Astrid Peth

John Henry Newman

For Newman Centers around North America see Newman Centre.

The Oxford University Newman Society (est. 1878) is Oxford University's oldest Roman Catholic organisation. It exists to promote Catholic faith and culture within the University, and has served as the model for Catholic student societies throughout the English-speaking world.

History

Foundation: 1878-96

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The founders of the Catholic Club, 1878; second-from-right, Gerard Manley Hopkins

Founded as the Catholic Club in 1878, it was not until 1888 that the club was renamed the Newman Society as a tribute to John Henry Cardinal Newman, who had done a vast amount to advance the cause of Catholicism at Oxford, both as an Anglican striving to recover Anglicanism's Catholic roots, and subsequently as a convert to Catholicism. At the time, the renaming of the society was not uncontroversial; Lord Acton, whose son Dick was amongst those involved in the changing of the name, counselled him to be careful. Owen Chadwick describes his letter of advice thus:

[He] felt it to be awkward. On one side was the pride of Trinity College in Newman as one of its eminent graduates; and of Oriel too, connected as it was ‘with the period of his fame’. But on the other side Newman still had enemies in Oxford and they no small men – Max Müller ‘probably’ his worst, but perhaps Jowett also, and then several secular minds. [Acton’s] advice to Dick on this matter was ‘Do nothing too conspicuously.’

Meetings of the society originally took place at the parish church of St Aloysius Gonzaga or in members' rooms. Speakers were frequently undergraduates, as records show, and topics were wide-ranging. Quoting from surviving minute books, Walter Drumm notes:

At the twenty-fourth meeting, on 2 November 1890, Mr. Parry (University College) read a paper on ‘Lake Dwellings in Switzerland’. ‘A desultory discussion followed, most of the speakers professing ignorance of the subject’. Mr. Urquhart read a paper on ‘Christian Socialists in France’ and Lord Westmeath on ‘De Quincy and Opium Eating’. Hilaire Belloc was probably the best known of the early members of the Newman; on 11 June 1893, when he was still and undergratuate at Balliol, he spoke on ‘The Church and the Republic’. In the following year, the Society fielded a football XI, although the title ‘Newman Football Team’ was not approved by all members.

When the Catholic Chaplaincy to the University was established in 1896 the society found a natural home there, often meeting in the Chaplain's rooms. The same year also saw the society's hundredth meeting, which took the form - on 18th June 1896 - of "a dinner at the Clarendon Hotel. Bishop Ilsley of Birmingham, the Duke of Norfolk and thirty-two others, which was practically the whole membership, consumed at 10/- per head: lobster bisque, sole dauphinoise, poussin (method of cooking unstated), gateaux and fromage."

Twentieth century: pre-1960s

The minutes for the period 1898 to 1907 have been lost; "the records of the Newman Society are very sparse until the 1940s, from which period society cards have survived." However, as Drumm has emphasised, what records do remain all point to the fact of the Newman's being central to Catholic life in Oxford:

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Ronald Knox wrote of his experiences with the Newman

...we can see from the earliest records that the newly arrived undergraduate at the turn of the century would have been welcomed not only by his chaplain... but by his fellows who met at the Newman.

By 1926, when Ronald Knox became chaplain to Oxford, the Society's speakers were no longer predominantly drawn from the ranks of students. Meeting in the long room on the first floor of the Old Palace - which was known as the Newman Room - the Society frequently attracted important figures. Such was the Newman's importance that it even laid claim to some of the Old Palace's furniture; Knox records that the Newman Room's "larger sofa... was presented to the Society by Mgr Barnes, who assured me that it was the sofa on which his father proposed marriage to his mother". Meetings during Knox's period as chaplain were generally held on Sunday evenings. In a description of a typical Sunday, Knox wrote:

At five or ten minutes to seven the Newman speaker, duly washed, must be taken off to whatever club the Committee is dining at. He and the Committee must be lugged back to the Old Palace about 8.10 and given port in the chaplain's room. The chaplain will keep a look-out to see when the members have mostly arrived (he may even send an S.O.S. to Campion to ask if a few people will turn up and conceal the sparsity of attendance); then he will take the Committee down to the Newman Room... and come to roost in a comfortable chair if he can still find one. During the five minute interval after the paper, the chaplain invites one or two of the more distinguished people present... to come up after the meeting. During question-time he tries to keep things going... The visitors probably retire at eleven or soon after and the chaplain (unless he has the speaker to entertain) can now enjoy his own company.

The society makes two appearances in Brideshead

When Knox finally retired from the role of chaplain in 1939, his impact on the Newman Society and Catholic life in Oxford generally had been such that his farewell included "a dinner at the Randolph Hotel at which the Newman Society presented him with an early folio of the Douay Bible, a silver mug, a water-colour of the Old Palace, and £50." His involvement with the Society was not over, however. Women had been admitted to Oxford in 1920, and became members of the Newman Society and of the congregation at the Old Palace in 1941, having previously been cared for by a separate chaplaincy. Knox - who had been called on to return to Oxford but was unenthusiastic - proposed the merger to the Archbishop of Birmingham as a solution to the unexpected vacancy he was being asked to fill; as a confident Evelyn Waugh would later put it, Knox "was the author of the temporary amalgamation, which persists to this day."

In 1945 the Newman was sufficiently established to merit two mentions in Waugh's "Oxford novel", Brideshead Revisited. The first reference comes in the course of Lady Marchmain's comments to Charles Ryder about her son, Sebastian:

I want Sebastian to have all sorts of friends, not just one. Monsignor Bell tells me he never mixes with the other Catholics, never goes to the Newman, very rarely goes to mass even. Heaven forbid that he should only know Catholics, but he must know some.

The society participated in the refurbishing of the Chaplaincy which followed the Second World War; with Newman funds purchase was made of 'a new wireless set and an electrically operated gramophone'. Socially, the Newman continued to reflect the character of Catholicism among Oxford students; Baroness Williams of Crosby has recorded that while she "went occasionally to the Newman Society", she "was never part of the exclusive Catholic groups, usually young men and women from distinguished recusant families."

The academic year 1956-7 saw the society hosting a disputation conducted by Oxford's Dominicans. In 1959 the society held a dinner at which the Vice-Chancellor was represented, and which was attended by William Cardinal Godfrey. The latter took the opportunity to announce the resignation of the then-chaplain, Fr Valentine Elwes.

Twentieth century: 1960-1990

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Elizabeth Anscombe addressed the society in 1973

Following the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, the 1970s proved a turbulent decade in the life of the Church. This was reflected in the life of the Oxford Catholic community. The situation at the Chaplaincy, then under the authority of Crispian Hollis, was bleak, as the system of catechetical Sunday sermons - established in the time of Ronald Knox for the purpose of promoting students' doctrinal and spiritual formation - collapsed:

Many regularly practising Catholics seldom or never went to the Mass at which the sermon was preached. If they did, they were as likely to be regaled with jokes and anecdotes and a little moral exhortation as with solid doctrine. There was no intelligible link between one Sunday's sermon and the next; an undergraduate who was vague about doctrine and totally ignorant of theology would be no better off in these respects at the end of the year than at the beginning... Father Hollis' reports in these years sound an anxious note, unparalleled in earlier or later years.

In the midst of widespread ignorance, doctrinal confusion, and moral rebellion, the Newman staked out its position in 1973, hosting an address by Elizabeth Anscombe in defence of Pope Paul VI's encyclical on artificial birth control (Humanae Vitae).

In 1985, in a series of events which would end up being written up in the Society of St Pius X's Angelus newsletter, the Newman arranged a talk on the legacy of Vatican II. Michael Davies was one of the scheduled speakers. Controversy over the choice of speaker led to a change of location, but the lecture was, he reported, "well received - too well received as there were hostile questions from only one person, which made it rather dull." Controversy would surround the invitation, a decade later, of Gerry Matatics, who addressed the society prior to his embracing sedevacantism.

1990 to the twenty-first century

The society ceased to be the University's sole Catholic society in 1990, following the creation by the University chaplains of the Oxford University Catholic Society. Relations between the two societies since the new foundation have been good, with a large proportion of crossover membership and occasional joint functions.

The society marked the end of the twentieth century with a number of events, culminating in a visit by George Cardinal Pell (then-Archbishop of Melbourne). The Catholic Chaplaincy’s Annual Review records that:

[H]e was the chief celebrant at the termly Mass for the Newman Society, which took place at St. Aloysius... [and] was followed by lunch in Merton... the Archbishop later spoke on the need for educated Catholic lay people to promote the Gospel in public life.

Evelyn Waugh addressed the Newman as a member

Notable speakers

Previous generations

The society has been addressed by prominent and influential Catholics - as well as non-Catholics of interest to a Catholic audience - throughout its history. Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was a founding member, and in the Newman's early years both he and author Robert Hugh Benson - also a member - gave papers. Evelyn Waugh, Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton all spoke to the Newman; in fact, it was while attending a talk by Chesterton that Waugh first met Harold Acton, to whom he would later dedicate Decline and Fall. The 17th Duke of Norfolk would later in life speak of his "vivid recollections of meeting G. K. Chesterton when I... attended some of his lectures to the Newman Society, which I will never forget." When Waugh himself addressed members in 1956, it was with an apocalyptic tone: "Our whole literary world is sinking into black disaster... I am sure that those who live for the next thirty years will see the art of literature dying."

Maurice Baring's Punch and Judy was written for the occasion of his addressing the society, and it was at a meeting of the Newman that Christopher Dawson heard Newman biographer Wilfrid Ward speak. A biographer has argued that the experience was an influence in Dawson's conversion. Other distinguished speakers who addressed the society in the course of the twentieth century included philosopher Baron Friedrich von Hügel, Fr Ronald Knox, noted Jesuit Fr Martin d'Arcy, and screen actor Sir Alec Guinness. The 1970s saw the visit of the Rt Hon Dr Arthur Michael Ramsey, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury while the subsequent decade featured an address by HRH Princess Anne.

Recent terms

Recent terms' speakers of note have included Piers Paul Read on the reality of Hell; Fr Timothy Finigan on 'Humanae Vitae'; Fr Thomas Weinandy on the Incarnation; Fr John Saward on the character of Heaven, and, separately, on the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum; Fr Aidan Nichols on the centenary of Pope St Pius X's condemnation of Modernism; Professor Geza Vermes (in debate with Dom Henry Wansbrough) on the historicity of the Gospels; Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe MP on being a Catholic politician; Sir Anthony Kenny on the Oxford Movement; and Baroness Williams of Crosby on the relationship between God and Caesar. In Hilary Term 2004 the Duke of Norfolk spoke at the society's termly dinner; the Michaelmas 2006 after-dinner speaker was Fr Paul Chavasse, actor causae of Cardinal Newman's cause for canonization and Provost of the Birmingham Oratory. As part of the Society's 130th anniversary celebrations in 2008 a dinner was held in Trinity College attended by HRH The Duchess of Kent, and attended by around 150 people.

The contemporary Newman

Current ethos

Today the society continues to provide a place for Oxford's Catholics who, in the words of Lady Marchmain, "must know some" of their co-religionists, while also promoting Catholic faith, learning and culture within the broader University. At least once a year the society tends to hold a talk on some aspect of Newman's life or work, seeking also to inform Oxford students of the ongoing cause for his canonization.

The Newman Society dinner, MT 2005

Term structure

The average term involves a drinks party, five weeks of weekly speaker meetings, a trip or other event on a Saturday afternoon and an end-of-term Mass and dinner with guest speaker; the specific form of any given term is, however, ultimately determined by the society's President. The President is assisted in his duties by a committee which includes a Senior Treasurer (Senior Member), Past-Presidents in residence, President-Elect, Treasurer, Secretary, and such other persons as are determined by the society's rules. In recent years, members have been afforded the opportunity to dine with speakers before meetings; such dinners have generally either taken place in members' colleges or in the University Catholic Chaplaincy.

In Trinity terms, the Newman has revived the practice of organising sporting events. A recent term saw the attempted assembly of a rowing Newman VIII, and although football was once the society's main sport, it is now more usual for termcards to feature punting and other leisurely pursuits.

The Newman Foundation

On Saturday 24th November 2007 the Executive Committee passed a Standing Order authorising the formation of a separate committee to investigate the possibility of a lecture series being set-up in order to further the Society's intellectual objects. The Newman Foundation Committee is in the process of fundraising and inviting people to become trustees.

Motto and tie

The Society's motto is the phrase first used by St Augustine of Hippo (in the Donatist controversy), and subsequently adopted by Cardinal Newman: "Securus judicat orbis terrarum" ("the world's verdict is secure"). The Society tie features stripes of papal gold, cardinal red, and Oxford blue; it can be bought at Walters of Oxford. On 13th May 2007 the Newman tie featured in the Oxford section of the Channel 4 documentary Make Me a Tory.

External relations

The Society has not, in recent years, shied away from direct engagement with the great issues of the day. Although more regularly featured in the student press, one controversial intervention which came to national attention occurred during the Regensburg affair of 2006, with the publication of a letter in The Daily Telegraph from the then-President:

I understand that the Pope's words prompted some Indian Muslims to protest by burning an effigy of the Pontiff. How extraordinary that this old English custom should appear there so many years after the Empire fell. I assumed the eccentrics in Lewes, East Sussex, were practically peerless in the practice of pope-burning... [M]arvellous that, even if they failed to read the context of the Pope's remarks, these people still managed to wheel out a centuries-old English tradition.

Office holders, Michaelmas Term 2008

Office	Office holder	College
390th President	Patrick J Milner	Keble
Senior Member	John Eidinow M.A. (Oxon)	Merton & St Benet's
Past-President	Richard J Pickett	Exeter
Past-President	The Rev. Br. Rupert Allen, O.Praem.	St Benet's & Blackfriars
Past-President	Alexander Morrison	Oriel
Past-President	Michael C S Ryan	Brasenose
Past-President	Yaqoob A K Bangash	Keble
Past-President	Paul W Fleming	Mansfield
Acting Secretary	Paul W Fleming	Mansfield
Charities Officer	The Rev. Br. Lawrence Lew, O.P.	Blackfriars
Librarian	The Rev. Br. David Rocks, O.P.	Blackfriars
Junior Officer	Madeleine Rudge	Merton
Junior Officer	Jack P Gunning	Pembroke

External links

• Oxford University Newman Society – official website
• Oxford University Newman Society – web-log
• Communigate: Newman Society
• OU Newman Society Catalogue of Papers – Bodleian Library