From the Clergy of
Lancashire
July 22, 1879.
TO HIS EMINENCE
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN,
CARDINAL OF ST.
GEORGE IN VELABRO.
It is now fifteen years since the clergy of Lancashire had the honour
to address you. It was then to thank you for your triumphant defence
of the Catholic priesthood; for in repelling a {142} wanton attack
made upon yourself you had fully vindicated the character of the whole
body of the clergy. Since that time each successive year has added to
the services you have rendered to the Church in England, and our
gratitude to you has grown in proportion. We are well aware how averse
you have ever been to outward display, but we could not but wish that
those services should be acknowledged in some fitting manner. And when
at length it was rumoured that the Vicar of Christ had named you for
the Cardinalate, we felt that the honour had been well earned, and
that our long cherished hope was being realised in the happiest form.
To a Catholic and a priest honour bestowed by the Holy Father is
honour indeed; and when that dignity is the highest in his gift, and
conferred upon you with every mark of delicate consideration, your
friends could hardly wish for you anything greater in this life. That
England, in spite of its manifold divergences in religious opinion,
should be united with its children of the Old Faith, and with the
whole Catholic world, in a common joy that this mark of distinction
should have been conferred upon your Eminence, must needs deepen our
satisfaction, as no doubt it increases yours. We can only wish for
your Eminence many years of life to instruct, to charm, and to edify,
with added lustre {143} and undiminished power, your fellow Catholics
and fellow-countrymen.
Signed in behalf of our General Meeting, held at Preston on the
22nd of July, 1879.
W. WALKER,
Canon of Liverpool, President.
To the Clergy of Lancashire
(This Reply is taken from the rough copy.)
MY DEAR CANON
WALKER,
It is one of the highest favours which Divine Providence can bestow
upon a priest, for him to have gained the good opinion and the
sympathy of his brethren. This is the thought which took possession of
me, and I trust without any fault, on reading the Address, so simple,
yet so strong, which you have sent me from the clergy of Lancashire.
I had not forgotten, I assure you, their generous act in 1864, when
they honoured me with a like distinction; and that I should have
received it twice from such a body of men is a marvel of which I may
well be proud to the end of my life.
I trust, as I have said, it is not wrong thus to feel and speak.
There was One, who for all her unapproachable {144} sanctity and her
transcendent humbleness of mind, could in her "Magnificat"
rejoice in the prospect of all generations calling her blessed; and
how then can it be wrong if I, on my own low level, but in her spirit,
include in my supreme thankfulness, due to the Giver of all good, an
exulting sense of the paternal tenderness towards me of the Sovereign
Pontiff, and of the warmth of the response which your friends have
made to his act in your Address of Congratulation to me.
Relying on them and on you, my dear Canon Walker, who have so long
shown me such kindness, to supply for me whatever is wanting in this
letter in the expression of my thanks to you all,
I am,
Your faithful and affectionate servant,
JOHN H. CARDINAL NEWMAN.
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From the C. U. I. Bono
Club of the Irish Catholic University
(Presented Wednesday, July 23, 1879.)
MAY IT PLEASE
YOUR EMINENCE,
At a time when you are receiving the congratulations of Catholics
{145} from all parts of the world on your elevation to the dignity of
Cardinal, we trust that you will not think it presumption in us to
express the joy and pride with which we have heard of that elevation.
The club on whose behalf we address you is formed mainly of
ex-students of the Catholic University of Ireland over which you once
presided, and it was founded with the object of discussing and taking
action upon questions bearing on the welfare of that University. In
the humble efforts which from time to time we have made for the
advancement of the University education of Irish Catholics, we have
found in your writings a never-failing counsel and guidance, and we
therefore feel that we may with especial fitness avail ourselves of
this opportunity to tender to you the expression of our gratitude,
respect, and veneration.
As students of the Catholic University of Ireland, we can never
forget that the "Lectures on the Scope and Nature of University
Education" were delivered in our halls, and by our Rector. When
you came to Ireland to undertake the Rectorship of the newly founded
Catholic University, the Catholics of this country, owing to their
having been for three centuries excluded from all share in the
advantages of higher education, had no traditions to guide them in
forming a correct estimate of what a University {146} ought to be.
Your great work, which we may justly call our Charter, has supplied
the place of those traditions, and, thanks to it, the Irish people
have now realised what a true University should be, and what
inestimable benefits a National Catholic University could confer upon
Ireland.
It is not as Irishmen only, but also as Catholics, that we owe you
gratitude for your teaching in our University. You have shown that
education is a field in which both clergy and laity can work together,
harmoniously and without jealousy, for a common object, and in which
both have duties, and both have rights, and in establishing this, you,
as it appears to us, have rendered valuable assistance to the Catholic
Church in her great struggle for freedom of education throughout the
world.
In one of the noblest passages in English literature you have
proclaimed your sympathy with our country's past and your hope in the
promise of her future. Seeking a fitting site for a University, you
say of our country: "I look towards a land both old and young;
old in its Christianity, young in the promise of its future; a nation
which received grace before the Saxon came to Britain, and which has
never quenched it; a Church which comprehends in its history the rise
and fall of Canterbury and York, which Augustine and Paulinus found,
and {147} Pole and Fisher left behind them. I contemplate a people
which has had a long night and which will have an inevitable
day." And you proceed to prophesy for our University a glorious
destiny to be attained in the future, "when its first founders
and servants are dead and gone". It is our earnest hope that you,
the most illustrious of our founders, may yet live to see your
prophecy at least in part fulfilled.
It was during your Rectorship that the Chair of Irish History and
Archæology was founded in our University, and that a Professor of
those subjects was first appointed in Ireland; and to your
encouragement and practical sympathy, as warmly testified by Professor
O'Curry, was due the preparation by him of those lectures on Irish
History and Antiquities which are among the most honourable records of
what the University has already done.
We venture to ask your acceptance of the National Manuscripts of
Ireland, a work edited by a distinguished Irish scholar, in the
hope that it may serve to remind you of the efforts which you made to
foster Irish studies in our University, and that it may thus be to you
a pleasing memento of your labours in an institution in which your
name will ever be mentioned with veneration and love.
In conclusion, we beg to tender to you our respectful
congratulations upon the {148} exalted dignity to which it has pleased
the Holy Father to raise you, and to express our earnest hope that you
may long be spared to serve the Church of which you are so illustrious
an ornament.
Committee:—
George Sigerson, Joseph E. Kenny, Gerald Griffin, P. J.
O'Connor, Michael Boyd, George Fottrell, jun., Charles Dawson, John
Dillon.
Hon. Secs.:—
H. J. Gill, William Dillon.
To the Committee of the C. U. I. Bono Club
July 23, 1879.
GENTLEMEN,
In thanking you for the Address of Congratulation which you have done
me the honour to present me, I am led especially to express to you the
pleasurable wonder I have felt on reviewing its separate portions, as
they succeed one another, and on collecting my thoughts upon them; at
the minute and most friendly diligence with which you have brought
together and arranged before me whatever could be turned to my praise
during the years in which I filled the distinguished and important
post of Rector of your Catholic University.
I know well, or, if this is presumptuous to say, I sincerely
believe, that a desire to serve Ireland was the ruling {149} motive of
my writings and doings while I was with you. How could I have any
other? What right-minded Englishman can think of this country's
conduct towards you in times past without indignation, shame, and
remorse? How can any such man but earnestly desire, should his duty
take him to Ireland, to be able to offer to her some small service in
expiation of the crimes which his own people have in former times
committed there? This wish, I believe, ruled me; but that in fact I
had done any great thing during my seven years there, has never come
home to me, nor have I had by me any tale of efforts made or of
successes gained in your behalf, such as I might produce, supposing I
was asked how I had spent my time, and what I had done, while Rector
of the University.
I cannot, then, deny, that, diffident as I have ever been, in
retrospect of any outcome of my work in Ireland, it has been a great
satisfaction to me and a great consolation to find from you and others
that I have a right to think that those years were not wasted, and
that the Sovereign Pontiff did not send me to Ireland for nothing.
{150}
There is another thought which your Address suggests to me, namely,
that, as looking back to the years when I was in Ireland, I have, as
it would seem, good hope after all that I had my share of success
there, so now we must none of us be discouraged if during the twenty
years which have elapsed since, we have had so many difficulties and a
success not commensurate with them. The greater is a work, the longer
it takes to accomplish it. Tantæ molis erat Roinanam condere
gentem. You indeed, gentlemen, are not the persons to be accused
of want of courage; but zealous men, though not discouraged, may be
disappointed. Let us all then recollect that our cause is sure to
succeed eventually, because it is manifestly just; and next, because
it has the blessing on it of the Holy See. We must be contented with
small successes when we cannot secure great ones, and we shall gain
our object surely, if we resign ourselves to a progress which is
gradual.
JOHN HENRY CARD.
NEWMAN. {151}
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ADDRESS
FROM THE CATHOLIC
YOUNG MEN'S SOCIETIES
OF GREAT BRITAIN
AT THE ORATORY,
ON SUNDAY, AUGUST
3, 1879, WITH AN ACCOUNT
OF THE PROCEEDINGS
WHICH ACCOMPANIED THE
PRESENTATION.
Cardinal Newman preached at the Church of the Oratory of St. Philip
Neri, Edgbaston, yesterday morning, August 3. In the afternoon his
Eminence received a deputation from forty-six branches of the Roman
Catholic Young Men's Societies.
The deputation consisted of Mr. Fitzpatrick (President), Mr. T.
Breen (Vice-President), and Mr. A. Quin (Hon. Secretary of the Central
Council, Liverpool); Mr. Delany (President), Mr. T. Newey, jun.
(Secretary), and Mr. J. Loughton, of the St. Michael's Branch,
Birmingham; Messrs. Gretton, Ford, Maley. A. Trafford, Dewsbury, and
Russell, of St. Peter's Branch, Birmingham; the Rev. J. Hughes,
Messrs. T. W. T. Bull and P. Tierney, of St. Catherine's Branch,
Birmingham; and delegates from Birkenhead, Cardiff, Chester, Cleator
Moor, Coventry, Dumbarton, Dumfries, Dundee, Edinburgh, Garston,
Gourock, Greenock, Hindley, Ince, Johnstone, Kilmarnock, Liscard,
Liverpool (nine societies), London, Newton-le-Willows, Northampton,
Ormskirk, Sheffield, Shrewsbury, Stockport, Wakefield, West Derby,
Whitehaven, Wigan and Woolton,
The deputation were bearers of an illuminated Address, splendidly
executed by Mr. J. O. Marples, of Liverpool.
These societies were first established in Limerick about the year
1848, by the Very Rev. Dr. O'Brien of that city, who conceived the
design of establishing one vast organisation, embracing a multitude of
branches, by which all might be bound in one brotherhood of feeling
and affection, and might by mutual encouragement be supported and
fortified against the snares and temptations to which men, and
especially young men, are every day {152} exposed.
This, then, was the plan which he carried out. "Brothers"
were enrolled, meeting-rooms procured, innocent recreation and
enjoyment promoted, and rules for the guidance and good conduct of the
members laid down. The project worked admirably; and in the course of
time Dr. O'Brien found himself founding new branches in different
parts of Great Britain, one of the first established in England being
St. Mary's, of Liverpool. This was inaugurated in 1853, and the Papal
Indult, attaching certain privileges to the society, was read at the
inauguration ceremony. The idea of making a presentation to his
Eminence originated from the Central Council, and on being
communicated to the Very Rev. founder was warmly commended by him. It
was taken up with enthusiasm by the different branches, and it was
carried out with activity and energy. Delegates from the various
branches in Liverpool were deputed to make the presentation, and on
Sunday the 11 o'clock train conveyed about thirty "Young
Men" to Birmingham. There delegates from other towns met them,
and together with the representatives from Birmingham and the
neighbourhood, numbering about 100, they went to the Oratory Church.
Here Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament was given by the Cardinal,
and at the conclusion of the service they were taken into the
reception-room. The deputation was introduced by the Rev. J. Sherlock
(Chaplain of St. Michael's Branch, Birmingham), who said: My Lord
Cardinal, in presenting to your Eminence the representatives present
of forty-six branches of the Young Men's Societies of Great Britain,
to offer you their congratulations by the presentation of a united
Address, I beg leave to express my own gratification that I find
myself at the head of this deputation. Just {153} thirty
years ago—in September, 1849—in your charity, sacrificing the
comforts of home, and even at the risk of life, you and your zealous
Fathers came to assist me at Bilston when I was struck down by illness
through excessive work in the cholera epidemic; and now, during the
twenty-six years I have lived in Birmingham, I have experienced a
constant series of similar favours at the hands of your Eminence and
the Fathers of the Oratory. Under these circumstances it is easily
seen that my gratification in joining in this demonstration is not
merely to offer my congratulation at the sacred distinction won and
received by your Eminence towards the close of a long and brilliant
career, but that it is also an opportunity of publicly expressing my
own lasting gratitude for so many favours.
His Eminence, turning to Father Sherlock, shook hands with him and
said: I wish I had one-fourth of the merits you have won for yourself.
It would be hard indeed if one did not in his own little way try to
serve such a laborious and hard-working priest as you are. God bless
you.
The President, Mr. Michael Fitzpatrick, then read the Address.
To his Eminence John Henry Cardinal Newman
MAY IT PLEASE
YOUR EMINENCE,
On behalf of the Young Men's Societies of Great Britain, we most
respectfully offer our congratulations on your entry into the Sacred
College of Cardinals, and express our joy at the honour his Holiness
has conferred on the English Church in selecting you for the {154}
exalted dignity. Amidst higher duties and intellectual work, your
Eminence has always shown a deep interest in the labouring class, and
has ever had a kind word for the working man. We do not forget that
your most brilliant lectures were delivered to working men in the Hall
of the Brothers of the Little Oratory: your words have spread and have
helped to lighten our toil, to instruct our minds, and to strengthen
our Catholic faith and principles. Filled with gratitude for your
interest in us, with esteem for your illustrious labours, and with
veneration for your personal character, we welcome with delight the
dignity you have received, and we pray that God may long spare you to
defend and adorn the Church. Begging your Eminence's blessing, we
subscribe ourselves on behalf of our respective societies,
MICHAEL FITZPATRICK,
President.
THOMAS BREEN,
Vice-President.
AUGUSTINE QUINN, Hon.
Sec., Central Council.
Feast of St. Augustine, Apostle of England 1879.
To the Young Men's Societies of Great
Britain
Sunday, August 3, 1879.
You must have anticipated, I am sure, Gentlemen, before I say it, what
gratification I feel at the Address {155} which you have now presented
to me on occasion of my elevation, by the condescending act of the
Sovereign Pontiff, to the Sacred College of Cardinals.
It has gratified me in many ways. I feel it is a great honour to be
thus singled out for special notice by a body so widely extended, and
so important in its objects, so interesting to every Catholic mind, as
your Society.
Next, your Address has come to me in a shape which enhances the
compliment you pay me, and was sure to be most acceptable to me. Not
only is the copy which you have put into my hands most beautifully
illuminated, but the illuminations are made the memorials of various
passages in my life past, which seem to suggest to me the careful
interest and the sympathy, and, I may say, the tenderness, with which
you yourselves have dwelt upon them.
And then this Address comes to me from so many. It is as strange to
me as it is pleasant, to find at the Holy Father's word, and, as it
were, at his signal, a host of friends starting up and gathering and
thronging round about me from so many great towns, north and south, in
this broad {156} land: whereas up to this time, widely known and
highly accounted as has been your Society, for myself I never realised
that there was any personal tie between you and me, or had that
conscious fellowship with you which is so great a help where hearts
beat in unison as being associates and companions in a great and noble
cause.
Still further, you add to the gratification which I feel on other
accounts by telling me that one of my books has been of use to you in
your zealous efforts to defend and propagate Catholic Truth, and that,
though I have not known you, you, on the other hand, have known me.
And more than this, in speaking of those lectures of mine you do
not forget to notice that they come from the Oratory of St. Philip
Neri, in whose house you are now assembled. I am glad to recognise
with you the similarity of aims which exists in the work of our
glorious Saint who lived three centuries ago in Italy, and that of the
excellent Priest, who has been in this country and in these islands
the founder of the Young Men's Society. And I cannot help feeling some
satisfaction in observing in your Address, and, as it were, in the
aspect {157} of your Society, certain coincidences, in themselves
indeed trivial and what may be called matters of sentiment, yet to me
happy accidents, as a sort of token of some subtle sympathy connecting
you and the Oratory. Such, for instance, is the date which you have
affixed to your address, "the Feast of St. Augustine, Apostle of
England," May 26; now are you aware that May 26 is also our feast
day, "the Feast of St. Philip, Apostle of Rome"? Again, I
see that the anniversary of your foundation is set down as May 12; but
this is a great day with St. Philip and his Roman house, as being the
festival of the Oratory Saints, SS. Nereus and Achilleus, whose Church
was the Titular of the celebrated Oratorian, Cardinal Baronius, the
ecclesiastical historian, and one of the earliest disciples of St.
Philip.
Short as your Address is, you see, it contains in its compass what
has required from me many words to answer duly. Moreover, you have
given me much more than an Address by coming with it yourselves, and
letting us meet face to face. I have to thank you, then, for a visit
as well as a beautifully embellished letter. For {158} all this
kindness I thank you from my heart again and again.
JOHN H. CARD. NEWMAN.
After this Reply, the Deputies were introduced to the Cardinal and
then returned to St. Michael's for the evening.
At St. Michael's discussions took place on matters of interest to
the Societies, and a hope was strongly expressed that the gathering of
members that day might be the beginning, or rather a renewal, of
similar meetings. A letter, too, was read by Mr. M. Fitzpatrick from
their venerable Founder, expressing his gratification at their object
in coming to Birmingham. Then, speaking of the early days of the
Societies, the letter continued thus: "And let me remark that at
a moment of helpless exhaustion in the year 1854 there came to me,
then at Manchester, words of kindness and encouragement, all
unexpected and undeserved, and those words gave new life to the
mission for founding the Young Men's Societies in Great Britain. Need
I say the words bore the signature, J. H. Newman."
The following names were also appended to the Address:—
Birkenhead (St. Laurence's).—Andrew Nooney,
President; John Hamlin, Vice-President; William Byrne, Secretary.
Blackburn (St. Mary's).—William Worden, President; Rev. H. Hu.
Schuergers, Vice-President; John McQuaid, Secretary. Birmingham (St.
Catherine's).—Rev. James Hughes, President; T. W. T. Bull,
Vice-President; P. Tierney, Secretary. Birmingham (St. Michael's).—Bernard
Delany, President; John Loughton, Vice-President; Thomas Newey,
Secretary. Birmingham (St. Peter's).—Joseph Brittain, President;
James Ford, Vice-President; John Maley, Secretary. Cardiff (St. Peter's).—P.
W. Gaffney, President; Thomas Collins, Vice-President; Eugene
McCarthy, Secretary. Chester (St. Francis').—John A. Hanley,
President; John V. Gahan, Vice-President; Thomas Rafferty, Secretary.
{159} Cleator Moor (St. Bega's).—Patrick Dunn,
President; Peter Jolly, Vice-President; John Kavanagh, Secretary.
Coventry (St. Osburg's).—James J. Sanders, President; Philip Cox,
Vice-President; John A. Kearns, Secretary. Dumbarton (St. Patrick's).—Rev.
Charles Brown, President; Daniel McBride, Vice-President; Peter Logue,
Secretary. Dumfries and Maxwelton (St. Joseph's).—James Carmont,
President; P. Hanlon, Vice-President; Thomas King, Secretary.
Liverpool (St. Anthony's).—Peter Rothwell, President; D. Grattan,
Vice-President; John Birchall, Secretary. Liverpool (St. Augustine's).—William
Payne, President; John Keating, Vice-President; John Shea, Secretary.
Liverpool (St. Mary's).—Michael Fitzpatrick, President; Francis
Barker, Vice-President; Robert Morton, Secretary. Liverpool (St.
Nicholas').—J. McLaughlin, President; James Cummings,
Vice-President; Henry M. Latham, Secretary. Liverpool (Our Lady of
Reconciliation).—D. Finnemore, President; P. Hennessy,
Vice-President; James Wade, Secretary. Liverpool (St. Patrick's).—Peter
A. Traynor, President; John Henry, Vice-President; Joseph Traynor,
Secretary. Liverpool (St. Sylvester's).—John S. Clarke, President;
James Doyle, Vice-President; James Daly, Secretary. Dundee (St.
Patrick's).—E. McGovern, President; P. McDaniel, Vice-President; P.
Magee, Secretary. Edinburgh (St. Patrick's).—John Adair, President;
Francis A. McIver and James Sorden, Vice-Presidents; Daniel Donworth,
Secretary. Garston (St. Austin's).—Nicholas J. Walsh, President;
James Hurst, Vice-President; Patrick Mulholland, Secretary. Gourock.—James
Hargan, President; Patrick M. Loughlin, Vice-President; Neil Doherty,
Secretary. Great Crosby—Very Rev. Canon Wallwork, President; G.
Crank, Vice-President; James Mackarell, Secretary. Greenock (St.
Laurence's).—Charles Sharp, President; Bernard Duffy,
Vice-President; Rev. Alexander Bisset, Secretary. Greenock (St. Mary's).—Rev.
Alexander Taylor, President; Benjamin Donnolly, Vice-President; John
Murphy, Secretary. Hindley (St. Benedict's).—Michael J. Ryan,
President; Peter Hilton, Vice-Preaident; Jesse Parkinson, Secretary.
Ince (St. William's).—John Holland, President; Francis McAllevey,
Vice-President; Daniel Cassidy, Secretary. Johnstone (St. Margaret's).—James
McGrath, President; W. McGranaghan, Vice-President; Thomas Daly,
Secretary. Kilmarnock (St. Joseph's).—James McMurray, President;
William Callachan, Vice-President; Edward McGarvy, Secretary. Liscard
(St. Albans').—John Murphy, President; John O'Connor,
Vice-President; Thomas Monaghan, Secretary. Liverpool (St. Albans').—Philip
Smith, President; {160} Charles Byrne,
Vice-President; Francis Manning, Secretary. Liverpool (All Souls').—John
Gould, President; Bryan Shannon, Vice-President; Patrick Kelly,
Secretary. London (The English Martyrs, Tower Hill).—Stuart Knill,
President; William Roadhouse, Vice-President; B. Forde, Secretary.
Newton-le-Willows (St. Mary's).—John Unsworth, President; Thomas
Kenny, Vice-President; Bernard Dolan, Secretary. Northampton (Our Lady
Immaculate).—George Robbins, President; Bartholomew Finn,
Vice-President; Charles Stokes, Secretary. Ormskirk (St. Anne's).—Patrick
Melia, President; Henry Connolly, Vice-President; James Kelly,
Secretary. Sheffield (St. Vincent's).—John Allen, President; Daniel
O'Neil, Vice-President; John J. Hourigan, Secretary. Shrewsbury (Our
Lady of Help and St. Peter of Alcantara's).—William Smart,
President; William Measey, Vice-President; William L. Booth,
Secretary. Stockport (St. Joseph's).—Rev. James Robinson, President;
Edward North, Vice-President; Patrick Scott, Secretary. Wakefield (St.
Austin's).—John Clinton, President; Sylvester Welch, Vice-President;
Peter Devine, Secretary. West Derby (St. Oswald's, Old Swan).—Joseph
W. Brown, President; Joseph McGrath, Vice-President; Michael Fogarty,
Secretary. Whitehaven (St. Bega's).—James Rooney, President; Thomas
Kearney, Vice-President; Thomas Ryan, Secretary. Wigan (St. Joseph's).—Patrick
Dolan, President; Joseph Ballard, Vice-President; Patrick Cawley,
Secretary. Wigan (St. Mary's).—John Hargreaves, President; Dennis
McCurdy, Vice-President; John Pilling, Secretary. Wigan (St. Patrick's).—Martin
Maloney, President; William Tickle, Vice-President; William Paisley,
Secretary. Woolton (St. Mary's).—Henry Rycroft, President; Michael
Shanley, Vice-President; Patrick Hannon, Secretary.
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From the Members of
the Catholic Total Abstinence League of the Cross
On Saturday afternoon, August 9, a deputation, representing the
Roman Catholic Total Abstinence League of the Cross, waited upon
Cardinal Newman, at the Oratory, Edgbaston. The deputation, consisting
of Mr. J. J. Fitzpatrick and Councillor McArdle, of Liverpool, and
some others, were bearers of {161} an
illuminated Address to the Cardinal, which was read and presented by
Mr. J. J. Fitzpatrick.
The Address
YOUR EMINENCE,
We, the Members of the Catholic Total Abstinence League of the Cross,
beg to tender you our sincerest congratulations upon the occasion of
your elevation by our Holy Father Leo XIII. to the high dignity of a
Prince of the Church.
It is with diffidence that we presume to address your Eminence, but
we wish to embrace this opportunity to give expression to the
affection and veneration with which we regard you.
We rejoice to know that one who has shed such lustre upon the
sacred office of the priesthood, and who has laboured so zealously and
unostentatiously to spread the light of our holy religion throughout
the land should receive the high distinction of being raised to that
exalted position of which you have proved yourself so worthy.
We look upon you as a distinguished champion of the faith, and we
earnestly pray that you may long be spared to fulfil the important
duties of your new dignity.
We ask your Eminence's blessing for ourselves and our association.
Signed on behalf of the members of the Catholic Total Abstinence
League of the Cross, Liverpool, June 6, 1879,
J. J. FITZPATRICK, Hon. Sec. {162}
To the Members of the Catholic Total
Abstinence League of the Cross
I wish I could make you a fit reply to your Address, which is so
very kind to me. Your own consideration in not coming to me in greater
numbers, of course, has deprived me of a great pleasure, but at the
same time I do not deny that it was needed for me. I am not so strong
as I ought to be. If I were I could hope to express in better terms
than I shall be able to do my feelings for so very kind and so great a
compliment; for a great compliment it is. I look upon you as a
remarkable body—in its spirit almost a Religious body—for you have
upon you a certain Religious character from the special obligation
under which the members of your association lie. We all know in its
beginning what a great blessing attended your Founder, Father Mathew,
as we believe, from above; and how great a name and reputation,
considered only in a secular point of view, attaches to your Society.
It began with the sanction of Holy Church, in consequence of the
extraordinary zeal of one who was without any powers of this world to
aid him making his way by the earnestness of {163} his purpose and the
force of truth. We know what great results followed from his
exertions, and as it was at the beginning so it has gone on. Your
League in Liverpool has attracted the reverence even of those who are
not Catholics from the charitable purpose in which it originated, and
from the number of its members who, in a spirit of self-sacrifice,
have joined it in order to encourage others who required a restraint
which was not needed for themselves. Besides that, it is so singularly
contrasted with the secular schemes and institutions with the same
object which are external to the Church. Moreover, it is specially
recommended to myself from the circumstance of the excellent priest
who is, I believe, at the head of your association in Liverpool. I saw
much of him years ago, and I know what a devoted servant of God he is,
and how he has laid himself out for great works and has done great
things. At the time I knew him he was employed in Hope Street in such
good works towards young men as characterise our own Oratory, and he
was kind enough to receive me and to pay me the great compliment of
asking me to deliver certain {163} lectures in his Institute. Since
that time I have not been in the way of seeing or hearing much of him;
but I know, as I have already said, how zealously he has worked all
along. He is one of those priests—one of those many priests—whom
one looks up to with great admiration, and I hope you will carry back
my thanks, not only to your whole body, but especially to him, for the
great honour which he has done me on this occasion. I do not know what
more I have to say; I wish I could say more to show you the heartfelt
satisfaction and gratification I feel at this Address, and, not in the
least measure, for the trouble which you yourselves, gentlemen, have
taken in bringing it to me in person.
The deputation afterwards dined with the Cardinal.
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Address from
the Catholics belonging to the Oratory Mission
On Sunday afternoon, August 10, some 200 members of the
congregation of the Church of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri,
Edgbaston, presented Cardinal Newman with an Address of Congratulation
on his elevation to the Cardinalate. His Eminence, who was accompanied
by the Fathers of the Oratory, received {165} the
members of his flock in the school dining-room. The Address, which was
signed by between 1100 and 1200 persons, was very beautifully
illuminated, and the title page bore an exceedingly chaste mediæval
design, composed of the hats and mottoes of the seven members of the
Oratory who have been made Cardinals, and St. Philip Neri in the
centre.
VERY REV. AND
DEAR FATHER,
Whilst the announcement of the intention of the Sovereign Pontiff to
confer upon you the high dignity of the Cardinalate has caused
universal rejoicing, and addresses of congratulations are being
presented to you from all parts, we, the members of the congregation
of the Church of the Oratory, who have had the especial privilege of
living near you, and of seeing and hearing you almost daily, feel that
we should not remain silent.
Not that we fear you would doubt our sharing in the general joy,
but that we wish to take advantage of so fitting a time to express in
this formal manner our respectful and grateful affection towards
yourself as the "Father of the Oratory".
Leaving others to speak of your valiant championship of the Faith,
your labours for Christian Education, your writings in poetry and
prose, we come to you simply as spiritual children of Saint Philip to
his representative, with our offerings of heartfelt congratulation,
that (despite your sensitive shrinking from praise or distinction)
{166} the Holy Father has thus graciously crowned your long fight for
truth with additional honour.
Praying God to grant that we may listen to your voice yet many
years,
Your devoted children of the Oratorian Church, Edgbaston, Birmingham.
Easter, A.D. 1879.
The Address was in course of signature before the Cardinal went to
Rome.
To the Catholics belonging to the Oratory
Mission
August 10, 1879.
You are quite right, my dear children, in saying that no words of
yours were necessary to make me quite sure of the affectionate
satisfaction you have felt from the first, from last Lent, on hearing
of the great honour which the Holy Father has condescended to confer
upon me. Yet, in spite of being certain of this, it is very pleasant
to me to hear this declared in my ears and before my face in the warm
language of the Address of Congratulation which you have now presented
to me. There is only one drawback to my gratification, and that is my
consciousness that I am not quite deserving of that full praise which
your {167} kind hearts are so ready to give me. Such praise from his
people is the best earthly reward which a parish priest can receive,
and as far as I have a claim to it I gladly and thankfully accept it
from you. But a good part of it is far more due to others than to me,
as I know well, and ever bear in mind. Not as if I thought for a
moment that you any more than I forgot to honour with your truest
regard and observance in your most affectionate memory those good
fathers, the living and the dead, who during my time here have acted
for and instead of me towards you, in bearing "the burden of the
day and the heats," in tending the sick, ministering to the poor,
teaching the children, and serving all classes in our mission; but I
feel, though you have never given to them less than their due, that
you give me, on the other hand, more than mine; and that though they
do not lose, still I have been a great gainer by that reflection of
their light, by that abundance of their good works which was not mine
at all. However, it is so pleasant to me to receive your
acknowledgments that I shall not make any great effort to disclaim
them. This for past years. As to the time {168} to come, though I
cannot know how much of life and strength remains in me, I am glad to
say that, be it more or less, the Holy Father, in his loving
consideration for you and for me, expressed to me in my first audience
his wish that I should not separate myself from my old duties and
responsibilities here in consequence of my promotion to the Sacred
College, and thus it is a great consolation to me to know, as far as
we can know the future, that I shall be here just as I was to the end,
and shall die as I have lived—the Father of the Oratory and the
priest and pastor of the Oratory Mission. May God bless us and guide
us, defend and protect all of us, now and henceforth unto the end.
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FIVE ADDRESSES
PRESENTED ON THE FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY,
1879.
Yesterday, August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, five Addresses were presented to Cardinal Newman
congratulating him on his elevation to the Sacred College. The
presentations were made in the School Refectory of the Oratory, where,
amongst the persons present, most of whom had come to Birmingham for
the purpose, were:— {169}
The Duke of Norfolk, the Marquis of Ripon, Lord O'Hagan, Captain
Lord Walter Kerr, Sir Rowland Blennerhasset, Sir Charles Clifford,
General Patterson, Major Gape, Monsignor Clarke (Clifton), Canons
Chapman (Birkenhead), Tasker, McKenna, Johnson (Nottingham), Longman;
Messrs. Basil Fitzherbert, Allies, W. S. Lilly, E. Lucas, Mr. Casworth
(Mayor of Louth), A. Feeney, Clifford, etc., etc.
The first of the Addresses was read and presented by the Duke of
Norfolk.
I.
From the Catholics of
England, Ireland, and Scotland
MAY IT PLEASE
YOUR EMINENCE,
We, the Catholics of England, Ireland, and Scotland, who may claim
also to represent those of the whole British Empire, unite in offering
to you this tribute of our affection and our respect upon your
elevation to the rank of Cardinal by the voice of our common Father,
Leo XIII. We salute you as henceforth a chosen Counsellor of our
Mother, the Holy Roman Church. Bear with us if we attempt to enumerate
some special reasons in the past course of your life for which the
Holy Father may have thought fit to set upon it this seal of his
approval.
In the first portion of your life, reaching to full middle age, we
find you the chief thinker and the great writer of a movement in the
bosom of the Anglican Church which has led to momentous results. In a
series of sermons, tracts, and {170} controversial works, you did all
that genius armed with learning and dialectic skill could do, to
defend the religious community in which you had been nurtured.
Compelled by the inward progress of conviction to surrender that
defence, you had attained at the moment of your conversion to the
Catholic faith a position as a Preacher, a Writer, and a
Controversialist, and you wielded a personal influence over the minds
of men, such as, in the opinion of your countrymen, had never been
reached by any minister of any rank in the Established Church during
the three centuries of its existence. The effect of twelve years of
unexampled work as its defender, terminated by your conversion, was to
impress upon thinking minds, even though they did not follow you in
your submission to the Catholic Church, the conviction that the system
which you had left could never again be defended upon the principle of
authority. It was a great example, the force of which all felt could
never be exceeded. It needed the united gifts of nature and grace,
matured in a life of piety, to bridge the chasm of ignorance, of
calumny, and of antipathy, which then divided Englishmen from the
Church, and in you the work was done by the Providence of God.
A generation has now passed since that event without diminishing
its effect. To the large number of writings produced {171} before your
conversion you have added proofs of incomparable ability in defence of
the position of Catholics in this country and in the world, in removal
of difficulties impeding submission to the Church, in illustration of
the Idea and Work of a Catholic university, in exhibiting the true
development of Christian doctrine as contrasted with its corruption,
in maintaining the foundation of certitude and setting forth true
principles of philosophy, in historical treatises showing a vast power
of philosophical induction, in sermons, and in many other writings.
Even the poet's glory is not wanting, for in a single drama you have
expressed the condition of departed spirits, in language which unites
the depths of Catholic tenderness with the severest accuracy of
doctrine, upon a subject singularly darkened by misapprehensions in
the minds of our countrymen.
Thus it has happened that, after being invested by the Holy Father,
Pius IX. of glorious memory, with the charge of introducing into our
country the rule and institute of St. Philip, when at the call of the
same Holy Pontiff you had given seven years to found the great work of
a Catholic university in a land renowned of old for the thirst of its
children after knowledge, the piety of its teachers and the science of
its saints, while withdrawn again from public gaze in the interior
life of a religious house, from {172} the bosom of which you directed
a practical example of the higher education, your influence has been
felt over the whole mind of clergy and laity. And further, though we
may not penetrate the veil which covers the secret recesses of
conscience, we cannot be ignorant that during this whole generation
those who have been perplexed in their efforts to escape from the
meshes of heresy and schism have largely recurred to you for the
solution of their difficulties. It may never be disclosed to the world
to how many minds, whether by word of mouth or by correspondence, you
have been a guide and support, enabling them to reach the haven of
safety. The favourite charges of ignorance and deception fell to the
ground before one whose career had shown a choice proof of human
knowledge, and a choice example of self-sacrifice. You have indeed
lain hid so far as you could, but you have been counted upon by all as
a force in reserve upon which in any moment of danger they could draw
for the most temperate and therefore the ablest defence of the
Catholic cause.
That cause embraces two chief regions, that of Christian doctrine
and practice properly so called, and that of Christian life in its
relation to the natural duties of the citizen. To illustrate the first
you have called in the power of a Theologian, Philosopher, Historian,
Preacher, and {173} Poet, throwing over your work in every domain the
light of genius, to glorify that Sacred Mother of all living into
whose bosom in the maturity of human judgment you had fled for refuge.
It has been your prime effort to communicate to others the blessing
you had received yourself, leading them to acknowledge the maternity
of the Church of God by the greatest deference, the most gentle
submission, a spontaneous tenderness of loyalty to the spiritual
authority in your own conduct, which has been the mark of your life,
and by virtue of which intellect has found its fullest force in
humility.
With regard to the position of Catholics as members of the great
spiritual kingdom in reference to the temporal State in which they may
be cast, it is fresh in our remembrance that when the decree of the
Vatican Council defining the Infallibility of the Supreme Pontiff was
called in question, and an attack upon the loyalty of Catholics to
their Sovereign grounded upon that decree, you responded to a general
call that you should take up our defence, and in a short treatise,
grasping all the bearings of a delicate and complex subject, you
satisfied the utmost demand of an over-excited public opinion; you
even turned it in our favour; you spoke, and the impeachment of our
loyalty fell to the ground, and we stood acquitted and justified.
{174}
In congratulating ourselves upon the dignity which the Sovereign
Pontiff has now bestowed upon you, we gather together these five
characters of your long and eventful life, rejoicing that its last
period, which we pray may be for many years, will be spent in special
ministry to the Chair of Peter, beside which Doctorship has ever found
its security, Piety its support, Genius its crown, and Charity its
reward.
NORFOLK, E. M., Chairman.
T. W. ALLIES, W. S. LILLY,
Hon. Secs. of the Presentation Fund Committee.
To the Catholics of England, Scotland, and
Ireland
MY LORDS, GENTLEMEN,
MY DEAR FRIENDS,
Next to my promotion by the wonderful condescension of the Holy Father
to a seat in the Sacred College, I cannot receive a greater honour,
than, on occasion of it, to be congratulated, as I now have been, by
Gentlemen, who are not only of the highest social and personal
importance, viewed in themselves, but who come to me as in some sort
representatives of the Catholics of these {175} Islands, nay of the
wide British Empire.
Nor do you merely come to me on occasion of my elevation, but with
the purpose, or at least with the effect, of co-operating with his
Holiness in his act of grace towards me, and of making it less out of
keeping, in the imagination of the outer world, with the course and
circumstances of my life hitherto, and the associations attendant upon
it. In this respect I conceive your Address to have a meaning and an
impressiveness of its own, distinct from those other congratulations,
more private, most touching and most welcome that have been made to
me, and it is thus that I explain to myself the strength of your
language about me, as it occurs in the course of it. For, used though
it be in perfect sincerity and simple affection, I never will believe
that such a glowing panegyric as you have bestowed upon me was written
for my sake only, and not rather intended as an expression of the mind
of English-speaking Catholics for the benefit of those multitudes who
are not Catholics, and as a support thereby to me in my new dignity
which is as really necessary for me, though in a different way, as
those {176} contributions of material help with which also you are so
liberally supplying me.
I accept then your word and your deed as acts of loyalty and
devotion to the Holy Father himself, and I return you thanks in, I may
say, his name, both for your munificence and for your eloquent praise
of me.
This your double gift, for so I must consider it, I conceive to be
an offering from you to the Sovereign Pontiff, to the Holy Roman
Church, to the Sacred College, and lastly to the Cardinal Deacon of
the Title of St. George; but still I should have very little heart,
unless I also viewed it as a kindness personal to myself. Yes, of
course it is personal, for the very reason that it is intended to
enable me to be something more than what I am in my own person. A
certain temporal status, a certain wide repute are necessary, or at
least desirable, for the fulfilment of the duties to which in the
sight of the Holy Father I have pledged myself. Among the obligations
of a Cardinal I am pledged never to let my high dignity suffer in the
eyes of men by fault of mine, never to forget what I have been made
and whom I represent; and, if {177} there is a man who more required
the support of others in satisfying duties for which he was not born,
and in making himself more than himself, surely it is I.
The Holy Father, the Hierarchy, the whole of Catholic Christendom
form, not only a spiritual, but a visible body; and as being a
visible, they are necessarily a political body. They become, and
cannot but become, a temporal polity, and that temporal aspect of the
Church is brought out most prominently and impressively, and claims
and commands the attention of the world most forcibly, in the Pope and
his Court, in his Basilicas, Palaces, and other Establishments at
Rome. It is an aspect rich in pomp and circumstance, in solemn
ceremony, and in observances sacred from an antiquity beyond memory.
He himself can only be in one place, but his Cardinals, so far as he
does not require their presence around him, represent him in all parts
of the civilised world, and carry with them great historical
associations, and are a living memento of the Church's unity, such as
has no parallel in any other polity. They are the Princes of an
Ecumenical {178} Empire. The great prophecies in behalf of the Church
are in them strikingly fulfilled, that "the Lord's House should
be exalted above all the hills," and that "Instead of thy
fathers sons are born to thee, whom thou shalt make princes over all
the earth". I am not speaking of temporal dominion, but of
temporal pre-eminence and authority, of a moral and social power, of a
visible grandeur, which even those who do not acknowledge it, feel and
bow before.
You, my dear Friends, have understood this; you have understood,
better than I, what a Cardinal ought to be, and what I am not, my
greatness of position and my wants. You, instead of me and for me have
(in St. Paul's words) "glorified my office". You are
enabling me to bear a noble burden nobly. I trust I never may
disappoint you or forfeit your sympathy, but, as long as life lasts,
may be faithful to the new duties which, by a surprising disposition
of Providence, have been suddenly allotted to me.
JOHN HENRY CARDINAL
NEWMAN.
The Assumption, 1879.
The Cardinal having concluded his reply Lord O'Hagan said: "I
venture to address {179} one word to your
Eminence in relation to the Catholics of Ireland. They will re-echo
with full cordiality the praise and homage which has been offered to
you in an Address worthily representing multitudes of the Catholics of
the three kingdoms. But they have special relations to your Eminence.
They remember with pride the long years of your sojourn amongst them.
They have enduring gratitude for the great benefits you have conferred
upon their country, and will desire, when your Eminence grants them
the opportunity, to testify, substantively and for themselves, the
admiration, reverence, and affection, in which they hold you."
Cardinal Newman said: "I can only trust to you, my lord, and to
those whom you represent, that you will make up for my deficiencies,
and supply the expressions of gratitude and of those deep feelings
which your Address to me has inspired". (See pp. 201, 232, 252.)
II.
From
the Catholic Poor School Committee
(Read and Presented by the Marquis of Ripon as
Chairman of the Committee.)
MAY IT PLEASE
YOUR EMINENCE,
The Catholic Poor School Committee of Great Britain desires with one
voice to express its joy at your elevation to the dignity of Cardinal,
and at the same time to render public thanks to His Holiness Leo XIII.
for the honour which by this choice he has conferred not only upon the
Catholics of the Empire, but, as it may with confidence say, upon the
nation itself. So many-sided has been the {180} intellectual energy of
your life, and in so many directions has its moral force pervaded the
minds of men, that we shrink from the attempt to describe it, and
would rather seek to discern that which has made it a consistent whole
as well as a uniform advance from the beginning. We seem to see that,
filled from the first with the sense of that most close and tender
relation in which the Creator and the soul that He has created stand
to each other, you felt a passionate love of God, and the desire to
devote every faculty and act to His glory and the furtherance of His
kingdom upon earth. Thus the thirst for truth and the aspiration of
piety sprang up together and strengthened each other, and no suffering
deterred you from their crowning act of submission to the Catholic
Church by entrance into her communion. In such a course may we not see
a connection, at least, with the purpose for which our Committee
exists? It was founded to unite clergy and laity in the work of
educating the mass of the people so that religious and secular
knowledge and practice might be joined together in the nurture of the
child. Thus it may be said to represent in the lowest part of the
social scale that of which your life has been the typical example in
the highest, the union of Reason with Faith, of Knowledge with
Religion, of Genius with Piety. You dedicated seven years of your
{181} life to carry out in Ireland a great design of the Holy See, the
blending the profession of the true faith with the acquisition of all
human science and culture; and as a result you have embodied in
enduring works the Idea of a Catholic University. You have given
thrice as many years in England, both time and thought without grudge,
to the formation of a School which should cause the best tradition of
English life to flourish upon the rich soil of the faith. For this end
you made it a home in St. Philip's own house, taking it, so to say,
into your heart. It is the aim of this Committee to do for the
labouring classes, so far as the necessity of that labour allows, what
in these two great instances you sought to accomplish for those who,
having by the gift of Providence leisure to acquire learning, ought to
expend both for the good of others. Permit, then, the Committee to
select out of the many works of your life this one of Education, and
on this ground especially to delight in the honour with which the Holy
See—in whose mission to the world is included the union of Christian
faith with human knowledge—has thought fit to crown a life from its
beginning instinct with the desire to spread the kingdom of God among
men, illumined throughout by the gift of genius, above all made
fruitful by sacrifice.
RIPON, Chairman.
THOS. WM. ALLIES,
Secretary. {182}
To the Members of the Catholic Poor School
Committee
MY DEAR FRIENDS,
In returning to you my warmest and most hearty thanks for an Address
conceived in the language of personal friendship rather than a formal
tender of Congratulations on my recent elevation, I must express my
especial pleasure on finding that the main view of my life, which you
select for notice, is just that which I should wish you to fix upon,
and should wish it for the same reason as has actuated you in
selecting it, namely, because it brings you and myself together as
associates in a common cause—the cause of Catholic Education.
To be honest, I do not deny that I could have wished you, in some
things which you have said of me, to have less indulged your
affectionate regard for me (I must venture on this phrase), and to
have been more measured in language, which cannot indeed pain me,
because it is so genuine and earnest; but I prefer to dwell on that
portion of your Address which leads me to feel the pride and joy of
fellowship with you in a great work, {183} and lets me with a safe
conscience allow you to speak well of me; nay, to allow myself even to
open my own mind and, indirectly heighten your praise of me.
It is indeed a satisfaction to me to believe, that in my time, with
whatever shortcomings, I have done something for the great work of
Education; and it is a second satisfaction, that, whereas the cause of
Education has so long ago brought you into one body, you, whose
interest in it is sure to have kept your eyes open to its fortunes,
are able, after all disappointments, to pronounce, at the end of many
years, that my endeavours have, in your judgment, had their measure of
success.
The Committee for the Poor Schools has existed now for thirty-two
years, and two-thirds of its members are laymen. I too, long before I
was a Catholic Priest, set myself to the work of making, as the
School, so also the Lecture-room, Christian; and that work engages me
still. I have ever joined together faith and knowledge, and considered
engagements in educational work a special pastoral office. Thus,
without knowing you, and without your religious advantages, {184} I
have, in spirit and in fact, ever associated myself with you.
When I was Public Tutor of my College at Oxford, I maintained, even
fiercely, that my employment was distinctly pastoral. I considered
that, by the Statutes of the University, a Tutor's profession was of a
religious nature. I never would allow that, in teaching the classics,
I was absolved from carrying on, by means of them, in the minds of my
pupils, an ethical training. I considered a College Tutor to have the
care of souls, and before I accepted the office I wrote down a private
memorandum, that, supposing I could not carry out this view of it, the
question would arise whether I could continue to hold it.
To this principle I have been faithful through my life. It has been
my defence to myself, since my Ordination to the Priesthood, for not
having given myself to direct parochial duties, and for having allowed
myself in a wide range of secular reading and thought, and of literary
work. And, now, at the end of my time, it is a consolation to me to be
able to hope, if I dare rely upon results, that I have not been
mistaken. I trust that I may, without presumption or arrogance, {185}
accept this surprising act of the Sovereign Pontiff towards me, and
the general gratification which has followed upon it, as a favour
given me from above.
His Holiness, when he first told me what was in prospect for me,
sent me word that he meant this honour to be "a public and solemn
testimony" of his approbation; also that he gave it in order to
give pleasure to Catholics and to my countrymen. Is not this a
recognition of my past life almost too great for a man, and suggesting
to him the "Nunc Dimittis" of the aged saint? Only do
you pray for me, my dear Friends, that, by having a reward here, I may
not lose the better one hereafter.
JOHN H. CARDINAL NEWMAN.
The Assumption, 1879.
III.
From
the Academia of the Catholic Religion
(Read and Presented by Mr. Edward Lucas.)
MAY IT PLEASE
YOUR EMINENCE,
The Academia of the Catholic Religion had the honour to count you
amongst its earliest members. It hails with profound gratitude to his
Holiness {186} Leo XIII. your exaltation to the rank of Cardinal of
the Holy Roman Church. The gifts of a Theologian, a Philosopher, an
Historian, a Preacher, and a Poet, shed upon a single life a lustre
seldom equalled: but it has been your merit to exert these varied
gifts in the noblest of causes. The powers which, when bestowed
singly, others have so often misspent in the propagation of error, you
have used collectively, first in the pursuit and then in the
companionship of truth. It was indeed given to you in the earlier half
of your life to stir the heart and mind of a great people in a degree
which is the lot of few in any age: in the later and happier period of
it he who was already an unrivalled Master of English language and
Leader of English thought became likewise an unsurpassed Exponent of
Catholic doctrine, a victorious Defender of Catholic loyalty. Then
these most precious gifts of intellect, the preacher's knowledge of
the heart, the historian's knowledge of the race, the insight of
proportion and cohesion in doctrines, whether natural or revealed, a
power of illustration which arrayed sacred truth in the fairest garb,
a style the mirror of exact and lucid thought, were seen to be but the
outward ornaments of a life hallowed by sacrifice. That Loss and
Gain at the central point of your course added ten-fold weight to
the natural vigour of thought, and wisdom matured by suffering was the
most eloquent {187} of teachers. You went to the centre of Christendom—to
Peter, from whom its unity springs—and, as a true son of St. Philip,
brought back with his habit a filial love of Rome, and caught by
inheritance from that Father the secret of her Catacombs and the glory
of her Basilicas. Such an one is fitted to be a Counsellor equally of
the suffering as of the conquering Church. Therefore we do heartfelt
homage to the choice of a great Pontiff, who, in exerting his own
judgment, has divined our desire: and we pray that you, who are
elected to be a Member of the Church's Sacred Senate at a time full of
danger and difficulty, may for many years be preserved to dedicate to
the special service of the Holy See the experience of a great and long
life rich in labours and sufferings, a life which seems to culminate
in its beauty and radiance as it advances to its rest and its reward.
HENRY EDWARD, Card.
Archbishop of Westminster, President.
EDWARD LUCAS, Secretary.
To the Academia of the Catholic Religion
I offer my best thanks to the members of the Academia for the
honour and the kindness they have done me by the Address which has now
been presented to me, and for {188} the warmth of the language with
which their Congratulations have been expressed.
Also I feel much gratified by their high estimate of the value of
what I have written, of its literary merits, and of the service it has
been to the interests of Religion.
Such praise comes with especial force and effect from the Members
of an Academia; for such a body, whatever be its particular scope and
subject-matter, still is ever, I conceive, in name and in office, a
literary, or at least an intellectual, body; and therefore I naturally
feel it as a high compliment to me, that my various writings should
receive the approbation of men whose very function, as belonging to
it, is to be critical.
However, I do not, I must not, forget, that whatever presents
itself for critical examination admits of being regarded under
distinct, nay, contrary aspects; and, while I welcome your account of
me as expressive of your good-will and true respect for me, which
claims my best acknowledgments, I shrink from taking it as
representative of the judgment of the world about me, or of its
intellectual circles either; and for this plain {189} reason, because
even I myself, who am not likely to be unjust to myself, have ever
seen myself in colours less favourable to my self-love, to my powers
and to my works, than those in which you have arrayed me; and hence I
cannot allow myself to bask pleasantly in the sunshine of your
praises, lest I lose something of that sobriety and balance of mind,
which it is a first duty jealously to maintain.
In fact, the point which you are so good as to insist upon, as if
in my favour, has always been a sore point with me, and has suggested
uncomfortable thoughts. A man must be very much out of the common to
deserve the five great names with which you honour me; and for myself,
certainly, when I have reflected from time to time on the fact of the
variety of subjects on which I have written, it has commonly been
whispered in my ear, "To be various is to be superficial".
I have not indeed blamed myself for a variety of work, which could
not be avoided. I have written according to the occasion, when there
was a call on me to write; seldom have I written without call, but I
have ever felt it to be an unpleasant {190} necessity, and I have
envied those who have been able to take and prosecute one line of
research, one study, one science, as so many have done in this day,
and thus to aspire to the "Exegi monumentum" of the Poet. I
am not touching on the opinions which have characterised their labours,
whether true or false; but I mean that an author feels his work to be
more conscientious, satisfactory, and sound, when it is limited to one
subject, when he knows all that can be known upon it, and when it is
so fixed in his memory, and his possession of it is so well about him,
that he is never at a loss when asked a question, and can give his
answer at a minute's warning.
But I must come to an end; and, in ending, I hope you will not
understand these last remarks to argue any insensibility to the depth
of interest in me and kindly sympathy with me in your Address, which
it would be very difficult indeed to overlook, but to which it is most
difficult duly to respond.
The Assumption, 1879.
IV.
From
the Committee of Management of the St. George's Club
TO THE MOST
EMINENT AND ILLUSTRIOUS
LORD, JOHN HENRY
NEWMAN, CARDINAL DEACON
OF THE HOLY
ROMAN CHURCH, BY
THE TITLE OF
ST. GEORGE IN
VELABRO
MY LORD CARDINAL,
The Committee of Management of the St. George's Club, on behalf of the
general body of its members, desire to express to your Eminence their
profound joy at your elevation to the Sacred Purple.
For thirty years the Catholics of this Country have looked to your
Eminence as a great Champion of the faith among a population deeply
prejudiced against it by ignorance and fable. It is to you that they
owe, with much else, defences both of their veracity and loyalty, so
powerful and winning as to have carried conviction to minds clouded by
inveterate misconceptions, and to have turned a tide of prejudice
which had been flowing strongly for three centuries.
But besides your signal services to the Catholic body at large,
many members of this Club are bound to your Eminence by personal ties
of a very sacred kind, and have special reason to rejoice in the
honour shown by the Sovereign Pontiff to one who is to some a
spiritual Father, to more a dear and venerated friend. {192}
The Committee of the St. George's Club trust, therefore, that they
may be permitted to add their most respectful and affectionate homage
to that which has reached Your Eminence from so many quarters upon
this great and glad occasion.
On behalf of St. George's Club,
NORFOLK, E.M., President.
To the Committee of Management and the
Members of the St. George's Club
When my first surprise was over, at the Sovereign Pontiff's
gracious act towards me during the last spring, I felt that so great a
gratification I could not have again, as that signal recognition by
the highest of earthly authorities, of my person, my past life, my
doings in it, and their results. But close upon it, and next to it in
moment, and in claim upon my gratitude, comes the wonderful sympathy
and interest in me, so wide and so eager in its expression, with which
that favour from his Holiness has been caught up by the general
public, and welcomed as appropriate, on the part of friends and
strangers to me, of those who have no liking for the objects for which
I have worked as well as those who have. {193}
In that accord and volume of kind and generous voices, you,
Gentlemen, by the Address which now has been presented to me, have
taken a substantial part, and thereby would have a claim on me, though
there were nothing else to give you a place in my friendly thoughts;
but this is not all which gives a character of its own to your
congratulations.
I was much touched by your noticing the special tie of a personal
character which attaches some of your members to me, and me to them;
it is very kind in you to tell me of this, and it is a kindness which
I shall not forget.
Also there is between you and myself a tie which is common to you
all; and that, if not a religious tie also, is at least an
ecclesiastical, and one which in more than in one respect associates
us together. St. George is your Patron; and you are doubly under his
Patronage: first, because he is this country's Saint, and next, in
that voluntary union, by virtue of which you address me. Now I on the
other side have been appointed titular of his ancient Church in Rome;
his Chapter, his dependents, his fabric, are all under my {194} care,
and, here again, as I claim to have an interest in you more than
others have, so you may claim to share in the devotion paid to that
glorious Martyr in his venerable Basilica.
But it would be wrong to detain you longer; and, while I repeat my
thanks to all the members of the Club for their Address, my special
thanks are due to you, gentlemen, who have taken the trouble to
present it to me in person.
JOHN H. CARDINAL NEWMAN.
The Assumption, 1879.
V.
From
the Training College of the Sisters of Notre Dame, Liverpool
Presented, Aug. 15, by the Marquis of Ripon, as Chairman of the
Managing Committee of the Training College of Notre Dame, Liverpool.
He prefaced it by a few words of high commendation of the College,
which he said ranked as inferior to no institution of the kind in the
country.
MAY IT PLEASE
YOUR EMINENCE,
The Convent of the Sisters of Notre Dame, Mount Pleasant, Liverpool,
which has for twenty-three years discharged the office of a Training
College for female teachers, in connection with {195} the Catholic
Poor School Committee as Managers, and with the Government as
Administrators of the Parliamentary Grant for Education, begs to
express to you their joy at the immense honour bestowed on you, an
honour reflected in no small degree upon their country by the Holy
Father, Leo XIII., in raising you to the dignity of the Cardinalate.
As an educating institution, we feel the vast importance of a
Catholic Literature, and we find in the thirty-four volumes of your
works what we trust is an omen of the future richness of our store.
You have treated therein, very largely, of the things of God and the
things of man, the converse of the soul with her Maker and Redeemer,
and the manifold relations of human society. You have explored history
with the acutest light of reason illuminated by faith; and philosophy
has become in your hands the torch-bearer of religion. In these most
varied works, which may be termed "a well of English
undefiled," we are conscious that you have provided for the
untold and ever-increasing millions, who, in the furthest East as in
the West, speak the English tongue and hold the Catholic Faith, a
source at once of human consolation and of divine light. Other pupils
besides ours will, in the ages to come, learn by the voice of
Gerontius the secrets of the unseen state, and be drawn to aspire
after the prize of eternal communion with God. {196}
But permit us to point at a more special contact between part of
the work of your Eminence in the past and our own actual task. You
gave seven years of your life to the foundation of a Catholic
University in Ireland: a permanent fruit of which remains, not only in
the institution founded, but in that illustration of an University's
highest functions which you have drawn with the utmost force and
precision. Since you retired from that work to St. Philip's home, our
College, aided by a Government which is both more just and more
generous in its treatment of Education here than in Ireland, has sent
forth upwards of eight hundred Catholic teachers into our schools. We
are sure that you, who have toiled in the cultivation of the learned,
feel an equal zeal to promote that of the labouring classes, for among
the gifts bestowed upon you so munificently by the Divine Goodness,
the heart of a great Preacher is one of the most conspicuous.
For this work of ours, in which we have followed to the best of our
ability, in the humblest sphere of human thought, the example you have
set up in its highest range, and for ourselves in particular, we ask
your Eminence's benediction, and the more, because a great proportion
of those whom we have instructed and sent forth belong to that Irish
race to which you devoted so many years: a race, which {197} by
spreading into so many lands carries far and wide that English tongue,
in the utmost purity and strength of which you have set forth the
triumphs of the Catholic faith.
THE SISTERS AND
PUPILS OF NOTRE
DAME.
Liverpool, Aug. 13, 1879.
To the Training College of the Sisters of
Notre Dame, Liverpool
[This Reply was extempore.]
The name of the Liverpool Sisters of Notre Dame would have been
quite enough, without other words, to make me understand the value of
the congratulations which your lordship has been so good as to put
into my hands in their behalf, and which, I need scarcely say, are
rendered doubly welcome to me as coming to me through your lordship.
May I beg of you the additional favour of your assuring them in turn
of the great pleasure which their Address has given me, not only as
proceeding from a religious community, whose kindly estimation of such
as me is ever coincident or even synonymous with prayer for his
welfare, but also as expressing the sentiments of ladies who by their
special culture of mind and educational {198} experience have a claim
to be heard when they speak, as in this case, on a question whether
his writings have done good service in the cause of Catholic faith.
For the gratification then which their language concerning me has
given me, and especially for that overflowing personal good-will
towards me which in the first instance has led to their addressing me,
I beg of your lordship's kindness to return to them my most sincere
acknowledgments.
[A Post Card written by one * who had been present at the five
Addresses, bears the following: "Ille Senex miræ fuit dignitatis,
modestiæ, comitatis. Pulcherrima sanè venustas Senectutis
Christianæ. Petrum loqui putares potiusquam Petri ministrum."]
* T. W. Allies, Esq.
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From Dr. Delany,
Bishop of Cork, to Cardinal Newman
CORK, August 3, 1879.
MOST EMINENT LORD,
Great as the honour and pleasure are of approaching your Eminence on
this occasion, I should not have ventured to do so in my individual
capacity. One may not undertake a proceeding which would be the
ambition of all, and being carried out would be oppressive to the
subject of their veneration. Happily, {199} as spokesman of a firm
Catholic Community, I have at the same time an opportunity of
expressing my personal feelings of delight at the promotion of your
Eminence to your present most exalted rank, not only honourable to
yourself, but, I may perhaps add, creditable to our Holy Church.
I might not please you by referring to your noble intellectual
powers, more appreciated by the rest of the world than by yourself,
but your Eminence must be consoled by the convictions of others that
our good God has made you the instrument of various and wide-spread
blessings to multitudes of your fellow-men.
Whilst the Catholic world hailed with delight the happy inspiration
of our Holy Father in electing you to a place in the College of his
Cardinals, I don't think that any portion of our Church cherished the
feeling more warmly than the good Catholics of Cork. I expected as
much, yet I was specially struck by the quiet enthusiasm that pervaded
all ranks of our Community on the occasion.
And having humbly joined in the tribute prepared for your Eminence,
they could not be content unless they gave expression to you in person
of their admiration, reverence, and love. I have the honour of
forwarding the Address they wish me to lay before you. Few besides
your Eminence could devise such a form {200} of words, as would
adequately convey their sentiments.
No accumulation of honours could increase my own profound and
affectionate veneration save only this judgment of our great Sovereign
Pontiff.
I have the honour to be,
Your Eminence's
Most humble and devoted servant,
@ WILLIAM DELANY.
Address from the City of Cork
May 10, 1879.
MOST EMINENT LORD,
The Bishop, Clergy, Mayor, and Catholic people of Cork, in accord with
their fellow-countrymen generally, beg to approach you with sincere
congratulations, on the auspicious occasion of your elevation to the
high office and dignity of Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church.
Drawn by a singular grace of God from the darkness of error and
schism into the light of Christ's true Church, you co-operated so
faithfully with the heavenly gift as to become yourself a beacon-light
to hundreds of others, who, moved by your example, and instructed by
your writings, have followed you into the tranquil haven of the True
Faith.
To the Church of your adoption you have proved yourself not only a
devoted Son, but wherever battle was to be done {201} for her cause a
ready and irresistible Champion.
As Irishmen we owe you a special debt of gratitude, for that, at
the call of our Hierarchy, you left your home and detached yourself
from your natural associations and devoted several years of your
services to the interests of Catholic University Education amongst us,
shedding by your name and literary labours a lustre on that
Institution which you strove to establish in the face of nearly
insurmountable difficulty.
Wishing you years of honour and usefulness in your new and exalted
position.
WILLIAM DELANY, Bishop
of Cork.
PATRICK KENNEDY, Mayor of
Cork.
JAMES DONEGAN, J. P,
Major, Hon. Sec.
THOMAS LYONS, Hon. Treas.
Reply to the Address from the City of Cork
August 21, 1879.
MY LORD BISHOP,
THE WORSHIPFUL, THE
MAYOR OF CORK,
AND THE GENTLEMEN
ASSOCIATED WITH YOU,
I well understand and feel deeply the honour done me in the Address on
occasion of my recent elevation which I have received with your
signatures attached, in the name {202} of the Catholics, clergy and
laity, forming the large and important population of Cork.
It is an additional mark of attention of which I am very sensible,
that the Address is so beautifully illuminated, coming to me in a form
as exquisite, considered as a work of art, as it is generous and
kindly in the sentiments about me to which it gives expression.
You show a kindly sympathy for me, in what you say of my conversion
to the Catholic Faith and the circumstances attendant on it; and I
consider you to be very generous to me in the notice you take of my
services so long ago in behalf of the Catholic University.
Certainly it is very gratifying to be told that my efforts then,
such as they were, in the cause of University Education were not
without effect; and, though I cannot myself estimate them as highly as
you indulgently do, it is too pleasant to believe that in this matter
you know better than I, for me to make any violent attempt to prove
that you speak too strongly in their commendation.
May I beg of you, my Lord Bishop, and of your associates in signing
the {203} Address, to convey to the Catholics of your city my most
sincere thanks for it, and to assure them that I shall never lose the
sense of pleasure which I derive from the friendliness with which they
regard me, and for the warmth with which they have welcomed the
gracious act towards me of the Holy Father.
JOHN HENRY CARD.
NEWMAN.
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From Prior Raynal,
O.S.B., St. Michael's, Hereford, to Cardinal Newman
ST. MICHAEL'S, HEREFORD,
August 23, 1879.
MOST EMINENT LORD
CARDINAL,
Allow me to offer you the heartfelt congratulations of myself and
Community on your elevation to the dignity of Cardinal of the Holy
Roman Church. Please also to accept the expressions of our deep
respect conveyed to you in person by Canon Hurworth. I take this
opportunity to thank your Eminence for the love you have always
evinced towards our great Father St. Benedict, as also for the
good-will you have always manifested for the Order, of which we are
the very lowly members.
Overwhelmed as you are by congratulatory letters, I beg that you
will not {204} trouble to acknowledge these few lines. We shall deem
ourselves happy to secure a memento in your Holy Mass and a blessing
from your fraternal heart.
Believe me, my Lord Cardinal,
Ever yours most respectfully,
P. W. RAYNAL, O.S.B.
To Fr. Raynal, Prior, St. Michael's,
Hereford
THE ORATORY,
August 24, 1879.
MY DEAR VERY
REV. FATHER,
Your letter, delivered to me by Canon Hurworth, in your own name and
in the name of your Community, is very kind and welcome to me, and I
thank you all for it. It has been an extreme gratification to me to
find the gracious act towards me of the Holy Father seconded so warmly
by my brother Catholics at home.
You say most truly that I have always had a great devotion for St.
Benedict and love of his Order, and I don't see how a son of St.
Philip Neri can feel otherwise. It was a priest of St. Benedict who
sent him to Rome, and a priest of St. Benedict who decided for him on
his remaining {205} there—and in his spirit, so simple and lovable,
I see nothing else than the spirit of St. Benedict.
I trust, my Very Rev. Father, that your kindness to me on this
occasion is a token that you and yours will sometimes recollect a very
old man in your good prayers.
Most sincerely yours in Christ,
JOHN H. CARD. NEWMAN.
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