Truly Distinguished

I write this as a board member of the Venerable John Henry Newman Association. It has been a concern of the association for some time to distinguish itself from the Cardinal Newman Society, which society appears so prominently in your editorial, Measuring Catholic Identity (3/27).

The Venerable John Henry Newman Association was founded in the 1980’s by the late Vincent Giese, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, whose present diocesan bishop, Cardinal Francis George, is the association’s spiritual advisor. The purpose of our organization is to encourage research into and to disseminate knowledge of the life, views and writings of John Henry Newman; to contribute in various ways to the cause of John Henry Newman’s beatification and canonization.

The association fosters the first purpose of research into and dissemination of knowledge of this great pastor and teacher through an annual conference, this year being held on Aug. 3-5 at the University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, Ill. The theme of the conference is Newman in the 21st century. Further information on the Venerable John Henry Newman Association is available at its Web site, www.udallas.edu/newman.

What I have said about the association also applies to the National Institute of Newman Studies (N.I.N.S.), located in Pittsburgh, Pa., with whom the association is closely allied. N.I.N.S. is dedicated solely to promoting the study and spreading the knowledge of the life, influence and work of the Venerable John Henry Newman. The institute accomplishes this mission by maintaining the Newman Research Library, sponsoring the Newman Scholarship Program and publishing the Newman Studies Journal.

The Venerable John Henry Newman Association and the National Institute of Newman Studies thanks America for this opportunity to distinguish ourselves from the Cardinal Newman Society.

Edward J. Enright, O.S.A.

Watchful Eye

In reading Will the Seminaries Measure Up? by Ronald D. Witherup, S.S., (3/20) the jump-off-the-page statement that there is only one question in the Instrumentum Laboris about homosexuality seems as if that should cover the sexuality issues in the church. What disturbs me is that the question should be, Is there evidence of any inappropriate sexual activity in the seminary? To me the implication of the first question is that sexual activity between a man and a woman is O.K. because it is evidence that the seminarian is not homosexual. Isn’t celibacy the issue here? Why does the church have to go around an issue before facing it? We the people of God have to continue to keep a watchful eye on the leaders of our church, who are not all honorable men.

Christine Ring

Slowly But Surely

I read with interest your editorial about the Cardinal Newman Society, Measuring Catholic Identity (3/27). That organization does not seem to recognize the irony of choosing as their patron a holy priest who himself was the subject of much vilification and animus by persons not unlike those who make up the current membership of that organization.

My suggestion would be that they rename themselves as the Msgr. George Talbot Society. Talbot, like Newman a convert from Anglicanism, was a domestic prelate to Pope Pius IX for nearly two decades and, in that capacity, besmirched Newman’s reputation in the papal household, accusing him (falsely) of being a supporter of Garibaldi, thwarting Newman’s desire for a Catholic College at Oxford, picturing him as being disloyal to papal authority and calling him the most dangerous man in Europe. He served as the Vatican agent of those in England who had no love for Newman, especially Cardinal Henry Edward Manning. Talbot, if he is remembered at all today, is remembered as the one who said that the laity’s role in the church was to hunt, to shoot, to entertain.

Providence, however, works slowly but surely. Talbot had a mental breakdown and ended his days in an asylum near Paris. Newman eventually became a cardinal and is now on the way to canonization. For all that, it is terribly sad to see Newman’s name associated with such persons, who are not at all unlike those who served as watchdogs of Orthodoxy against Newman in the 19th century.

Lawrence S. Cunningham