"Saint John Henry Newman, Doctor of the Church"

Father H comments on the possible canonisation of Blessed John Henry Newman and the attacks already beginning to be leveled against him.

From Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment

It looks as if our kindly and most erudite Patron may have a second miracle recognised enabling him to be canonised in October, during this present ecclesiastical year of 2019.

Great news!! It is reassuring to see the divine Hand powerfully at work in His Church.

But at the same time, we should remember the enormous skill with which the Enemy uses what is good and skilfully perverts it to his own ends.

The months leading up to the canonisation will be a time of enormous danger. The teaching of this great Doctor will be corrupted and misrepresented. The Eminent Graf von Schoenborn has already had a swipe at doing this (at the News Conference 'launching' Amoris laetitia). B John Henry, who spent his whole life opposing liberalism and indifferentism, and opposing cruel and corrupt ultrapapalist  'factions' in Rome, is likely to be repackaged as a forerunner of ultrapapalist and ethically dubious Bergoglianism; not to mention inevitable attempts to attribute to him the silly claim that X can "develop" not only into Non-X and but even into Contra-X.

Even PF's actual words at the ceremony of canonisation may quite possibly be painful to us, if he indulges his recurrent need to hurt people.

We should ensure that we know what Newman taught and how he lived so that we can detect and expose the sophistical falsehoods which will abound as we approach the canonisation.

It is likely that those in the Church who are promoting the acceptance of homosexual genital activity will revive the old claim that, in orientation if not in physical activities, Newman was homosexual. They will carefully ignore evidence such as entries in his Diary recording temptations he felt meeting girls at parties when, as a 15-year old schoolboy, he returned home for Christmas. Our age, which knows nothing of warm friendships between men because it is preoccupied so exclusively with genital fumblings, is not the best age to understand Victorian mores. My own subjective impression, for what it is worth, is that there is something extremely masculine about Dr Newman's calmly ruthless controversial methods.

The best biography I know of Blessed John Henry is the big fat one by Dr Ker, which quotes masses of Blessed John Henry's own words. I venture to suggest that, if anybody wants to know what they can buy you for Christmas, suggest this book ... then make the study of it one of your Lenten Exercises.

The next aim, surely, must be to secure him the title Doctor of the Church. S Edith Stein received that title pretty soon after her canonisation. Then, perhaps, "Patron of the Third Millennium".