Lead Kindly Light: The Life of John Henry Newman

NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 88 BOOK REVIEW LEAD KINDLY LIGHT: THE LIFE OF JOHN HENRY NEWMAN BY MICHAEL DAVIES Lead Kindly Light:The Life of John Henry Newman. by Michael Davis. Long Prarie, MN: The Neumann Press, 2001. Pages 248. Hardcover, $23.00, ISBN 1-930873-37-9. In any bookdisplay, this volume would stand out. The color of the cover is cardinalitial crimson with the title plus the name of the author and publisher stamped in gold. Front and center on the cover is a reproduction—2.625 by 3.125 inches—of the painting of Cardinal Newman by Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) that was commissioned by the Duke of Norfolk in 1881 (LD, 29:360-61). In an age when publishers often hide non-descript bindings underneath attractive dust-jackets, the Neumann Press has graced this biography with a decidedly handsome cover. Inside the book are 30 more illustrations—the first reproduces the 1845-water color portrait of Newman as an Oxford fellow by Sir William Ross—though one is puzzled by the unnecessary repetition of this portrait in black and white on page 50. The remaining black-and-white illustrations depict Newman, select contemporaries— Keble,Faber,Wiseman,Manning,et al.—and places—Oxford,Littlemore,Birmingham, Rednal, etc.—but sometimes the printing of these illustrations seems fuzzy. This biography narrates Newman’s life in a readable fashion with generous citations from his writings and those of some of his contemporaries, though readers may find some quotations a bit long and even distracting. On occasion, the author might have been more ecumenically sensitive;for example,how is one to understand the following statement:“Newman is often presented today as a proponent of the indifferentism that masquerades as contemporary ecumenism” (129)? In addition, Anglicanism is characterized as “a different religion from Catholicism in which we can have no faith”(241) and Newman is described as“a man whose life and teaching would inspire countless Protestants to abandon their errors and embrace the truth of the one,true Church founded by Jesus Christ”(13). However,didn’t Newman see his own life as a process of spiritual development from the Evangelicalism of his youth, through his efforts to find an Anglican via media to his acceptance of Roman Catholicism? Readers may also be puzzled by the author’s occasional attacks on contemporary “modernism”—which is sometimes the Modernism condemned at the beginning of the 20th century by Pope Pius X, but at other times seems to be the ill-effects that sometimes resulted from misconceived efforts to implement the teachings of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65); in still other instances,“modernism” seems to be equated with 21st century secularism and de-Christianization. In any case,the author’s occasional attempts to relate Newman to current events seem distracting at best if not somewhat detrimental to an authentic presentation of Newman’s life and thought. 89 Unfortunately, there are some mistakes: John William Bowden (1798-1844), whose decades-long friendship with Newman began during their student days at Trinity College, Oxford, inexplicably becomes James Bowden (16-17, 72, 241). Also Edward Thomas O’Dwyer, the Bishop of Limerick whose defense of Newman from the charge of Modernism was acknowledged by Pope Pius X (10 March 1908), loses his family name (73, 174, 247), apparently since the papal letter, according to papal protocol, used only the bishop’s first and middle name (cf. http://ic.net/~erasmus/ RAZ462.HTM). The first appendix contains a useful“chronological table”of Newman’s life; once again, there are mistakes: Newman’s sister Jemima married John Mozley on April 28, 1836,not 1835,and Newman’s mother died on May 17,1836,not 1835 (cf.LD,5:xv). The second appendix reproduces the letter of Pope Piux X to Bishop O’Dwyer of Limerick; the third appendix contains Newman’s discussion of “Infallibility and Conscience” from his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk; the fourth appendix on “The Rambler Controversy” contains excerpts from “On Consulting the Faithful” as published in Appendix V to the 1871 edition of The Arians of the Fourth Century; the fifth appendix (which should be labeled V, not IV) republishes four...