Good news.
Vatican City, Feb 13, 2019 / 03:32 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis Wednesday approved the canonization of Bl. John Henry Newman, a Roman Catholic cardinal, scholar, and founder of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in England.
Following a Feb. 12 meeting with Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the head of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the pope signed off on a second miracle attributed to the intercession of Newman, who was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in Birmingham, England on Sept. 19, 2010.
Everyone is posting on the announcement.
I know many people will take another look at Newman, and like I'm doing here, repeat a few things about his life and friendship with Fr. Ambrose St. John. Gay Catholics like to claim Newman because of that close friendship. I have lost count of the priests I have known who have speculated upon the subject of sexual orientation and these priests. The best of them always held up their example as a model for chaste-celibate, same sex disinterested friendship. Others were less discerning and along with some lay-gay-Catholics, were quite sure their friendship must have been romantic in nature.
I don't believe that of course.
As I noted several years ago, controversy has swirled around Newman's close friendship with St. John, especially in the past couple of decades, since religious activists in the gay rights movement have searched Martyrologies looking for saints who showed signs of homosexuality. (Queering the Church) The trouble with that revisionist thinking is that in just about every epoch, homosexual behavior has always been considered a perverted, disgraceful act - and in Newman's time it was a vice never even to be mentioned and punishable by law. Therefore it is very difficult for contemporary notions of same-sex, homoerotic, romantic love to be imposed upon earlier 'couple saints' - try as they might. (Jonathan and David, Sergius and Bacchus, and so on.) Nevertheless, such distortions have gained a foothold in contemporary culture, and are promulgated by not a few gay-Catholics
I won't devote much time to this subject, been there, done that in the past. Check my archives here.
Disinterested friendship - it's a good thing.
Where's his bones?
ReplyDeleteI think his remains are missing....
Where are the chicken and the duck?
ReplyDeleteA report at the time of his death specified that Newman had requested he be buried in quicklime. He had his reasons. Had present-day Church authorities taken note of this report they would not have been so disappointed to discover there was nothing left of him when they recently attempted to translate his body. They even had a pair of red slippers ready to place on his feet. I wonder what ever happened to them?
ReplyDeleteKeep thou my feet; I do not ask to see,
The distant scene, one step enough for me.
There are some wonderful reports on Newman in local newspapers of the time, after he moved to the Birmingham Oratory, especially about his preaching.
His room at the Oratory has remained in situ since his death. There is a small altar in one corner.
Cardinal Newman Exhumation Fails to Produce Body...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.catholic.org/news/international/europe/story.php?id=29968
no relics?
ReplyDeleteNewman's remains will never be placed in any Altar stone....strange...