Paul Cullen, John Henry Newman, and the Catholic University of Ireland, 1845–1865

NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL BOOK REVIEW PAUL CULLEN, JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, AND THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, 1845-1865 BY COLIN BARR 104 Paul Cullen, John Henry Newman, and the Catholic University of Ireland, 1845-1865. By Colin Barr.Notre Dame,IN:University of Notre Dame Press,2003.Pp:xv + 288. Paper, $30.00, ISBN 0-268-03878-3. Colin Barr undertakes to“retell the story of the creation and the early days of the Catholic University of Ireland”(7) during the years 1845 through 1866. In doing so, he attempts to correct a misconception about the person who founded and sustained the university. In Newman circles, the university is regularly attributed to Newman in such phrases as “Newman’s University”; in contrast, Barr argues that the university from first to last really belonged to Paul Cullen (1803-1878), who was named Archbishop of Armagh in 1849, and succeeded Daniel Murray, as Archbishop of Dublin in 1852. From Barr’s perspective, Newman takes on a secondary, though crucial,role in beginning the actual university.Newman certainly brought his talents and name-recognition and left his mark and mind upon the university; however, the real source of the university’s creation, its aim to model the University of Louvain, and its ongoing existence after Newman left should be attributed to Cullen. Cullen was also the one who most deeply “mourned” the University in its essential demise in 1866. In short, Cullen’s central role in the university is one that many have forgotten. Following the introduction, the first three chapters deal with the educational, political, cultural, and ecclesiastical backdrop leading up to the university project. Chapter one introduces the problems and issues surrounding the educational system of Ireland in the first half of the 19th century. In this chapter, Barr presents the “personalities”involved in the debates about education, especially mixed education, where children of mixed religious background would attend the same school,and no official religious profession would be adopted. Chapter two considers the establishment of the Queen’s colleges, explicitly designed to implement the philosophy of mixed education at the university level; Barr gives attention to the immediate concerns this proposal generated especially among the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland and Rome.Chapter three deals with the ecclesiastical and civil politics that led to the final decision to reject the“Godless colleges”as these institutions of“mixed education” were derogatorily called. The next five chapters cover the period when Newman was explicitly involved in the university-project (1851-58). Chapter four discusses the hierarchy’s positive response to the university-proposal, especially Cullen’s calling Newman to be a 105 consultant on the university question and later appointing him as the rector.Chapter five considers the development of the formation of the idea of the university and reveals a high correspondence between Cullen’s and Newman’s views. Chapter six discusses the delays in 1853 and chapter seven the opening of the university in 1854. Chapter eight presents the rapid emergence of problems at the university, that culminated in Newman’s departure in 1858. One wonders if nearly everyone, including Newman and most writers evaluating the entire project,was expecting the university to grow unreasonably fast.In all of these chapters,Barr reveals the support given by Cullen both to Newman and to the university-project—support that has frequently been overlooked by scholars who have only considered Newman’s“views” of these years. Chapter nine, dealing with the years following Newman’s rectorship, gives attention both to the first couple of years when there was no rector and the next three, starting in 1861 and ending in the winter of 1865-66, under the guidance of Bartholomew Woodlock. Chapter ten then returns to the actual working structure of the university—material which perhaps should have been more fully integrated into some earlier chapters.The conclusion, deals with the failure of the university. Barr, while acknowledging other problems in the life of the university, roots its failure in the lack of a charter. Barr intends his work to supplant Fergal McGrath’s “classic” on Newman’s University, Newman’s University: Idea and Reality (1951). Both texts cover a number of the...