The Night School with St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890)

The third of our “Johns” of Series 17 is only the second native-born Englishman since the 8th century to be raised by the Church to the status of Doctor of the Church. It is because of this remarkable man, and what was done by Pope Leo XIV on 1 November 2025 in Rome, that I designed Series 17 to include these three Johns: John the Evangelist, John Chrysostom, and John Henry Newman. It is one thing to be a profound thinker, even a holy thinker of the great Mysteries of God and God’s way with human beings. John Henry Newman was that. But it is quite another capacity for that same person to be able to stay in close to the way human beings actually are - Pope Francis spoke of pastors being “close enough to the sheep to take on their smell” - rather than as they ought to be. John Henry Newman was this also. There is a beautiful, articulate humanity that comes through in John’s writings.In order to get a sense of this about John, I have chosen to concentrate attention on his justly revered Parochial and Plain Sermons (eight volumes of them), paying close attention to perhaps four of those sermons. Welcome to the conclusion of Series 17 of The Night School.