse it.<ref>Buckton (p. 30) cautions: "We ought, of course, to be wary of repeating [Charles] Kingsley's obsessive practice of eroticizing every aspect of Newman's life and faith."</ref>

Ellis Hanson, for instance, writes that Newman and Froude clearly "presented a challenge to Victorian [[gender norms]]", but "Faber's reading of Newman's sexlessness<ref>Faber's book came out in 1933. Later research by Ker (see below) and others does not support the idea of Newman's "sexlessness".</ref> and Hurrell Froude's guilt<ref>As Hilliard notes (p. 5), Piers Brendon, in his biography of Froude, offers a very different interpretation of Froude's sense of guilt.</ref> as evidence of homosexuality" seems "strained".<ref>Ellis Hanson. ''Decadence and Catholicism''. Harvard University Press, 1998, p. 254.</ref> When [[John Campbell Shairp]] combines masculine and feminine imagery in his highly poetic description of Newman's preaching style at Oxford in the early 1840s, Frederick S. Roden is put in mind of "the late Victorian definition of a male invert, the homosexual: his (Newman's) [[homiletics]] suggest a woman's soul in a man's body".<ref>Frederick S. Roden. ''Same-Sex Desire in Victorian Religious Culture''. Palgrave MacMillan, 2003, p. 16. {{ISBN|978-0-333-98643-1}}. In the passage cited by Roden, Shairp describes the style of Newman's sermons as "so simple and transparent, yet so subtle withal; so strong yet so tender; the grasp of a strong man's hand, combined with the trembling of a woman's heart ... laying the most penetrating finger on the very core of things".</ref> Roden, however, does not argue that Newman was homosexual, seeing him rather—particularly in his [[Profession (religious)|professed]] celibacy<ref>Roden, pp. 4, 6, 13–14.</ref>—as a "cultural dissident" or "queer". Roden uses the term "[[Queer theory|queer]]" in a very general sense "to include any dissonant behaviours, discourses or claimed identities" in relation to Victorian norms.<ref>Roden, p. 1.</ref> In this sense, "Victorian Roman and [[Anglo-Catholicism]] were culturally queer".<ref>Roden, p. 2.</ref> In Newman's case, Roden writes, "homoaffectivity" (found in heterosexuals and homosexuals alike)<ref>Roden, p. 1. Roden here explicitly follows [[Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick]], whose term "[[homosociality]]" he uses in the sense of "homosociability or homoaffectivity" (p. 7).</ref> "is contained in friendships, in relationships that are not overtly sexual".<ref>Roden, p. 7.</ref>

In a September 2010 television documentary, ''The Trouble with the Pope'',<ref>''The Trouble with the Pope'', [[Channel 4]], 13 September 2010.</ref> [[Peter Tatchell]] discussed Newman's underlying sexuality, citing his close friendship with Ambrose St John and entries in Newman's diaries describing their fond love for each other.<ref>Peter Tatchell. [https://www.theguardian.com/media/tvandradioblog/2010/sep/13/peter-tatchell-trouble-with-the-pope "The Trouble with the Pope: a journey into my own preconceptions"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160309194629/http://www.theguardian.com/media/tvandradioblog/2010/sep/13/peter-tatchell-trouble-with-the-pope |date=9 March 2016 }}, ''guardian.co.uk'', 13 September 2010.</ref><ref>John Cornwell. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8720000/8720596.stm "Cardinal Newman"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100921223135/http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8720000/8720596.stm |date=21 September 2010 }}, BBC News: ''Today'', 4 June 2010.</ref><ref>Francis Phillips. [http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2010/07/14/fr-ian-ker-brings-clarity-to-the-question-of-newman-and-his-male-friends/ "Fr Ian Ker brings clarity to the question of Newman and his male friends"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101222194356/http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2010/07/14/fr-ian-ker-brings-clarity-to-the-question-of-newman-and-his-male-friends/ |date=22 December 2010 }}, ''CatholicHerald.co.uk'', 14 July 2010.</ref> [[Alan Bray]], however, in his 2003 book ''The Friend'',<ref>Alan Bray. ''The Friend''. University of Chicago Press, 2003</ref> saw the bond between the two men as "entirely spiritual",<ref name=BrayTablet>Alan Bray. [https://web.archive.org/web/20120207071228/https://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/5030 "Wedded Friendships"], ''The Tablet'', 8 August 2001.</ref> noting that Newman, when speaking of St John, echoes the language of [[Gospel of John|John's gospel]].<ref name=Vernon/> Shortly after St John's death, Bray adds, Newman recorded "a conversation between them before St John lost his speech in those final days. He expressed his hope, Newman wrote, that during his whole priestly life he had not committed one [[mortal sin]]. For men of their time and culture that statement is definitive. ... Newman's burial with Ambrose St John cannot be detached from his understanding of the place of friendship in Christian belief or its long history". Bray cites numerous examples of friends being buried together.<ref name=BrayTablet/> Newman's burial with St John was not unusual at the time and did not draw contemporary comment.<ref>Ian Ker. "Newman, John Henry (1801–1890), theologian and cardinal", in ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''.</ref>

David Hilliard writes that relationships such as Newman's with Froude and St John "were not regarded by contemporaries as unnatural. ... Nor is it possible, on the basis of passionate words uttered by mid-Victorians, to make a clear distinction between male affection and homosexual feeling. Theirs was a generation prepared to accept [[romantic friendship]]s between men simply as friendships without sexual significance. Only with the emergence in the late nineteenth century of the doctrine of the stiff upper lip and the concept of homosexuality as an identifiable condition, did open expressions of love between men become suspect and regarded in a new light as morally undesirable".<ref>Hilliard, pp. 4–5.</ref> Men born in the first decades of the nineteenth century had a capacity, which did not survive into later generations, for intense male friendships. The friendship of [[Alfred Tennyson]] and [[Arthur Hallam]], immortalised in ''[[In Memoriam A.H.H.]]'', is a famous example. Less well-known is that of [[Charles Kingsley]] and his closest friend at Cambridge, Charles Mansfield.<ref>Buckton, pp. 36–37.</ref>

When Ian Ker reissued his biography of Newman in 2009, he added an afterword{{sfn|Ker|2009|pp=746–50}} in which he put forward evidence that Newman was a heterosexual. He cited journal entries from December 1816 in which the 15-year-old Newman prayed to be preserved from the temptations awaiting him when he returned from boarding school and met girls at Christmas dances and parties.{{sfn|Ker|2009|p=748}} As an adult, Newman wrote about the deep pain of the "sacrifice" of the life of celibacy. Ker comments: "The only 'sacrifice' that he could possibly be referring to was that of marriage. And he readily acknowledges that from time to time he continued to feel the natural attraction for marriage that any heterosexual man would."{{sfn|Ker|2009|p=749}} In 1833, Newman wrote that, despite having "willingly" accepted the call to celibacy, he felt "not the less ... the need" of "the sort of interest [sympathy] which a wife takes and none but she—it is a woman's interest".<ref>In the passage quoted from (cited in Ker, ''John Henry Newman: A Biography'', p. 197), "interest", "affectionate interest" and "sympathy" are used interchangeably.</ref><ref>[http://ewtn.com/catholicism/library/cardinal-john-henry-newmans-exhumation-objectors-5696 "Cardinal John Henry Newman's Exhumation Objectors"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200206174428/https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/cardinal-john-henry-newmans-exhumation-objectors-5696 |date=6 February 2020 }}, Ian Ker, ''[[L'Osservatore Romano]]'' weekly edition in English, 3 September 2008, p. 3.</ref>