Fr. Ian Ker: Doctor Newman

Fr. Ian Ker:

In today’s secular world, where holding even basic Christian moral convictions is regarded as “extremist” and therefore by definition irrational, Newman is a powerful champion of the reasonableness of faith. Indeed, he is himself one of the great Christian apologists, who continued his defence of Christianity as a Catholic in his philosophical magnum opus, the Grammar of Assent.

The canonisation is also significant in that it opens the way to the Church’s recognition of Newman the theologian as a “Doctor of the Church”. Often called “the Father of Vatican II”, he is surely the counterpart in the post-conciliar Church of St Robert Bellarmine, the Doctor par excellence of the Tridentine Church.

https://catholicherald.co.uk/magazine/newman-should-be-the-next-doctor-of-the-church/

And this:

https://aleteia.org/2019/02/21/cardinal-newman-could-be-declared-a-doctor-of-the-church-expert-says/

And, still more from a few years back, 2010 to be exact:

https://zenit.org/articles/cardinal-newman-doctor-of-the-church-2/

(Fr. Beaumont), who wrote the official biography of the cardinal beatified Sunday by Benedict XVI, noted that “all the Popes since Pius XII hoped to see Newman canonized and declared a doctor of the Church.”

“It is also Benedict XVI’s fervent wish,” Father Beaumont stated. “He has also expressed it, discreetly, in his conversation with journalists in the plane and in his homily during the beatification.”

In the conversation with journalists on board the papal plane en route to the United Kingdom, Benedict XVI said of Blessed John Henry Newman, “He is a figure of a doctor of the Church for us and for all, and a bridge between Anglicans and Catholics.”

Father Beaumont explained that “on declaring certain saints ‘Doctors of the Church,’ the Church acknowledges in their teaching […] a particular authority for all the faithful.”

He expressed confidence that “Newman will one day join the small group of 30 men and three women who have that status.”

Furthermore, the priest told ZENIT that “it was clear that for the Holy Father, Newman’s beatification was but a stage to something else.”