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%e9vfarian Li6rary :J\&ws{etter Spring, 1990
No. 20 (New Series) j. H. Newman, 1801-1890
The Newman Year On February 21 , 1990, the Birmingham (England) Oratory will inaugurate the Centenary Year marking the death of John Cardinal Newman. It provides a time to reflect on the influence which Newman has had and to examine his relevance to our present concerns and questions. A survey of the popular Catholic literature in the past century has shown how the American Catholic community has responded to Newman. In the early decades, it was Newman as poet ("The Dream of Gerontius") and as educator ("The Idea of a University") that drew attention. In the 1940s, many discovered his sermons and prayers through the collections such as Heart to Heart and Lead Kindly Light. In the 1950s, his concern for a theologically educated laity inspired the Newman Centers on college campuses. Vatican II has been called "Newman's Council," for many of his concerns were fundamental themes of the council: the development of doctrine, the role of the laity, ecumenical concern for the well-being of all Churches. His writings on conscience and authority and his historical studies on past councils continue to offer guidance. For Newman, always interested in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, the Virgin Mary was no afterthought. Far from detracting from Christ and the Incarnation, the Virgin Mary-as he saw her-was the greatest safeguard of the truth of the Incarnation: "Nothing is so calculated to impress on our minds that Christ is really partaker of our nature, and in all respects man ... as to associate Him with the thought of Mary, by whose ministration He became our Brother." In those countries where there was no devotion to Mary, he noted, belief in the Incarnation had waned. Newman developed the patristic notion that the Virgin Mary was the new Eve cooperating with the Christ, the new Adam, in the remaking and renewal of humanity. Mary's principal traits-faith and the pondering of God's word-replace Eve's lack of belief. Newman presents a new pattern of sanctity-a complex, heroic individual who confidently endures even though little understood or accepted. In a famous sermon, "The Second Spring," he referred to the restora-
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Cardinal Newman:
The Faith of Mary Thus St. Mary is our pattern of Faith both in the reception and in the study of Divine Truth. She does not think it enough to accept, she dwells upon it; not enough to possess, she uses it; not enough to assent, she develops it; not enough to submit the Reason, she reasons upon it; not indeed reasoning first and believing afterwards , with Zacharias, yet first believing without reasoning, next from love and reverence, reasoning after believing. And thus she symbolizes to us , not only the faith of the unlearned , but of the doctors of the Church also, who have to investigate, and weigh, and define, as well as to profess the Gospel; to draw the line between truth and heresy; to anticipate or remedy the various aberrations of wrong reason; to combat pride and recklessness with their own arms, and thus to triumph over the sophist and the innovator (University Sennons, sermon 15, p . 313).