For decades, scholars have assumed that the genius of John Henry Newman remained underappreciated among his Roman Catholic contemporaries. In order to find the true impact of his work, one must therefore look to the century following his death. Newman's Early Roman Catholic Legacy, 1845-1854 unpicks this claim. Examining a host of overlooked evidence from England and the European continent, C. Michael Shea considers letters, records of conversations, and obscure and unpublished theological exchanges to show how Newman's 1845 Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine influenced a host of Catholic teachers, writers, and Church authorities in nineteenth-century Rome and beyond. Shea explores how these individuals employed Newman's theory of development to argue for the definability of the new dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary during the years preceding the doctrine's definition in 1854. This study traces how the theory of development became a factor in determining the very language that the Roman Catholic Church would use in referring to doctrinal change over time. In this way, Newman's Early Roman Catholic Legacy, 1845-1854 uncovers a key dimension of Newman's significance in modern religious history.

This volume considers the impact of Newman's Essay on Development (1845) on Roman Catholicism of the time immediately after his conversion.

For decades, scholars have assumed that the genius of John Henry Newman remained underappreciated among his Roman Catholic contemporaries. In order to find the true impact of his work, one must therefore look to the century following his death. Newman's Early Roman Catholic Legacy, 1845-1854 unpicks this claim. Examining a host of overlooked evidence from England and the European continent, C. Michael Shea considers letters, records of conversations, and obscure and unpublished theological exchanges to show how Newman's 1845 Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine influenced a host of Catholic teachers, writers, and Church authorities in nineteenth-century Rome and beyond. Shea explores how these individuals employed Newman's theory of development to argue for the definability of the new dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary during the years preceding the doctrine's definition in 1854. This study traces how the theory of development became a factor in determining the very language that the Roman Catholic Church would use in referring to doctrinal change over time. In this way, Newman's Early Roman Catholic Legacy, 1845-1854 uncovers a key dimension of Newman's significance in modern religious history.

John Henry Newman and the Development of Doctrine provides an analysis of the attempts by John Henry Newman to account for the historical reality of doctrinal change within Christianity in the light of his lasting conviction that the idea of Christianity is fixed by reference to the dogmatic content of the deposit of faith. It argues that Newman proposed a series of hypotheses to account for the apparent contradiction between change and continuity, that this series begins much earlier than is generally recognized and that the final hypothesis he was to propose, contained in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, provides a methodology of lasting theological value and contemporary relevance. Stephen Morgan establishes the centrality of the problem of change and continuity in theology, to Newman's theological work as an Anglican, its part in his conversion to Catholicism and its contemporary relevance to Catholic theology. It also surveys the major secondary literature relating to the question, with particular reference to those works published within the last fifty years. Additionally, Morgan considers the legacy of the Essay as a tool in Newman’s theology and in the work of later theologians, finally suggesting that it may offer a useful methodological contribution to the contemporary Catholic debate about hermeneutical approaches to the Second Vatican Council and post-conciliar developments in doctrine.

This Handbook provides an introduction to all the major aspects of Catholic theology. As well as covering basic topics of doctrine and moral theology, the book considers some of Catholic theology's most important sources between 200 and 1870, and all the main movements and developments in Catholic theology since 1870.

John Henry Newman (1801-1890) has always inspired devotion. Newman has made disciples as leader of the Catholic revival in the Church of England, an inspiration to fellow converts to Roman Catholicism, a nationally admired preacher and prose-writer, and an internationally recognized saint of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, he has also provoked criticism. The church authorities, both Anglican and Catholic, were often troubled by his words and deeds, and scholars have disputed his arguments and his honesty. Written by a range of international experts, The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman shows how Newman remains important to the fields of education, history, literature, philosophy, and theology. Divided into four parts, part one grounds Newman's works in the places, cultures, and networks of relationships in which he lived. Part two looks at the thinkers who shaped his own thought, while the third part engages critically and appreciatively with themes in his writings. Part four examines how those themes have shaped conversations in the churches and the academy. This Handbook will serve as an important resource to critical and appreciative exploration of the person, writings, controversies, and legacy of Newman.

Reinhard Hütter’s main thesis in this third volume of the Sacra Doctrina series is that John Henry Newman, in his own context of the nineteenth century, a century far from being a foreign one to our own, faced the same challenges as we do today; the problems then and now differ in degree, not in kind. Hence, Newman's engagement with these problems offers us a prescient and indeed prophetic diagnosis of what these problems or errors, if not corrected, will lead to—consequences which have more or less come to pass—and, furthermore, an alternative way which is at once thoroughly Catholic and holds contemporary relevance. The introduction offers a survey of Newman’s life and works and each of the subsequent four chapters addresses one significant aspect of Christianity that is not only contested or rejected by secular unbelief, but also has a counterfeit for which not only Christians, but even Catholics have fallen. The counterfeit of conscience is the “conscience” of the sovereign subject (Ch. 1); the counterfeit of faith is the “faith” of one who does not submit to the living authority through which God communicates but rather adheres to the principle of private judgment in matters of revealed religion(Ch.2); the counterfeit of doctrinal development is twofold: (i) paying lip service to development while only selectively accepting its consequences on the grounds of a specious antiquarianism and (ii) invoking development theory to justify all sorts of contemporary changes according to the present Zeitgeist (Ch. 3). Finally, the counterfeit of the university are all those “universities” whose end is not to educate and thereby to perfect the intellect, but rather to feed more efficiently the empire of desire that is informed by the techno-consumerism of today (Ch. 4). The book concludes with an epilogue on Hütter’s journey to Catholicism.