Book takes a look at Blessed John Henry Newman

SALT LAKE CITY — John Henry Cardinal Newman, who was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI, is the subject of "The Heart of Newman," a synthesis arranged by Erich Przywara, S.J.

Cardinal Newman was a 19th-century theologian who was received into the Catholic Church in 1845 at the age of 44. Pope Benedict announced his feast day as Oct. 9, the day Cardinal Newman was accepted into the Catholic Church, not the date of his death, as is typical for feast days.

Cardinal Newman’s conversion marked a new dawn for the Catholic Church in England. He had been a major intellectual presence in English cultural life, and many of his fellow countrymen followed his example and converted.

Born and raised an Anglican, Newman became an Anglican priest and Oxford scholar. His brilliance showed itself early, and the Catholic Church delved deeply into his soul. He became Catholic in 1945 and was ordained a priest two years later; he was named a cardinal in 1879. His heart was deeply entrenched in Catholicism, and he worked to spread the faith throughout England and beyond. A writer of novels and poetry, his first two books, "The Idea of a University" and "Loss and Gain," a fictionalized semiautobiographical story of a young man’s search for faith, brought him more fame.

His life, too, was a search for happiness. "Experience enables us to ascertain the moral constitution of man, and therefore his future from his present," he wrote. "It teaches us, first, that he is not sufficient for his own happiness, but is dependable upon the sensible objects which surround him, and that these he cannot take with him when his leaves the world; secondly, that disobedience to his sense of right is even by itself misery…."

According to the "Correspondence of John Henry Newman with John Keble and Others," Przywara wrote that Newman was a man who had many friends, not the least of whom were the saints themselves, whom he studied.

"Many holy men have died in exile, many holy men have been successful preachers; and what more can we write upon St. Chrysostom’s monument than this, that he was eloquent and that he suffered persecution?" Newman wrote.

He also studied other saints: Ambrose, Gregory, Basil, Augustine, Jerome, David and Paul. He was strong in the sacraments and urged others to be so.

Nowhere in "Newman" is there any mention of a woman, except Mary, the mother of Jesus, and "she," as the Church itself. Newman pledged himself to celibacy at the age of 15, and maintained it throughout his life.

At his death in 1890, Newman requested to be buried alongside his closest friend, Ambrose St. John, and so he was. But when Pope Leo XIII planned for his blessedness, his body would have been moved for veneration. Oddly, though, there was nothing left of John Henry Newman except the metal handles of his casket. There are those who believe the ground in which he was buried was so soft and moist that it literally ate his body away along with his wooden casket. Pope John Paul II named him Blessed anyway, and he is now on the road to sainthood.

Other biographical books used by Pryzwara in writing his synthesis include many books by Newman himself, such as "Loss and Gain: The Story of a Convert." Other references are "The Biography of John Henry Cardinal Newman" by Julien Chilcott Monk and "The Oxford Movement" by Keble and other Newmanites.